Previously on Wynonna Earp, Team Earp played hot potato with Bulshar’s ring and it’s Wynonna’s turn to hold it, Kate turned Doc into a vampire as easily as turning a potato into a french fry, and Wynonna started doing the mashing Charlie Fire Services like a potato.

Hello and welcome to my recap of what shall henceforth be known as The Potato Licking Episode.

We open this lovely episode with Wynonna teaching Jeremy how to play pool while also recounting what all the various stains are from, leaving him quite distracted. So instead they talk about Doc and Wynonna says he’s all Jeremy’s now, but Jeremy says he has a Robin now. Jeremy is afraid of getting Robin even more tangled in their supernatural saga but Wynonna tells him he’s gotta get in as much face time as possible before that face grows fangs. Then, going directly against her own advice, she dives behind the pool table when Charlie Fire Services comes into the bar.

“Sorry I just thought about that one Sanvers scene and got overwhelmed and had to crouch down.”

Before she deals with that though she passes Bulshar’s ring off to Jeremy to deal with, telling him to lock it up tight. He leaves and Charlie Fire Services comes over, so Wynonna awkwardly asks him on a date, despite originally wanting no strings, and despite this guy being as bland as a raw potato and her being as dynamic as cheesy tater tots. But of course he agrees because he might be boring but he’s not stupid.

While Wynonna is stroking CFS’s ego, Bulshar is stroking an evil-looking book. Doing this sucks Constance Clootie’s body out of the salt flats, and Bulshar plots Clootie’s burnt-to-a-crisp head back on it. I thought she was going to magically restore back to new like when Cinderella puts on her glass slipper but alas, she stays mostly just cinder. He hands her a fierce looking toothy sword and marches forth like a zombie on a mission.

Back in town, Doc gets home to the Gardner house to find Kate has dinner waiting for him. And by dinner I mean a dude tied to a chair. Doc is too proud to accept this gift so he decides to go out and hunt his own self.

After he leaves, Kate’s hands brush her cards and she knows, in that intuitive way she knows things, that Bulshar knows she’s in town.

“Weird that the message came through ‘I know what you did last summer’ but whatever.”

Also the dude Kate chose to kill is a total monster so I’m here for her vigilante vampirism.

After learning the favorite sport of fictional lesbians from Wynonna, Jeremy heads back to BBD to lock Bulshar’s ring inside a box inside a safe and calls Robin to invite him to what has to be the best thing to happen in the Ghost River Triangle since Purgatory Pride – Big Gay Dinner.

Can we talk about that for just one second? Not only does this ensemble show have enough queer characters to make a Big Gay Dinner, but all four of these characters are also chill and happy enough to have a double-date and make a joke about the gayness of it all. It makes my heart so happy, because in a sci-fi Western a lot of shows could have taken the “oh it’s a small town everyone is closeted and scared and ashamed of their sexuality at all times” but this show is like “every day is Purgatory Pride if you want it” — and it’s not just side characters either. It’s the most-loved girl in town, the sheriff, the super smart president of the Doc Holliday fan club, and a murder-tree-and-potato-licking reluctant park ranger. Four fully formed humans with four distinct roles and personalities, none of them just the +1, none of them disposable.

Doc didn’t get the “not disposable” memo though because Jeremy’s phone call is interrupted by Doc pouncing on Robin like Simba when he was first learning to hunt. But apparently Robin tastes like rancid earth (from licking the murder tree? from having a demon seed planted in him?) so Doc snapped out of it to realize it was a friend of Team Earp, so he brings him to Jeremy to patch him up. The realization in Jeremy’s eyes when he sees that Doc is a vampire who tried to take a bite out of an ally, you can see his internal Doc shrine come crashing down. It’s heartbreaking.

Luckily Robin is a little out of it and doesn’t really know what’s going on and has no idea what or who took a bite of him.

Speaking of eating, Wynonna is out on her date with Charlie Fire Services and honestly I ship her with this breadstick more.

“Oh you’re still here? Sorry I went into a bread blackout.”

And I get that Wynonna is trying to be normal and go on a normal date with a normal guy but girl! You’re not normal! And you deserve better. But I’ll have more to say about good ol’ CFS later so I’ll leave them to their date for now.

The date is graciously interrupted by a panicked Jeremy, rambling about how Doc bit Robin and how very not okay he is with this turn of events. Wynonna isn’t either and seems more than eager to switch gears and go patrolling for a vampire or two.

Doc gets to Shorty’s, presumably to meet Wynonna, but she planned a bait-and-switch so instead Doc finds himself trapped in a holy water lasso and stuck alone in a bar with Charlie Fire Services.

Wynonna, however, wasn’t out for Doc’s dust, and kicks her way into the Gardner house to face a very prepared Kate.

Hard to get the jump on a mystic, I reckon.

Much to Wynonna’s chagrin.

This looks like a badass movie billboard. I’m so tempted to put dramatic text on it.

Vampire nonsense or not, Big Gay Dinner must go on. So Jeremy takes the still-kind-of-out-of-it Robin and are met by the WayHaught Welcoming Committee.

And this is also relatable because my friends and I have things like Bad Lesbian Movie Brunch.

Waverly takes Robin into the kitchen to help with food prep, and Jeremy is being awkward with Nicole. At first she thinks that he’s just nervous about Robin hanging out with all of them, even though he’s known Waverly a long time, but Jeremy soon asks after Wynonna and it’s clear he’s more nervous about that mission than this one.

Wynonna thinks Kate glamoured Doc, and that’s why he let her turn him, but Kate laughs at the idea of trying to force John Henry Holliday to do anything he didn’t want to. Kate thinks at this point Wynonna has earned a bit of her backstory, and Wynonna for once takes a hint and just listens. You see, Kate was from a noble family in Europe, but her and her parents moved to the states and found a hard time of it. Her parents died soon after the move, and she didn’t feel like going to live with Creepy Uncle Otto back in Hungary, so she stayed and used her natural mystic skills to be a fortune teller.

She met Doc in the bar one night when she refused to read someone’s fortune and he got testy so Doc stepped in even though it seemed Kate and her gun had it handled. Still, she appreciated the gesture, didn’t see him pocket the cards she refused to read, and the rest was history.

This is such a classic Western sit-off but with ladies and I’m HERE FOR IT.

Doc and Charlie Fire Services are having a pissing contest in which CFS grossly talks about his stamina and overall just acts like a major douchebro when Zombie Clootie (Zootie?) stumbles in and starts rooting around. CFS attacks her with her own hand and Doc vamps out and realizes he’s super strong. He also realizes that the animated corpse they just beat up is none other than the Salty Stone Witch herself.

Side note, I am still assuming Charlie Fire Services will reveal himself to be more interesting than he is. He has to be evil or something, right? A murder tree in disguise? One of the hot fireman cultists? The serpent from Adam and Eve’s story? I just don’t trust him at all, and I trust this show too much to believe he’s just an average, entitled, low-key misogynistic, boring cis straight white man.

Wynonna tells Kate that she wants to turn Doc back into a human and is willing to kill Kate to do it, but Kate isn’t done with her story, so she goes on. She tells him that toward the end of their ride together, when Doc was tired and mopey looking, Kate throws out the idea of going back to Hungary. But Doc is dismissive and just coughs up some blood and walks away from her.

But HOW do you walk away from her? HOW?!

Wynonna accuses her of abandoning him, but she figured he’d be fine with just Wyatt. She wanted him to want her, to beg her to stay, but he didn’t, so she left.

While they’re talking, Kate manages to palm Peacemaker away from Wynonna, a trick she learned from the gunslinger in question.

:sings: Katie’s got a gun

They face off with knives instead, and Kate looks almost bored by the idea of fighting Wynonna, like she wishes she could see they’re on the same side.

At the Homestead, Waverly and Robin are bonding over some meal prep and how fun it is that they’re having this Big Gay Dinner.

Waverly’s face is how I feel about potatoes, as a general concept.

But partway through the peeling process, Robin ponders about potatoes and what they might feel while they’re in the ground. His eyes glaze over and he says Bulshar can talk to the seeds in the ground, and Waverly, quick on her feet, leans into the trance her friend is in and starts to ask questions. Robin says that Bulshar can talk to seeds and then licks a potato and it’s just as wonderful as I had hoped it would be.

Just outside the kitchen, Jeremy and Nicole notice that Bulshar’s ring has popped out of the safe and into the muffins, and Nicole drops it in surprise. Waverly comes in just as Nicole bends over to pick it up, and for a brief moment she thinks Nicole is proposing.

Love you like a boomaring, boomaring

The good news is, she seemed super down to get engaged. The bad news is, that is not what was happening at all. She has too much else to worry about to be embarrassed though; the boomaring was locked away and now it’s here, Robin is licking potatoes, Doc is a vampire, and also Robin just left the Homestead.

:Kermit flail gif:

So the Unkillable Gay Squad sets off to find Robin. Luckiliy he didn’t get very far, but strangely he is shirtless in the corner, holding a potato, scratching his arm wound, and mumbling about fertilizing the soil.

Doc and Charlie Fire Services fail to dump Zootie down the well, so she takes off (waving her detached arm with middle finger up at them) and ends up at the Gardner house, breaking Kate and Wynonna’s standoff and causing them to stand side by side instead.

Now that’s more like it.

Peacemaker flickers as Wynonna points it at Zootie, and Kate says that her power is fading. She also says she recognized it as Clootie right away because “power recognizes power” which will come up later, so put a pin in that.

What continues to be interesting about Zootie though, is that she’s not attacking anyone. She’s still just searching. And when she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she leaves. Kate sense that she’s looking for something Doc-related, but that’s all she knows.

In the barn, Waverly suggests they try talking to Robin again and he says that the trees don’t want to but they’re doing Bulshar’s bidding; it has something to do with him being entombed underground for so long. Robin snaps out of it and feels a bit embarrassed, but his friends shrug it off. Nicole survived a massacre and Waverly touched the goo, for example.

“We’re all mad here.”

And Jeremy! Sweet Jeremy. He was in a car accident when he was young and was trapped with his mother’s body for THREE DAYS. And now he can sense when his friends are “super scared” and I have never felt more like I want to wrap him in bubble wrap to protect him always.

But they’re all so kind and welcoming and they’re about to go back to BGD but then Zootie comes in and seems to have found what she’s looking for. Immediately, Waverly is pissed. Which is funny because it’s true that Clootie also interrupted the bachelorette party she was throwing at her house, but interesting because Wynonna didn’t even recognize her on sight. But Waverly knew instantly, like Kate did. Power recognizes power.

Just saying.

Speaking of power, Bulshar’s ring quite literally starts burning a hole in Nicole’s pocket, so she does what she does best and just randomly chucks it. But Waverly acts on instinct and puts it on, allowing her to fling Zootie across the room seemingly without much effort.

“Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.”

When Wynonna and Kate get there, Waverly gives them the low-down, and Kate fills in a little more detail from the story she told earlier. The person whose fortune she wouldn’t tell? Was Sheriff Clootie. AKA Bulshar. It was his future she wouldn’t tell, and if they don’t stop Zootie, he’s going to know what’s what.

Before they leave to stop her though, Kate looks at the ring nesting neatly on Waverly’s finger and tells her not to underestimate its power.

I really hope Waverly’s divorce with that skull hasn’t gone through yet and she’s not accidentally engaged to Bulshar now.

Looking a little nervous, Waverly tries to remove it, but can’t seem to pull the ring off.

Zootie brings Bulshar his cards, and we don’t see the future card, but it makes him laugh maniacally so I imagine it can’t be good.

By the time Wynonna and Kate catch up, Zootie is standing there alone like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Or like a Sim without a task. Kate says she’s just a burnt-out shell at this point, so Wynonna starts to pull out Peacemaker. Clootie puts it to her own forehead, and the gun glows that mercy blue as it kills her.

Wynonna and Kate stand in the snowy landscape of Purgatory, and talk about what’s next.

So much beauty, it’s as blinding as the snow behind them.

Kate tries to be encouraging, saying that when it come down to it, Bulshar is just a demon, and Wynonna is the best demon hunter there is. Wynonna thinks Kate is buttering her up like a breadstick so she won’t kill her, but Kate says killing her won’t turn Doc back; she’s been reading the wrong vampire lore.

But as they talk about linked fates, Wynonna gets the brilliant idea that maybe reading Wynonna’s cards will help them figure out what Bulshar’s future is.

Back at the Homestead, the Unkillable Gay Squad is trying to get Waverly’s ring off but it’s super stuck. And as they pull on it, they realize new markings appeared on it, so Jeremy excitedly gets an Arabic dictionary Waverly just had lying around.

I love seeing WayHaught do normal domestic things like trying to get a magic ring off your girlfriend’s finger.

Just then, Wynonna storms in and reveals her cards as Kate did, saying they match Bulshar’s. The past is the devil, the present is the Tower (which means darkness/destruction) and the future involves Adam and Eve. To confirm her point, Jeremy says that the words that appeared on Waverly’s ring translate to “Garden of Paradise.” So that’s what Bulshar is looking for.

Robin comes in just then though and says that it’s not so much that he’s looking for it…he’s found it.

Out on the front porch, Kate tells Wynonna the final chapter of her story. Kate confronted the young Constance Clootie when Doc went missing, but she was no help, so Kate went to her uncle to get vamped so she could look for Doc for as long as it took.

Kate became immortal, meaning she was playing Westworld before it was cool.

PS. I wish we could pluck Young Clootie out of time and take her to present-day Purgatory. I kind of love that evil bitch.

I think Wynonna realizes now, that Kate isn’t the bad guy here. She didn’t come in to steal Doc away from Wynonna specifically, she didn’t set out to vamp Doc up. She’s just trying to live her life and survive, same as Wynonna. And Team Earp can use all the help it can get in the upcoming battle.

Purple, the color of royalty, appropriate for Kate.

Doc goes to talk to Wynonna in the barn, a place he doesn’t need to be invited into, and Wynonna says she doesn’t like him like this. He says he did it for her, for Alice, to protect them as long as it takes. Wynonna just looks so, so sad.

I mean just about everyone Buffy the VAMPIRE slayer loved was a vampire…at least Doc didn’t turn into a Revenant.

But then a determined look crosses her face and she says it’s time to end this curse once and for all. She tells Doc that Bulshar is here for the Garden of Eden, that it’s what Purgatory and the Ghost River Triangle are protecting. And from out of the shadows, a wild Bulshar appears, blowing what look like dandelion puffs in their faces. And I’m no mystic, but I have a feeling it’s not just going to grant them each three wishes.

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