Shorty’s is empty when they get there, save for Doc who maybe was going to steal liquor to give to Amon? Waverly, our precious little empath continuing to be incredibly intuitive, can tell that Doc and Wynonna were a thing, and Wynonna can feel it too, but Doc is so mad at Wynonna he doesn’t notice that her and Waverly are being super weird. Well, maybe he would have after he realized Waverly takes her new role as cop very seriously and starts delivering some truly adorable and hilariously earnest lines like telling Doc to lay off because she’s off-duty.

“Hey mister! I said cut it out!”

But before Doc can ask them if tacos are tasty, demons stroll into the bar to shake Doc down for Amon.

When the Earp sisters realize these demons aren’t just comic book fanatics in really elaborate Halloween costumes, but real deal demons, and then Doc vamps out and they scream and grab the nearest things to them to wield as weapons…which happen to be tiny umbrellas.

Where’s Joan the Vampire Slayer when you need her.

Desperate to escape the dangerous situation, the sisters run outside and hide in a dumpster until the coast is clear, looking cuter in a giant trash receptacle than I did on prom night.

Me having crackships on shows with perfectly lovely canon queer couples. *cough*Nancy Drew*cough*

While trying to decide what to do next, Waverly gets a skull emoji text from someone named Jeremy so they run off to figure out what that’s about, narrowly avoiding getting pitchforked by Rotten Jack himself.

One of the demons from Shorty’s goes back to Amon to tell them about the weird situation with the Earp girls’ memories and how Wynonna doesn’t even have Peacemaker, and Amon says they must have tried to cross the border. Which is ominous. Amon sees this as a moment to take advantage of and skips off to make some mischief.

As the BBD support group comes to an end, Robin and Jeremy chat a little more. Robin asks Jeremy if he gets headaches, assuming they suffer the same ailments, but Jeremy says his pain is more like a heartache. And like, stab me in the eye why don’t you, show?? Why you gotta make the sweetest, softest boi hurt me like this? Jeremy compliments Robin on his Halloween tie, but Robin says he already wears a mask so he didn’t feel like dressing up any more than this. Their conversation is interrupted by Jeremy receiving a call from Doc about the Earps acting very strange, and Jeremy has a plan but he needs Doc to decide on a signal.

Jeremy’s gallant jaunt to save the day is impeded, however, by his interim boss telling him that they’re officially under lockdown until ol’ RJ is in custody.

As the Earp sisters are popping out of the dumpster like they’re playing Fortnite, Amon rolls up with his smarm turned up to 11.

“I may not know my name but my bullshit meter is still intact.”

He really leans into their memory loss, accidentally helping them realize they got their names flip-flopped and claiming to be Wynonna’s boyfriend. Intuitive Waverly is not buying it, but when he flashes a pair of black rhinestone-donut-adorned panties, Wynonna is convinced, and Waverly isn’t about to leave her sister. (She IS a cop, after all.)

Wynonna’s reservations are truly gone and she leans out the window like a puppy while her baby sister hesitantly climbs in the back.

I think it’s really telling/interesting/brilliant how totally and absolutely carefree and go-with-the-flow Mind-Wiped Wynonna is. This is all she’s wanted. This is what she has been trying to get the whiskey to do for years. To relax, to set down the burden she’s carrying if only for a little while. To forget. It’s why any of us practice escapism, isn’t it? Whether we do it via alcohol or media or whatever our outlets and/or vices. We just want to try to somehow, some way, forget our responsibilities and traumas and just see who we are when we’re unburdened. But the truth is we can never really forget or let go. But Wynonna has. And sure, I think she’s a little loopier than she would be, but maybe this fun, smiley, loving, go-with-the-flow kind of gal is who Wynonna would have been if she didn’t have a garbage father, an absent mother, and a top-shelf-buttload of trauma. Maybe this is who 30-something year old Wynonna would have been if her last name wasn’t Earp.

Anyhoot, Amon leads the girls back to the Glory Hole and tells them to put on some of Mercedes’ costumes. The name Mercedes triggers Wynonna’s long term memory; she gets psychic reading style flashes of red hair and general badassery. This activates something in Waverly too. Red hair = love. Also there are handcuffs. It’s like trying to not only remember but then also explain a dream.

“It’s time for makeup, perfect smile, it’s you they’re all waiting for.”

But then they’re distracted by Amon doing a line of what they think might be coke but I assume is like…crushed human bones or some shit.

I’m a sucker for a Scooby Doo peek stack.

It’s Doc’s turn to visit Casey, who he finds hiding under his picnic table writing an apology letter to the Earp sisters. He ends it the way I will be ending every strongly worded email I ever write, “PS. Dance like no one’s watching.”

Casey and Doc have a heart to heart, and Doc convinces Casey to take his Extractor duties back up because you can be both a fuck-up and a hero. Heroism is not synonymous with perfection. Sometimes it’s admitting when you were wrong and making it right. Sometimes it’s doing the best thing even though it’s hard. Sometimes it’s just doing the next right thing. Inspired, Casey agrees to go with Doc, and also offers up Peacemaker.

Back at the Glory Hole, the Earp sisters emerge on stage in all their costumed glory. Despite not knowing who they were, they chose costumes that spoke to the core of them: Wynonna a superhero, Waverly an angel.

I also love that Mercedes has worn both of these costumes, and that conveniently a W is just an upside down M.

But it’s not until they’re already on stage that they realize that Amon’s plan is to auction them off to the highest bidder to kill the infamous Earp girls as they see fit.

Things get a bit chaotic as the online bidding starts and Wynonna tries to up the price because she was insulted by its low starting numbers. Waverly tries to bid herself (because Wynonna is her “most important thing” :sobbing emoji:) but Amon vetoes that right quick.

“Every time I try to fly I fall, without my wings I feel so small. I guess I need you, baby (girl).”

Eventually a stranger in a spooky mask bursts in to bid to kill the Earp heir right then and there, and Doc is ready to burst in to save them until the mystery figure motions to his crotch and Doc stands down, still en garde but not making moves. The figure shoots Wynonna and Waverly, but not with bullets; instead they’re injected with something that makes them remember who they are and spring into action. Rotten Jack bursts in to crash the party and Amon decides to save his own ass only and runs out of the club, locking everyone in with the ancient murder demon.

How rude.

A fight breaks out, and before Wynonna is finally reunited with Peacemaker, Waverly puts up her lil fists ready to block and dodge that pitchfork all night.

I would dive in front of pitchfork-wielding nightmare fuel for Waverly Earp any day of the year.

Remembering their no-kill instructions, instead of shooting him, Wynonna smashes the back of Jack’s skull, causing him to freeze. For some reason that I’m sure is totally casual and not concerning at all, Waverly feels drawn to stick her hand in the gaping wound in the back of Jack’s head.

She REALLY wanted to jack his lantern.

But Casey stops her, saying she’ll get burned, because it’s his job. And so we learn why he’s called the Extractor when he reaches in and carefully removes the candle from Rotten Jack’s pumpkin head. Despite the fact that Jack seems disarmed and they were ordered to bring him in alive, Waverly simply cannot resist the urge to snuff out evil and blows out Jack’s life candle.

Wynonna takes a ziploc baggie of Jack’s rotten guts back to the BBD, asking for answers about the fog in exchange, but the interim supervisor says that BBD is definitely not controlling that. Their last few local leaders either disappeared without a trace, lost their cool about a baby Bigfoot and got their head exploded after touching the goo. (Though maybe when the last lady saw a baby Bigfoot she thought of Littlefoot and how The Land Before Time is profoundly sad IN WHICH CASE I cannot blame her for needing to take some time off.)

When Jeremy catches up with Wynonna, he confirms that the interim supervisor wasn’t lying, that they aren’t controlling the fog, nor do they really understand it. What they do know is a) they think it comes from the Garden b) the more you’re in it, the worse off your mind and memory are. Which explains why the longer Waverly and Doc were in the garden, the less they remembered about who they were or what they were meant to do.

To show Wynonna what prolonged exposure to the fog can do, Jeremy introduces her to Robin, though he doesn’t look like the Robin she remembers. But as Robin looks at her without a trace of familiarity, and excuses himself because he has a date night with his boyfriend planned, understanding washes over Wynonna in a strong, depressing wave.

I know I’ve used the lyrics to “With One Look” from Sunset Boulevard before so I won’t again but MELANIE FUCKING SCROFANO, YOUR FACE.

Jeremy sits Wynonna down to tell her what he’s been keeping from her aka to break her heart, and also mine. The night Wynonna killed Bulshar, when Waverly and Doc went into the Garden and the fog rolled out of the gates they opened, BBD came to the Homestead and took Robin and Jeremy. En route, Jeremy convinced Robin that he could handle Black Badge, but he needed his best guy to find Wynonna and tell her what happened so she could come save him. Jeremy thought he was doing the right thing, giving Robin his best chance. He thought BBD might keep him prisoner, might even torture him, but if Robin was free and getting help it would be worth it.

But instead, Robin got lost in the supernatural fog that was neither pink nor sexy. Wynonna saw what happened to her and Waverly after only a few seconds of exposure, but Robin was wandering in the fog for weeks. By the time they found him, Robin was so far away from his sense of self that he had ripped his own face off.

So every week, Jeremy comes to this BBD trauma support group and slips a little of the serum he gave Waverly and Wynonna into Robin’s coffee. He wants so desperately to help Robin get his memory back.

After listening quietly, Wynonna says softly, “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this on your own.” And she looks at him with sympathy and apologies in her eyes.

“From the bottom of my broken heart.”

Because nobody, NOBODY, in Purgatory understands the task of taking something like this on solo better than Wynonna Fucking Earp. And she knows the pain of it, the strength it requires to carry so much guilt, to take on so much responsibility, to keep all the stress and fear and sadness buried deep inside. What she didn’t know was that the geeky kid she all but kidnapped from a Black Badge facility a few years ago, this geeky scientist who can sense when his friends are in danger because it makes his crotch feel weird…that Jeremy “Jagged Little Nerd-berger” Chetri was strong enough to carry all this on his own. We knew it, of course. We’ve gotten peeks into what he went through as a kid, how he got tied up with BBD in the first place. Doc knows. Wynonna loved him, of course, but never really took the time to see him as anything much more than a helpful kid brother before. But she sees him now. She recognizes the pain behind his eyes, because it matches hers.

Jeremy tells Wynonna that he just wants to help the man he loves. That he doesn’t care that Robin went to Rosewood, PA to get a new face, he doesn’t care that Robin has a new boyfriend. He just wants Robin to be happy.

Wynonna looks at Jeremy with deepened respect and sincere determination and tells him that she’ll help him however she can. Jeremy says that there’s just one hiccup…the mind fog is spreading.

Wynonna goes back to the Homestead and snuggles up on the lawn with her sister, enjoying being able to use a campfire to toast marshmallows instead of just to survive in Canada.

This is my happy place. The Earp sisters snacking by a campfire at the Homestead.

They reminisce about how this shitty Halloween was almost fun compared to Halloweens when Ward Earp was the head of the household. Waverly remembers a time she wanted to be a scarecrow for Halloween, probably because she either read aforementioned Goosebumps book or maybe the “Harold” from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 3 and knew scarecrows are fucking terrifying, and Wynonna broke Ward’s anti-Halloween mandate to make her baby girl’s dreams come true. Ward locked Wynonna in the basement for three days after that, but Wynonna still insists it was worth it for her lil sister to get some candy on Halloween for once. Waverly finally gets to what the mind fog derailed her from saying and tells Wynonna that even though she loves Nicole with her whole angelic being, even though things are changing, that one thing will remain true no matter what: Wynonna is her sister, and she has always been/will always be Waverly’s hero.

‘Til the world ends.

Nicole returns from her shopping trip just then, decked out in her Season 1 uniform, just like Waverly requested. Stetson and all.

Well how-dy.

Wynonna tries to spontaneously combust while her sister and soon-to-be sister-in-law make out right in front of her.

Always a Wynonna, never a WayHaught.

But before Wynonna can will herself invisible, she makes Nicole promise her that she’ll love Waverly for as long as she lives, a promise Nicole makes without hesitation.

Maybe these smiles are what melted all the snow in Purgatory.

The episode ends with another Season One throwback. While not in his post-well cowboy finest, Doc instead inhabits the early energy of one Bobo Del Ray and drags Amon out to a demon fire pit. He tells Amon’s mistreated minions that they’re free now, and that Doc is leaving Amon’s punishment to the imagination of his mistreated minions, and he walks away with his head held high as the demons descend on Amon like the hyenas on Scar at the end of The Lion King.

Unless Doc is going to march right back to Wynonna and say he understands now why she did what she did with Holt, this is a wee bit hypocritical re: the blurred lines of “goodness” and “honor” since I’m not sure one could call tossing a chained up man to his enemies could be considered less of an easy way to rid oneself of your enemies than shooting him when his guard is down, but I suppose we’ll see how that shakes out.

Next week, trivia night! See ya then!

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