Keeping Up With the Earps: 4×04

If you’ve never seen one of my deep dives before…well it’s a lot. This post is split up into several sections, some highlighting the episode itself and some keeping track of the bigger picture. I hope you gain something from it.

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.

Brief recap of 4×04: Afraid indeed.

Black Badge is back needs all the help they can get. They kidnap Wynonna aka Agent Arp and with the help of Jer-Bear and Antoni, convince her to help guard trucks bringing supplies to the citizens of Purgatory. Wynonna’s first mission runs into trouble when Doc, who is working for Amon, sabotages the truck with plans to steal the booze. Wynonna tries to foil him by handcuffing herself to the cargo and Doc heads up the road (apparently WAY up the road) to fetch his tools.

Meanwhile Rachel and her sexy gay aunts head to a junkyard belonging to Billy, Rachel’s “maybe-kind of-boyfriend”, to try to find Peacemaker. The junkyard turns out to be Magpie Ranch, home of the Clantons and it seems like Nicole has history with the Mam, the head of the family. Their search is cut short, not because of the scary demon guy, or by learning that the the ranch belongs to archenemy of the Earps, but because of something scarier, teen angst. Mam is not happy with Billy being friends with an Earp lover and threatens Rachel.

It’s gotten dark and Wynonna is still handcuffed in the the supply truck. She finally realizes the rocks she keeps finding aren’t a weird new tracking device, but something evil. The gross, scary guy from the Clantons’ ranch shows up with the symbol from the rock carved into his head. Wynonna manages to escape the truck but ends up in trap, alone with no weapons and terrified. Doc finally shows up and they shoot him, but that barely slows him down.

Billy is terrified about what Mam might do to Rachel so he goes to “make it right” by telling Rachel they can’t hang out together anymore. Billy panics when Rachel pulls a rock marked with a C out her (but really Wynonna’s) pocket. He thinks the reaper is after Rachel and performs some sort of self-sacrificial ceremony to call the monster off. This causes the monster to abandon its pursuit of Wynonna.

Once the team is all back at the Homestead everything gets explained and we see the big picture. The Clantons have been enemies of the Earps since at least the time of Wyatt and now they are not only in Purgatory, the are running it. Billy’s brother Holt is the town Sheriff, and his sister Cleo is the Magistrate. And running the family is Mam, who is as terrifying as any monster we’ve seen on this show.

Wynonna knows that she needs her WHOLE team in order to fight the Clantons and all the other evil stuff that has made its way to Purgatory over the last 18 months. She goes to BBD and makes sure they know exactly who she is. She’s Wynonna Fucking Earp and it’s time for her and her team to do what they do best and hunt some god damn demons.

And wouldn’t it be great if we could end on that fist pump moment? Not on this show, my friends. Nicole goes to confront Mam, basically telling her whatever deal they had is null and void. And with a phrase that is pretty much always bad news on TV, Mam says that things are “just beginning” as she opens a jar releasing … well something not good.

Potentially Important Takeaways:

• The Earps’ new enemy is actually a very old enemy. A family that has hated the Earps since the days of Wyatt, the Clantons.
• Mam tells Cleo and Holt that her plan for the Earps is “already in motion”.
• “It’s time for you to deliver”/ “you bring what’s due?”. Despite what Nicole might think, it looks like whatever Mam did is what got Waverly back. The Clanton brand was glowing at the top of the door that brought them home. So what is she owed?

Tarot Cards:
*Portion removed. Check 4×02 if you’re curious.

Gems You May Have Missed:

• What is with BBD and Chinese take-out? We saw Lucado eating it a few times, now it’s on the desk when Niomi is talking to Wynonna.
• Speaking of birds (if you know, you know) the pretty bartender at the Glory Hole is called RAVENia. Just saying.
• There’s a Purgatory Fire Department calendar hanging in the diner Rachel and Billy were at.
• The Clanton ranch is called Magpie Ranch. (Birds!) Magpies are known for being hoarders so it fits perfectly.

Answers to questions you may have:

• It was Cleo who cut her hand and sent the reaper after Wynonna.
• When Billy thought the reaper was after Rachel he performed a ceremony to call it off, that’s why it walks away from Wynonna.

Favorite Lines:

• I am not back. I am in my jam-jams.
• I’d call it “Haught Topics”.
• That’s a lot.
• Peacemaker, she slaps for sure.
• I am Carol.
• Doesn’t want to be seen at the junkyard with her sexy gay aunts.
• Halloween costume. I’m going as She-Rah. – – Oh my god, I would die.
• What the fucking fuck?
• Wynonna Fucking Earp.

Under-appreciated (according to me) Lines:

• Because if you want to turn something into guacamole, you bring Antoni. (in case you don’t watch Queer Eye, that is a hilarious reference.)
• So have you seen this Fleabag thing everyone’s talking about?

The Big Picture

My attempt at the timeline:

• Genesis 3 – A deceptive serpent in the Garden of Eden leads to The Fall of Man and two angels are placed at the entrance with a flaming sword to guard the Garden. (Biblical canon, not Wynonna Earp canon)
• October 26^th 1881: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
• Bulshar entombed: 1887
• Wynonna Born: 1988*
• Waverly Born / Julian is “pushed outside of the GRT: Sept 8 1994*
• 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 Four Credits Breakdown:

• The first of the new images is an old photo of two figures standing near a couple of trees. What appears to be a man in a hat and a smaller, likely female figure. As lightning flashes we see them in more, terrifying detail. Their eyes glow and they have marks on their faces. Scars? Lighting?
  It’s faint, but the man in the photo seems to have the Clanton brand on his forhead.

• The next image is of a female angel walking toward a threshold of light. Again, there is a flash and the image changes. The angel is gone.

• The next change is a little harder to catch. The card for Dom/Waverly has changed. Now on top of a map of the Ghost River Triangle, is an image of the “garden”/ icy Stonehenge.

• The last and most subtle addition is on Kat/Nicole’s card. On the right there is a tree that wasn’t there last season. And you may not have noticed (other than the obvious murder trees), but there is A LOT of tree imaginary throughout this show since the start.

• The most important image of the credits isn’t new, it’s been there since day one, it’s what this show is really all about, the damn birds.

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. I’ve taken out some stuff that seems obvious, but it’s still in previous versions.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral:

• 30 second shootout between lawmen and a group of outlaws, the Cochise County Cowboys.
• Lawmen involved included Town Marshal Virgil Earp, Special Policemen Morgan and Wyatt Earp, and temporary policeman Doc Holliday.

Cochise County Cowboys present at the O.K. Corral:

• Billy Claiborne : ran from the fight.
• Ike Clanton: ran from the fight
• Billy Clanton: killed in the shootout (remember this name next ep)
• Tom and Frank McLaury: Killed in the shootout

The Clantons: “We thank our kin for this feast, and for the sin that roots us. The power of vengeance will damn our enemies. In the name of Clanton, we vow to never forsaken. Never forget. And never forgive”
I think it’s safe to assume they weren’t going around using the last name “Clanton” since no one knew they were in Purgatory.

• Poison. Cursed.
• Margo aka Mam
  • Clanton Heir
  • Made a deal with Nicole to get Waverly and Doc home.
  • Not a nice person.
• Magistrate Cleo.
• Sheriff Holt
  • His name-tag says Sheriff Holt, but Nicole and Cleo refer to him as “Sheriff Clayborn (Claiborne)”, which is the name of another family involved in the O.K. Corral shootout.
• Billy
  • Performed a ritual to save Rachel. “A soul for a soul. We are rooted together, enemies and kin. But I sever that root and I offer myself.”
  • Possibly being tuned into a “reaper”
• Reapers are Clanton ancestors, including “Uncle Ike” who is likely the same Ike who was present at the shootout.

Waverly:

• Fully grown half-angel and adult human lady.
• Happily taken Virgo with hair for days. 
• “Destined” to take her place on Julian’s throne as “The Guardian”. “I am trying to protect this place, just like my father did.”
• Has some angel powers, but the extent is not known. I’ll be interested to see what she can do outside of The Garden and without the ring (assuming it stays gone).

John Henry “Doc” Holliday:
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.

• Participant of the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
• Totes doesn’t deny being Wyatt’s boyfriend.
• Went to hell when he died in the AU. Is super emo about it.
• Is a vampire.
• Was able to climb the stairs to “The Garden”. 
• Emotionally constipated.

Jeremy Chetri:

• Has a sort of empathetic connection to people (“now I can sense when my friends are super scared”) every since he was in a car crash with his mother and stuck with her body for three days. My poor child.
• Black Badge “did stuff” to him as well.
• Not “purely human”. I don’t really take this to mean anything more than what we already know as stated in the bullets above, but who knows, maybe he’s the werewolf. 

Nicole Rayleigh Haught:

• An Earper, @LoveAndDonuts, pointed out on Twitter that a man named Samuel A. Haught owned a cattle ranch in Arizona where the “Cowboys” were known to do business. And here is a great thread by @PurgatoryArcheo that goes into some Haught family history. Coincedence, Easter Egg, or well thought out plot point? Time will tell.
• Is a Capricorn….This fucking show. They think of everything.
  

Black Badge Division (Guess who’s back):

• “No longer defunct”. They’re different and in way over their heads (I mean Naomi Hycha is no Agent Lucado), but maybe our gang will start getting paid again. For now they are to “observe, not interfere”.
• “If you think I’m afraid of demons, just wait until you meet upper management”.
• 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.”
• Early members include Robert Svane aka Bobo Del Rey.
• All the main characters except for Nicole have signed a contract in blood.

The Garden:

• (Bible) Home to two very important trees, The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge [of Good and Evil].*
• There is some sort of living machine that requires blood.
• from Eve, “what kind of batshit playground experiment for creation was this?”
• Has been used as a prison for Eve. It seems that as long as there was a Guardian on the throne or the machine was being fed, Eve was kept from escaping.
• From Juan Carlo’s journal “We guarded the entrance to keep him in, to keep everything in, but we failed, Julian and I”.   Maybe the Guardians were to keep Bulshar and apparently Eve IN their prison and to keep them away from the Tree of Life.
• Waverly’s angel blood caused flowers and trees to pop up.

Eve:

• (Biblical) One of the first of two (or three depending where you stand on ‘Lilith’) humans created. Lived in relative paradise until she was tempted by The Serpent (our Bulshar) to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
• There has been mention in certain versions of her story that well…”the motif of Eve copulating with the primeval serpent takes priority over her other sexual transgressions.”
• From 3×10: Wynonna – “Don’t forget Eve.” Kevin – “Oh, I wish I could. Don’t even get me started on that girl”.
• Has been imprisoned in “The Garden”, potentially, but not surely since her creation.
• Has a long list of things she is “pissed about”, a list which she hopes to address once she is free.
• Her plan, or part of it includes getting to the Ghost River Triangle to get what she is “owed”
• Self-described “nightmare unto the world”.
• Seems to be a feminist… so at least there’s that.

Peacemaker: This section is a bit complicated after the developments of 3×12.

• Missing.
• Is a flaming sword that used to be a Buntline Special that used to be a flaming sword.
• Was originally The Flaming Sword meant to protect The Garden. Referred to as “the garden’s security system” by Julian.
• the sword can only be wielded by a Champion chosen by an Angel. As of now that is Wynonna who was chosen by Waverly.
• Disconcertingly referred to by Bulshar as “my sword?”, but that’s one of those things that makes me question if anyone or anything on this show is what we’ve been led to believe they are so I’m not going to think about it.
• As a gun glowed orange when aimed at a demon. As a gun glowed blue for the first time when Wynonna used it to kill Willa. Glowed blue for the second time when Waverly pointed it at Rosita and Wynonna ordered it to fire, grazing Rosita. As Wynonna prepared to shoot the Stone Witch, which was presented more as putting her out of her misery, the barrel started to glow orange, but quickly switched to blue.
• When Wynonna pointed the gun at Bulshar it glowed white, both IRL and in her hallucination.

The ring:

• Belonged to Waverly’s father, Julian. Bulshar stole it.
• Kate tells Waverly not to “underestimate the power of this relic. It’s older than most things on earth.”
• When Waverly finally puts it on, not only can she not take it off, Arabic writing appears on the ring. The writing translates to Garden of Paradise.
• So far we’ve seen the ring: give Widow Mercedes a serious Glow-Up and enable Waverly to punch a zombie witch across the barn, melt a demon’s face, control Bulshar’s former arm (connected to a radioactive revenant), heal her friend’s face, raise Julian, it’s rightful owner, from the dead, and put an end to Bobo.
• Can’t say if this is on purpose or not, but Waverly yelling at the ring to get it to suddenly be useful is too similar to Wynonna yelling at Peacemaker in 2×12.

My original theory was that the flaming sword, the gun, the ring, and the plate from S2 were all made by the same source of metal. Now we know that the gun was the flaming sword, but I still think there is a connection. I also came across some stuff about a very old black stone that is related to biblical story of the Garden of Eden. 

Mel and Kat Tweets of the Week:

I feel like Mel and Kat are pretty consistently hilarious when it comes to live-tweeting, so let’s recap some of the best of the best.

Thanks so much for reading. Feel free to leave theories and feedback in the comments or hit me up on twitter. If you really liked it feel free to head over to my Ko-Fi page and contribute to my Chipotle fund https://ko-fi.com/earpermarine.