“Wynonna Earp” Episode 202 Recap: Fury Road Is Paved with Goo

Previously on Wynonna Earp, Willa let a whole slew of new evils into Purgatory before Wynonna killed her, Waverly touched the goo and became Dark Waverly aka Gooverly, the fam (sans Nicole Haught) took a Black Badge Blood Oath, and WayHaught started to cool down a bit because of it.

We open on Doc and Wynonna in a shower, but not the fun kind of shower, a decontamination shower. This is the kind of thing that happens when your start-up is bought out; suddenly where you used to be given powdered donuts for your troubles, you’re given contamination showers and paperwork. And listen, Lucado doesn’t exactly love this situation either, but it’s where they’re at, and it means Wynonna has to start handing over demon bodies, STAT.

Luckily for Wynonna, plenty of evil is afoot, including but not limited to whatever Jurassic Parked a man named Jesus in a porta-potty at a Purgatory construction site. The man who finds him — or rather, doesn’t find him, and instead finds a spiderweb and goo residue — goes to talk to Officer Haught about it, but there’s nothing she can do except keep an ear out right now. Waverly comes to see her girl in action, but Nicole is still feeling salty about the whole not-getting-to-sign-the-blood-oath thing so she’s not exactly in a “let’s make out in Nedley’s office” kind of mood today.

You KNOW Nicole must be upset if she can deny that face.

Waverly apologizes and tries to explain that she truly doesn’t feel like it’s a privilege to be part of Black Badge Corporate but Nicole isn’t ready to make nice. She hands Waverly the Jesus file because it was suspicious and walks away. Waverly follows suit, but not before stealing the bell off the little service counter. And I’m just going to go ahead and tell you right now that this doesn’t come up again in this episode, but nothing in this show is an accident, so surely it’ll be important later.

In the Black Badge Lite office, Doc is playing with his cell phone, Wynonna is doodling, and Waverly is trying to figure out how to be the teacher’s pet while Lucado is lecturing them on one boring thing or another. Oh and Jeremy’s here! So far he’s pretty useless because he figured out how to trace the demons but they’re too elusive to actually track. But still, I’m glad he’s here.

Lucado insults everyone in turn, including telling Waverly she’s only good for fetching coffee, which both her AND Wynonna take offense to.

“How many dead languages do YOU speak?”

Lucado also doesn’t really understand Doc’s value add. Basically she’s pretty sure all she needs is Wynonna to churn out some demon slayage all by herself, badabing badaboom.

But the thing is, it’s not that simple. And it doesn’t matter if Lucado doesn’t get why Doc and Waverly are there, Wynonna does. Though, Doc is acting a little shifty today and disappears to deal with something confoundingly separate from Black Badge. Instead, it’s Waverly who swoops in with the save, handing her big sister the file Nicole gave her, and leading Wynonna to a construction site headed up by an old friend, Mercedes Gardner.

Mercedes is the first person we’ve met from Ye Olde Purgatory who doesn’t hate Wynonna’s guts; they share jokes about how they each slept with half the town and much to Wynonna’s surprise, they even hug, bonding over being the two least popular gals in Purgatory.

Through her conversation with Wynonna, we learn that Mercedes is buying real estate in Purgatory while it’s at an all-time low post Bobo-pocalypse, and that she was friends with Willa when they were younger. The thing is, though, she doesn’t know Willa didn’t die when they were kids, so she wonders aloud what Willa would be like now. A thing unfortunately Wynonna knows all too well.

Wynonna excuses herself from the conversation to chase after a construction worker, who ends up being a Revenant called Earl. While she’s chatting with him about who is affected by this curse more, the Earp girls or the Revenants, Wynonna gets hit by an icy blast and a wave of a familiar perfume; the memory of shooting Willa floods her brain, and she sees a shadowy woman dressed in black lace. While she blinks away the traumatic memory, Earl gets away, and the woman is also nowhere to be seen.

Wynonna takes off after Earl, but instead finds a webby pod that she presumes contains what’s left of Jesus.

Back at the police station, Wynonna starts to dissect the pod, but as soon as she pierces the pod and touches the goo, Wynonna’s breath goes icy cold again, she smells the same old perfume, and we see the same lady-shadow lurking. But when Wynonna whips around to see it for herself, she instead finds herself face to face with Waverly.

Who DOES sometimes get coffee but ON HER OWN TERMS.

Unlike Wynonna, Waverly is just DELIGHTED to be scalpel-deep in a mysterious pod. The sisters talk about Dolls and missing him until Wynonna becomes uncomfortable with the amount of feelings on the table and turns her snark back on. She slaps Waverly’s butt and asks if her newfound Dolls-is-probably-fine optimism had anything to do with her — AND I QUOTE — “banging a hot redhead.”

Waverly gives her sister a half-smile tinged with enough sadness that Wynonna knows they’re still in North Pole territory. Waverly admits she doesn’t fully understand; she lied to Black Badge about Nicole to protect her. “I would die if anything happened to her.” Which frankly I think she proved last season when she had Wynonna give up Peacemaker to save Nicole. But before any more discussion can be had, the pod Waverly is dissecting starts to split and a GIANT SPIDER POPS OUT.

In an amazing feat of adorability, Wynonna and Waverly manage to look super cute while they scramble around trying to and eventually shooting the giant spider that is revealed to be full of goo. Wynonna decides she’d prefer a shower in her own home to another turnip-scented contamination shower. Also she is inspired by their ability to handle this monstrosity on their own, so she calls an emergency meeting of the midnight society. She then says what I believe is now being adopted as the Earper motto: “This might be a shit show but it’s our shit show.”

And what a shitshow it is, too.

Oh and actually I wanted to make the Are You Afraid of the Dark joke but Wynonna actually calls it an emergency symposium and I thought that was pretty great, too.

Wynonna asks Waverly to call Doc, since he hasn’t returned her voicemails (she’s correctly assuming he doesn’t know how it works) and thinks he’s more likely to answer his phone if Waverly calls.

But Doc spends this episode in a somewhat shady endeavor with a woman named Rosita, who originally is reluctant to get into whatever illegal dealings he’s knee deep in, but eventually concedes with the promise of protection.

I don’t know what her deal is, but her side-eye game is strong, so I think she’ll fit right in.

At the homestead, Wynonna comes downstairs after a shower of her own making and is alarmed to find Jeremy sitting in her kitchen with the GooSpider in a jar VERY CLOSE TO HER SNACKS.

This is who the fate of Purgatory depends on, y’all.

But Waverly invited him so Wynonna concedes to him being there and grants his very enthusiastic request to await Doc Holliday’s arrival at the end of the drive.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Waverly is reading excerpts from a young Willa’s diary to Nicole. Because the thing is, even if they’re in somewhat rocky territory right now, Nicole and Waverly are still each other’s person; so if Waverly needs someone for something Wynonna can’t help with, she’s’ going to call Nicole. And if Waverly needs her, no matter how hurt her feelings are, Nicole is going to come.

“Who’s Tom Riddle?”

In Willa’s diary, she writes that her parents brought home a baby and she is QUITE displeased. Willa’s diary claims Mama Earp told Papa Earp they had to “do what is right” but Willa had already decided she is not about to welcome this precious baby angel into the family.

Waverly tells Nicole that Bobo also mentioned something about her not being a real Earp, but Nicole is immediately just FURIOUS that Bobo got into her girl’s head like this. She reassures Waverly that she’s the “Earpiest” because you know what, Earp is about badassery not about blood, and it’s just what Waverly needed to hear, so she kisses her.

“I heard one leg of the gayest race is having the most on-screen kisses, we’ve gotta start doubling down.”

Nicole pulls away and a dejected Waverly assumes it’s because Nicole and her are still in a fight, but actually it’s because Nicole’s Officer Haught skills kicked in and she detected Wynonna clomping up the stairs. Nicole excuses herself, and Waverly feels a little dejected, realizing probably they’re still in a bit of a fight.

Wynonna feels a little awkward about interrupting, but then sees Willa perfume bottle and tells Waverly about how she thinks the ghost of Willa dressed up in period garb and started haunting her. Waverly says maybe Willa can’t move on (or they can’t) because the bedroom is still a shrine to their twice-dead sister.

So Waverly’s suggestion? KILL IT WITH FIRE!

And start with the Raggedy Ann doll that tried out for the lead in Chuckie

Jeremy is downstairs flirting with Doc when the girls run downstairs with stuffed animals and whiskey and start dancing around a funeral pyre of sorts. Feeling warm and boozy. Wynonna is drunk enough to want to Real Talk with Doc, and because apparently Melanie Scrofano is on a mission to break my heart six times a week, they start by talking about missing Dolls (“I didn’t know when we rescued Dolls we wouldn’t get to keep him”) and then tries to kiss him and when he turns her down she yells at him, asking how he can turn his feelings on and off, how he can keep disappearing to do God knows what with Bobo knows who. She calls him a bunch of names, he reminds her that he’s still her friend, and he storms out, leaving a sad-faced Wynonna behind.

Scrofano always makes me think of that song With One Look. “One tear from my eye makes the whole world cry.”

When Wynonna gets back to the fire with Waverly, Jeremy runs out and says he found out that the spider came from an egg and was just a baby and very likely wasn’t born an only child. Creepy crawlies usually come grosser by the dozen.

Meanwhile at the constructions site, Mercedes, fresh off her own chilly encounter with the lacy woman in black, now finds herself cornered by spidey’s whole fam damily. She’s a smart cookie, though, so the first thing she does is call Wynonna.

Wynonna and Waverly save Mercedes, Waverly taking her to clean up and Wynonna going after Stupid Earl, who is a Revenant Right’s Activist and whines about how cursed he is to the girl who has killed two of her family members because of these asshats. Wynonna is explaining how there might be a way for them both to get out of this thing alive and uncursed when Earl’s eyes go demony and he starts talking about a thing he wants to protect in the nooks and crannies of the old school the site is on and even though it’s creepy af, Wynonna decides to follow him.

They get to an old chapel and Earl is a beat away from licking the door when he lunges to attack; Wynonna easily knocks him out and Waverly appears to help out.

How’d you find this place, Waves? Your darker half drawn to the Hellmouth, too? Hmmm?

Okay let’s check in on Doc, shall we? Did I mention Nedley sold him Shorty’s? Because he did. Nedley wants to keep the bar running so he can keep an eye on folks, and says as long as Doc can pay the taxes and upkeep, it’s his. Not exactly having built a nest egg in the well he was trapped in for decades, Doc has to be a little creative in how he gets the money. So he steals proof that Lucado ordered a hit on Dolls and uses it as blackmail to get her to pay for the bar. She’s a little surprised that’s the favor he leveraged; Doc says Dolls has already killed the assassins she sent after him and the Earp girls don’t need his protection, so Shorty’s it is. (It’s also possible he said he didn’t ask about the Earp girls because he’s trying to make it seem like he doesn’t care about them so Lucado doesn’t hurt them to get to him? It’s unclear, honestly.)

Anyway, this is his value add.

At the construction site, Waverly asks if they should call for backup, but there’s no one left to back them up. It’s just Wynonna and Waverly, dynamic duo. So they open the door to the chapel and go to town on the glowy gooey eggs inside. When they’re done, they slow-mo walk down the hallway, head-to-toe covered in goo, swinging their weapons, a song about swagger playing in the background.

If every single episode had a slow-mo walk til the end of time I’d never get sick of it.

Mercedes is still a bit shook but isn’t going anywhere anytime soon because she already sold her house so she’ll be hanging out with the Earps for a bit. She tells them about how she’s in town fixing the things her siblings broke, and she says, “It always comes down to the big sister,” but Wynonna disagrees.

“You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.”

After the three ladies leave, the woman in black appears again, this time with a friend. One of them pulls back her veil to reveal an old-timey hairdo and one of those little portrait brooches at the collar oh and also SHE HAS NO FACE. She’s a dementor, basically, and she’s SCREAMING. It’s very unsettling. I was going to include a photo but I don’t want to look at it again so here’s look at Dani Kind instead.

This is a pretty classic “I just found out demons are real and a person I know is a demon slayer, I need a drink” face.

Back at the police department, after her contamination shower, Wynonna is giving Lucado the lowdown, but she’s mostly ignoring her. Wynonna wonders aloud why she didn’t have any follow-up questions, but don’t worry, Jeremy has one. He asks Wynonna if smashing the eggs made her wet, simply oblivious to the innuendo, and Waverly slides right into frame to see what her sister will make of this one. It’s the most perfect moment. Between her just appearing in the doorway and the look on her face — both right before, “Oh man this is gonna be good,” and right after, hella amused — was just A+ background acting.

She just HAD to see Wynonna’s reaction. HAD TO.

Once they get the dirty jokes out of the way, Jeremy explains that the kind of eggs they smashed are usually submerged in water, and suddenly all the clues fall into place for Wynonna; it wasn’t just a coincidence that there were three different oogie boogies in and around the chapel. So they make a run for it but they’re too late; Stupid Earl has opened the Hellmouth.

That doesn’t usually lead to hugs and puppies.

Wynonna is pissed enough to make some Mad Max references; so much of her life is in shambles right now, but at least she’s still the goddamn Earp heir.

Back at the Homestead, Nicole comes to see Waverly, who wants to know if Nicole is still mad. Nicole says girlfriends fight, though they both adorably agree it’s the worst. And Nicole isn’t here to fight, she’s here to give Waverly some applications for official documents that might help her figure out her origin story. Nicole knows this means a lot to Waverly, and says that — fight or no fight — she’ll always be there for Waverly, as long as she wants her. Then all of a sudden the music gets sexy, and so does Waverly.

IS THIS A DREAM

It’s not A-frame kissing with parkas on, it’s not blurry kisses near some candles in the woods. Nope. It’s a bright room and a clear lens, an unbuttoned shirt and a belt undone. At this point Nicole stops Waverly — with effort, like dragging your feet in the sand to stop a swing — and asks if she’s sure.

I don’t have a clever caption for this. My brain shorts out when I look at screenshots for this scene.

Waverly says yes right away. She smiles and giggles a little nervously. “The best sex is makeup sex, right?” (Making Nicole go full Paige McCullers head dip.) And listen I know this is silly but hearing adults say the word sex when they’re talking about the sex they’re about to sex is very refreshing! And of course, consent is sexy. So they exchange, “I like yous” and Nicole lifts Waverly’s chin right up.

You know how when Steven Universe is excited he gets quite literally starry eyed? That’s me.

And they kiss and they kiss and then the tol redhead picks up her smol girlfriend and places her gently down on the bed in a beautiful sweeping motion that looked like something out of a ballet.

“May I have this dance?”

And then either I had a braingasm or the scene fades to white, it’s anyone’s guess.

In order to not interrupt her sister AGAIN, Wynonna goes to Shorty’s and shares a drink with Doc. She asks if they’re okay, and for a second it seem like they might be, but then Doc starts yelling at her about never letting her guard down around Lucado and then makes an excuse about having to do inventory and sends her away.

The reason he was being so shifty is that Rosita was here to check out the basement setup. She says they need better bourbon, a generator, and better ventilation, and uses words like “reverse engineer” and “synthesize” so whatever they’re up to, it’s not your run-of-the-mill mobile meth lab.

Wynonna takes herself home and finds Waverly in the kitchen, reading Willa’s diary again. Wynonna had saved one of WIlla’s teddy bears from the fire, but Waverly is feeling less nostalgic. She doesn’t miss whoever came back in Willa’s body.

But *I* like whatever pajama bra situation is happening under that kimono.

But Wynonna says no matter what happened, Willa will always be their sister, because “Once an Earp, always an Earp,” not knowing about the identity crisis Waverly is having. Wynonna invites Waverly to sit on the porch with her but Waverly still has Nicole in her bed. Then Wynonna, while telling her sister to get back to business, does this thing with the teddy bear that implies she’s not quite sure how two women have sex with each other.

Actually in still form it’s not as far off.

Waverly tells her sister to take a break, and sends her off to the porch. Waverly opens the freezer to get a snack (an eskimo pie, probably), but she sees the picture of her, Wynonna and Willa from when they were little and her eyes go black. Dark Waverly decides she doesn’t want an eskimo pie, but instead decides to snack on THE FUCKING SPIDER.

I don’t like to snack shame but COME ON.

I let out a pained, “Nooo” every time I watched the ep. Waverly, we’ve been over this “don’t touch the goo” thing a million times, “don’t EAT the goo” should have been implied!!!

Okay tell me all your theories. Who are the women in black? What came out of the Hellmouth? Is Dark Waverly actually just Demon Willa trying to take over Waverly’s body? Talk to me.