[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Wynonna Earp: Vengeance.]
We may have only gotten 90 more minutes of Wynonna Earp with the Tubi special Vengeance (now streaming), but every single one of those was fun, heartbreaking, and jam-packed.
To quickly recap: Demon-hunter Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) and Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) are brought back to Purgatory by an “Earp” message spelled in body parts, and in the ensuing fight, Doc is killed. Waverly (Dom Provost-Chalkley) decides to accept a job with Black Badge helping to root out corruption (and hopefully bring Doc back from the dead), while Nicole (Katherine Barrell) stays in Purgatory, where she’ll be working alongside a deputized Wynonna.
We’ve already broken down the major moments with the cast and creator Emily Andras here, but read on for more from Scrofano, Rozon, Barrell, and Andras as they answer more burning questions after that special.
How Will Wynonna and Nicole Work Together?
After starting the special away from Purgatory with Doc, planning to steal enough money to bring home Alice, Wynonna ends it staying in her hometown, burying her love, and deputized by Nicole. Is part of her more at peace with herself than she was on the road?
“I think Wynonna is at her best when she has something to keep her busy,” Scrofano tells TV Insider. “I think being deputized is the thing that will keep her from thinking. I think being alone with her thoughts is the worst demon she could face. So I think in that sense, she might be better off at the end because she’s not just going from casino to casino and trying to hide how she feels. I think part of her is terrified of being a mother and wonders if she’d be a good one or wonders if she even wants to do the day-to-day mothering thing. That might not be who she is. So it’s just really interesting that at the end she gets to go back to fighting for something and staying too busy to think.”
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Throwing herself into that work will help her avoid dealing with her grief as well. “Wynonna never deals,” says Scrofano. “Her escape is work and staying busy. And I don’t think any real part of her ever wanted to be a deputy. But hey, if it’s the thing that keeps her from going crazy and it gives her a sense of purpose because now without Peacemaker, she probably doesn’t feel like she has much of one… I think that’s going to be her drug.”
That means Nicole’s certainly going to have her hands full. “Oh, good luck,” Andras says with a laugh, “having to put your own deputy in the drunk tank at night. Plus they’re hunting a werewolf. They’re going to be so busy. I would do a spinoff just those two trying to manage Purgatory because you just know it’s going to be sheer chaos.”
Barrell, too, uses the word “chaos” for how she thinks the two working together will go, though she describes it as “hilarious.” “I think Nicole’s definitely got her hands full now, but I think she secretly loves it,” she adds. “I think she might be doing more policing of Wynonna than she will other things.”
Nicole could also have her hands full with the town; she preferred to keep everyone in the dark about what’s really going on in Purgatory (demons), but former sheriff Nedley (Greg Lawson) pointed out that her way of protecting people was deciding for them.
“I was so proud of that because I thought it was kind of showing Nedley had grown, too,” Andras notes of that conversation. “For so long, Nedley had kind of taken the path of least resistance. Sure, maybe he knew there was a supernatural element here, but he was like, ‘Not my business. People are going to freak out.’ Now he has also grown up and gotten a little wiser and he also thinks maybe people can handle more than you give them credit for. Maybe the town deserves to be in on what makes this place challenging but also special. All you’re making me want to do is tell the next story.”
Why Did It Make Sense for Doc to Miss a Shot?
Doc may have won the shootout near the end of the episode against the rogue Black Badge agent (Andrew Bushell) and his men (though he did take a fatal shot himself), but in an earlier scene with the other man, he missed a shot while showing off his gunslinging skills (in a scene that’s reminiscent of Doc showing off to Wynonna in Season 1).
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“I love that he missed a shot,” Rozon says. “There was a lot of discussion that he shouldn’t miss the shot and I remember we had some producers on the set being like, he’s the best gunslinger in the world and he wouldn’t miss his shot and he shouldn’t. And I love that he missed a shot. I love that he’s coming to terms with so many things at that time and realizing that he’s not the best gunslinger in the world. And you know what? Who cares? He doesn’t want to be anymore. He doesn’t have to be. That’s not what makes him a man anymore. Those are not the things that are as important to him. He deals with it in the moment.”
When it came to the dual at the end, “I don’t think he was prepared to not win,” Rozon continues. “He hasn’t lost a dual before. But yeah, I think he’s coming into that next phase or those days are done, the cowboy days are done. The wild days are done. And I think that’s why, to be honest, unfortunately, he’s kind of got to go. Those days of fighting in Wynonna Earp, well, they’re always going to be there. The fight, it’s always going to come to Wynonna. That’s her curse. It’s hers to fight and fight alone. The people that she loved try and help her as it can, but that’s her curse. And I think in some ways he’s realizing he can’t do the fight anymore.”
Why Did Mercedes Have to Die?
What started it all was Mina attacking Nedley and Mercedes (Dani Kind) and killing the latter to leave the “Earp” message. “I know we needed a big catalyst to get Wynonna home and we certainly discussed who we were going to kill off, but I want to be careful with this,” Andras explains. “Mercedes is such a larger-than-life character. We needed to do a death that meant something to everyone and would move them, but it wouldn’t devastate them so much that we couldn’t have any fun the rest of the movie.”
As she points out, it’s sad that Mercedes is dead, but she did go out fighting. “She also has had such a big life and talk about a girl who’s gone through it. I don’t want to take away from the tragedy of it all, but I also think she lived how she wanted to and she died protecting someone she cared about. She really dug down and found a moment of courage, which I really liked. I liked that she defends Nedley at the end. That isn’t always a choice Mercedes would’ve made.”
The creator makes sure to praise Kind. “Can I just talk about what a baller Dani Kind is as Mercedes, showing up on a frozen lake looking like a frigging gorgeous highlighter and being up for anything? If I could find a way to bring Dani Kind in another capacity, I would. She’s an incredible woman.”
Will Wynonna Bring Home Alice?
Wynonna and Doc’s plan was to eventually live as a family with Alice, and before his death, they even talked about having a house overlooking the barn. But at the end of Vengeance, Wynonna doesn’t have Alice—and there’s nothing to suggest she plans to bring her home. Will she, or does she want to get Doc back first?
“I don’t know. I do have a theory about this, but I’m loath to share it,” admits Andras. “The trick about Alice is Alice is still a little kid and I think we can’t pretend that Wynonna doesn’t have some trepidation about mothering. Taking care of a five-year-old is a whole thing. That’s something Wynonna has never faced before. She absolutely adores that kid and would do anything for her, but I never want to take away from what Wynonna’s choice was. It’s a choice a lot of women make, which is she gave Alice up for adoption so that Alice could have a better life because she loved her so much. That was a very maternal thing to do. So let’s see.”
That being said, Andras “definitely would love to see what Alice Earp looks like. I think that would be extremely exciting in the future, but I don’t know yet. Stay tuned.”
Why Did Wynonna Give Up Peacemaker?
When Wynonna defeated Mina (Karen Knox) and trapped her in the containment box, she’d been holding Wynonna’s gun Peacemaker. And so now that gun is trapped, too, in the box buried with Doc.
“The theme of the specials is a little bit about growing up and maturing. Wynonna has always been attached to being a demon hunter and being the heir because really it was the only thing that she was ever really good at. She figured it out. She’s good at killing and hunting demons. And in a weird way, she almost became addicted to that because the rest of her life had been fraught with so much failure. But for her to give up, essentially, the thing that makes her the most special to save the people she really loves felt like a very mature decision to kind of not put so much stock in her career, so to speak,” explains Andras. “It’s almost the opposite decision of Waverly and she sort of chooses her people over a piece of metal. I just thought that was a maturity in Wynonna that she wouldn’t have been able to make in Season 1, for example.”
This doesn’t mean that gun is gone for good, should there be more Wynonna Earp in the future. “Peacemaker is still down in the ground with Mina with Doc, and it’s a veritable scary weapon,” the creator says. “So do I think we’ve seen the last of it? Who knows?”
Are There Any Deleted or Bonus Scenes?
As is always the case, not everything can make the final cut, especially with a special that’s only 90 minutes long and it doesn’t have a “Game of Thrones budget,” points out Andras. “I wouldn’t do it any other way, but oh my God, we had so much bigger set pieces in the middle. We had kind of a winter carnival. But then it became almost more profound and more personal, I think, to make it about Wynonna’s journey back to the group home. Sometimes these accidents where you have to cut something for budget actually become opportunities. They actually force you to dig down on the story.”
She also reveals that they did film an end credits scene that she hopes to one day get out there. “I would say it depends on enthusiasm from the fans. If there was a chance to maybe re-release the special with a little bit of bonus material, maybe we could do that, but we’ll just have to see how this one does.” She refuses to say anything else.
As for anything that was filmed that was deleted, it’s “nothing that I feel shouldn’t have gotten deleted,” Andras tells us. “You always make cuts, but a lot of it is for pace and everything like that. There’s a lot of stuff I would like to do next time that came up, but nothing I feel got deleted that wasn’t the right decision, let me put it that way.”
Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, Streaming now, Tubi
