Keeping Up With The Earps 4×07

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 4×07:RIP CJ

Love is in the air as the friends and family of Waverly and Nicole (except Jeremy and I want answers) celebrate their engagement…and celebrate, and celebrate again. While Wynonna is in the woods threatening Amon during his snack, the rest of the gang is toasting at Shorty’s. Shorty’s is back to be a good ole saloon with Nedley running things this time and Rachel donning the iconic Shorty’s top to work as a bar-back. Nedley, however, will be happier with his new bar once the invisible, killer, teenage reaper is removed from his basement.

Wynonna eventually shows up, claiming she has been busy making big plans for a Bachelorette party. Of course Wynonna would take Wayhaught to a strip club… on a Sunday. Whether Wynonna knew it would be male strippers or not is up for debate. A pretty bummed out looking naked cowboy and apparent former angel (a Cupid to be exact) named Demitri does his thing on stage then sticks around for shots with Wynonna and debating the existence of love with Waverly. Waverly just needs to look at Nicole and she knows that love might be the only real thing, while Demitri’s expert opinion on love is that “it don’t exist”. Waverly agrees to a bet even though she doesn’t think there’s a way to prove a winner. Demitri takes this as an invitation to slip a vial of magic glitter into Waverly’s pocket.

Waverly then proceeds to spread the sparkly love spell all over Purgatory. For Nicole, Bunny, and Amon Waverly is the target of their out of control love and lust. Wynonna is horny for Amon, Doc has a new found soft spot for Cleo, and Nedley is randy for Bunny. This causes some hilarious antics at Waverly and Nicole’s official engagement party. Wynonna snuck in the magic glitter and threatens to use it to make Amon requite her feelings, but in true Wynonna fashion, chaos ensues and everyone except Waverly and Rachel (who is apparently there too, guys you should pay more attention to your teenager) gets glitter bombed.

There’s amorous friendship between Doc and Nedley, some sexual WynHaught tension, and Bunny getting cozy with a demon, but not even magic can make Doc embrace Nicole after he just learned she was going to hand him over to the Clantons. Waverly gets Demitri to Shorty’s and we learn that his spit can break the spell, so they spit rocket everyone in the butt, where love lives obviously. Of course there wasn’t anything fake about the emotional embrace between Doc and Wynonna, their love is real. Unfortunately love isn’t enough to overcome the other stuff and Doc let’s go and walks away from a devastated Wynonna. In the end there is still a canyon between Doc and Wynonna, Bunny is a little less awful, and Wayhaught may have proven to Demitri that love is real.

While everyone was distracted by their love for each other Rachel sneaks down to the basement to check on her crush-gone-wrong, Reaper Billy. And hey, I had terrible judgement when I was a teenager, but I’m not sure it was “let the invisible Clanton killing monster go” bad, but that’s what she does. Billy makes it back to Magpie ranch to be reunited with his sister, Cleo, who has just fed their mother to the other reapers. Cleo is happy to have the only family she has left home and is ready to “take back what is” theirs.

Potentially Important Takeaways:

• What is the rock at the center of Waverly’s engagement ring? It’s not a traditional shiny stone so I have to assume it has some meaning.
• Doc finds out that Nicole made a deal to hand him over to the Clantons in exchange for getting Waverly out of The Garden. He’s clearly got some feelings about it since even under the glitter magic, he won’t dance with her.
• As Cleo feeds Mam to the reapers, she vows to “destroy them” (Earps and Co).

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

Gems You May Have Missed:

• It was Demitri that interrupted Wayhaught’s post proposal make-out.
• If you’re as obsessed with birds as I am (and who isn’t?) you might be interested in the fact that Wynonna, Waverly, and Doc were all wearing clothes with birds at one point at Shorty’s.
• Not only does Waverly’s dress have birds, it has Pansies, which are the flower of Capricorns like Nicole.
• Rachel tells Nedley that she has nightmares about forgetting the words to the National Anthem. This is a nod to the fact that Martina, who plays Rachel, is the official anthem singer of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
• “Get her so sloshed she thinks she’s Jann Arden”. For those of you oblivious to Canadian royalty, Bunny is played by the iconic singer Jann Arden. The song Bunny sings for Waverly is Jann’s hit “Insensitive”.
• When Nicole takes the mic from Bunny she starts singing the same song that Waverly sang to her in the Christmas episode, “Let’s Stay Inside” by Adaline.
• When Doc gets to Shorty’s, Waverly says “thank Eros”. Eros is the Greek god of love and sex and the counterpart to Cupid.

Answers to questions you may have:

• As Demitri shows off his wing scars on stage, Waverly says “I know him”. At first I thought it was some weird celestial thing, but after a few rewatches, I’m pretty sure she just recognizes him from his interruption in the motel parking lot.
• Scofflaw: a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively.

Favorite Lines:

• To all the kisses we have snatched, and vice versa.
• Love is like the tooth fairy. – Never pays as well as you think. – It don’t exist.
• I’m Pan. – Pan I buy you another drink?
• This is not a soccer locker room!
• Take seven cold showers and only think about Band Of Brothers.
• I’m Mount Haught.
• A horny octopus.
• Get your homophobia off my homestead.
• I haven’t really gay’d at all.
• She’s a homophobic hoe, and you fixed it with your magical coochie.
• Well, fuck me. That was hot.
• Should we get naked anyway? Just for… science.
• Love lives in the butt.
• Have a nice evening, lesbians. – Uh, Waverly’s bisexual.

Under-appreciated (according to me) Lines:

• I have an old copy of Bend it Like Beckham. (Millennial sapphics know)
• Loblaw’s into your flaming ladybug. (I love a throwback joke.)
• “Get her so sloshed she thinks she’s Jann Arden”
• Zoë Kravitz
• The hummus. I hand squished it myself. – Get your bean hands off of my guitar!.

Homage to Horny Nicole:

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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 forehead.

• 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.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Real world):

• 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.
• There’s no consensus on who shot first.

Cochise County Cowboys present at the O.K. Corral (Historical, not Wynonna Earp canon):

• Billy Claiborne : ran from the fight.
• Ike Clanton: ran from the fight
• Billy Clanton: killed in the shootout
• 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. Wynonna asks Amon what they are, “Demon? Revenant?”. Amon replies “A little less and a little more than all of that.”
• Live on Magpie Ranch. Magpies are notorious hoarders among other things.

Margo Jean “Mam”: Deceased

• Clanton Heir. 
• The Swamp Witch
• Refers to a “charm”/”gift” she possess.
• Made a deal with Nicole to get Waverly and Doc home.
• Not a nice person.

Sheriff Holt: Deceased

• Clanton Heir.
• His name-tag says Sheriff Holt, but Nicole, Cleo, and Doc referred to him as “Sheriff Clayborn (Claiborne)”.

Cleo:

• Clanton Heir
• Magistrate?

* Confirmed that Holt and Cleo had been going by the name “Clayborn” (alternate spelling of another family that was at the OK Corral shoot-out), probably to hide the fact that they are Clantons.

Billy: Reaper

• 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.”

*Reapers are Clanton ancestors, including “Uncle Ike” who is likely the same Ike who was present at the shootout. Billy says he has “the might of a thousand ancestors”. What we don’t know is if being a Reaper can be reversed.

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.”
• Is able to melt brains without Julian’s ring.

John Henry “Doc” Holliday:

• Participant of the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
• 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”. 
• Seemed genuinely hurt by old Wyatt’s assessment of him.
• Potentially having some sort of existential crisis over his violent history.

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”.

Amon:

• Demon
• Doesn’t like the Clantons. Seems a bit afraid of them.

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

• Found.
• Is a Buntline Special that used to be 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.

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Yes there was some interesting bird imagery this ep. Yes, I am keeping track.

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.