Wynonna Earp boss on how Fargo inspired the rest of the season

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 “Let’s Pretend We’re Strangers,” because you won’t be able to unmake your peace.

Wynonna Earp showrunner Emily Andras wasn’t joking when she said, “Playtime is over.”

This week’s episode opened with Wynonna herself possessed by the tentacle demon (a.k.a. Mikshun) who’d been possessing her sister Waverly for so long. But the ancient being wasn’t able to cause too much mischief before Doc Holliday caught onto its ways and trapped it. While in custody at the Sheriff’s station, Wynonna was able to fight the demon long enough for Dolls to chop off her finger take a sample for Black Badge. But when he showed it to Agent Lucado, the demon started speaking to her — and caused her to become a passenger for it, which in turn made her head explode.

Using Peacemaker, Waverly was able to draw the demon out of Wynonna and into herself before escaping back to the barn to activate the contraption she’d built with all the metal she’d been collecting during her previous possession. There, she ran into her girlfriend (and police officer) Nicole Haught, who believed her lie that it was Wynonna who was possessed. So when the Earp heir showed up with her gun (which she could hold again), Nicole attempted to keep her at bay — before realizing it was Waverly who was possessed. Using an old trick from their childhood, Wynonna was able to make Waverly swallow Doc and Dolls’ demon exorcising concoction, thus ridding her of the tentacle. This allowed Wynonna to dispatch it back to hell with her trusty ol’ gun.

However, in the episode’s final moments, Waverly told her older sister that the demon had told her something Wynonna didn’t know about herself: that she’s pregnant. One test later, it was confirmed. The Earp heir is officially with child.

Elsewhere in the hour, the team had to deal with the mysterious demon-hunting, red robe-wearing Order in town, led by a firefighter named Ewan who did not want to cooperate with either of the Earp sisters, despite knowing it’s Wynonna’s duty to dispatch supernatural creatures. However, Doc traded him Edwin Earp’s plate to allow Wynonna the chance to face her sister. But that’s not the only development: Jeremy returned to the station at the end of the hour to reveal that Black Badge themselves have completely disappeared.

Below, Andras walks us through episode 5’s craziest moments…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you realize you wanted to explore Wynonna going through a pregnancy this season?
EMILY ANDRAS: Melanie Scrofano [who plays Wynonna] actually told me that she was pregnant, and she was quite worried even though we’re very close. As a showrunner, you immediately go into challenge mode. “How do you deal with this?” But I’m also a woman of a certain age, so I’ve had some children in this business, and obviously, the show prides itself on being incredibly female-friendly. So we figured out very early on, especially when we really did the math of when Mel was due, that we were going to have to write it in. And I just happened to watch Fargo the week before Mel told me, and Francis McDormand is really pregnant in it, and her husband basically wrote her pregnancy in. So I thought it was awesome that she was basically a kickass pregnant cop. But the movie isn’t about her being pregnant. So I was inspired by that.

So I knew I had to talk to Syfy. Because I really wanted to play this pregnancy and didn’t want to do the sitcom thing where Wynonna Earp, a kickass heroine is carrying around giant laundry baskets and not fighting. That’s not the type of show we are. Bless the guys at Syfy because they said, “We’re so excited about this idea of a pregnant superhero. We’re all in.” Also, if you want another reason why Mel is an otherworldly human being, she’s already six months pregnant as of this episode.

What does it mean for the show to be incorporating a pregnancy arc this season?
I really want to tell a real story about this character, who I love, being pregnant. There are lots of story lines about women who are married or get pregnant and are really happy, but there are lots of women who have become pregnant and haven’t planned it or don’t know they’re pregnant for a long time and keep drinking. I really want to be consistent with the character. It’s a really empowering story to talk about choice and what happens if you don’t want the baby or didn’t expect it…

Also, there is something so exceptional about this situation because Wynonna Earp is literally the only Earp heir. She’s the only one that can fire Peacemaker and the only one who can protect the Ghost River Triangle. Much like Marge Gunderson in Fargo, Wynonna needs to keep doing her job. The rest of the season isn’t going to be her shopping for breast pumps and knitting tiny socks, as amazing as that would be. Pregnancy is a long time. It’s almost 10 months. So you have to keep doing your job and fighting those battles. I’m not certain what she’s going to do. But she’s the only one who can do it, and things aren’t getting less evil. So Wynonna has to figure out a way to do both these things. But she can because she is woman. She is strong. At the same time, obviously, there’s so much drama around this. We don’t know who the father is or if he’s human. So there’s a lot of emotional territory to mine. Everyone’s going to have an opinion about it. What does Waverly think about it? What are we going to do? So I do want to keep it grounded.

How is it impacting Wynonna for her to not only get this news from her sister, but for her sister to have learned it through a demon?
In typical fashion, that is the curse. Even Wynonna doesn’t always feel like she has agency over her own body or her own choices. She’s such a victim of fate, which is one of the themes of the show: Wynonna and the rest of the characters struggling to find free will even though it feels like so many choices have been made for them. So it felt kind of typical of the situation which Wynonna finds herself in. She doesn’t even find out herself. At the same time, it softens the blow that it comes from the person who trusts her the most and who she trusts the most, and it was done in such a respectful manner. I really like the moment when Waverly says, “The demon told me something,” and Wynonna says, “What, you know all my secrets?” and she does this big gulp. And the fact that Wynonna didn’t know she was pregnant. What did she think that Waverly was going to say? What secrets did she think were going to come up? In a million years she didn’t think it was the pregnancy one. I could tell the story of the Earp sisters for 25 years.

I realized as I was watching that scene that we really don’t know too much about Wynonna, Waverly, and Willa’s mom. Will this story line touch upon that a little?
The only thing we’ve ever heard about the Earp mom is that she basically loved. Which is insane when you think about it because she had three little girls. Society is going to judge pretty harshly a mom who left her children behind in a situation that wasn’t ideal. We don’t know the circumstances behind that, but I think it’s safe to say that Wynonna has issues with her mom, and abandonment, and issues with what it means to be a mother. So definitely there’s a chance for that stuff to come up.

One thing I was very grateful for was Doc and the rest of the team cluing into what was happening with Wynonna really fast. Was that intentional, or was it just by a necessity of having to move through so much plot in that one hour?
One of my personal pet peeves on television is when characters act stupid because the plot demands that they do. Doc Holliday is so not stupid. He’s the best poker player in the world. He’s the most observant character on our show. Tim Rozon thought that Doc should figure it out even sooner, like when he first sees Wynonna. So that’s not to say that Doc isn’t suspicious really early on. Even if it makes the story really challenging, one rule that I always have is that I want the characters to stay consistent and act in character. They are smart. They live in a world where demons exist. They’re now aware that something was in Waverly. So I was just confident that we had enough plot, even if he did find out that Wynonna is a demon early on. The other truth is the audience knows. You don’t want them sitting there and screaming at the characters for 42 minutes. It’s unsatisfying.

Also, Lucado’s head explodes. Where there any alternative options to her death?
I wanted Lucado to go out with a bang. I like that despite the fact that she’s weak and selfish and ambitious, she makes a move to tell Dolls to save himself. We’ve had a lot of fun with the tentacle and Waverly, but we needed to show that there are consequences and that this thing is really dangerous. Making someone’s head explode was just a good shortcut to show how dangerous this thing was becoming.

What does it mean for Black Badge to be gone?
We have to find out. It’s crazy. Black Badge went through all this trouble to get our gang to sign these blood contracts. They’ve obviously been observing. The fact that they’ve up and left is probably not the best time, but that’s a cliff-hanger we’ll have to explore next episode.

And there’s also that Order. What role will they be filling going forward?
They’re another chapter of demon hunters. I love that Wynonna is like, “Where the hell have you guys been?” There’s some sense that they’re a different group of guardians protecting the Ghost River Triangle. So on some level, it’s kind of comforting for Wynonna and the gang to find out that they’re not the only ones aware that there’s so much demon activity in the area. But these guys are serious. They almost killed the Earp sisters. But we haven’t seen the last of them. It’s interesting because we don’t know yet if they’re good or bad… Their attitude is a little more reflective of Dolls’ in season 1. Sometimes you need to sacrifice one person to save the many. When you’re fighting things that are so terrifying, you have to make those choices. On a smaller level, you see Wynonna have to make these choices and constantly having to weigh the lesser of two choices.

What can we expect next week now that we’ve had this big crazy episode?
I wouldn’t say the crazy stops, but next week is really fun. First of all, emotionally we have Wynonna left staring at a pregnancy stick. So she has to figure out what’s going on and how she’s going to tell the rest of the team. That’s a major issue for her. Also, we’re midseason now. So we’re starting to move the pieces on the chessboard. There’s a seal that’s broken, the Ladies in Black have now taken the Gardner sisters’ faces and recruited Tucker Gardner, who’s somehow involved. Let’s say that those ladies are starting to put their own plan in place.

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