Wynonna Earp Season 3: What’s Next For WayHaught?

In the final act of the Wynonna Earp Season 3 premiere, Nicole (Kat Barrell) dropped a major bombshell: she may be the only known survivor of the Cult of Bulshar. Though we’ll have to wait for more episodes to see exactly what that casual bombshell means, Den of Geek did get a chance to chat with Kat Barrell and Dominique Provost-Chalkley (Waverly) about how this latest secret will affect the WayHaught relationship moving forward.

“I think that, ultimately, the reason why people are tentative to tell their secrets to Waverly is because they know how sensitive and how hard she will take a lot of stuff,” Provost-Chalkley told Den of Geek at SDCC. “So I think they’re actually trying to protect her … But, of course, it can be frustrating because it’s like, ‘Another thing! Like another thing I have to deal with?'”

At least it sounds like Nicole hasn’t been keeping this secret quite as long as she did the secret of her ex-wife. According to Barrell, Nicole’s memory of the Cult of Bulshar is “really foggy right now where we are in Episode 1.”

“She’s really just figuring it out,” Barrell elaborated, “because I think it’s a really repressed memory for her, that she wouldn’t have a lot of clarity on. So I think she’s confused and embarrassed, but also really, really scared and, the sorting of that out, I think she’s gonna need Waverly’s help for a lot, because I think she’s very scared. And Nicole doesn’t get very scared very often so it’s an interesting place for her to be.”

Speaking more generally about the WayHaught relationship prior to the Season 3 premiere at the ATX Television Festival, Barrell told Den of Geek that she likes the tension in the relationship between Nicole and Waverly because she doesn’t want it to be treated any differently than a heterosexual relationship.

“Our show is pushing so hard to show a queer relationship and I just feel that, if we’re gonna do that, we need to show all aspects of it,” said Barrell. “The reality of being in a relationship is that it’s not always rainbows and butterflies. There are challenges. There are hard things. You have to confront your partner about things. You make bad decisions sometimes, but what’s important to show is that you apologize, you own up to your mistakes, you make it better, you try your best to fix whatever you did that you weren’t proud of.”

Wynonna Earp Season 2 gave the show a chance to complexify the WayHaught relationship. Moving into Season 3, presumably, that trend will continue, as it does for all good TV relationships.

“I think that is what makes the relationship with Waverly and Nicole so amazing,” said Barrell, “is that, yes, in Season 1, it was amazing because there was this relationship between two women that was treated with equal importance to any relationship on the show, but, in Season 2, we got to see the evolution of that which I think actually should be even more of a normal relationship with all the ups and all the downs which I think are equally as important for representation.”

As for Nicole’s character outside of her relationship with Waverly, Kat is excited for fans to learn more about Nicole’s backstory.

“For the first two seasons, I did kind of feel like I wasn’t really sure of where [Nicole] came from, and where you come from is such a big part of who you are,” said Kat. “So, it was really nice to see and I think that fans who are really interested in Nicole’s story will be very happy with this season because we just learn so much more about where she came from and also a lot of dark secrets that she’s hiding.”

Wynonna Earp airs on Fridays at 9 p.m. on Syfy.