“A girl’s gotta be ready. You never know when a clear stretch of road and the right moment will come along.” – Wynonna Earp.
It’s taken a while. It’s taken the effort of an entire fandom using the hashtag #fightforWynonna, a fight that even saw Earpers put up a billboard in Times Square, but the fourth season of Wynonna Earp, my current favorite show adapted from a comic (and basically, my current favorite show of one of my favorite comics, period) will begin production this summer, to be broadcast in 2020.
Though Syfy renewed the show last year for seasons four and five, there was a problem with financing, leaving the show’s production team and Earpers in the dark as to whether the show would ever return. According to a press release sent out by IDW Entertainment, which produces the series, Cineflix Studios has come aboard to co-produce with Cineflix Rights handling international sales for all four seasons of the series.
Showrunner Emily Andras sent out a personal thank you to the Earpers yesterday when the announcement broke:
You showed up. Never lost your polite-yet-fierce no chill. Made me proud, every single day. And I pray the success of the #FightForWynonna campaign gives u hope – hope u can channel into ‘real’ life, to demand better & get what u truly deserve. Because you deserve the best. #E4L https://t.co/FGtJ41tz7y
— Emily Andras (@emtothea) July 2, 2019
The show is adapted from the Wynonna Earp comics by Beau Smith, a longtime comics writer who’s embraced and been embraced in return by the television show production and cast, starting with showrunner Emily Andras, and by several cast members who have written tie-in comics with him, including Tim Rozon (Doc Holliday) and Melanie Scrofano (Wynonna).
Why does this matter so much that yesterday’s news started trending on Twitter, and why are Earpers so devoted to the show?
I think it boils down to this: the cast of characters on Wynonna Earp are just so damn fun to spend time with on a weekly basis.
There’s Wynonna, the self-proclaimed crazy chick with a gun, bearing the burden of being the Earp heir that has to wield Wyatt Earp’s enchanted Peacemaker gun as part of a curse, but also one of the biggest goofballs on the show; there’s Waverly, her eternally sunny younger sister who’s smarter than everyone else and will not give into despair as she finds out everything hidden from her by her parents; there’s Doc Holliday, cursed by a witch with eternal life who at first just wanted revenge but then became an unofficial member of the Earp family; and the mysterious and intense Marshall Dolls who was Wynonna’s mentor; Officer Nicole Haught, who’s a vital member of the team and Wynonna’s sister-in-arms; and Jeremy, the adorkable and nerdy tech expert.
There are others, too, who round out the cast, every one of them their own quirky, fascinating selves. And every single actor nails their performances.
Additionally, the strong LGTBQA representation on the show, which started with the relationship between Waverly Earp (Wynonna’s sister) and Purgatory police officer Nicole Haught, has only grown over the three seasons, providing a feast to a fandom hungry to see themselves in positively represented in SF fandom.
Note: there are other LGBTQA characters on the show but none has a better ‘shipping name than WayHaught. The only shipping name that comes close, for me, is Shoot (Root & Shaw, Person of Interest.)
Then there’s the writing of the show itself. It’s not just the cast fighting monsters and supernatural evil, it’s also about them fighting their own worst instincts and sometimes losing that fight.
Each of the three seasons has added layers to the show’s mythology but perhaps no personal storyline has been better than Wynonna’s unexpected pregnancy from her affair with Doc. The pregnancy was written into the show when star Melanie Scrofano became pregnant. Scrofano’s said she feared that her pregnancy would impact the show negativity but Andras and the show’s writing room instead used the pregnancy to add depth and layers to Wynonna and her fight.
Let’s not forget the dialogue. I have a personal thing for dialogue. The dialogue on Wynonna Earp is awesome and it’s one of the most quotable shows being aired right now.
About the only quibble I have is that the pacing is sometimes too fast. Miss an episode and you can be completely lost. Miss only fifteen minutes of an episode and you could still be completely lost. It helps that you can’t binge the show, only watch it week by week, and can absorb everything that’s going on. I’m convinced that week-to-week viewing schedule, making viewers anticipate what crazy, woo-boy thing comes next, is partially responsible for the quick growth of the show’s fandom.
So, if you’ve not discovered Wynonna Earp yet, here’s your chance. There are three seasons available to binge right now on Netflix (well, season three is coming this month), with each season knocking over the mythology a bit to raise the stakes, and then you can join the rest of us Earpers in 2020 at the beginning of the fourth season.
Warning: Wynonna Earp season 3 ended on quite the cliffhanger, though Wynonna did manage to defeat the demon and save the world from being remade into a demon Eden. I think.
