Wynonna Earp’s wild season 3 finale takes the series to a whole new level

Enlarge / Is that what you’re wearing to the Apocalypse? Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) confronts the demon Bulshar (Jean Marchand) in the Season 3 finale of Wynonna Earp. (credit: Michelle Faye Fraser/Wynonna Earp Productions)

It’s hard not to root for Wynonna Earp, Syfy’s underdog supernatural series about the demon-fighting great granddaughter of the Old West lawman Wyatt Earp, which just wrapped its third season. The series has raised the stakes with each season finale, and this time it pulled out all the stops. The show pits its titular heroine against the demon that cursed her family and sets up a major reset of the entire premise for season four.

(There are spoilers for the first three seasons below, but it is generally mindful of major spoilers.)

“Wynonna Earp is not an easy show to describe in just one sentence,” showrunner Emily Andras admits. It has elements that made Buffy the Vampire Slayer a cult sensation in the 1990s, including whip-smart writing and a killer theme song (“Tell That Devil” by Jill Andrews). There is a wise-cracking, reluctant Chosen One, or Cursed One, in the case of the Earp heir. Instead of battling vampires, Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano, The Listener) takes on “revenants,” the repeatedly reincarnated outlaws that Wyatt Earp killed. They won’t stay dead until the Earp heir offs them with Wyatt’s famous 16-inch barrel revolver, dubbed Peacemaker (not a historically accurate name for a possibly apocryphal piece of weapon, but don’t get hung up on that).