Keeping Up With the Earps: 3×03

Thank you to everyone who offered feedback last week! Here we go again.

There is A LOT going on in this show and it’s very easy to miss something that could be important. Since I have little else to do besides rewatch and think about Wynonna Earp, I thought I would offer up this kind of “cheat sheet”. It’s broken down into two main sections, first a look at the specific episode, the second part is kind of a deep dive into mysteries and clues surrounding all the main characters and entities.

Disclaimer: Nothing included in this post should be taken as absolute fact. Even information that I took directly from the show is stated as I see it and is in no way endorsed by anyone officially linked to the show.

Notes on 3×03: Keep Going. Keep Fighting.

This week’s episode was all about saying goodbye to a member of the family. We see Dolls’ closest friends all mourning in their unique way as they make plans for a wake. Though the episode is focused on the grief felt by those Dolls left behind, we also get a good deal of new details about several characters, which I included further down in Part II of this post.
The entire episode was beautifully done and included a lot of relationship dynamics we don’t see very often and some we just never get tired of, like the Earp sisters spending quality time together by the fire. There’s also some talk about the idea of free will and destiny after Waverly learns about the trauma Nicole experienced in the Ghost River Triangle as a child before ultimately deciding to return there as a cop. Waverly takes this a sign that there is no free will and wonders out loud what the point of pretty much anything is. Waverly brings the topic up again when she half-shouts at Doc and Kate that “if we’re all destined to be here and we’re all gonna die here, we need to figure out how to be here…together”.
The high point (in a “make me sob” kind of way) of the episode is when Jeremy, Doc, Nicole, Waverly, and Wynonna gather to lay Dolls to rest on a hill near the Homestead. Wynonna had Dolls cremated to insure that Black Badge would never use his body again. One by one they say goodbye in their own way as a beautifully haunting song plays in the background. Xavier Dolls, Died With His Boots On.
When someone who plays such a huge part in your life is suddenly taken from you one of the biggest questions is, “what do we do now?”. We’re given the straightforward answer two times in the episode. First, when Wynonna is talking Quinn out of going kamikaze and he asks “so what am I supposed to do?”, Wynonna gives him an answer that is hard for him to accept, he’s supposed to “live”. The second time we get an answer it’s from Dolls himself. He left Wynonna an envelope containing a happy picture of the whole groups, when Waverly asks Wynonna what it means, she tells her it means “Keep Going. Keep Fighting” because of course that’s what Dolls would tell her to do.

Gems You May Have Missed:

• Doc picks up Dolls’ scarf at Shorty’s by the dart board.
• I missed these lines until I watched with subtitles. Wynonna to Quinn after the Revenant attack, “Three paranormal tours with BBD, but this Fs with your S” and when asked what Jeremy is doing with them “F-ing with my S”.
• Another line I missed without CC, when Wynonna is heading into BBD to find Jeremy she’s practicing what to say: “I shouldn’t have called you a traitorous nerdly when I know deception dweeb is less harsh and more accurate”.

Answers to questions you may have:

Were there really any big questions this week?

Favorite Lines:

You shot him right in the dick. That was really sweet.
Oh love. Sometimes you get and sometimes you get got.
She said duty. – Yeah, she sure did cutie.
I got one in the chamber and murder on my mind.
The point is that I love you.
This is a memorial, dipshit. Did you even bring a cassarole?
Officer Fire-Crotch — Demon Blown-off Balls
Does anyone around her NOT have a secret wife?
I’m a vampire, not an asshole.
Well then like a few selfies and slide into my DMs like a normal person.
So what am I supposed to do? — Live
You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, baby girl.
Nicole wants to be eaten by vultures and then pooped out again. — hardcore.

 

The Big Picture

My attempt at the timeline:

• Bulshar entomed: approx 130 years ago
• Wyatt died: 1929
• Willa Born: 1987
• Wynonna Born: 1988*
• Waverly “Born”: Sept 8 1994*
• Nicole survives Cult of Bulshar Massacre in the GRT: 1996
• Mama left: 1999**
• Attack on the homestead: May 2000
• Wynonna comes of age: 2015*
  *What we know for sure is that the attack was in 2000 and that Wynonna was 12 and Waverly was 6 when it happened. Keep in mind when doing the math, that Emily wrote the pilot in 2015. It all falls apart if you try to use the air date for the math. Also, because the month someone is born can mess up the math, this is all kind of give or take a year.
  **The original line was that Waverly was 4 when Mama Earp left, making me think it was two-ish years before the attack, but in 3×01 Wynonna says that Mama had only been gone six months when the Homestead was attacked.

Season Three Credits Breakdown:

• Angel with one wing in an old cemetery. Surrounded by several dead looking trees. When we zoom in the the angel is wrapped up by a large snake.
  – This should be especially interesting to folks who subscribe to the “Waverly is an Angel” theory.
• More ugly trees, the biggest one in the forefront has half a face

Main players: What we know about what we don’t know

Most of this will be things that were shown or stated in the show, however I am including theories that I feel strongly about, those theories with be in italics. Anything that was added since the last post will be in bold.

Mama Earp aka Michelle Gibson:

• Mother to Wynonna and Waverly. *
• Rodeo star in 1996
• has been in prison since she “left”.
• specifically told her family not to tell Waverly where she was.
• Based on the voiceover at the end of season 2, she has knowledge about Bulshar
• Hears voices that talk to her about Bulshar, Wynonna calls this “new”.”
• Doesn’t want to leave prison.
• I refuse to believe that it’s a coincidence that Mama Earp and the Widows wore the same perfume (I don’t know how to spell it…Shalotel?).
  *Michelle clearly considers Waverly her daughter, whether or not she gave birth to her is a debate for further down the page.

Wynonna Earp:
– Most of the mystery surrounding Wynonna has to do with the years she was away from Purgatory and doesn’t seem like it’s going to have much of an implication on the show (I’ve heard it’s explored more in the comics).

• Earp heir
• Great hair
• Mama specifically wanted to make sure Wynonna could survive by herself.

Waverly Earp-ish:

• We know she’s not an Earp, but it’s still up for debate if Michelle is her mother or not. We know Mama referred to Waves as her “angel” and when Wynonna is leaving the prison Michelle shouts that her “daughters” are off limits. I tend to believe that Michelle is her mother, one of the things I base this on is reading interviews where Emily specifically talks about the mystery of Waverly’s “father”.
• I agree with the popular theory that she is not 100% human, even though we know she’s not a revenant. There have been a lot of possible clues that allude to this, most notably possible hints about her being an angel.
• I’m going to quote exactly what Kate said about the tarot card she pulled for Waverly: “Temperance. The angel card, balance and moderation, but it’s upside down. Lack of long-term vision.”… “She’s something alright.”
  • I also want to include what Emily Andras said in an interview regarding this, “The thing about the Tarot is that everything isn’t quite so literal. It’s all interpretation and a special read, but also you just have to trust me that when going down the Tarot cards route that we’ve researched and nothing has been chosen lightly.”
• Bobo referred to her as “kin”.
• Promised to Bulshar by Bobo.

Xavier Dolls (Deceased):
Like Wynonna, there are plenty of questions, but I’m not going to dig TOO deep unless I think it’s going to have an impact on the show in the near (this season) future.

• taken as a child by BBD (per Ewan in S2)
• Is what Black Badge made him (a dragon).
• Was part of a BBD squadron being experimented on by mixing their DNA with demon DNA. 
• Whatever BBD was doing to him, made him “unstable”.
• I think he has more of an interest or more knowledge regarding Nicole than he has let on, but I’ll talk more about that in Nicole’s section. 

John Henry Doc Holliday:
Like Dolls, there are plenty of questions, but I’m not going to dig TOO deep unless I think it’s going to have an impact on the show in the near (this season) future

• Has a wife named Kate dating back to his pre-well days. Regardless he still talks about Wyatt as if they were soulmates
• Went to hell when he died in the AU. Is super emo about it.

Jeremy Chetri:

• Black Badge “did stuff” to him as well. 
• has some kind of psychic* abilities, likely stemming from an accident he and his mother were in when he was a kid.
  *maybe not the right word, but they shown times where he knew things that it didn’t make sense for him to know, like that “Wayhaught” needed Doc to meet the baby or when his groin told him Doc was alive.

Nicole Haught:

• Says the first time she heard the name Bulshar it “twigged” something in her. She also had a panic attack when she saw Bulshar’s mark carved into a body at a crime scene.
• Feels like she is “supposed” to be in Purgatory. Feels like she has been in Purgatory before.
• Dolls picked her to keep Bulshar’s ring safe.
• Has a key to Dolls’ place. (per Yarn text convo)
• Only survivor of an attack linked to the Cult of Bulshar, carried out by Beret Demon (killed by Dolls in 3×02). During the attack she “somehow” got down to the river and “someone” saved her. She was in the GRT with her aunt and uncle for a music festival.
  Likely the 1996 attack from the BBD files.
• I think there is something to the fact that Dolls was so eager to do whatever it took to save Nicole last season, even going so far as to say he would “order” Waverly to hand over the third seal to save Nicole. I also think his eagerness to have Nicole working on the Bulshar stuff is worth noting.

Kate aka Katalin aka Countessa:

• vampire
• Doc’s wife dating back to his pre-well days, told about his immortality by Wyatt. Says that when she heard he had “arisen” she knew she had to do “whatever it takes” to find him. 
• admits to Doc that she did come back “for” him.

Bulshar/ Cult of Bulshar:

• Entomed for over 130 years ( I know I should know the exact time, but I can’t find it).
• Somehow makes creepy trees, that are probably people, pop up all over the place.  I assume that is what he is doing with the Vampire at the end of 3×01 “You will show others the path”.
• Specifically wants decedents of the Original Families of Purgatory.
• Per texts convos from Yarn: People have going missing in the woods. We don’t know what happens to someone once the trees get them, but based on at least one of the victims the trees could be targeting the Original Families for Bulshar. Claude Simone was one of the people who went missing and according to Waverly the Simones “have been in Purgatory forever”.
• The victims at Pussy Willows were killed within seconds of each other, not simultaneously. The killer was something that could move lighting fast, later revealed to be Beret Demon (killed by Dolls).
• There have been massacres linked to the Cult of Bulshar every 7 years since at least the 1920s. BBD file started in 1926, but the massacres were likely happening before that. It appears that Beret Demon was carrying out massacres on Bulshar’s behalf, but the possibility exists that he wasn’t the only one. 
• The massacre at Pussy Willows took place less than 7 years since the last massacre, probably due to the fact that Bulshar has risen. 
• Per a BBD file shown on Yarn there was a massacre in 1996 at a family campground in the GRT. The incident was a fire and ruled a natural disaster with “no survivors” (hmm interesting) The file also includes pictures of “new” bushes which were burned, as well as Bulshar’s mark in a tree, unburned.

Black Badge Division:

• Supposedly a highly classified branch of the U.S. Marshalls, but as we according to Agent Moody BBD “isn’t a government agency, never was.”
• They disappeared from the Ghost River Triangle
• Early members include Robert Svane aka Bobo Del Rey.
• All the main characters except for Nicole have signed a contract in blood.
• Inconclusive as to what extent they still exist. Quinn, a friend of Dolls’ and fellow Black Badge agent wanted to take revenge on whatever is left of BBD HQ. Wynonna tells Quinn that if he ever returns to Purgatory that it better be because he recovered the blood contract her team signed. Quinn seems to agree to the mission mentioning paying “Mr. Moody” a visit. 

 

Ok, friends, that’s all I have for this week.  Feel free to discuss theories in the comments. If you think I got something totally wrong from the show that I should correct, please offer proof. The format for this is still a work in progress, if there is something you think should be taken out or something you think should be added, please let me know.

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