Wynnona Earp

What’s it about?

Wynnona Earp follows Wyatt Earp’s descendant as she battles revenants, demons and family curses with a legendary gun and unlikely allies.

Starring

Melanie Scrofano, Tim Rozon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, Katherine Barrell, Varun Saranga, Shamier Anderson, Michael Eklund, Dani Kind

An Introduction to Wynnona Earp

The series opens with Wynnona Earp (Melanie Scrofano) heading back towards Purgatory, the kind of hometown that makes “I’m just here for the funeral” seem like a bad long-term strategy. She’s been gone for years, carrying lots of family baggage and an understandable reluctance to revisit it. She returns at a time when a violent supernatural attack is happening close to the road, and she has to confront a character that presents human enough before quickly realising it just messed with the wrong woman.

Wynnona’s response sets the tone for the show’s preferred rhythm right off the bat. She is scared, angry and very funny, at times in the same breath. She also has an innate survival instinct that has been honed by a childhood that was more stoic than emotionally nurturing. The incident attracts the attention of Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson), an outsider who’s investigating a series of bizarre deaths in Purgatory. His manner indicates he’s been sent to handle an issue that the normal police would prefer to classify as an administrative embarrassment.

When Wynnona arrives in town, she meets her younger sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), who has a much more enthusiastic knowledge of the area’s history than Wynnona does. Their reunion is complicated by old resentments, family trauma and the uncomfortable realization that the Earp name has a supernatural responsibility. The conversation slowly unravels the mystery of the strange violence around Purgatory and how it relates to Wyatt Earp, the fabled ancestor of Wynnona, and the people he killed throughout his life.

The opening sets Wynnona Earp as both a supernatural Western and a heroine who doesn’t care about being a ceremonial heir. She will be expected to take up a legendary weapon, take on a terrifying family responsibility and be useful to a secret government operation. Her answer is less noble destiny than, “Fine, but y’all are going to regret making this my problem.” The outcome is fast, messy and heartily melodramatic, with enough menace to prevent the jokes from floating away.

Summary

Wynnona Earp is the great-great-granddaughter of famed lawman Wyatt Earp and she’s returning to Purgatory, a remote town near the Canadian Rockies. The family inheritance is accompanied by an unusually disagreeable obligation. Wyatt’s old enemies are back as Revenants, supernatural outlaws tied to the Earp family’s past, and it’s Wynnona’s destined job to send them back to Hell.

The family curse has a practical side though, as she’s also inherited Peacemaker, Wyatt’s intricately-engraved revolver which has the magical power to detect demons and dispatch them with a single shot. Wynnona isn’t presented as a serene and spiritual hero-in-the-making who’s been studying ancient prophecies for years by a tasteful waterfall. She’s a damaged, sharp-tongued woman with a complicated past, a knack for making reckless decisions and a strong preference for solving paranormal problems with bullets.

Wynnona Earp’s narrative builds around the uneasy alliance that forms around her. Xavier Dolls is a member of the Black Badge Division, a secretive government division that handles unexplainable threats. Waverly Earp, Wynnona’s younger sister, has been researching the family’s history for years, and knows much more about Purgatory’s bizarre mythology than her returning sibling cares to hear. Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell), a local deputy, is a bearer of everyday police work, moral stability and a helpful lack of awe for sensationalist supernatural nonsense.

An undeniable spark between Waverly and Nicole evolves into a relationship, with the couple becoming one of the few beacons of stability in the show when chaos is reigning all around. Debuting at a time when LGBTQ+ characters were often used merely as ‘box-ticking’ before being rudely dispatched in many other TV shows, the show’s affectionate portrayal and staying power of these two offered a deliberate and welcome alternative.

The show also introduces Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), Wyatt Earp’s famous sidekick, who comes with his own historical connection and a confident demeanor that seems to have been unaffected by the passage of a few centuries. His laidback but guarded swagger is the polar opposite of Wynnona’s impulsive, confrontational nature, but they have an unspoken, undeniable connection, along the lines of Bill and Sookie in True Blood.

And so, with this rag-tag group at the heart of it all, the series gallops ahead, mixing monster hunting, Western imagery, family trauma, romantic tension and deliberately scruffy humour.

Wynnona Earp’s themes and stories revolve around loyalty, inheritance and the potential to decide what a family legacy means. Its world is filled with demons, secret agencies and cursed lands, yet the emotional core is always distinctly human: sisters who must learn to trust one another, partners with unbreakable bonds, friends who appear when it matters most, and damaged individuals learning to work as a team.

Check out the Season 1 Trailer here: