Wynonna Earp Season 3 Episode 5 Review: Jolene

This Wynonna Earp review contains spoilers.

Wynonna Earp Season 3, Episode 5

Zoie Palmer (Dark Matter, Lost Girl) makes a fun appearance on Wynonna Earp as Jolene, the demon that has dogged Waverly her whole life. Poor Waves – first Bobo, now Jolene. It turns out all of Michelle’s treachery was an attempt to take out Jolene, who keeps everyone transfixed with her baked goods.

Aside from being a fun opportunity to put everyone in great clothes and let them slap each other, this episode really exposed the fissures within the group. Using secrets and insecurities, the demon creates chaos and tries to convince Waverly to kill herself. Of course it doesn’t work, but unlike many other shows, Waverly saves herself. She thinks of her sister’s love first and foremost, and then everyone else in her life, she remembers how valuable she is to them, and she fights back.

Bobo has long been obsessed with Waverly, and probably always will be. It turns out that all the times he’s called Waverly his angel, he meant it literally. He still wants to see her and I’m sure he will eventually, but for now he’s stuck in Doc’s old stomping grounds at the bottom of a well, being creepy and pronouncing banana liqueur weirdly. There’s no clear reason why Bobo’s suddenly helpful and forthcoming, other than perhaps an upcoming redemption arc, which wouldn’t be the strangest thing this show has done.

This episode reintroduced the notion of Waverly’s mysterious parentage and the distance it creates between her and the rest of the Earp family. The revelation that Waverly is part angel is more in line with her character than the idea of her being a changeling. If anything, it might be too on the nose.

“Jolene” sets up a dangerous dynamic between Wynonna and Michelle, one of co-dependence and self-destruction. I hope that upcoming episodes delve into not only the distance Waverly feels from them, but also the disturbing similarities that Wynonna often sees, and the pattern that she could easily fall into.

Finally, this episode picked back up the old thread of Nicole feeling left out of Waverly’s supernatural life, which was largely laid aside when Officer Haught became part of the team. Nicole has a point – she is often the last to know, though in the case of a fugitive mother, sometimes her status as an officer of the law makes that necessary. Still, it’s hard to imagine Doc ever being left out of the loop like this, and it’s something WayHaught will have to keep working through.

Kate piqued my interest for the first time tonight. She seemed above the fray in a way that no one else – even supernatural beings like Doc, Dolls, and the Iron Witch – has been thus far. That quality brings with it knowledge, power, and new narrative possibilities that intrigue me far more than any possible romantic entanglements.

Now that the demon has been exorcised, I hope to get to know Michelle better as a character. She was a lot of fun here, instantly understanding who Doc was, slapping him for complimenting Jolene, nd serving him a drink called, “the don’t have a stealth wife while you’re doing my daughter, you enormous prick.” But Nedley has given a very different impression of Michelle than anyone else. The premise of this episode seemed to exonerate Michelle of her worst misdeeds, but in parts of it she seemed to personify Wynonna’s most destructive impulses.

Finally, there is the Bulshar of it all. For some reason, the creepy crawly tree boogeyman seems to have a thing for Officer Haught, his ring appearing in her hand to protect her, in spite of her throwing it away in the woods – a woods that seems to be his dominion. Speaking of that ring, Doc was never going to hand it over, so it feels a bit like season 1 Doc to pretend for an episode that he was going to. And, oddly enough, it seems to be Bulshar that wound up saving them all in the end. In a callback to Kate’s tarot card reading, Jolene didn’t swear fealty, so one of those big creepy trees swallowed her whole. I can’t imagine that’s going to end well for our heroes.