‘Wynonna Earp’ Goes From One Nightmare to Another (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 4, Episode 2 of Wynonna Earp, “Friends in Low Places.”]
Not only did Wynonna Earp return better than ever with its Season 4 premiere, it more than delivers with its second episode, far exceeding expectations when it comes to all-important reunions.
Picking up immediately where “On the Road Again” left off, “Friends in Low Places” sees demon hunter Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) still determined to save everyone, even after Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) fell down a long, dark shaft and with sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and vampire Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) in the Garden. But with Dr. Valdez’s daughter, Rachel (Martina Ortiz-Luis), by her side, at least she’s not alone and with someone who knows her way around the Black Badge facility.
Meanwhile, Waverly and Doc are startled by the appearance of a naked Nicole, trapped in some sort of force-field, but soon, they’ll get the answers about just what’s going on in the Garden that they didn’t from the guy who decapitated himself upon their arrival.
And if that’s not crazy enough, the final moments of the episode change everything for our faves.
What Happened to Nicole?!
When Doc tries to pass the naked Nicole his coat, he hits some kind of force field between them. He promises to return with clothes and Waverly.
(Michelle Faye/Wynonna Earp Productions, Inc./SYFY)
Back at the Black Badge facility, Wynonna and Rachel make their way down to the “interdimensional gateway” the brilliant scientists-turned-zombies were working on. (After they got it to work, “BBD panicked and gassed everyone,” the doctor’s daughter says.) Though it usually takes three people to get into the lab, Wynonna refuses to leave any of her loved ones (“my Haught cop, my celestial sister, my vampire baby daddy”). “Your life is wild,” Rachel remarks. Oh, if she only knew.
In the Garden, Waverly, too, is stopped by the invisible barrier, and when she asks if Nicole saw Wynonna, her girlfriend says she didn’t. “It’s really you,” Waverly says, happy. “Who else would I be?” Nicole asks.
Well, not Nicole. Because the real Nicole is lying on the ground of the Black Badge facility, very much alive but very injured, after her fall. And there’s a zombie only a few feet away.
Don’t Wake the Zombies!
Decked out in decontamination suits and masks, Wynonna and Rachel make their way through a lab and pick keycards off dormant zombies—they’ll stay that way, unless someone wakes them, say with a beaver blaster—to unlock the door to the gateway. They get through just in time for Wynonna to help Nicole with her zombie problem. And Nicole confirms she’s going to say yes to Waverly’s proposal! All that’s left to do is get Waverly back so she can.
However, then Rachel refuses to let them through because she’s found her mother’s body, and it looks like she died keeping the portal shut. She may not have been able to save her mom, but she can help them save someone else, Wynonna says, and Rachel agrees. But Nicole’s not going anywhere, with her leg broken in multiple places. It’s up to Wynonna to go through the portal and bring Waverly and Doc home herself.
With zombies closing in, Nicole has Rachel tell her about her family. Her mother told her about one of her ancestors, a warrior princess 300 years ago, called the Valdez. After she proved worthy in war, she was given an entire kingdom to rule and immortality to do so.
The Many Faces of …
Meanwhile in the Garden, Waverly hears the throne calling to her. “Kevin said that I would sit on it to save the world and that I would turn to stone,” she tells “Nicole,” who tells her she’s already sacrificed so much. When Waverly wonders if she’s angry Wynonna drugged her, “Nicole” admits she has a “long list” of things she’s pissed about, but she plans to fix that one by one.
(Michelle Faye/Wynonna Earp Productions, Inc./SYFY)
Doc heads to feed the machine, only for a door to open to another chamber. There, he sees a two-sided puzzle, with Nicole’s face on one and a creature’s on the other and realizes she’s not the sheriff. “This prison is not for us,” it dawns on him. “It is for the thing that I left Waverly alone with.”
But by the time he catches up to them, it’s free from the cage and Waverly knows it’s not Nicole because it “tastes like sulfur” when they kiss. And if you suspected this is Eve, you’re right! “I’m going to hurt all of you,” she warns Waverly. “I am a nightmare unto the world,” and her father died before he could teach her to save it from her.
When Doc joins the fight, Eve changes her face to look like Jeremy (Varun Saranga), then, after he pins her to the stone next to one of the doors to and from the Garden using shears, Wynonna. It’s time to go, the vampire says, but Waverly refuses to let Eve leave her prison and subdues him.
Soon after, Wynonna arrives in the Garden and sees Eve wearing her face. Cue the clone jokes from the demon hunter: “You a clone? Wyclonna?” and, after Eve introduces herself with a graphic threat to her friends, “Jesus, Orphan Whack, take a Midol and a nap.”
After Wynonna takes off following Doc’s voice, Eve removes the shears, but then Waverly sits on the throne—”I am the Guardian. I am the failsafe,” she says—and Eve is unable to move.
When Wynonna finds Doc, however, he thinks she’s Eve and immediately attacks. “As far as reunions go, this is better than my high school, but not as good as 90210,” she quips. She tries to explain how she got there, even mentions Alice, their daughter they had to send away for her safety, but he refuses to risk it … until she yells out their safe word, “for when private time gets too honky-tonk.” But they only have time for a couple quick kisses before they have to go their separate ways (to Waverly, for Wynonna, and to stop Eve, for Doc).
(Michelle Faye/Wynonna Earp Productions, Inc./SYFY)
Eve’s determined to get out and “what [she’s] owned in the Ghost River Triangle,” and Doc’s fight with her ends with him kicking her through a door to… an unknown location.
Meanwhile, Wynonna has to talk Waverly into leaving what she sees as her “destiny.” Eve “cannot be allowed to escape,” she insists. Fortunately, Nicole had thrown Bulshar’s ring through the portal after Wynonna, so she can use it to remind Waverly of who’s waiting for her. “It’s time to start living for ourselves,” Wynonna says, helping her sister off the throne, just in time for them and Doc to make their escape through the only door that’ll open.
Purgatory, Sweet Purga—What?!
Wynonna comes to back where the stairs were, her gun Peacemaker “gone forever.” Doc’s next to the well, not in it, so he celebrates with “in your face, you stupid hole!” He also has Waverly’s bag, with the book she’d taken from the Garden.
And as soon as Waverly wakes, she hurries to the homestead, where Nicole fires a warning shot before seeing it’s her. Their passionate reunion moves from outside to the first floor to the stairs. (Creator Emily Andras had said that this season would be “more sexy” and oh, it is.)
Meanwhile, Wynonna and Doc reunite in the middle of town, and she gives him his guns back. “If you ever need them, they are yours,” he says. “So am I.” But their moment is interrupted when she’s distracted by what’s become of the town: people are hanging from scaffolding.
And as Waverly and Nicole take a break from the “disgustingly hot pre-marital sex” (Wynonna’s words), the former notices the sheriff’s longer hair. Did she get extensions? No, she grew it out. Wait, what? Nicole explains she broke her leg, and when she returned to Purgatory, she had to retreat to the homestead and did everything she could to keep it safe. And that’s when Waverly finds out she and the others have been gone 18 months, three weeks and four days!
Wynonna Earp, Sundays, 10/9c, Syfy
