A Particularly Complex Demon
WYNONNA EARP: VENGEANCE – (limited spoilers) ⁓
Mina
South of Purgatory, on the edge of the Ghost River Triangle, former Sheriff Randy Nedley (Greg Lawson) is ice fishing. He is joined by Mercedes (Dani Kind), who arrives wearing yellow faux snake skin boots. (Similar boots were memorably worn by Whisky Jim Byers in “Two-Faced Jack” (Episode 1.8). It is late February, the time of the Hunger Moon, when (as Waverly will later explain) “the veil between the Earth and the underworld is at its thinnest”. The fishing shack begins to shake and something dark slips through the veil.
Mercedes
Farther south, in Tombstone, Arizona, Doc (Tim Rozon) and Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) are planning to rob the (fictional) Hohokam Reservation Casino. (The Hohhokam did once exist in that area but their culture died out six hundred years ago.) The Casino is run by Paco Daisy (Julian Black Antelope). After Wynonna’s plans are discovered, Paco’s associate Chayton (Wesley French) searches her and finds Peacemaker. When he points the gun at Paco, the barrel glows. Wynonna gets her gun back and shoots the demonic casino owner, who, instead of going down in flames, turns into a neat pile of dust. It seems important that Peacemaker responds to Chayton’s touch.
Paco Daisy
Chayton has a PhD in 19th Century Americana, and describes Wyatt Earp as “just another apocryphal colonizer who got a revisionist history thanks to his big gun.” That comment might have been indirectly aimed at Doc Holliday, who was in the room at the time.
The name Chayton derives from a Lakota word meaning “hawk”, or “falcon”. At the Earp Homestead, Doc cryptically responded to a mention of the Hunger Moon with: “I do hate a dark hawk morning.”
Back in the Ghost River Triangle, Sheriff Haught (Kat Barrell) can’t reach Nedley by phone, so she investigate and finds her former boss wounded and Mercedes scattered in pieces that spell out “Earp”. Haught calls Wynonna and gives her the message.
Doc
Twenty years ago, when Teenage Wynonna (played by Rebecca Jane Todd) was in a local group home for girls, she tried to convince some of the other girls that demons are real. In the barn at the Earp Homestead, she organizes a summoning séance. “Wyatt Earp took this lasso from the old west sheriff who put a curse on him. The demon Clootie,” she says, then continues in Latin: “Revenis ad se ostendendum invocamus. In nomine Clootie. In nomine Earp.” (which loosely translates as: “We invoke you. Return and show yourself. In the name of Clootie. In the name of Earp.”)
The cops show up before any demons do. Afterward, Mina (Karen Knox), who runs the group home, goes inside the barn to search for a bracelet that Wynonna lost in the occult exercise. (Her intended use for the bracelet is unknown, but such personal items are used in sympathetic magic.) A cloud of black smoke grabs her and pulls her down to a place she describes as “hell”. “It is not fire and brimstone down there,” she (later) tells Wynonna. “It is cold and dark and mean.” So it might not be the same place where Wynonna’s been sending revenants.
Did fifteen-year-old Wynonna know that it was Sheriff Clootie who put the curse on her family? Wynonna seemed to first discover the details of the curse in “House of Memories” (Episode 1.12) from a letter written by her father.
Alice Earp, who turned five in 2022.
Before she managed the group home, Mina was an orphan. “She was a resident there herself until she aged out at 18,” Wynonna explains to Doc and Waverly. “She wasn’t at the séance. She wasn’t even the target.”
Unlike other demons, Mina can enter the Earp Homestead at will. Wynonna suggests that is because she was personally responsible for making Mina demonic. Bullets, even those from Peacemaker, don’t kill Mina. They just slow her down.
The reason Mina waited twenty years to return might have something to do with Waverly, who turned twenty-seven in 2022 (or possibly early 2023), the age when heirs to the Earp Curse acquire their powers. Though Waverly is not Ward Earp’s child, Peacemaker seems to regard her as an Earp because she was able to fire the gun in “I Hope You Dace” (Episode 2.12), which is also the episode in which Alice was born. At the group home, Mina points to that bracelet that Waverly made and tells teenage Wynonna: “I’m just trying to help you so you can stop being selfish and help her.”
Ward and Willa Earp’s tombstone
At the place where her father and Willa are buried, Wynonna has a conversation with a version of Randy Nedley who really doesn’t sound like himself.
WYNONNA: “Here lie two other Earp heirs, two people I loved enormously. I had to kill them myself. My whole life has been a boatload of mistakes and missteps. And it sucks. And I’m tired. At least they get to rest.”
NEDLEY: “Yeah. Well, you’ve had more than your share. Anyone else would have blown their brains our years ago.”
WYNONNA: “Points for me, I guess?”
NEDLEY: “Well, you’ve had to do whatever it takes to live with it, except admit the truth. That you like it. The huntin’, the killin’, the choosing. After a lifetime of being powerless and on the defensive, you love being special.”
WYNONNA: “What gives you the right to judge me?”
NEDLEY: “Oh get real. These two sucked. Your sister was a manipulative sociopath. Your father was an abusive drunk…Best fisherman I ever met. Here’s the thing your asshole father taught me about winning. History doesn’t remember who played fair, or who cheated, or who had the right gear, or whether you sabotaged your competitors’ lines. History only remembers who won.”
WYNONNA: “I don’t know if I can win. She’s a monster.”
NEDLEY: “And you’re not just an Earp heir. You’re your father’s daughter. and he was one mean son of a bitch. You know sometimes it’s just about going where the fish are.”
That evaluation of Willa doesn’t ring true. Willa was more than that.
Mean Girls Sheree and Jasmine (Yana Gold and Rosie Simon) both of whom were at that barn séance 20 years ago.
AFter a well-choreographed fight scene at a grain elevator in Mossleigh, Wynonna stops the hell hounds Mina sent after her by jumping into the same cold lake through which Mina entered the Triangle. She enters the underworld much like Xena did in Mortal Beloved (XWP Episode 1.16), and finds Mina, who bears as strong resemblance to Callisto, a nemesis Xena created for herself. After trapping both Mina and Peacemaker in “The Elchur Minificial Box of Containment” (or as Wynonna calls it, the “Elkherd Magnifico Box of Containment”), Wynonna is pulled from the icy lake by Sheriff Haught, still alive and apparently undamaged.
Miscellaneous Info
Karen Knox as Boris in SLO PITCH, a webseries co-created by Knox, Gwenlyn Cumyn, and J Stevens. All 20 episodes can be streamed on AMC+.
“Mina” is one of the nicknames for Wilhelmina.
Wesley French (Chayton) is Javier in Rusty Cundieff‘s romantic comedy MEET ME NEXT CHRISTMAS, which stars Christina Millan as Layle, a woman desperately trying to get a ticket to a sold-out New Years Eve concert in hopes of impressing “the man of her dreams”. The film is available on Netflix.
Varun Saranga (Jeremy) is Lex in A THOUSAND CUTS, a thriller written and directed by Jake Horowitz. The film stars Jonas Chernick and Storm Steenson as reporters planning to solve a 30-year-old murder on a live TV special. The film premiered at Cinefest 2024 in Sudbury, Ontario. It is not yet available to stream.
WYNONNA EARP: VENGEANCE can be streamed on TUBI. The 90 minute film won seven Canadian Screen Awards:
Best TV Movie
Best Writing-TV Movie – Emily Andras
Best Lead Performer-TV Movie – Melanie Scrofano
Best Original Music – Robert Carli, Peter Chapman
Best Production Design – Robert Carli, Peter Chapman
Best Visual Effects – Matt Hansen, Darcy Arthurs, Colin Campbell, Lorne Kwechansky, Ken Nielsen, Michael Key, Paula Fania, Jenny Lim, Chad Cutler, Ingyun Hwang
Best Stunt Coordination – Steven and Leslie McMichael
WYNONNA EARP: TALES FROM PURGATORY, is available from Audible.com.
* Last Updated 1 week ago