Keeping Up With The Earps 4×08

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 4×08: A Halloween to remember…errr

Dom is really good at comedy. The Earp sisters lose their memories, hilarity ensues.

Jacks Potential Targets: Speculate away

  • Angel (Obvious)
  • Mother (Killed at her house)
  • Fool (Doc calls Amon “you poor fool”)
  • Scholar
  • Sorcerer
  • Warrior (The lottery update board shows that the Warrior was killed, I assume the BBD agents)
  • Healer (killed a doctor while Wynonna and Waverly were in the dumpster)
  • Twins
  • Cook
  • Lovers

The more you know:
Te Deum Cleobis aka Rotten Jack is not a real person. The “Te Deum” is a Latin Christian hymn and “Cleobis” is the name of a mythical figure in Greek mythology, who appeared in a myth alongside his brother Biton.

Potentially Important Takeaways:

  • The fog from The Garden surrounding the GRT triangle causes people to lose their memories. Being in The Garden had a similar effect as they showed Waverly struggling to remember Nicole.
  • “To be honest, hitting that guy felt good…what does that say about me?” This line from Waverly doesn’t feel like a throw-away. Foreshadowing?

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

Gems You May Have Missed:

  • Before we find out that the mystery man Jeremy is talking to is Robin, Jeremy gets excited that Robin remembered that Jeremy moved his operation back to Purgatory. I assume that Jeremy takes this as possible progress with Robin’s amnesia.
  • Robin and his boyfriend are going to watch The Babadook. If you’re not caught up on your memes, I suggest you look into The Babadook: Gay Icon.

Answers to questions you may have:

  • Casey is “the extractor”, meaning the only one who can remove a demon’s “hell fire” without being burned.
  • This one is more of a theory, but it would stand to reason that since Casey is the “extractor” that the light in a can he blinded Wynonna and Waverly with is the hell fire from another creature he has extracted. Which makes me wonder if that’s what in all of those many, many cans of Spaghetti Loops.
  • The fog is around the Ghost River Triangle (not Purgatory), the “Big City” is inside the GRT so Nicole and Rachel weren’t mind wiped on their trip.

Questions that I don’t know the answer to:

  • Why, in the time that everyone has been back from The Garden, did Jeremy neglect to tell them that if they leave the GRT, their memories will be erased?
  • How many demons are kept alive by tiny candles?

Favorite Lines:

  • These buttons are definitely familiar.
  • I like whisky!
  • Happy Halloween, Premium Rhapsody.
  • Don’t step on my nuts, man. I’m off duty.
  • I like red hair. It reminds me of love… and handcuffs.
  • I’m not a hero. I’m a fuck-up. – You can be both.
  • She’s my most important thing. – Gross.
  • You are, and have always been, my hero.
  • Suddenly, I’m in the middle of a porno.

Under-appreciated (according to me) Lines:

  • High! – Hello.

4×08 “Fuck” Count: 10 #Blessed

  • Fuck this, man, I hate Halloween.
  • Wynonna Fucking Earp.
  • I fucking hate Halloween
  • Trick or treat, motherfucker!
  • Fuck, her memory’s coming back.
  • Fuck it up. Fuck it up!
  • I’m a fuck-up.
  • Fuck you.
  • So fuck him.

I love a parallel:


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 26th 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.

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.

BillyReaper

  • 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”. 
  • 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).
  • Who or what is “upper management”? “If you think I’m afraid of demons, just wait until you meet upper management”. / “can Wynonna stop 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.
  • 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
  • Peacock. #IYKYK
  • Dead?

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

  • 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/gun 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.

Julian’s 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.

Kat was filming and unable to live tweet this week so I skipped this part altogether.

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.

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