"Jolene" - Wynonna Earp S03E05

And so with "Jolene" get the main part of last week's teaser where the Earps suddenly have a new "friend" in their life: Jolene. Jolene bakes treats and stuffs them into people's faces, and then they fall under her sway. What the whole Blind Witch/baked treats things has to do with Jolene being a demon from Hell is never made clear. We never find out what happened to Robin from last week, either. Other than that late in this episode, Jolene is grabbed by the same animated tree branches Robin was grabbed by last week. And she says that it's Bulshar. So presumably Bulshar grabbed Robin, too, but it has nothing to do with Jolene.

Got that? Good.

To recap, Jolene spends her time spreading chaos. First by turning Wynonna and Waverly against each other, and then Nicole against Waverly, and then Doc against Waverly. Meanwhile, Wynonna ties Michelle (Megan Follows) up in the barn, and Michelle says Waverly was a demon but Michelle did some kind of ritual that ended up binding the demon to her. This whole story turns out to be a limited retelling, as we'll find out later in the story.

Jolene basically strolls through the episode with everyone accepting she's a friend of the family. When they have any doubts, she stuffs one of her enchanted treats into their mouth and they soon fall under her spell. And then Jolene turns on the "You know, you really hate such-n-such" whammy and we're off.

In a somewhat confusing sequence, Waverly eventually believes Michelle enough to untie her. Which doesn't really accomplish anything. Also, Jolene finds the revenant institution guard from last week and sets him up to make it look like he's the demon they're looking for. Michelle and Wynonna soon take him down and assume that they've killed "the" demon. Everyone goes to Shorty's on karaoke night (Doc knows what karaoke is?), and Jolene brings along Tupperware containers with her treats so everyone in the bar can eat.

Kate (Chantel Riley) is there, and there is a bit where Wynonna mentions Kate was known as "Big Nose Kate". Like the real Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings, who was the real-life Doc Holliday's companion and common-law wife. The Hungarian prostitute has somehow morphed into a black fortuneteller vampire. Ah, Hollywood reality.

Jolene is soon turning Wynonna against Kate, pointing out Kate used to be Doc's wife and they're back together again. The demon also makes some pointed remarks about glorified Hollywood vampires like the ones Kate is.

A fight breaks out, and Nicole tosses Wynonna and Michelle in a cell for public intoxication. Jolene leaves treats for the police station staff, and then pays Nicole a visit. Nicole is having second thoughts about turning against Waverly, and the power of True Wuv (tm) breaks Jolene's spell. The ring Nicole threw away has popped up in her room, and it burns Jolene when she grabs it. This irritates Jolene enough she tosses Nicole in a closet and locks her in.

Also during all of this, Michael Eklund pops up as Bobo. He's in the well, and Doc visits him to ask about the ring. I barely recognized Bobo: the months in the well have not been kind to him. Bobo is still intrigued with Waverly, and asks to see her in return for his information about the ring.

Wynonna and Michelle eventually snap out of their cell, call for Randy, and stop him from eating the station treats. He presumably lets them out, and Wynonna goes to the greenhouse where Michelle gave birth to Waverly. Apparently Jolene and Waverly can't kill each other because they're "linked". So Jolene tries to convince Waverly to kill herself. Which I wouldn't think is how "linked" works, but okay. Waverly remembers that everyone loves her (she's like the Lois Lane of Wynonna Earp), and that gives her the strength to resists Jolene's suicide demands.

Jolene also has a lot of dialogue about how she and Waverly are twins, and Waverly is all nice and good and flaxen haired, and Jolene is all dark and evil and reviled.

Fortunately, Wynonna shows up to shoot Jolene since Waverly can't kill her because of that linked thing. For some reason the Peacemaker bullet doesn't kill her or even hinder her much. She runs out... into a devil's trap (that's what they call it on Supernatural: it's never named here) Michelle has set. Before the Earps can deal with Jolene, Bulshar sends his animated tree branches to grab her because she didn't swear fealty to him, break her neck, and pull her into a tree.

In the end, Nicole and Waverly make up and have sex. Because they're gay, don't you know? Doc forms a protective circle in the woods, yells at an unseen Bulshar that he's not going to let him get the ring, puts it on, and strolls out of the circle. So why'd he draw it in the first place?

Wynonna goes to the well and Bobo tells her Waverly is actually an angel. Or at least the offspring of an angel, Julian, who mated with Michelle. So Waverly is now part angel. Because... of course she is.

The episode does a good job of demonstrating all the little rifts in the group. Admittedly some of those rifts (Doc is sleeping with Kate after he and Wynonna had a daughter) aren't particularly clear or unexplained. But at least most of them get called on their bad behavior, even if the reasons why they're behaving badly aren't clear.

We do get to see a little more of Michelle. We find out that she's been hearing the demon's voice in her head since she gave birth to Waverly, and that's why she's been acting nuts. Here we see Michelle as protective of Wynonna (slapping Doc when she finds out he's with Kate). As noted, Michelle and Wynonna end up in a jail cell together and talk about old times.

Tim Rozon is good as always: I liked his monologue to Bulsar: "I do not fear the void. I spit into the void!" Michael Eklund didn't have much to do this week, but at least he's back after being absent in the first four episodes.

I could have done without the glorification of Waverly. The creative team has always seemed to have a love-love relationship with her. Granted it made sense to focus this episode more on her because we get a lot of revelations about her backstory. But the show is called Wynonna Earp, not Waverly Earp. Giving her special attention for an episode is one thing: giving her the lion's share week after week, not so much.

They seem to be going somewhere with Nicole, since they've talked about how she survived the Bulshar massacre. And now the ring came back to her and apparently protected her from Jolene. No further mentions of the hints they dropped last week that she might take over for Randy because he's getting too old and tired to keep covering things up.

So overall, "Jolene" was an okay episode of the show. They seemed to be going for a Dawn/Buffy vibe with Jolene: who is this woman and how has she inserted herself into everyone's life? But we already pretty much know the answer going in: she's a demon with mind-glamouring treats. It's also not clear what she's up to: just spreading chaos (like she does at Shorty's), or trying to trick Waverly into killing herself, or worry about not swearing fealty to Bulshar, or some of all three. She lacked a strong focus on one aspect of her villainy, which might have worked if she was a continuing character. But as a one-and-done bad guy, not so much.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?