Rachel deserves love. She deserves the space to heal and thrive. She deserves to enjoy being a kid again, after losing her mother and having to fend for herself in a factory full of zombies. After being Nicole’s family for a hard year and a half, dressing in Wynonna’s clothes and trying to distract Nicole from looking towards the horizon for the woman she loves and lost. She deserves to go fishing with Nedley, and to take Billy along too, after fighting so damn hard to remind everyone else to save him. She deserves the chance to prove Wynonna wrong about Purgatory, and what kind of home it can be. She deserves to sing for her family, and to call it what it is: a gift.
Nedley deserves love. He deserves to see Nicole continue to grow into the role he left behind for her, and to walk her down the aisle—because just because he isn’t her biological parent doesn’t mean he isn’t her dad. Nedley deserves to binge-watch Pretty Little Liars and any other “guilty pleasure” TV show he damn well pleases (because it knows there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure—only the things that society tries to shame us for loving). He deserves to run Shorty’s for the business, sure, but really as an excuse to help take care of the town that takes care of him in return.
Jeremy deserves love, even if the show has not always known how to give it to him. (If there is one thing Wynonna Earp has consistently struggled with, it is finding space for its characters of color in a very White world and story.) He deserves a chance to run an institution like Black Badge with community and hope rather than hierarchy and violence (and to maybe find a deeper piece with what happened to Robin). After everything he has lost, I love that—just like Wynonna—when Jeremy meets someone he likes, he is still able to choose vulnerability.
Doc deserves love. He deserved the chance to turn from a cowboy into a cowman—because he took accountability for his actions and strove to be a better human. I love that Doc’s redemption has been found in loving and caring and nurturing (himself and others) rather than in the killing that got him thrown into a well to begin with. I love that this series never believed that, just because Doc was from long ago, he had to be filled with “period appropriate” hate. Instead, it believed that Doc would love as hard any anyone else, and that he would be the one to stand next to Waverly Earp at her wedding. Doc saw the goodness in Wynonna, even when she couldn’t see it in herself, and he also understood that the path to loving ourselves is one we must all take for ourselves. “Yes vengeance drove my thinking—kept my alive, gave me a purpose. But when it was dark and I was scared—and I have been scared for a long time, Wynonna—I mostly thought about love.”
Nicole deserves love. She deserves a chance to be chosen by the home she chose for herself again and again, something she has found with the Earps and in the sheriff’s office. Nicole deserves infinite peace and happiness, even if that isn’t really a thing. After 18 months losing hope, she deserves to wake up to it next to her every morning. She deserves to be at home with her wife, going on all of life’s adventures and holding her hand when the firelight grows dim.
Waverly deserves love, and she is that rare TV character who has almost always understood that. She is a superhero not because of her angel father, but because she has always found a way to be ferociously kind. Waverly Earp is Wynonna’s whole damn heart, and she kept it safe when her sister couldn’t, but that’s no way to live, and Waverly knows that too. “My biggest fear used to be that you’d never come back. That you’d never get to know the real me. But now I know you always will, Wynonna.” Waverly’s greatest wish came true when she got her sister back in the series pilot; everything that’s happened after that has been dreams she never even thought to wish for.
