Up in Disco Dude’s lair, When Nurse Ava comes to check on Sara, presumably at least 18 hours later, she asks Sara if she’s an “Earper for life” yet. Sara says she agrees that the second season is when the show really found its footing, and Nurse Ava asks if she’s a WayHaught shipper. It’s hilarious and adorable and it made me as giddy as the time Wynonna Earp and One Day at a Time gave each other on-screen love.
“If you insult Waverly Earp, I WILL have to tighten these restraints. Those are simply the rules.”
Before Sara and Nurse Ava can get into the Great Willa Debate, Sara pins Nurse Ava with a shiv she made from the remote and tries to threaten her into letting her go. But Nurse Ava says she’s disposable, that Bishop will just replace her with another Nurse Ava after she’s gone, and this shocks Sara into loosening her grip a little.
Me being dramatic when I have the slightest cold.
She tries to reason with Nurse Ava, explain to her that she might have been created by Bishop, but she’s her own person with autonomy, with a soul. He doesn’t control her. But Ava just tells Sara to get back in bed and closes the door behind her.
Back in Northumberland, the painting of Constantine is trying to convince Astra to stop and switch them back, but Astra isn’t hearing it. She was sucked into hell as a scared little kid and had to fight tooth and nail to gain the power she had there. She won’t start from scratch again, she can’t. She wants the shortcuts and she wants them now.
But of course, Crowley has his own goals in mind and has no intention of going back in the painting if he can help it. Before she can begin her next magic lesson, she hears the Legends all clomping into the manor, tired from having to WALK like a REGULAR PERSON all the way from where Mick kicked them off the Waverider to the mansion they couldn’t use Google maps to find. They are all talking over each other and asking her for different things, all while she’s trying to hide the fact that she let a cultist inhabit Constantine’s body while their sorcerer friend is trapped in a painting, so she loses her cool and turns everyone into inanimate objects.
The number of times in my life I would have turned my little brother into a toothbrush.
And suddenly it’s a modern-day, low-budget Beauty and the Beast in here. Ava is a binder, Behrad is a candlestick, Zari is a flip phone, Nate is a wheel of cheese, and my favorite note to type on this list: SPOONER IS A FORK.
Crowley convinces Astra that in order to really level up her magic, she needs a soul to sacrifice. At first she’s going to choose one of her soul coins from Hell, considering monsters like Christopher Columbus. She chooses her local racist instead, which I think is a fine plan, but Behrad is worried about what this will do to Astra’s soul.
Having presumably run out of Wynonna episodes, and perhaps being inspired by an Earp sister training montage or two, Sara is doing pushups in her room when Nurse Ava sneaks in, saying Bishop is asleep and she wants to help Sara, even brought her a fuel cell for the spaceship she landed in.
“I’ve got a backpack, got a backpack full of sunshine.”
Nurse Ava says she heard what Sara said, really took it to heart, that she has a soul and wants and dreams and opinions, and that Bishop’s plan is idiotic. So they start their jailbreak. Hilariously, without Gary as even a consideration.
At the manor, Astra still has little trinkets in her ear trying to convince them not to steal a random guy’s soul so she gathers them all up and shoves them aside before he can be too suspicious. The neighbor continues to be a monster, so she pulls out the necklace she needs to suck his soul out.
Is it possible that Olivia Swann is actually an ethereal being?
But at the last minute, decides against it. But before she can kick the neighbor out to save his soul, Crowley appears and does the deed for her.
Furious, Astra tries to swap Crowley and Constantine back, but with his newly acquired soul powers, he’s too strong for her level one magic. He calls her a helpless princess again, and then decides to use his new powers to make her one.
I love how there was an entire animated singing sequence in this episode and it didn’t feel off the wall at all because of the lack of lines or boundaries this show has.
Astra starts to sing, largely against her will, but she and the Legends attack, Behrad pulling a Lumiere, Ava flapping around like a book from Pagemaster.
This show is like the manifestation of the phrase “you had to be there.” You can’t explain it to anyone.
But Crowley is too strong and banishes her to the attic where she fights the urge to keep singing.
I’m not sure a cartoon as any right to be this pretty.
Luckily, she’s not alone; she has the cartoon version of the painting of Constantine to keep her company. He tells her about a magic cleansing spell her mother kept on hand in case Constantine ever lost control, like magical Narcan, and Astra realizes it’s probably the song she found earlier.
She said earlier she didn’t know how to read music, but now that she’s looking at it again, she realizes the notes make sense to her. What Crowley didn’t realize was that by turning her into a cartoon princess, he gave her the inherent gift of music.
For the honor of Grayskull!
Spooner uses her fork tines to unlock the attic door and Astra starts to sing.
After a very magical scene that is truly bonkers in a way this show does best, Astra prevails and everything goes back to normal, including getting Crowley back in the painting where he can’t steal any more souls. When the racist neighbor comes to and demands to know who these people who randomly appeared are, Astra calls them her friends and kicks him out of her house.
As the dust settles in the aftermath of the day’s chaos, Astra realizes something; in stripping Crowley’s powers while he was in Constantine’s body, she stripped Constantine’s powers, too. John knew that would happen before he even told her about the song, but he knew it was the only option to save the girl he promised to protect.
Like, this is supposed to be “disheveled” Astra. She looks better than I did at my senior prom.
The good news is, this means Constantine has to start from scratch, learning and collecting magic from scratch. Like restarting a video game. So this time, he’ll take Astra along on his journey.
When Sara and Nurse Ava get to the ship, Sara soon learns she’s been double-crossed. Nurse Ava’s loyalties still lie with Bishop, and the fuel cell is just Bishop’s nightlight. It turns out Nurse Ava still sees Bishop as a god of sorts, and Bishop just wanted Sara to lead him to the ship she arrived on.
She boasts about yeeting all the aliens in the pods across space and time, but he already has all the DNA he needs. Sara fights her way out while Nurse Ava watches, easily taking down the Ava guards, and ultimately snapping Bishop’s neck. But as she stands over her slain enemy, an unseen source hits Sara with a tranq dart.
When Sara wakes up, back in Bishop’s disco den, he says they went on “quite the adventure” together. He now says that they’re…inseparable. And I worry that he’s linked their lifelines somehow. Maybe he’s as unkillable as she is now.
I know this isn’t the point but I feel like Cosima would like this shirt.
Next week, the Search for Sara continues!
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– Nice 80’s opening scene.
– Please don’t paint Astra as being naive. Desperate, maybe, but not naive.
– So Bishop’s 70’s look is more than just a look.
– Bishop is Ava’s creator. Interesting.
– How will all of this play into Ava’s story?
– Wynonna Earp!
– Did she say all 15 seasons of Wynonna Earp?
– “…it’s all just Glamour.” I’m sure that that’s not a Chekov’s Gun. (Huh. It wasn’t.)
– Nurse Ava is a WayHaught shipper. Does this mean that all Avas are gay?
– Hmmmm…Crowley’s fountain is probably another Chekov’s Gun.
– Ava is a binder, and Zari is a flip phone. It’s great.
– Spooner is a fork for the irony, I imagine, but why is Behrad a candle and Nate a cheese? (Apparently there are two theories on Behrad: either he’s always lit, or because he has wind powers he’s a candle in the wind)
– I like how Spooner and Zari are with Astra. Kill the guy racist guy.
– Really wanted to see cartoon Zari. Alas…
“Fifteen seasons of Wynonna Earp.”
Why must you hurt me in this way, writers? What have I ever done to you?
—
Going full on Disney princess musical number in the middle of an episode would have been batshit crazy in almost any other series but here it’s just another day.
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“…since season two when they figured out what the show was about and really leaned into it.”
Meta commentary! As much as we try not to think about it, Legends of Tomorrow season 1 still happened.
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So, Bishop’s look, behavior, and place in the story feels like a very deliberate homage to Nathan (Oscar Isaac) in Ex Machina. Which is … a choice. Ex Machina was a morally dark, visually stunning, philosophically masturbatory film wherein a hapless fool is brought in to perform a Turning Test on an AI named… Ava.
—
What will Sara think when she gets to season four of Wynonna Earp and hears herself name dropped?
Oh wow I hadnt made the Ex Machina connection yet but Bishop was reminding me of the collector dude from Killjoys (season 2 I think?) who also had AI lackeys and wanted to add a space traveling assassin to his collection.
This episode was so much fun and somehow to two story lines worked well together, even though they shouldn’t have.
I think that they are in the present at the mansion! My understanding of the 80s vibe was that Astra was a little kid in the 80s so that’s still her reference for things. And John’s house has plenty of things from the 80s bc he clearly doesn’t keep it up well
Yeah I was also under the impression they were in the present. Astra is bugging John about wifi!
Oooh. Her phone said something about the ‘demon network’ so I assumed her phone existed outside linear time. That makes sense! My brain can’t keep up sometimes lol
I think Nate was a cheese wheel because he’s “American Cheese”. He had a stars and stripes flag on the side of the wheel and the character is annoyingly cheesy, too.
Behrad… I dunno. He should’ve been a bong I think, CBD and air?
The rest of them were good and funny, though I felt a little bad for Ava’s binder, especially when the second plot was highlighting how the AVAs are programmed for specific jobs.