Previously on Wynonna Earp, we learned that Waverly Earp wasn’t only a metaphorical angel but also literally born of a celestial being, the gates to the Garden opened, Wynonna lost Peacemaker then found it again, WayHaught got engaged, and Wynonna went on a bender after a fight with Doc and slept with Amon.

This week, we open on a butt.

Wynonna’s butt, specifically. She wakes up with only her boots and her gun to her name and covers herself with a tray as she inches away from the horny demons (literally, they have horns) setting the Glory Hole up for some kind of game night.

Oops, I did it again.

Amon asks her to leave so she wraps herself in some vagina curtains with a tasteful boa belt and struts to the Purgatory Police Department so she doesn’t have to hike all the way home mostly naked.

We then cut to a pumpkin patch where some Black Badge agents are patrolling. Apparently never being scarred by a single Goosebumps book in their life, they walk right past the terrifying scarecrow wearing Widowesque finger jewelry. So they never see it coming when all of a sudden it leaps off its post and pitchforks them to death.

Back at the Homestead, Waverly is gleefully decorating the front porch and Nicole, knowing full well there’s no way trick-or-treaters are making it all the way out to the Earp property, is amused at her gal’s Halloween spirit.

I deeply appreciate that Waverly was determined to climb on banisters to decorate instead of asking her tall girlfriend to help.

Also this is neither here nor there but I adore it when the smaller half of a couple is on a top step and the taller is on a bottom step so their heights are temporarily reversed. So cute. Anyway, Waverly tells Nicole she’s going to spend some quality time with her sister today, and Nicole is fine with that because her and Rachel are going to the Big City to do some wedding shopping anyway. Waverly jokes that Nicole doesn’t need a white dress if she wears a white hat, specifically her stetson.

“If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?”

Before they can break in another set of stairs, however, Waverly gets a cryptic text from Wynonna and knows she has to go see what her sister means when she says, “Bring pants.”

Jeremy beats Waverly to Wynonna’s side and is surprised to find her clothed in vagina curtains but honestly not as surprised as someone who has never met Wynonna might have been. He tells her that his new boss is on his ass to get Agent Earp to deliver and she hasn’t brought them a demon in weeks.

Me explaining to coworkers that “EOD” means “before I go to sleep” not “5pm sharp.”

Waverly interrupts the debriefing, entering the room dressed as a ladybug, which I believe is a nod back to Season 2 when Wynonna is listing lipstick names and Waverly thinks they’re doing a bit and says “flaming ladybug” which Wynonna steals as a nickname for herself later in the episode.

I could have just used this for 90% of the captions but I’ll say it once and you’ll just feel it the rest of the ep: THE EARP SISTERS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO ME DOT TUMBLR DOT COM.

Jeremy tells Wynonna that he has a job for her and needs her to get the Extractor and bring in a demon scarecrow named Rotten Jack but not kill him. Waverly tells Jeremy they simply can’t do BBD’s bidding today because they have big Halloween plans. She’s determined to have her Earp Sister Day. And she brought Wynonna a costume.

Waverly’s face screams, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”

You would think Waverly would be soured on B. Spears because that’s who Nicole and Shae were seeing in concert when they decided to get married, but then again, who could blame them for being hyped up after seeing Toxic performed live.

“When I’m not with you, I lose my mind.”

While the Earp sisters head out for some Halloween happenings, Doc goes to the Glory Hole, dressed like Freddy Mercury, possibly for no reason other than he felt like it. It’s not like Waverly was hosting a proper Halloween party, right? Either way, I’m not mad at it. We love bisexual icons stanning bisexual icons. Amon explains the demon game night situation to Doc, saying they’re taking bets on who Rotten Jack will kill and when. Doc isn’t amused and thinks Amon is asking for trouble, but Amon doesn’t care what Doc thinks because he’s been slacking on his Glory Hole liquor duties. Amon then starts his quick descent from morally ambiguous demon to wretched man, feeling over-confident in his Earp heir immunity since he had sex with her, clearly not knowing that Wynonna shot her own big sister when she went too far past the line.

Doc knows better and also is still harboring a bit of resentment about their most recent fight so he just laughs in Amon’s face and stalks off.

Elsewhere in the Ghost River Triangle, Waverly and Wynonna follow a map Jeremy gave them to find the Extractor, and end up at a cute little trailer set-up. They knock on the door (Wynonna delivering a perfect, “It’s Britney, bitch”) and when it opens they’re surprised to find their old pal Casey the Half-Demon.

I love that Waverly relented to doing this task but first she was going to braid her sister’s hair if it killed them both.

Back at BBDHQ, Jeremy blows off his boss similarly to how he blew off the Earp girls, determined to get to this meeting he’s been mentioning. When he gets there, it seems to be a group therapy session, and he seems to be there for a cute boy with a lil bandage on his nose. Jeremy gets excited when this cute boy remembers something he told him before, and at first it seems like awkward flirting, but then Jeremy calls him Robin. Robin looks at him with friendly eyes, but not the familiar way he once looked at our favorite Doc-obsessed, science-loving nerd.

Back at Casey’s trailer, Waverly and Wynonna do their darndest to convince Casey to give them the Extractor when finally he explains that HE’S the Extractor. And he doesn’t want to go with them.

I would like to note that Peacemaker never glows when Wynonna points it at Casey. She was never going to actually hurt him.

He gets worked up that they’re working with BBD, he feels betrayed by his buds. “We cooked chili together!” he exclaims as he opens a can to blind them with some kind of magic flash, puts on a gas mask, and runs into a nearby field. The Earp sisters follow, Wynonna echoing his chili words back at him, but suddenly they find themselves surrounded by fog, as docile as Dorothy in a field of poppies. By the time they find their way out of the fog, they not only don’t recognize each other, but they can’t even remember their own names.

“What’s my name?? Don’t let me be the last to know!”

Fictional Amnesia is always really interesting to me because as someone who minored in psychology and also took a cognitive neuroscience class in college because I’m an idiot who thought they would be the interesting way to fulfil my required science credits, I learned a lot about long and short-term memory, and how brain injuries and other amnesia-causing situations (including drugs or trauma) will affect everyone so differently. Like on paper it might seem weird that they remember that what Wynonna is wearing is a school uniform but not remember it as a Britney Spears costume, and frankly it IS weird, but it’s not impossible. Brains are weird, is what I’m saying. And memory is a mystery, especially to me, someone who will find herself in a whole room reaching a specific direction without knowing why until seeing the thing I was about to pick up reminds me.

When they make it back to Casey’s campsite, Waverly immediately punches him square in the face.

Casey is shocked that “the nice one” who demanded they use vegan ingredients during the Chili Cook-Off FOR FREEDOM just cold clocked him but he eventually calms them down and convinces them that they’re just super high and uses their map to point them toward home.

The Earp sisters are feeling giddy and silly so they stumble off toward what they hope is a car they can hopefully drive, not even realizing they left behind Peacemaker.

When they get back to the Homestead, they start investigating the house to figure out who they are. As someone who just played the video game Gone Home for the first time where I basically had to learn about “my” family by exploring their house, I found this delightful.

Between the giant spoon and the giant moccasin and the giant VALDEZ scrawled across the wall I can imagine it being a confusing home to peruse.

Wynonna thinks maybe they’re roommates, but Waverly knows that they’re sisters, somehow. Wynonna thinks it’s awfully cute that they’re sisters and they live together and skips off to find mail with their names on it. They accidentally swap names and, like drunk girls incorrectly solving an escape room, start to incorrectly assume things about their lives. Wynonna thinks she works at Shorty’s, because she likes the way Rachel’s dirty shirt tastes of whiskey and Waverly feels drawn to the cop uniform she found and remembers loving punching Casey so she assumes she must be a cop.

Lick first, ask questions later wouldn’t be MY first investigative technique but you do you, bb.

Waverly starts to talk about the rush she felt when she punched Casey, but since Wynonna isn’t feeling like herself, she doesn’t clock it as a red flag and they decide to go to Shorty’s, where surely Wynonna is working for Halloween.

Next page: Taste of a poison paradise.

Shorty’s is empty when they get there, save for Doc who maybe was going to steal liquor to give to Amon? Waverly, our precious little empath continuing to be incredibly intuitive, can tell that Doc and Wynonna were a thing, and Wynonna can feel it too, but Doc is so mad at Wynonna he doesn’t notice that her and Waverly are being super weird. Well, maybe he would have after he realized Waverly takes her new role as cop very seriously and starts delivering some truly adorable and hilariously earnest lines like telling Doc to lay off because she’s off-duty.

“Hey mister! I said cut it out!”

But before Doc can ask them if tacos are tasty, demons stroll into the bar to shake Doc down for Amon.

When the Earp sisters realize these demons aren’t just comic book fanatics in really elaborate Halloween costumes, but real deal demons, and then Doc vamps out and they scream and grab the nearest things to them to wield as weapons…which happen to be tiny umbrellas.

Where’s Joan the Vampire Slayer when you need her.

Desperate to escape the dangerous situation, the sisters run outside and hide in a dumpster until the coast is clear, looking cuter in a giant trash receptacle than I did on prom night.

Me having crackships on shows with perfectly lovely canon queer couples. *cough*Nancy Drew*cough*

While trying to decide what to do next, Waverly gets a skull emoji text from someone named Jeremy so they run off to figure out what that’s about, narrowly avoiding getting pitchforked by Rotten Jack himself.

One of the demons from Shorty’s goes back to Amon to tell them about the weird situation with the Earp girls’ memories and how Wynonna doesn’t even have Peacemaker, and Amon says they must have tried to cross the border. Which is ominous. Amon sees this as a moment to take advantage of and skips off to make some mischief.

As the BBD support group comes to an end, Robin and Jeremy chat a little more. Robin asks Jeremy if he gets headaches, assuming they suffer the same ailments, but Jeremy says his pain is more like a heartache. And like, stab me in the eye why don’t you, show?? Why you gotta make the sweetest, softest boi hurt me like this? Jeremy compliments Robin on his Halloween tie, but Robin says he already wears a mask so he didn’t feel like dressing up any more than this. Their conversation is interrupted by Jeremy receiving a call from Doc about the Earps acting very strange, and Jeremy has a plan but he needs Doc to decide on a signal.

Jeremy’s gallant jaunt to save the day is impeded, however, by his interim boss telling him that they’re officially under lockdown until ol’ RJ is in custody.

As the Earp sisters are popping out of the dumpster like they’re playing Fortnite, Amon rolls up with his smarm turned up to 11.

“I may not know my name but my bullshit meter is still intact.”

He really leans into their memory loss, accidentally helping them realize they got their names flip-flopped and claiming to be Wynonna’s boyfriend. Intuitive Waverly is not buying it, but when he flashes a pair of black rhinestone-donut-adorned panties, Wynonna is convinced, and Waverly isn’t about to leave her sister. (She IS a cop, after all.)

Wynonna’s reservations are truly gone and she leans out the window like a puppy while her baby sister hesitantly climbs in the back.

I think it’s really telling/interesting/brilliant how totally and absolutely carefree and go-with-the-flow Mind-Wiped Wynonna is. This is all she’s wanted. This is what she has been trying to get the whiskey to do for years. To relax, to set down the burden she’s carrying if only for a little while. To forget. It’s why any of us practice escapism, isn’t it? Whether we do it via alcohol or media or whatever our outlets and/or vices. We just want to try to somehow, some way, forget our responsibilities and traumas and just see who we are when we’re unburdened. But the truth is we can never really forget or let go. But Wynonna has. And sure, I think she’s a little loopier than she would be, but maybe this fun, smiley, loving, go-with-the-flow kind of gal is who Wynonna would have been if she didn’t have a garbage father, an absent mother, and a top-shelf-buttload of trauma. Maybe this is who 30-something year old Wynonna would have been if her last name wasn’t Earp.

Anyhoot, Amon leads the girls back to the Glory Hole and tells them to put on some of Mercedes’ costumes. The name Mercedes triggers Wynonna’s long term memory; she gets psychic reading style flashes of red hair and general badassery. This activates something in Waverly too. Red hair = love. Also there are handcuffs. It’s like trying to not only remember but then also explain a dream.

“It’s time for makeup, perfect smile, it’s you they’re all waiting for.”

But then they’re distracted by Amon doing a line of what they think might be coke but I assume is like…crushed human bones or some shit.

I’m a sucker for a Scooby Doo peek stack.

It’s Doc’s turn to visit Casey, who he finds hiding under his picnic table writing an apology letter to the Earp sisters. He ends it the way I will be ending every strongly worded email I ever write, “PS. Dance like no one’s watching.”

Casey and Doc have a heart to heart, and Doc convinces Casey to take his Extractor duties back up because you can be both a fuck-up and a hero. Heroism is not synonymous with perfection. Sometimes it’s admitting when you were wrong and making it right. Sometimes it’s doing the best thing even though it’s hard. Sometimes it’s just doing the next right thing. Inspired, Casey agrees to go with Doc, and also offers up Peacemaker.

Back at the Glory Hole, the Earp sisters emerge on stage in all their costumed glory. Despite not knowing who they were, they chose costumes that spoke to the core of them: Wynonna a superhero, Waverly an angel.

I also love that Mercedes has worn both of these costumes, and that conveniently a W is just an upside down M.

But it’s not until they’re already on stage that they realize that Amon’s plan is to auction them off to the highest bidder to kill the infamous Earp girls as they see fit.

Things get a bit chaotic as the online bidding starts and Wynonna tries to up the price because she was insulted by its low starting numbers. Waverly tries to bid herself (because Wynonna is her “most important thing” :sobbing emoji:) but Amon vetoes that right quick.

“Every time I try to fly I fall, without my wings I feel so small. I guess I need you, baby (girl).”

Eventually a stranger in a spooky mask bursts in to bid to kill the Earp heir right then and there, and Doc is ready to burst in to save them until the mystery figure motions to his crotch and Doc stands down, still en garde but not making moves. The figure shoots Wynonna and Waverly, but not with bullets; instead they’re injected with something that makes them remember who they are and spring into action. Rotten Jack bursts in to crash the party and Amon decides to save his own ass only and runs out of the club, locking everyone in with the ancient murder demon.

How rude.

A fight breaks out, and before Wynonna is finally reunited with Peacemaker, Waverly puts up her lil fists ready to block and dodge that pitchfork all night.

I would dive in front of pitchfork-wielding nightmare fuel for Waverly Earp any day of the year.

Remembering their no-kill instructions, instead of shooting him, Wynonna smashes the back of Jack’s skull, causing him to freeze. For some reason that I’m sure is totally casual and not concerning at all, Waverly feels drawn to stick her hand in the gaping wound in the back of Jack’s head.

She REALLY wanted to jack his lantern.

But Casey stops her, saying she’ll get burned, because it’s his job. And so we learn why he’s called the Extractor when he reaches in and carefully removes the candle from Rotten Jack’s pumpkin head. Despite the fact that Jack seems disarmed and they were ordered to bring him in alive, Waverly simply cannot resist the urge to snuff out evil and blows out Jack’s life candle.

Wynonna takes a ziploc baggie of Jack’s rotten guts back to the BBD, asking for answers about the fog in exchange, but the interim supervisor says that BBD is definitely not controlling that. Their last few local leaders either disappeared without a trace, lost their cool about a baby Bigfoot and got their head exploded after touching the goo. (Though maybe when the last lady saw a baby Bigfoot she thought of Littlefoot and how The Land Before Time is profoundly sad IN WHICH CASE I cannot blame her for needing to take some time off.)

When Jeremy catches up with Wynonna, he confirms that the interim supervisor wasn’t lying, that they aren’t controlling the fog, nor do they really understand it. What they do know is a) they think it comes from the Garden b) the more you’re in it, the worse off your mind and memory are. Which explains why the longer Waverly and Doc were in the garden, the less they remembered about who they were or what they were meant to do.

To show Wynonna what prolonged exposure to the fog can do, Jeremy introduces her to Robin, though he doesn’t look like the Robin she remembers. But as Robin looks at her without a trace of familiarity, and excuses himself because he has a date night with his boyfriend planned, understanding washes over Wynonna in a strong, depressing wave.

I know I’ve used the lyrics to “With One Look” from Sunset Boulevard before so I won’t again but MELANIE FUCKING SCROFANO, YOUR FACE.

Jeremy sits Wynonna down to tell her what he’s been keeping from her aka to break her heart, and also mine. The night Wynonna killed Bulshar, when Waverly and Doc went into the Garden and the fog rolled out of the gates they opened, BBD came to the Homestead and took Robin and Jeremy. En route, Jeremy convinced Robin that he could handle Black Badge, but he needed his best guy to find Wynonna and tell her what happened so she could come save him. Jeremy thought he was doing the right thing, giving Robin his best chance. He thought BBD might keep him prisoner, might even torture him, but if Robin was free and getting help it would be worth it.

But instead, Robin got lost in the supernatural fog that was neither pink nor sexy. Wynonna saw what happened to her and Waverly after only a few seconds of exposure, but Robin was wandering in the fog for weeks. By the time they found him, Robin was so far away from his sense of self that he had ripped his own face off.

So every week, Jeremy comes to this BBD trauma support group and slips a little of the serum he gave Waverly and Wynonna into Robin’s coffee. He wants so desperately to help Robin get his memory back.

After listening quietly, Wynonna says softly, “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this on your own.” And she looks at him with sympathy and apologies in her eyes.

“From the bottom of my broken heart.”

Because nobody, NOBODY, in Purgatory understands the task of taking something like this on solo better than Wynonna Fucking Earp. And she knows the pain of it, the strength it requires to carry so much guilt, to take on so much responsibility, to keep all the stress and fear and sadness buried deep inside. What she didn’t know was that the geeky kid she all but kidnapped from a Black Badge facility a few years ago, this geeky scientist who can sense when his friends are in danger because it makes his crotch feel weird…that Jeremy “Jagged Little Nerd-berger” Chetri was strong enough to carry all this on his own. We knew it, of course. We’ve gotten peeks into what he went through as a kid, how he got tied up with BBD in the first place. Doc knows. Wynonna loved him, of course, but never really took the time to see him as anything much more than a helpful kid brother before. But she sees him now. She recognizes the pain behind his eyes, because it matches hers.

Jeremy tells Wynonna that he just wants to help the man he loves. That he doesn’t care that Robin went to Rosewood, PA to get a new face, he doesn’t care that Robin has a new boyfriend. He just wants Robin to be happy.

Wynonna looks at Jeremy with deepened respect and sincere determination and tells him that she’ll help him however she can. Jeremy says that there’s just one hiccup…the mind fog is spreading.

Wynonna goes back to the Homestead and snuggles up on the lawn with her sister, enjoying being able to use a campfire to toast marshmallows instead of just to survive in Canada.

This is my happy place. The Earp sisters snacking by a campfire at the Homestead.

They reminisce about how this shitty Halloween was almost fun compared to Halloweens when Ward Earp was the head of the household. Waverly remembers a time she wanted to be a scarecrow for Halloween, probably because she either read aforementioned Goosebumps book or maybe the “Harold” from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 3 and knew scarecrows are fucking terrifying, and Wynonna broke Ward’s anti-Halloween mandate to make her baby girl’s dreams come true. Ward locked Wynonna in the basement for three days after that, but Wynonna still insists it was worth it for her lil sister to get some candy on Halloween for once. Waverly finally gets to what the mind fog derailed her from saying and tells Wynonna that even though she loves Nicole with her whole angelic being, even though things are changing, that one thing will remain true no matter what: Wynonna is her sister, and she has always been/will always be Waverly’s hero.

‘Til the world ends.

Nicole returns from her shopping trip just then, decked out in her Season 1 uniform, just like Waverly requested. Stetson and all.

Well how-dy.

Wynonna tries to spontaneously combust while her sister and soon-to-be sister-in-law make out right in front of her.

Always a Wynonna, never a WayHaught.

But before Wynonna can will herself invisible, she makes Nicole promise her that she’ll love Waverly for as long as she lives, a promise Nicole makes without hesitation.

Maybe these smiles are what melted all the snow in Purgatory.

The episode ends with another Season One throwback. While not in his post-well cowboy finest, Doc instead inhabits the early energy of one Bobo Del Ray and drags Amon out to a demon fire pit. He tells Amon’s mistreated minions that they’re free now, and that Doc is leaving Amon’s punishment to the imagination of his mistreated minions, and he walks away with his head held high as the demons descend on Amon like the hyenas on Scar at the end of The Lion King.

Unless Doc is going to march right back to Wynonna and say he understands now why she did what she did with Holt, this is a wee bit hypocritical re: the blurred lines of “goodness” and “honor” since I’m not sure one could call tossing a chained up man to his enemies could be considered less of an easy way to rid oneself of your enemies than shooting him when his guard is down, but I suppose we’ll see how that shakes out.

Next week, trivia night! See ya then!

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