Wynonna Earp Vengeance
Something is stirring at the edge of the Ghost River Triangle, something straight from Hell rising through the ice of the frozen lake beneath Randy Nedley’s fishing hut and seeking vengeance, a demonic force with one name on its glossy red lips, sending a message to the heir of Wyatt Earp and holder of his gun Peacekeeper who twenty years before laid a curse on it, Wynonna Earp called back to Purgatory.
Wynonna and John Henry “Doc” Holliday on a working vacation in Tombstone, Arizona, fleecing casinos and flushing out demons until the call comes to summon the crazy chick with the demon-killing gun back to the homestead where her sister Waverly now lives with her wife, Sheriff Nicole Haught, the townsfolk are once again less than welcoming to the black sheep of the clan regardless of how many times she has saved their lives, seeing her as a magnet for trouble, a reputation which is undeniably justified.
Inspired by the comic book created by Beau Smith and developed for television by Emily Andras, Wynonna Earp ran for four seasons to its final episode in 2021 and three years later has been resurrected for a one-off special, Wynonna Earp Vengeance, written by Andras and directed by Paolo Barzman who also helmed twenty-one episodes of the original show, reuniting the main cast of Melanie Scrofano, Tim Rozon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Katherine Barrell as Wynonna, John Henry, Waverly and Nicole alongside some other familiar faces.
Rocking up against them is Karen Knox’s swaggering Mina Starratt, known to Wynonna in the time long gone, powerful but not as complex or interesting as previous adversaries, the Stone Witch Constance Clootie, the Spider Widows, and of course Bobo Del Rey, impervious to bullets and presumed based on nothing more than Wynonna’s hunch to be resistant to Peacemaker though it is never put to the test, their hopes instead resting on what seems to be a spirit trap left over by the Ghostbusters.
An item from Waverly’s collection of Black Badge Division artefacts, that organisation is now represented by Agent Lafferty (Andrew Bushell), a newcomer to Purgatory carrying attitude and baggage who exemplifies the frustration of Wynonna Earp Vengeance in that he brings both too much and too little, significant to the story but with less a character arc than a descending parabola, his sudden but inevitable betrayal following so swiftly after his introduction he never seems to reach a clear apex.
A far cry from the one-shot supporting players of yore who were soon inducted into the expanding dysfunctional family, it was the tangle of damaged characters striving for better and defeating demons both personal and manifest with sharp shooting and sharper one-liners which made Wynonna Earp essential viewing, Vengeance an unexpected chance to catch up in inevitably bad circumstances, with the time passed reflected in the changes in the many relationships between lovers and siblings.
While Wynonna and John Henry have always had their problems, time away from Purgatory has allowed them to imagine something different, a life not hunting demons, a home for their daughter Alice, while Waverly has grown angrier, taking after her sister’s drinking habits, changes which are not convincingly explained by frustrations at the limitations of small town life for an ambitious and intelligent independent woman, while former sheriff Nedley (Greg Lawson) feels guilty, blaming himself for growing old, for failing his town, and further layers of trauma of Wynonna’s own past are illuminated in flashback with Rebecca Todd perfectly cast as her teenage self in care.
The move from SyFy to Tubi allowing the production broad leeway, the fights are more bloody and the adult situations and language are more explicit, but the evolution does not feel so much growth as simply change, Wynonna Earp Vengeance a comfortable continuation of what came before, time spent with good friends whose company has been missed but never pushing the format or expanding the horizon of what has already been achieved, feeling like a promise which has been dutifully honoured yet lacking the heat to truly set it ablaze and justify its return, a reunion adequate rather than glorious.
Wynonna Earp Vengeance is streaming now on Tubi
