Editor’s note: The below interview contains major spoilers for Wynonna Earp: Vengeance.

When Wynonna Earp ended for the first time back in 2021, it was kind of a perfect conclusion for a show that had always beaten the odds. After four seasons full of humor and heartbreak — not to mention an epically romantic WayHaught wedding — the SYFY series faded to black for Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) and the rest of her team’s demon-hunting adventures. This year, however, Wynonna’s comeback actually happened thanks to the commissioning of a 90-minute special on Tubi, titled Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, which brought back most of the main cast — and a couple of surprise faces! — for a scrappy follow-up that made for a welcome reboot in the town of Purgatory.

While Vengeance did conjure plenty of warm fuzzies with its premiere last week, the situation was still pretty dire for Wynonna and her beau Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), as they found themselves returning to town they’d left in the rearview mirror at the end of Season 4. Meanwhile, Wynonna’s sister Waverly (Dom Provost-Chalkley) and newly-appointed Sheriff Nicole Haught (Kat Barrell) may have settled into newlywed bliss together while holding down the fort in Purgatory, but when a new evil threatens their peace, our faves have to team up again to take on one of the biggest baddies they’ve ever faced. Ahead of the premiere of Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, Collider had the opportunity to sit down with showrunner Emily Andras to discuss some of the special’s major moments. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Andras reveals how long it took for Wynonna Earp: Vengeance to go from a script to production, why Nicole ends up becoming Wynonna’s boss, how the ending leaves the door open for more Wynonna Earp stories in the future, and much more.

EMILY ANDRAS: How mad at me are you?

COLLIDER: Mad? No. I said as much in my review: it feels like there’s more story left to tell.

ANDRAS: How much trouble do you think I’m in? Let me put it that way.

Emily Andras Explains Why the Ending of ‘Wynonna Earp: Vengeance’ Is Bittersweet
Image via Tubi

Well, this pertains to something that I wanted to ask you about anyway, which is — given the fate of a certain character, where the special leaves off, it seems like the team is going to do everything they can to bring him back.

ANDRAS: That’s the key. I’m going to be honest, it’s like a dance in genre. You can’t have every death not matter, or else the stakes don’t matter at all. I think Dalton is dead. I think Lucado is dead. We’ve done deaths that really matter, but Doc died under extenuating circumstances, and he’s such a heart of our show. It also gives Wynonna some hope and something to fight for, which she deserves. She’s had such a rough go of it. So I find the ending bittersweet, but I do have hope and faith that they’re going to do everything in their power. And also, I think that would be a really sexy journey. I’m all for zombie Doc coming up shirtless and covered in dirt. It won’t be the worst. We’ll suffer through it. I would love to tell that story, so we’ll see how it does. But I definitely was hedging my bets, let’s put it that way.

Do you feel like that’s in line with what you prefer as a writer in terms of never really definitively putting a button on any story, but always leaving a potential path open?

ANDRAS: I am of two minds about it, and I’ve also had the privilege of playing it both ways. The end of Season 4 was a definitive ending, which was a choice I made because I felt like I could see the writing on the wall. We were not going to get a Season 5, despite rumors to the contrary. And I was like, “I cannot mess with this fandom because they have been so loyal to us for so long. They deserve a happy ending, particularly for their queer couple who are soulmates. We need to do that, and if I get 10 more seasons, I can figure it out.” But I could not live with myself if things had been destroyed and that was it. We needed some sense of happiness and that things were going to be OK.

This is a new network, a new opportunity. We will always have those other four seasons. But yeah, if I never get any more, there is some bittersweetness to this, but also a sense that people have grown and are going on with their lives. Death is something we all need to deal with. Not me. I’m going to skip it, but you guys do you. You kind of have to read the tea leaves, which is really tricky as a creator. And many a creator has been screamed at by their fans because they did end on a cliffhanger, but that’s a little bit of a gamble you’re often paying with the powers that be because you’re hoping that that forces their hand a little bit. So, you want it to both be satisfying, but also let everyone know that if you want it badly enough, there is a story to be told. I don’t really have a preference. What I don’t want the audience to feel is tricked. I don’t mind if they’re shocked. I don’t mind if they’re surprised, but I don’t ever want them to feel that I screwed them over.

How long have you had the idea for this particular story and this particular baddie, which has ties to Wynonna’s backstory and is really embedded in her past and all the struggle that she went through? Has that been an idea that you’ve always had, or was this more of an opportunity to go, “OK, what haven’t we done with Wynonna yet?”

ANDRAS: I would say a little more column B than column A, because again, new network, new mandate. We had a lot of loose threads in Season 4, too. If I was just doing 12 episodes, I might’ve picked up a little bit more of the mythology. But Tubi really was like, “We know the Earpers are going to show up no matter what. This is an opportunity to get new fans.” They don’t want to have a spreadsheet of the past four seasons. We want them to understand that [Wynonna’s] kind of a wild and unconventional demon hunter with this posse of dipshits, and she’s in trouble. We want everybody to be able to tune in and vaguely understand what’s happening. You have the burden of the series, but maybe you can get it if you show up.

This story is really a new one. I would say I’ve always had the idea of what happened when Wynonna was a teenager, that kind of trauma post-killing her dad and being in group homes. There’s a lot of Wynonna’s past that just sounds bad, but we never got into the details, and I knew I wanted the story to be personal to earn it being a special. Wynonna has made so many mistakes. We all have. We all lie awake and think about what we said in grade seven, and it suddenly comes into our brains when we’re supposed to be sleeping. But think about the mistakes we don’t even know we’ve made, like hitting reply all or hurting someone’s feelings without meaning to. That also intrigued me, the idea of, “This is partly her mistake, but not entirely her fault,” and I think this Wynonna deals with it in a way that Season 1 Wynonna could not have. So, it felt very timely for where the character is at.

Emily Andras Wants To Push the Envelope Even Farther if ‘Wynonna Earp’ Continues

It feels like this being on Tubi gave it the opportunity to be naughtier — which isn’t to say that there wasn’t naughtiness before, but on broadcast, things have to get cut or censored.

ANDRAS: Tubi was amazing. They were like, “No rules. You can push the sexuality. You can definitely push the language.” The name of the game was elevation. Because we’re doing a 90-minute special, we wanted to feel like you could only get it on Tubi in this format, but this isn’t something you would’ve seen in Season 3, for example. So, I was stunned. I don’t think there was a single thing we did that they said no to, and I even think if we are lucky enough to do more, we can push the envelope even farther if we want to. They were such good partners. They really understood the combination of adult grit and humor and feeling and emotion. So, that was quite freeing. But, as fun as all that ornament is on the Christmas tree, you still have to make sure the story is solid and there’s the feels and lots of emotion and romance and all that stuff.

You touched on this already, getting into Wynonna’s growth as a character, and given where everyone ends up, I was surprised in a way, but also not, to see Wynonna being deputized. My pitch to Kat [Barrell], and I’ll pitch it to you, was a buddy-cop sequel.

ANDRAS: Oh my God. Couldn’t you watch 15 episodes of that? Yes, you’re hired.

To your point, I don’t think that Wynonna would have been Nicole’s deputy in Season 1. So, I wanted to ask you about developing the WynHaught friendship and evolving it to the point where now they’re partners and working together, especially with Waverly going off to Egypt and artifact hunting and whatnot.

ANDRAS: Saving all of Black Badge. Power suits aplenty. I’d also watch that show, by the way. I think that’s exactly it, right? First of all, no one else can handle Wynonna in this job, but, to give Nicole credit, I think Nicole knows all of Wynonna’s weaknesses, but also her strengths. How long do we think it is, Carly, until Nicole has to throw her own deputy into the drunk tank, three days? Which I will also watch. But there’s something so moving to me about the maturity of Wynonna to give up what makes her special, which is Peacemaker, to agree to work for someone else. She’s the second. It’s kind of an acknowledgement that she has something to learn from Nicole, that she has to abide by some rules, that maybe she should reintroduce herself to the town that used to hate her with fresh eyes. To me, it’s all part of the metaphor — this home has become a home for these people versus just a place of dread, versus the pilot when Wynonna comes home and everyone hates her. It’s a reinvention.

Part of it too, on some level is… look, is Alice in her future? Is she going to be a mom who brings home a daughter? She has to have a job. She has to get a job at McDonald’s. Sometimes we do things we would never consider doing when we’re 21, because that’s what it is to mature and be a mother and be a grown-up. I get moved by it because my little baby’s all grown up. I still think she’s going to go hunt a sexy werewolf and probably make a mess of it, and that’s going to be delightful. But I admire that my ‘Nona can put aside her pride in that part of herself and realize having a job isn’t giving up. It isn’t selling out. It’s actually being there for the people you love, being there for Doc in some manner, until she can figure this out. But I’ll agree to your greenlit buddy comedy with Tubi. I’m assuming this is a binding contract. I want your outline on my desk by Monday.

When you made the official announcement [in February], that was sort of the greenlight, “This is really happening.” I’m assuming, for you, those conversations were even churning in the background a bit sooner than that. How long has this really been in the works?

ANDRAS: By the time we made the Zoom announcement, everyone knew. But you know what’s funny about it, Carly, it all happened pretty fast, which was unusual. I think I started hearing about it around August, September, and by December I was writing a script. Unlike a lot of work where you have to wait and scheme, it sort of all happened. We were in production, standing on set, in February, and now here we are, not even a year later.

In a weird way, it was actually kind of rollicking. We jumped at the chance, and that was scary too, that I didn’t have time to overthink it. I knew what kind of a mandate was, but listen, you cannot kill this show with fire. Thank God. There’s always the opportunity for more Earp. People recognize more and more as time goes on that it’s special, and it’s so hard in this fragmented environment to have a fandom that feels this way, to have so much passion and that they show up for anything. But I was still delighted, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I was still pretty stunned when this happened. Part of me still isn’t sure it happened.

It did! You all suffered through Calgary in February to bring us this.

ANDRAS: You know what? Buddy comedy in Hawaii. Write that down, please. It’s still worth it. I’d still do it.

My hope is that they’ll bring you all back every year to keep doing Earp.

ANDRAS: A movie a year would be amazing. I would absolutely love that.

I’m manifesting.

ANDRAS: Let’s hope. Let’s manifest it.

Wynonna Earp: Vengeance is streaming now on Tubi.

Watch on Tubi