A HORROR WESTERN, QUICK ON THE DRAW
Wynonna Earp shows a below-radar series can flour ish when a creative team nurtures a passionate fan base
On the Syfy horror western Wynonna
Earp, Tim Rozon plays a version of the gunslinger Doc Holliday, a role that requires him to rock an exceptional mustache and dodge long-limbed monsters while negotiating the existential ups and downs of immortality (it’s a long story).
A fan encounter at the first EarperCon UK in London in 2017 brought up none of those things. Rather than discuss an obscure plot point, a young woman wanted to share how the show, which has a number of LGBT characters, had helped her come out to her father, who brought her to the convention.
“It was awesome and overwhelming,” Rozon said. “I was thinking, this is about way more than my character running from a tentacle.”
The relationships among the cast and showrunner and Wynonna Earp fans — known as “Earpers” — are so intense, the next year will bring conventions devoted solely to the show in Toronto, Minneapolis, New Orleans and London (again).
It’s a striking level of commitment for a programme that only debuted two years ago and has aired a total of 25 episodes. But it’s a bond that has helped the Syfy series, which returns July 20 for its third season, not just survive but thrive within the ever-changing pressure cooker of peak TV.
With its modest Nielsen ratings, which average less than 900,000 viewers a week, Wynonna
Earp may not have made it past its first season.
But as social media and a growing array of viewing platforms give networks more ways to gauge the value of niche audiences — and executives become more creative about monetizing them — Wynonna Earp demonstrates how a distinctive premise, a passionate fan base and a creative team that respects and nurtures that enthusiasm can help an under-the-radar programme flourish in a TV landscape that is tough even on acclaimed shows.
But Wynonna Earp, the tale of a woman and her allies battling monsters, has a value for Syfy beyond balance sheets, according to Chris McCumber, president of Syfy.
Viewership among women aged 18-34 was up 44% in the show’s second year, and more than half the audience is women — the highest ratio within the otherwise male-skewing Syfy viewership.
“That sense of perseverance and fighting against all odds is relevant right now,” he said.
According to the lore of the show, Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) is a descendant of Wyatt Earp, who got the clan put under a curse. As the Earp heir, Wynonna is fated to protect the hamlet of Purgatory — and the world — from the demons that bedevil the town. She has the special ability to wield Peacemaker, Wyatt’s gun, which she uses to send Purgatory’s “Revenants” back to hell, usually with a quip — and whiskey — at the ready.
It’s not for every taste — nor was it meant to be.
“It’s such a relief to not have to make TV for everyone,” said Emily Andras, the executive producer and showrunner, who described the comedy-infused, character-driven drama as a combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Justi
fied and Frozen. (Wynonna and her younger sister, Waverly, have a tight bond.) “In a world of 500 [scripted] shows, if nothing else, you have to say, ‘Well, I haven’t seen that before.’”
The show has “exceeded expectations” on the social-media front, McCumber said. In 2017, Wynonna Earp had an average 224,000 day-of-air Twitter engagements — seven times the next highest Syfy series.
Overall, Twitter activity was up 874% in Season 2, according to the firm ListenFirst. “I’m a real believer in social media and people using word-of-mouth — that matters more than ever,” McCumber said.
A year ago, Syfy made the slogan “It’s a Fan Thing” key to its marketing campaigns, thus
Wynonna Earp and its energetic supporters “fit in perfectly with where we were going with the rebrand”, McCumber said.
The core elements of the premise — rogue tentacles, prickly villains, a found family and swoon-worthy romances — are familiar to aficionados of genre entertainment. But the twist it put on those basics helped Wynonna
Earp stand out and win fans. Andras’ feminist outlook is much in evi- dence. This past season, Wynonna was pregnant (as was Scrofano), but she didn’t let that slow her down.
Both Doc and the former federal agent Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson) are attracted to Wynonna, but the romantic possibilities are just a part of the story, not the main point.
Awareness, at least in geeky circles, was relatively high from the start, in part thanks to a vocal cadre of fans of a prior show Andras worked on, Syfy’s Lost Girl.
Within six weeks of the show’s debut in April 2016, #WynonnaEarp began trending on Twitter for the first time. However, soon there was a potential snag. In the first half of that year, a large number of LGBT women — who aren’t easy to find on TV in the first place — were killed off on an array of shows. The resulting furore left many gay TV fans angry and wary.
At that point, the most high-profile
Wynonna Earp couple was Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and Purgatory cop Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) — a pairing known as “WayHaught.”
“I remember someone tweeting to me ‘I’m scared to fall in love with WayHaught,’ and it broke my heart,” Ferrar said.
Aware of the worry, Andras made a bold and unusual move, in this era of spoilerphobic showrunners. She told Liszewski and others in the media that Waverly and Nicole would survive the first season, and those TV writers spread the news weeks before the season finale.
“The feeling was, ‘We can enjoy the rest of this ride,’” Liszewski said.