‘Wynonna Earp’ Postmortem: EP Talks Waverly’s Place and Doc’s Motivation

Spoiler alert! Don’t read on if you haven’t watch the Wynonna Earp series premiere yet.

As far as birthdays go, Wynonna Earp is having her worst one yet.

Upon returning to her hometown for her uncle’s funeral, Wynonna quickly discovers that her great, great grandfather Wyatt Earp’s legacy “curse” is live and well and that she’s next in line to be it’s heir, following the death of her father and older sister Willa many years ago. But news of her arrival quickly gets to the Revenants—Wyatt’s old outlaw enemies who’ve come back to life as demons—who then kidnap her younger sister Waverly in order to get Wynonna to surrender Wyatt’s old gun, Peacemaker, the only thing that can get rid of them the second time around.

Unfortunately for them, Wynonna comes up with a plan that quickly sees her blow up half the demons awaiting her, and dispatch the remaining few using her newly-discovered supernatural abilities. With Peacemaker still in the Earp family and slowly adjusting to her new position as the “heir,” Wynonna is then forced to take Agent Xavier Doll’s offer to become a part of the U.S. Marshall’s paranormal-focused Black Badge Divison.

Elsewhere in the episode (and unbeknownst to the Earp sisters) Wyatt’s old buddy Doc Holliday has also made a mysterious return and it seems he’s working with the Revenants?

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With so much taking place in the episode, and Doc’s allegiances still in the air, TV Insider spoke to executive producer Emily Andras about some of the series’ biggest questions so far.

With Wynonna working on being the heir, what is Waverly’s journey this season?
Waverly has an amazing journey. She’s just so positive, she really is the heart of the show. She’s the reminder of what we’re fighting for, that humanity is worth saving. But at the same time, Waverly has sort of become what was expected of her to survive. Her survival mechanism after her family tragedy is “No, I’m going to be the good girl, I’m going to get straight A’s and I’m going to be nice with everybody and I’m always going to be smiling.” [But] Waverly has depth and anger and some super powers of her own, so to speak, that she’s going to discover along the way. I’m glad that you asked about her because definitely over the journey of the season Waverly is the character that probably changes the most.

Is there anything you can tease about these powers? Are they supernatural ones like Wynonna has?I’m just going to say no comment. [Laughs] Look, I think one of the most interesting character to write is the character’s who doesn’t have any special abilities, doesn’t know martial arts, isn’t like the crack shot but still is brave and goes into battle. That to me is an extraordinary character you become attached to. So I think that is Waverly’s super power, but she is going to find out things. She has a lot of secrets and she is going to find out stuff about herself that will shock even her, if that makes sense.

What does Doc think of the sisters now that he’s encountered the latest in the Earp line?
Well, you have to wait and see. His motivations are shaded. Doc Holliday, especially played by Tim Rozon, just drips charisma. He could flirt with a lamp post and probably would. So, I don’t know what he thinks of them. [But] I would be lying if I didn’t say he was intrigued by them. But, if they get in this way, they better watch out. Let me put it this way: Doc protects Doc. And Doc will use whoever it takes to get what he wants. He doesn’t want emotions to get in the way of what he wants and we will have to see if he stands by that.

What is the girls’ sense of him?
Well you know, early days… They just think he’s a weirdo. The funny thing about Purgatory is because it is where Wyatt Earp lived for a while, the town really benefits from Wyatt Earp tourism. We see in the second episode there’s a sign in the bar where Waverly works that says, “Drink where Wyatt Earp is.” Tourist come to this town because they want to have a pint where Wyatt Earp drank. So initially they probably figure he’s just some weird role player role playing as a cowboy. Fate definitely has a big hand in our series, and Wynonna definitely feels drawn to Doc in a way that is more then just an attraction or something. There’s some destiny at work there. As I said, he doesn’t always have the best motivation so thing’s might get complicated.

Will we see any other villains besides the Revenants or is it mostly just them?
Oh there’s tons. This is kind of the tip of the iceberg. We are setting up the world with the demon Revenants. But [Purgatory] is kind of like a hot bed of different supernatural activity. As the season goes on we get a lot of players in the mix. We get some creatures and some weird stuff happening. Some people we may think are human may turn out to be Revenants or demons. There’s definitely kind of our chronic phobia of supernatural sinister bad guys, so be prepared and some of them are amazing.

Wynonna Earp airs Fridays at 10/9c on Syfy.