Wynonna Earp: Who Will You Be, Doc Holliday?

Let’s talk about John Henry “Doc” Holliday. If what we’ve seen so far of Wynonna Earp Season 3 is any indication, our favorite gun-slinging marionette puppy is in for a rough time.

When Wynonna Earp Season 2 ended, Doc was forced to give away his baby girl minutes after meeting her, lost his immortality, and went to hell after being killed in the previous alternative universe episode, Wynonna Earp Season 2 Episode 11, “Gone As A Girl Can Get.”

Coming into Season 3, Doc is still dealing with the emotional fallout of all of those things and not dealing with them particularly well.

It’s hard to blame Doc for struggling. What he went through at the end of Season 2 would be devastating for anyone.

But, for Doc, a character that spent most of his life hiding behind nihilism and fate, these events also seem poised to kick off an existential crisis of sorts, and one that’s been a long time coming.

Wynonna Earp is a show about fate and free will, decisions, and consequences, and it was actually Doc who introduced that tension.

During their first interaction, Doc and Wynonna talk about Wyatt Earp and his choice to be a gunslinger. Doc corrects Wynonna’s use of the word “want” and says:

Wyatt Earp wanted to be a farmer. 30 seconds in the O.K Corral and a gunslinger he was made. Sometimes life chooses for us.

As viewers, when Doc says that, we hear it in terms of Wynonna and the burden of the curse that’s been forced upon her.

It is most certainly that. This scene and that last line foreshadow one of the show’s most consistent and powerful themes — defiance in the face of destiny and doing what’s right even when up against forces larger than ourselves.

Wynonna is a character that has stopped running. At the end of Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 1, “Purgatory” when she saves Waverly from the revenants that kidnapped her, she stands up and says:

I’m going to put you in the ground like it’s my job. Because you know what? I’m starting to think it is.

At that moment, Wynonna makes the choice to own her fate and everything that comes with it. She is done running.

She’s going to fight back even if the game seems fixed. That resilience and determination are two of the things that makes Wynonna the aspirational character that she is.

But that line is an important part of understanding Doc too. Doc and Wynonna present a sort of contrasting exploration of choice versus fate.

If Wynonna’s fate is shaped by the choices life made for her, Doc’s fate is shaped by the choices he made himself, even if he doesn’t want to acknowledge that.

Where Wynonna feels the weight of every decision, whether it’s fair or not, Doc uses fate as a nihilistic abdication of responsibility for what happens in his own life and the lives of others impacted by his actions.

The implication that line from the pilot paints when viewed in the context of Doc is that what he describes as fate is actually the consequences of choices.

30 seconds in the O.K corral might have made Wyatt Earp the gunslinger he never wanted to be, but, whether it was the right choice or not, he chose to participate in those events. Life didn’t choose for him.

Along those same lines, as much as Doc in Season 1 wants to focus on what the Stone Witch did to him and be a victim of external forces, he still ultimately chose to make that deal.

Later on in Wynonna Earp Season 2 Episode 8, “No Future in the Past,” we even learn that he chose to stay stuck in that well instead of giving up his immortality.

The Doc we meet in Season 1 is selfish. He has a sense of entitlement and belief in what life owes him.

Time and again we see Doc justify selfish actions, even actions that put the Earp sisters in danger, by focusing on revenge and what happened to him. He deflects to the external rather than engaging in much scarier self-reflection.

There are moments where you can see that Doc doesn’t really believe his own cynicism though. Little moments of regret accentuated by a look or a gesture from Tim Rozon that add depth and an inner conflict perhaps hinting at the moral reckoning coming to a head in Season 3.

It’s only upon meeting and getting to know the Earp sisters that those cracks start to translate into changed behavior. Waverly and Wynonna both play a part and hold up different mirrors that reflect who Doc is and who he can be.

Wynonna, of course, is the one he loves, and much of the selflessness we see in Doc later on is motivated by that love.

But Doc also recognizes parts of himself in Wynonna, so when she keeps fighting, keeps making the unselfish choice, it underscores the hollowness of his cynicism and reflects back a picture of himself Doc doesn’t particularly like.

Because she perseveres where he gives in, Wynonna forces Doc to acknowledge his moral failings and start to truly reflect on them for the first time in his very long life.

And then there’s Waverly.

Most people who watch Wynonna Earp regularly know that Doc and Waverly have a special relationship and that, next to Wynonna, there is no one Doc cares about more (Baby Alice probably now a second exception). Like Wynonna, Waverly holds up a mirror for Doc but her mirror reflects something different.

One of Waverly’s best traits is her capacity to see the best in people. She can see the hero in Doc even if he can’t. Through Waverly’s eyes, Doc can see the best version of himself, the version he could choose to be if he’s brave enough.

Between the two Earp sisters, Doc can see two paths.

One where he remains the self-centered, self-professed victim of life, or the one where he strives to be the better person that Wynonna is and that Waverly knows he can be.

As the first season progresses, Doc starts to change as a result of his relationships with Wynonna and Waverly, or at the very least he makes better choices.

Through almost all of the second season, that selfish entitled character we met in the pilot seems a distant memory. His utter devotion to the Earps and loyalty to his entire found family is enough to soften even the hardest heart.

But starting with Wynonna’s request for the ring that gives him his immorality and ending with giving his baby girl away, Doc’s newfound selflessness is tested.

There are little signs that this reformed, unselfish Doc isn’t quite as complete as he appears.

The drunken pity party he throws himself after losing his immortality (even if it’s pretty understandable) and the flippantness with which he treats Rosita and his relationship with her, all harken back to the morally ambiguous character we met in Season 1.

But when Season 2 ends, how Doc will deal with everything that has happened and what he learned is left ambiguous. It isn’t until Season 3 begins that we see the existential crisis these events triggered.

Wynonna Earp Season 3 Episode 1, “Blood Red and Going Down,” sets up Doc’s rather fragile emotional state, but it’s on Wynonna Earp Season 3 Episode 2, “When You Call My Name,” that Doc’s moral crisis comes pouring out.

During what would turn out to be their final conversation, Doc almost pleadingly reminds Dolls that he went to hell, the same place Wynonna sends revenants to. He asks if this is his reward, convinced the outcome is fixed no matter what he does.

Once again, he’s echoing the entitled, “What I’m owed” sentiment that motivated his obsessive and often reckless quest for revenge on Constance Clootie.

Towards the end of their conversation, Doc tries to pull Dolls into his spiral by telling him they are the same, that they both face the same damnation and their actions are meaningless.

But Dolls doesn’t flinch and doesn’t let Doc off the hook. He responds to Doc with both a powerful articulation of his own character and a challenge to do better, saying:

We’re not the same. I don’t need the threat of damnation to fight for the right side

The challenge Dolls lays out for Doc is the very heart of the questions Doc has to answer before his crisis can be resolved.

He has to decide who he is, and who he wants to be.

Can he be the person who does the right thing without the need of reward or being owed something for his sacrifice? Is he strong enough to truly carry the weight of the consequences of his, not life’s, choices?

Those answers are not going to come easy, but we should have faith. We should have faith because even if he’s struggling now, Doc hasn’t returned to who he was in Season 1.

Whether it was the hope of redemption, love, or something else that motivated Doc’s changed behavior since the end of Season 1, he has been changed in a fundamental way.

There’s a desperation and fear in Doc’s voice during his conversation with Dolls that wasn’t there when Doc first climbed out of that well.

Part of that is, of course, fear after the experience of being sent to hell, but part of it is because that emotional distance he had from the repercussions of his action seems to have disappeared.

When Doc tells Dolls that being a hero also makes them murderers, he is visibly shaken. If it was just his fear of hell, he could have said any number of things to Dolls about fate and the arbitrariness of life.

Instead, he chooses to talk about what his actions, even the ones done for the right reason, make him. For the first time, he feels the weight of responsibility and can’t completely deflect to some external factor as absolution.

Doc has grown so much since we met him. In Season 1 when he lied or engaged in the subterfuge he is so good at, it was always in service to his own ends.

For example, on Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 7, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” he ignores the Blacksmith’s advice to get Waverly to safety and then lies to her about it; all so he could take his shot at revenge against Constance Clootie.

In Season 2 though, he applies those same skills to help save Dolls’ life purely out of love for Wynonna. He puts himself at risk to help Dolls without the expectation of getting anything in return.

That is not something Season 1 Doc would have done.

In Season 3, we’ve seen both sides of Doc.

The entitled, scared victim that lashes out at Dolls about his reward is the same Doc who on Wynonna Earp Season 3 Episode 3, “Colder Weather,” apologizes to Waverly unprompted and without excuses after snapping at her earlier in the episode.

This is in contrast, again, to his actions on Wynonna Earp Season 1 Episode 7, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” when he comes very close to apologizing to Waverly for putting her in danger but never actually does.

He never actually uses the word sorry and even his attempt at an apology is framed with an excuse about the Stone Witch.

More significantly, he ends his apology by inquiring whether Waverly plans to tell Wynonna about what he did. It’s unclear if even this almost apology is motivated by actual remorse or self-centered worry about Wynonna being angry at him.

Little things like Doc’s Season 3 apology contrasted with Season 1 or his unselfish, unwavering support for Wynonna subtly show how he’s evolved.

He is not the man he was. He has been changed by his experiences and by his relationships, but he’s not yet quite the man he could be.

Everything about this show and this character suggest that Doc won’t find his way easily, but he will find it eventually. Undoing a century and half of learned behavior isn’t something that just happens, and Doc is going to fail at times.

The return of his wife Kate (Chantel Riley) will almost certainly force Doc grapple with the consequences of his past actions in ways we’ve never seen, and his fear of returning to hell will continue to color his choices and interactions.

He is going to make decisions this season that frustrate and even devastate us. He may hurt the characters we care about and damage relationships he’s built.

But as much as Wynonna Earp is about fate and consequences, it’s also about compassion and embracing ambiguity. So let’s have faith.

Let’s have faith in flawed characters to persevere even after they mess up, and let’s have faith that, even if it’s a long road, Doc will choose the path of hero, not life’s victim.

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Wynonna Earp airs Fridays at 9/8c on Syfy.

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