Here’s some actual good news: Wynona Earp is coming back … at least for one movie sometime this year.
Way back in 2016 – jeez, was it really that long ago? — SyFy was heavy into the vampire thing for obvious reasons … and in the midst of it they premiered this exceedingly … eccentric show called Wynona Earp, based very loosely on an indie comic by Beau Smith. Basic premise: the descendants of the real, live gunslinger Wyatt Earp, armed with his not only legendary but now enchanted six-shooter, roam the current world shootin’ down supernatural creatures – demons basically, but very human, very clever demons, in a world that looked like ours – or at least a small rural version of ‘ours.’ The current descendant – an unwilling warrior for good, at least at the beginning, was the undeniable badass Wynonna, who returns to her ancestral home, and reunites with her recently estranged sister, the damn near angelic Waverly – no, seriously, as it turns out she’s literally half angel – her best friend Nicole who is also the town sheriff, and best of all … the now immortal vampiric version of Doc Holiday himself. And damn people, from the very beginning you could see the spark flying between Wynonna and Doc. It was almost as much fun as the shape-shifting and sharp-shootin’.
Wynonna Earp went on for four seasons, with some long gaps between them, and finally ended all too quietly in 2021, with the usual brave declarations that “we’re not done yet; we have a huge fan base, we will be back.”
And son of a gun … here they are. Just last week, the producers announced that they’re making a movie that picks up a few years after the end of the series – a film called Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, that’ll show up later this year on – of all places – Tubi. Yes: Tubi.
There is no question that Emily Andras, who created and executive produced the series from beginning to end, deserves a lot of credit for the whacky and unpredictable us and downs of this show – with way more ups than downs. But the real magic came from the amazing Melanie Scrofano as Wynonna, and Tim Roon as Doc. And yeah, Dom Provost-Chalkley as her sister Waverly and Nicole Haught as her best friend the Sheriff, were equally damn near perfect.
Interesting careers since then. Though it is nearly impossible to understand, Melanie Scrofano was appearing irregularly in another eccentric Canadian hit, Letterkenny, as Mrs. McMurray, the constantly falling-down-drunk wife of a tough-as-nail idiot neighbor McMurray (I don’t think we ever actually learned her first name, actually). At any rate, she was showing up there all the way until Letterkenny finally closed up shop this year. She was also one of the horrible, murderous family in the truly wonderful Ready or Not. And she’s been a continuing character in the equally wonderful Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as a starship captain and occasional love interest for Captain Pike. And now … she’s circling back.
Then there’s Tim Rozon, who did a few thing after Earping, then landed on another supernatural Canadian series called Surreal Estate, looking very different but still pretty hot. That show was… okay, and it’s gone two seasons with a possibility of a third. But Rozon seems better-suited for western garb than the business suit, and check this out: there’s a brand new movie, just released, called Calamity Jane, where Emmily Bett Rickards – Felicity Smoak from Arrow for all those years? — plays Calamity Jane, who breaks out of jail right after her lover, Wild Bill Hickock – played by Stephen Amell, the Arrow himself! — and goes gunning for Sheriff Mason, the man what killed ‘em .. played by Tim Rozon, from Wynona Earp. It was just released, available on Amazon and elsewhere… and I gotta watch that one.
Anyway, Scrafino and Rozon – and Provost Chalkely, who’s kind’a laid low since Wynonna, and Nicole Haught, who has done an impressive string of Christmas movies since Wynonna – are all coming back for Vengeance. And Andras told Vanity Fair that all your favorite characters doing all your favorite things were going to be back in the saddle again. “Doc and Wynonna have been on an adventure, and Waverly and Nicole have been at home in [the Earp hometown of] Purgatory, doing their thing; I think it’s going to be really interesting to see, hopefully, what gets everybody home — maybe facing a challenge they’ve never faced before, something pretty intense.”
And best of all, we’re not going to have to wait forever to see this. Looks like it’ll be with us later this year – later summer, maybe? Early fall? Huddling in the dark shadows of Tubi, for God’s sake.
More Wynonna! Cool!
