“Wynonna Earp” Episode 208 Recap: Oh, Take Me Back to the Start

Settle down class, get out your notebooks, we learned a lot during this week’s Wynonna Earp and it’s time to review. “No Future In the Past” was Orphan Black–level complex, and it took me three times watching it to feel like I got all the important stuff, so hopefully I can do it justice.

We open on little Waverly chasing after her stuffed bunny that Willa threw onto the frozen lake — this is the first thing we learn; we knew Willa was always a little shit but apparently she was actively trying to kill her little sister from the word go. I thought the beam in the barn thing was just a mean sister prank but this is next level.

We cut back to Waverly telling Wynonna this story, and that maybe it should have been a clue that she wasn’t part of the family. Wynonna can’t wrap her head around this; she remembers Waverly coming home from the hospital. Hell, she named her when her parents tried to name her Welcome. (Of note, she says she remembers Waverly coming home, not their mother being pregnant, and based on Willa’s diary entry, it’s possible they just brought her home, not from the hospital. Then again I don’t remember my mother being pregnant with my brother either so WHO KNOWS.)

Anyway, Waverly says now that no one ever celebrated her birthday or bought her school photos and Wynonna looks frankly a little horrified; she’s digging through her memory for evidence of this but all she remembers is Mama Earp calling Waverly her angel. (This will be important later.)

“One sister was a monster and one was in constant trouble and yet still I wasn’t the favorite.”

Waverly says that Mama left and after that her dad wouldn’t look at her, which she attributes now to her not being his. Wynonna remains unconvinced. Oh and by the way, who did pull her out of the ice if Willa didn’t? Waverly looks at her like she could know the answer, then says it was Wynonna who pulled her out.

“Who’d you think? My imaginary friend?”

But from the look on her face, Wynonna doesn’t remember that. And saving your sister from almost dying after falling through the ice sounds like a thing you’d remember.

Not too far away, Juan Carlos pulls over to help out a broken down car and is rewarded by getting a hickey from Widow Beth because he won’t tell Widow Mercedes where the last seal is.

At Shorty’s, Rosita comes downstairs and flirts with Doc and invites him back upstairs, but he has to run to the salt flats real quick. He suggests perhaps while he’s gone, she tries to get to know the Earp girls a little better, since they’re all part of his life now. He calls Wynonna fun and says the truest thing: Everybody loves Waverly.

“I guess it WOULD be nice to have more screentime. And maybe get out of Shorty’s someday.”

They kiss and it’s cute and I’m mostly into it, I just don’t know if we can trust Rosita yet, because we don’t know much about her. Though something tells me we have to worry less about her and more about whatever baggage from her past might follow her right to our friends.

Okay here’s a scene that I’m going to need you all to describe to me. It starts out well and good with Wynonna being about as mature as you’d think she’d be when at a doctor’s appointment that makes her uncomfortable. She’s making jokes (naps are my bitch) and the doctor tries to stress the importance of the situation.

Wynonna starts to ask if a test could determine what “kind” of baby it is, probably thinking of the potential rev-ness of hers, but covers it up by saying she has a friend who thinks she might be adopted. The doctor asks if Wynonna is thinking of adopting, and says she has options, but only has a few weeks left. And I’m not sure exactly how far along Wynonna is, but the phrasing sounded like abortion lingo. And maybe I only think this because next the doctor shows Wynonna her sonogram before Wynonna says she wants to see it, and says Wynonna should remember she’s “deciding for two.” Which is definitely taken right from the anti-abortion handbook. But it’s possible she was just using similar language to be anti-adoption? Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and she just wanted Wynonna to take her pregnancy more seriously? Either way, Wynonna freaked out, and I felt uncomfortable, but Wynonna didn’t seem to be too upset about it because as she storms out, she says, “See you next week.”

Just give me a ‘scrip for my magic hair tonic and I’ll be on my way.

The doctor chases her out and hands Dolls a confidential envelope which seems unprofessional but Dolls doesn’t care because he’s off to follow Wynonna. When he gets outside he sees a truck peel away, leaving behind a pool of blood and some pregnancy pamphlets. This sends him tearing to Nedley’s office, where they determine the truck belonged to Juan Carlos and their best lead is to ask the firehouse fellas.

Meanwhile at Shorty’s, Waverly and Nicole are playing the official game of queer women.

Like Maggie and Alex before them.

Waverly is distracted though, because she sent in a DNA sample and the results should come back any day now. She had it sent to the police station so Wynonna wouldn’t see it, though that doesn’t matter now. Nicole says, too quickly, that of course it matters, and that she hasn’t seen anything, and it’s a little weird but lucky Waverly’s mind is elsewhere. Nicole asks if Waverly is sure she wants to know, and she isn’t, but she has to know where she came from. Waverly thinks the best course of action right now though is Nicole help her take her mind off things for a while.

Mind off, hands on.

But this week it’s Rositas Interruptus, because Rosita wants to take Doc’s advice and bond with the gals by throwing Wynonna a baby shower. One cute little thing I liked about this scene is that Waverly and Nicole didn’t jump away from each other or act all embarrassed for being busted almost kissing. I just wanted to point it out because I feel like I don’t talk enough about how refreshing it is to have a show with two women in a relationship and having it not be scandalized. But don’t think for a second I’m ever taking it for granted that they act like and are treated like a any other couple at every turn.

Anyway, the girls are down for a baby shower, even though Waverly is surprised by Rosita’s seemingly sudden interest in being part of the gang.

“It will be more like a baby drizzle because there are only three of us but we’ll make it work.”

While Dolls is interrogating Ewan the fire chief, but he is arrogant, unaffected, and entirely unhelpful. Luckily Wynonna calls Dolls then and says she’s safe. She tries to tell him where she is exactly using clues like she’s playing Taboo but Juan Carlos takes the phone from her then. Luckily Dolls speaks fluent Wynonna so he knows they’re at a church. He’s afraid Juan Carlos wants to “creepy Vegas marry her” (a line that made me snort) but Ewan says that doesn’t sound like good ol’ JC. The Order isn’t interested in the Black Badge business, but Ewan gives Dolls the location of a church Juan Carlos might take her to anyway.

Juan Carlos tells Wynonna that his curse is similar to Docs in that he has longevity, but his also has an added caveat that he can’t interfere. So he has things to show Wynonna, but she has to choose it for herself. She says it doesn’t feel much like choice but she takes Wyatt’s badge from him and do as he says, going into the chapel to recite some words while standing on a pentagram, especially since he promised her, “The Earp sisters will be reunited before sundown.” Which is very interesting, because she only asked if she’d be back for the nachos Waverly had promised her (the cover for the baby shower).

“Standing between me and food is nacho best plan.”

So Wynonna does the spell and there’s a woosh but she doesn’t feel any different. She must be different though, because she leaves Peacemaker behind as she wanders back to Shorty’s. In all of my dreams, no doorways ever lead to where they’re supposed to lead – I’d walk out of my bedroom and end up in my elementary school, leave a classroom and be in a castle somewhere…and yet it never seems weird. This seems to happen to Wynonna, because she walks out of the chapel and into Shorty’s, and doesn’t really start to question things until she realizes that Doc isn’t answering her or looking at her or seeing her at all. She looks around and realizes everyone is dressed in old fashioned garb, so she runs out side to make sure it’s not just a costume party and realizes she’s on the set of Westworld. She looks around, panic spreading across her face, and asks the important question: WHEN am I?

And why is everything in a soft cool blur? Are we in Ravenswood?

Inside, she tries to get someone’s attention, anyone’s, but it’s clear she’s invisible to them. She starts to worry she’s a ghost. Before she can figure it out though, a meek little man approaches Doc, who is not very kind upon seeing him. Wynonna realizes with surprise that the man is none other than Bobo del Ray. Though not quite yet. Right now he’s just Robert Svain.

The rest of the saloon freezes so all Wynonna can see and hear is Robert telling Doc he has a message from Wyatt Earp. Doc is brash and mean and growls at him that if he had a message from Wyatt, to tell him in private next time. It’s a totally flipped script and it’s unsettling to watch in the very best way.

But Robert’s message is important. There is a “padre” in Purgatory who wrote to Wyatt, saying their sheriff is a demon, terrorizing the town, and Wyatt wants Doc to go with him to sort it out. But Doc declares Purgatory a lost cause and refuses.

Doc coughs and says he’s made his peace with Wyatt, and tells Robert to go to hell. Robert says something that means more knowing what we know now than it did when I watched it the first time, “I would go to hell and back for Wyatt.” And he will.

Robert says Doc felt the same once and leaves Doc standing there, so angry his mustache is trembling.

There are gunshots and Wynonna is scared and isn’t sure what to do or how an injury would even affect her but decides to make a choice and follows Doc and Robert outside, yelling “tacos are tasty” a few times for good measure, in case that’s the way to get extracted from this chaos.

Doesn’t look like anything to me.

Two strangers walk by and give Wynonna a lot of answers in not a lot of sentences. Here’s what we learned:

• The aforementioned evil Sheriff of Purgatory was called Sheriff Clootie
• Wyatt Earp shot the Sheriff (but he did not shoot the deputy)
• Sheriff Clootie had three wives
• Also aforementioned Padre has a drinking problem

Wynonna is overwhelmed with all this new information but follows a blood trail and ends up back in the church. Robert Svain lay dying on a pew, and Wynonna expresses her disbelief that he was Wyatt’s friend. That he was good.

But she doesn’t stay in this moment long before she’s surrounded by a non-injured Robert, the Widows, and a young Constance Clootie, and Padre Juan Carlos having a chat.

So the thing is, the Sheriff wasn’t just a “demon” like a real tyrant, he was a literal demon, so they have buried him alive. The Widows are pissed about it but Juan Carlos punches one of them in the face to express his dissenting opinion on the matter.

Cut to Shorty’s, present day, where Nicole and Waverly are decorating, starting to get into this whole baby shower idea. Rosita brought a piñata that looks like a baby and is filled with donuts and at first Wavelry and Nicole were wary of hitting a baby with the bat but once they thought about they realized it’s actually the most Wynonna thing ever.

I really hope the donuts inside are like those little wrapped hostess ones. Otherwise things are gonna get messy.

Rosita heads off to get mocktail ingredients and Waverly expresses her confusion about Rosita’s sudden interest in their lives. Nicole tells her girlfriend to cut the girl some slack; the Earp sisters are an intimidating duo, and Nicole came in before they had gotten back to full impenetrable bond status. Waverly is confused; she’s the nicest person in Purgatory. Literally. LITERALLY. SHE HAS A SASH. Which actually I’d like to take a moment to talk about if you don’t mind.

This is now the second reference in this episode to Waverly being a town favorite. Doc says “everybody loves Waverly,” Waverly mentions she won a literal “nicest girl in town” competition. And at first glance you might be like, “wow, how great that someone who was all but neglected growing up turned out to be so sweet.” But of course she did. Sure, it’s not the only path she could have taken. But her parents, the people who are meant to love you unconditionally no matter what you do, barely paid her any attention on a good day. Her oldest sister, someone she should have been able to look up to, hated her for reasons little Waverly couldn’t see or fathom (or control.) So of course she spent her life trying to be as likable as possible. She luckily had other influences — Wynonna who did love her, however messy her own life was, Gus and Curtis, who seemed to have provided that unconditional love she was missing— so she didn’t go too far and become manipulative or totally shut off. But it’s no surprise that when Waverly got old enough to take control of her own life she did everything she could to be the most helpful (by learning all she could) and being the person the most people would like (probably having to work extra hard because everyone already hated her family, especially her one remaining sister).

Anyway I love Waverly and there’s a lot to unpack there but that’s the end of my rambling for now.

My Brave Little Toaster. <3

Waverly promises Nicole to try to give Rosita a chance and when she returns, she accepts a “Purgatini” from the newbie. Rosita turns some of the mocktails into cocktails and when Waverly encourages her to add more booze, there’s a moment of mutual appreciation, because booze bonds all.

I’ve made some great one-night besties in line for the bathroom at a bar.

Wynonna, meanwhile, is watching Robert put the Widows in the box they stayed in for years, scoffing at them for not foreseeing dynamite as a future problem that could set them free. And giving them armholes.

Clootie reveals a little more here, saying Wyatt killed her part-demon sons, and that her husband can’t be set free or he’d come after her. One thing I’m not entirely clear on is what moved Clootie from Team Demon to wanting to venture out on her own, putting her husband out of commission and turning on his two other wives.

One thing I am clear on is that Clootie knows if her husband ever gets free, she’s dead meat, so she has created three seals to keep him buried. She has already given Juan Carlos and Robert their talismans, and she now gives them iron and silver to pour over them. Hers however a little easier to hide than an ancient manhole cover, as it is her wedding ring. The very ring Doc wears.

“No wonder he wouldn’t let me ear it so I could play mob boss and make him kiss my ring…”

They don’t tell each other where their seals will be, and head out to hide them. Wynonna goes off to follow Clootie.

Dolls gets to Juan Carlos and chest is puffed up but JC says Wynonna chose this and if he wakes her up before she’s ready it could end badly. So instead he just goes inside and sits with Wynonna, sleeping soundly. He comes back outside and Juan Carlos tells him about his non-interference rule. Dolls points out he’s been awful interfere-y lately but Juan Carlos says he’s just accepting the consequences. In the form of gangrene. It’s gross. But they can’t worry about that now because the Widows are here, looking for the third seal. So Dolls runs out to fight them.

Wynonna ends up back in the chapel because this spell is trying to tell her a story and the next part happens in the church, too. Bobo is there, bleeding again, and he says, “Angel?” but it’s just Clootie the Cutie. He makes a joke about her being able to be in a church at all and she says, “I am made whole in the house of my enemies,” which is a deliciously evil thing to say. Robert explains that he went to Purgatory with Wyatt, and Sheriff Clootie ended up using him as a human shield. At Robert’s behest, Wyatt shot Clootie through his own self. And apparently he’s been sitting in this chapel bleeding to death long enough to get a letter from Wyatt about how he’s off to find Doc, who has gone missing. I imagine that probably what actually happened is that he died of an infection from the wound but since it’s a dream walk Wynonna is seeing it as a fresh wound. Probably also to help with the sequence of events, since you know we weren’t seeing everything as it happened. Dreams are fun that way.

Clootie chooses now to tell Robert about the curse her husband put on Wyatt before he fell; everyone killed by Peacemaker is destined for hell, doomed to return again and again, hunting Earp heirs until forever.

Wynonna is feeling the same confusing amount of pity for Robert Svain in this moment.

The lines of good and evil have blurred but everyone is still so damn attractive.

Robert cries out then that he’s a good man. Clootie assures him hell will fix that pesky problem for him. She offers to help though — there’s a way to end the curse but she won’t tell him until he brings her the bones of her sons. But he doesn’t want to help this witch.

In a jarringly different tone, Rosita, Waverly, and Nicole are playing Never Have I Ever while they wait for Wynonna to show up.

Never have I ever wanted to be part of a game of never have I ever so badly.

They’re calling each other Rosie and Waves and Nicole is impressed, albeit surprised, at the turnaround a little tequila caused. Rosita goes off to find a game for them to play while Waverly reaches into her bag for a pen. But it’s not her bag she goes into, it’s Nicoles, and in it she finds the results to her own DNA test. Which Nicole not only has been keeping from Waverly, but has already read. Which is illegal and wrong and squicky and WHY NICOLE WHY. I mean I know why. No one wants to see sadness on that sweet baby angel’s face. But Nicole. It makes me wonder if last week’s “I can’t lie to her” was less an implied “ever” and more “about this because I’m already holding another big lie and the guilt is consuming me and I don’t want to add more on top of it.”

I’m putting Waverly in a feelings bubble so everyone can stop hurting her THANKS

Waverly wants to know why she kept it from her, and Nicole says, “Because I love you.”

Someone call the Purgatory Sash Shoppe (we know they have one) and get a Worst Timing award, stat.

Waverly is knocked off her stool by the force of this and says what we’re all thinking, “Are you serious right now?” Right now is SO not the time. Nicole was trying to protect Waverly, but Waverly doesn’t need her protection. She doesn’t need anyone making decisions for her. She even echoes Wynonna’s earlier concerns about Nicole, asking if she’s trying to control Waverly.

Nicole says once Waverly knows, she can’t unknow, but it’s not Nicole’s secret to keep. Waverly knows the news is bad based on Nicole’s face, but storms out before reading the results herself.

HEY QUIT DOING THAT WITH YOUR FACE IT’S HURTING ME

And it’s really too bad. Nicole was being so supportive up til this point, and she could have brought Waverly the results, and they could have looked together, and she could have been there for Waverly no matter the results. But now Waverly will have to deal with it alone, because Nicole overstepped. Her intentions were good, I know, but she went about it in the worst way.

Rosita comes back, confused, and Nicole realizes she made a big mistake. Huge.

Wynonna’s vision takes her next to a well, with a still-dying Robert and Clootie approaching. Wynonna recognizes the well and soon knows why: it’s Doc’s well. And he’s in it now. Clootie wanted vengeance, and to give Doc eternal life and then throw him in a well seemed like a pretty solid torture plan. Plus, he has her ring, which heals the dying and delays death indefinitely, and is also her seal, safe at the bottom of a well with the fastest gunslinger in the west.

One moment I liked is that Clootie then vanishes into thin air and Robert and Wynonna both say, “Neat trick,” at the same time.

Robert tries to get the ring from Doc, but he won’t give it up. Robert realizes then that Doc would rather be immortal at the bottom of a well than a mortal man but safe and free. Doc tells him to save him or go to hell, and Robert chooses the latter. Quite literally.

Clootie reappears then and asks him again to find her son’s bones. He growls at her then, sounding more like the Bobo we’ll come to know, saying she has nothing he wants, but she says she’ll find something. Wynonna is stressed.

Stressed but glowing.

Outside the church she’s asleep in, Dolls is frozen by the Widows and they run off to EAT Juan Carlos. Eat him. With their mouths. Like he’s a box of donuts and his organs are their favorite flavor. Dolls unfreezes himself because he’s a dragon, which surprises the heck out of them. They scatter for a minute and Dolls kills Juan Carlo, at his request. RIP, Padre.

Dolls barricades himself inside the church and then twitches a lot, saying it feels like burning, which makes me wonder even more about what the heck Dolls even is. When the Widows realize they can’t get in, they decide to burn the damn thing down.

Wynonna’s final stop on memory lane is back with Robert, watching him die. But this time, he can see her too. He recognizes her; he’s caught glimpses of her throughout this dream walk. He calls her his guardian angel. Wynonna starts coughing and hearing Dolls calling out her name somewhere in the distance, like when your alarm clock enters your dream before it enters your consciousness. Wynonna wants to have some words with Robert first though, because she can’t believe he left Doc down in that well just because he was jealous of his relationship with Wyatt.

He confesses that wasn’t his finest moment, and she says it could have changed everything. She calls him Bobo, but that’s not his name yet, so he’s confused. Wynonna is coughing up smoke now and knows she has to wake up. She picks up Peacemaker and tells Robert to try to remember who he is, how much he loved Wyatt, despite all the cycles of hell he’s going to go through.

He holds her as she coughs more, and she tells him they’ll meet again. He promises that no matter what, he’ll never hurt her, and asks what his angel’s name is. To which Wynonna responds, “Waverly.”

Robert uses what might be his last ounce of strength to run and ring the church bell so someone will come help his angel.

And sure enough, back in the real world, the bell also rings, and Ewan and his boys pulled Wynonna and Dolls out just in time. It was tough and go there for a minute, but Wynonna coughs awake, much to Dolls’ adorable delight.

Over at the lake, Waverly is on the frozen lake again, reading her paternity results, crying.

She looks so SMALL. </3

And now she remembers what really happened the day she fell through the ice. It wasn’t Wynonna who pulled her out of the ice, but Bobo, calling her his angel. And while it might not have been Wynonna who literally carried her baby girl to safety, it was Wynonna who saved her after all.

And listen…up until this episode, I was pretty convinced that Bobo was Waverly’s father. Especially after last episode? I had hardly any doubt! But now? Now I’m not so sure. Now that we have another explanation for why Bobo was so protective of little Waverly, because he thought she was his angel, the one he swore to never hurt, now the father theory has less purchase. It’s not entirely off the table, but I don’t know. And I love that I don’t know. This show keeps surprising me in the best ways. And this episode gave me that “I need to rewatch the entire series to date now that we have all this new information” feeling.

Wynonna wakes up at the homestead, the little spoon to Dolls’ big. She tells him that Doc’s ring is the third seal, and if the Widows break it, the Demon Clootie will rise. Dolls kisses her shoulder and holds her and she’s smiling.

It’s more like big spoon, little spoon-with-an-egg-in-it but that’s okay.

Dolls is extra glad she’s okay because technically she was dead for 77 seconds. (Which is an oddly specific amount of time; and also happens to be the exact number of Revenants.)

Wynonna is surprised but not too worried about it. She tells Dolls about how Bobo used to be just Robert, a good dude and a friend of Wyatt’s. She repeats what Clootie said, “I am made whole in the house of my enemies.” But Dolls says the real phrase, from the Bible, is, “My enemies are made whole in my house.” Which I believe means the full sum of your enemies is rounded out by the people you call family. And would be the title of my thesis paper on Wynonna Earp if I was writing one.

Dolls says that eventually we all become enemies, but Wynonna says they’d never come to that. But before they can talk more about their feelings, Wynonna sits up straight. The Earp heir died. But only for a few seconds. That’s fine, right? That won’t affect the curse or the Revenants she put down? Nothing happened when Buffy died for a few seconds right? Right??

Everything is five by five. Right? RIght???

Alas. 77 seconds is plenty of time for at least one Revenant to rise. And that Revenant is n one other than Bobo del Ray.

Phew. That was a lot to unpack. My head is still spinning but I want to hear all of your theories. Tell me what I missed, I’m sure it was plenty!