Wynonna Earp boss on that final scene: 'Playtime is over'

Spoiler alert! This article contains details from the third episode of Wynonna Earp season 2 — so quickly get to another page if you haven’t watched “She Ain’t Right,” because you won’t be able to unmake your peace.

Take a moment there, Wynonna Earp fans. Our hero certainly needs it.

Friday’s hour saw the titular gunslinger deal with some tough stuff. First, she finds Dolls, who was lying in the Earp Barn after his return to town. She immediately takes him to Doc and Rosita, who are trying to recreate his serum, but when they get the measurements wrong, Wynonna sends them Jeremy to help.

Next, she apologizes to Nicole for their argument before agreeing that something was up with Waverly, who’s been acting strange on account of her still being possessed (not that anyone else knows yet). Only before she can address that, Waverly has already gone down to the Bading Bading club (where she belts out a sultry number) on a recon mission to monitor two supernatural beings intent on getting their hands on a Black Badge briefcase containing something belonging to Edwin Earp. But when Waves gets captured without any backup (Lucado lied), Wynonna goes in to rescue her, and things head super south. Waverly even loses her hand — though she does manage to grow back the missing appendage quite quickly.

At the same time, Doc and Dolls manage to come to the rescue, the latter using his new serum-amplified ability to burn one of their enemies to a crisp. Later, Wynonna and Waverly open the briefcase to find a plate belonging to Edwin Earp, their grandpappy, who managed to take down 70 revenants in 300 days. Following their discovery, Wynonna confronts Waverly, who admits that she might have been possessed, only to have the demon enter Wynonnainstead.

Here, showrunner Emily Andras walks us through episode 4’s craziest moments…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I know a lot of crazy stuff happened this episode, but can we first please talk about Waverly singing? Was it a case of Dominique Provost-Chalkley giving you a resume of all her talents, or do you just write knowing she can do it?
ANDRAS: It’s even more horrible than that. We’re all really close and like each other, so just through being friends with Dom, I know what she can do and her history being on the West End when she was a teenager in London. So I knew that she could sing and dance. It’s much, much worse. It’s me betraying a confidence, and being like, “Hey, remember that one time we had wine, and you said you could juggle chainsaws? Guess what. I wrote that in.” It’s not like her bragging or giving me a list of things she can do. It’s more just knowing about Dom and what she’s capable of. I did ask her on this one, “Are you comfortable doing this?” And she said, “Yes.” She’s so adorable and always so nervous, but then she totally nails it. But you know what the craziest part is? She filmed the cheerleading sequence and the singing sequence the same week. She was so exhausted. It was crazy.

Speaking of crazy, when did you know that you wanted Wynonna to become the host for this demon?
It’s fun. Melanie is such an exceptional actress, and one of the joys for me is seeing all the praise she gets for her range. She can go from badass to comedic genius to vulnerable puppy all within the same scene. She really is, for me, a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Because Wynonna has, in these first three episodes, been trying so hard to keep the team together in Dolls’ absence, I felt like it was only fair to give Mel a chance to maybe spread her wings a bit. And the idea of evil Wynonna was just so delicious, and without getting into it, let me just say you will not be disappointed. It is a tour de force.

What does this mean for the Earp lineage or the heir, though? Because she can’t hold Peacemaker. Is it something where we see that Waverly may step in?
It’s simply not good! The thing about the Earp heir that is kind of tricky is that you can only become the Earp heir when you’re 27 years old, so technically, Waverly can’t use or fire Peacemaker. Also, there’s also the slight problem which is we are not even sure if Waverly’s actually even an Earp or has Earp blood. Even if she was 27, could she fire the gun? Could she become the Earp heir? So in a weird way, we’re heir-less. Also, Wynonna Earp is the one with superpowers, so the fact that the demon is inside her maybe is like it got the most powerful Corvette on the market, so to speak. It’s not a good thing.

We saw when Wynonna was trying to face off against Waverly that it was obviously very hard for her. How is everyone else going to react going up against Wynonna?
One of the things that we’ve seen with the demon that’s most tricky is that it was in Waverly for a long time but remained hidden. So part of the concern is whether this thing is going to mimic Wynonna? Is it going to be out in the open with all demon-dom, or is going to imitate Wynonna and try to get what it wants, even if that means killing people or harming people we know? That’s the danger. This thing can imitate humans. Wynonna’s the hero. But if and when the team finds out she’s possessed, how are they going to fix that?

VIDEO: Wynonna Earp Star Tim Rozon On The Bading Bading Shootout

Of course, this isn’t the only demon on the show. We have the Ladies in Black, who’ve taken the faces of both Gardners sisters. When did you know you wanted to have two other demons mimicking humans?
Always. If you look really carefully at the scene, you’ll see that the “new Gardners” have lines around their faces, so what the demons have done is literally taken their faces… One of the things that is really powerful about Wynonna Earp is that right from the get-go, Revenants look like us and could be anyone in town. The idea of not really knowing who to trust among your friends and neighbors at the very point when you need to trust people if you’re going to succeed is an ongoing theme of the show. Do we ever really know each other? Do ever we really know what we’re capable of? Do we really know what people are doing behind closed doors? Also, I think Dani and Megan, who play Mercedes and Beth, are phenomenal actresses, so the idea that maybe these demons in many different forms are now operating amongst our people, whether we know it or not, is going to lead to a lot of tension and a lot of really good stakes.

There’s also the return of Dolls! Last season a lot of viewers were wondering what exactly he was. Is it safe to say he’s a dragon?
He’s pretty dragonesque. I’m not going to yell at anyone on Twitter if they call him a dragon. He seemed pretty dragony to me. I’m not familiar with any salamanders that can breathe a giant fireball when endangered. Correct me if I’m wrong, scientists, but I’d say he definitely has dragon tendencies.

So is there still a mystery of what he is and can do?
We’re still trying to discover technically what he is and also how he became like that. Was he born like that? Did Black Badge do something to him? What did the drugs have to do with either suppressing or bringing that out in him? But because we see Wynonna take him on and the gun glow, whether he’s a dragon or something else we haven’t named yet, we know he’s definitely partly demon or there are demonic elements to him, which is why Peacemaker glows. So, he’s certainly less than human.

It’s cool having that kind of litmus test on the show now that we have so many demons in the mix. We can tell when someone is demonic or not.
Exactly. But we’re always careful. We never want it to be like Sting, which is Bilbo’s sword which glows when orcs are out. But Peacemaker can inherently tell whether someone is human or other, especially if Wynonna intends to harm them. That’s when it lights up.

The other big twist of the episode is when Waverly lost her hand. For a second, I really thought you were going to leave her one-handed. Was that something you considered?
It’s pretty funny. In the edit, we weren’t necessarily going to show the hand, we were just going to see the carnage and then come back after commercial and see the hand. But when I was in the edit suite, I realized it’s much better to actually show the hand. Because that’s exactly what you think — this was a fake-out. They’re not actually going to do it. So I’m so looking forward to the response on Twitter. But that’s crazy, right? We actually did cut off her hand! I was pretty proud of that moment in a horrible, sick way.

It’s your Game of Thrones moment!
It’s my Game of Thrones moment! But luckily, she’s tentacled, so she’s going to be able to grow it back.

Will there be any ramifications for her having grown it back using her tentacle powers?
It’s not the last we have seen of tentacle powers.

What can you tease about next week’s episode?
Playtime is over. We’re always going to have fun, but now the chess pieces are going on the board, and we’re starting to see what we’re going to be dealing with this year. It’s just a blistering season. It just moves lightning-fast with so many shocks and surprises.

Wynonna Earp airs Fridays at 10 p.m. ET.