Saturday, May 7, 2016

Wynonna Earp, Season 1, Episode 6: Constant Cravings



This episode brings a bit more of Dolls, which is definitely needed. He and Wynonna continue to have their excellent snarky relationship. They’re awesome when they spar and investigate and generally work awesomely together.

But there’s more. Dolls’ bosses aren’t happy with him – he suggests it’s because they haven’t brought a living Revenant back for capture therefore they’ve failed to prove that Purgatory even has a Revenant problem so why are they spending all the money? Personally, I’m inclined to think the powers that be have a much more sinister motive than that – because don’t they always? Isn’t that like a rule?

To reinforce that, they seem to have cut him off from a supply of some drug he’s dependent on. And it’s definitely not a conventional drug. This drug makes his eyes change colour and shape – something supernatural. He has to get it illicitly since he’s apparently done something to offend his bosses

Without the drugs, Dolls is definitely on edge, agitated and not doing well.

We also have an interesting Revenant fight which brings a little more nuance to the whole killing demons thing. We have a family of Revenant cannibals – not just from pure evil but because they lived in a hard time in a difficult place with hard winters and few resources. Of course, one member, Mama, became addicted to human meat. Her son supported his mother out of devotion and her daughter didn’t have any choice in the matter (An interesting element here is that said daughter was raised as a son since Mam was determined she would not face the prevailing sexism of the era –but at the same time upbringing didn’t change who her daughter was or who she wanted to be. Mama wanting to be different couldn’t change that). Wyatt came to town and killed them all – turning them into revenants – but Mama’s children’s culpability is more nuanced than simple “evil demons who need to die.”


Wynonna does end up killing them anyway – since they want to kill Wynonna since every single time a new heir arises Mama gets hungry again. The Revenants still end up dead but there’s a bit more nuance behind it

Waverley has her own interesting B plot, dragging around Champ most of the episode and getting steadily more and more sick of him and his shallowness and complete disregard for her academic achievements or thought in general. Waverley is finally done – and tells Champ that they are over. She focuses on following her dead uncle’s legacy – he was the man who encouraged her education and desire to learn. And he’s left her a human skull and instructions to take it to the blacksmith.

This blacksmith is an interesting character – being both a smith and a purveyor of random woo-woo. I’m not sure how she fits in with the greater cosmology. That’s been a thing on Wynonna Earp there is clearly a lot more out there than Revenants and Purgatory but we don’t spent a lot of time examining it

The blacksmith uses a mystical ritual to make Waverley keeper of the bones like her uncle was – only she gets an extra: with the ritual revealing the bones are the son of the Stone Witch, Constance (she who Doc Holiday wants to kill) and those bones are now bound to Waverly. Also noteworthy –one of the two skeletons Constance is interested in is missing a head

Iiiinteresting – maybe the cosmology is about to open up a whole lot. This episode brought a double load of questions to the general mysteries of the show and made it all a little deeper… now how many answers are we going to get?

Sadly, and typically, the woman Doc Holiday has been seducing to get information about Bobo is now killed and disposed of now we’ve set up Doc and Wynonna to be a thing (even if Wynonna wants to cool things back to friendship). It’s ultimately disposable and dismissive and reduced her to one of the many women in media who only get to exist when a male love interest wants to have sex with them