While the first season of Wynonna Earp flirted with some genre elements — mostly tropes borrowed from horror or ghost stories — it wasn’t until the show’s second season that some truly fantastical material started to creep in, making the show feel more like a “comic book show” than ever.
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That feeling was codified in last week’s alternate-reality episode. Sold as a riff on It’s A Wonderful Life, audiences were likely surprised to find out just how much it felt like an Earth-2 episode of The Flash instead. Along with a deepening of the mythology and some tweaks to the rules and even some characters’ backstories, season 2 managed to surprise even the die-hard fans Andras credits with keeping the show on the air.
“Syfy encouraged us to lean into the comic book origins of the show, so we felt really free to take on more fantastical comic book elements and superhero elements,” Andras told ComicBook.com. “Also, I used it sort of metaphorically. I just know, having been pregnant, that the fact that Wynonna was pregnant and fighting demons and kicking butt — and that was both Wynonna and Melanie — really does speak to someone who was a superhero to me. I feel like the kind of fortitude and mental strength it takes to take that on when you’re pregnant is extraordinary. I meant it almost more in a grounded way — any woman who’s doing that is truly a superhero.”
The revelation that Wynonna was pregnant came about halfway through the season — but it was about a third of the way into writing the episodes that series star Melanie Scrofano revealed to Andras that she was pregnant.
In a series where the mythology of the characters centers so much on the concept of a firstborn “heir,” a baby is not just a change to the characters’ dynamic but potentially a fundamental change to the high concept and an existential threat to Wynonna, whose newborn will represent the future Earp heir and so will likely have even more of a target on its back than Wynonna herself.
The stories getting bigger and more “out there” is just a natural evolution for the series, according to Andras.
“As far as fantastical material, it’s always what can happen in future seasons,” Andras added. “In season 1, you’re laying so much pipe, introducing the characters and explaining up the mythology, that in season 2, you’re able to let yourself loose off the tether because the audience already understands the rules of the series and who these people are, so there is more room to play with the supernatural, the villainess, shades of grey, and what have you. Yeah, we went pretty crazy, didn’t we? Now that I look back, I’m like ‘Woo! That was fast-paced. That was crazy.’”
The season 2 finale of Wynonna Earp airs tomorrow night at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Syfy.
Based on the IDW Publishing comic book created by Beau Smith, WYNONNA EARP follows the life of famous lawman Wyatt Earp’s demon-fighting great-great-granddaughter Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano), who inherited Wyatt’s mythic abilities and his famous gun. As a special agent in the Black Badge Division (a top secret sector of the U.S. Marshals) and with the help of her younger sister, Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), boss, Agent Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson), notorious gunslinger Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) and officer Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell), Wynonna is determined to put an end to the Earp curse once and for all. WYNONNA EARP is produced in Calgary by SEVEN24 Films and distributed by IDW Entertainment. Emily Andras developed the series for television and continues to serve as showrunner and executive producer. Jordy Randall, Tom Cox, Ted Adams, David Ozer, Rick Jacobs and Todd Berger also serve as executive producers.
