'Wynonna Earp': Is Nicole Haught dead, an angel or something else a lot more complicated?
Spoilers for 'Wynonna Earp' Season 4, Episode 1 'On the Road Again'
The return of 'Wynonna Earp' after its two-year hiatus and game-changing cliffhanger has only left more questions than answers. Why can't Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) enter into the Garden? Why was it that Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon) could? What is the mysterious blood-seeking creature in the garden? Why is Valdez so important? Why are there demon crabs? Perhaps most perplexingly of all, just what exactly is going on with Sherriff Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell)?
Nicole Haught has been having a terrible day. First drugged by Wynonna as Waverly gets pulled into unknown dimensions, then forced to jump from a train and teamed up with the woman who drugged her, then made to seemingly sacrifice her life to save the woman, and finally, appearing in the eerie, snowy world of the garden with nary a stitch upon her person. While stranger things have happened, it's fair to say that none of the main cast had quite as rough a day as Nicole in this season's premiere.
With her appearance in the Garden, however, Nicole's main goal has been achieved — she's reunited with her (possible) fiance, although probably not in the way that Nicole expected. It's not explained just how Nicole arrived to where she is in the first place, whether or not she's real, and if so, where her clothes disappeared to. When we last saw her, Nicole was falling to her death in the sewer grate of an unidentified warehouse. Given the Garden's biblical connotations, is it the first step towards Heaven, and if so, is Nicole a ghost?
One thing to note is that her appearance came after Waverly poured her angelic blood into a mysterious grate that is meant to keep "the monster" fed. Waverly's blood appears to have a unique affect on the chamber - it opens a door that appears out of nowhere, and causes a tree to grown in the barren Garden. Nicole also appears as an apparent side-effect of this bloodletting, which begs the question - did Waverly summon Nicole there? Or did she merely summon Nicole's spirit into a strange, afterlife in the Garden, leaving Nicole's corpse stranded on Earth? It's also worth noting that Waverly's tarot card reading included the Death card. While the card, in tarot, symbolizes change and not death, Nicole's change of state from a living human to a spirit in the afterlife may symbolize both death and a significant change for her.
There is, of course, a third possibility - that Waverly didn't summon the real Nicole, but an illusion of her. We know very little how how Waverly's angelic heritage works, and even less of what the effect her blood might have in the Garden. The Garden pulled her in, however, and it may just be trying to alter its reality to please Waverly. There is no better way to do that than to give Waverly some kind of approximation of Nicole, build from Waverly's memories.
Whatever the answer, it's going to be worth keeping a close eye on Nicole going forward until answers are made clear. Assuming Waverly still remembers who Nicole is, however, it's a safe bet to assume that the two are not about to let each other out of their sight now that they're on the same plane of existence again.
The next episode of 'Wynona Earp' airs August 2 at 10 PM ET on Syfy.