Rowena is trying to form a coven. The Mega Coven, her way
of trumping the Grand Coven. No, no-one likes the name, it’s certainly not
helping her recruit anyone. Also they’re not fools – she may have killed the
head of the last coven (which she won’t admit) but they know she has made lots
of enemies including the Winchesters and have no wish to sign up to play Rowena’s
bodyguards. She tries to claim she killed the King of Hell to impress them –
only to learn he’s still alive.
Losing her temper, Rowena uses her shiny new evil book to
nuke her recruits.
Dean is still all spacing out about the Darkness woman
and, probably because of this, is not so quick to see Amarra the why-didn’t-you-burn-her-child
as all evil. They also get a bit snarky about god not being around to take care
of the darkness (even Castiel is a little… edgy about god’s ongoing absence). Sam
suggests that the best alternative to god is… Metatron. Bad Moose! Bad idea.
They’re dealing with the spell Rowena put on Castiel by
chaining him up. He’s still out of control and they need Rowena to lift it.
Which means Dean tries to call Crowley who isn’t answer. Metatron is also
elusive (and can we have a d’awwwww for Castiel who seems quite sad that Sam and
Dean don’t like his car). Castiel also can’t really help them with where
Metatron might be beyond ”he likes waffles”
The spell hits again when Castiel has a seizure (+10
points for responding to Dean’s “do you know where/when you are” with “Earth.
Several billion years since the beginning.”). He’s also hearing voices (yet
more bonus points for Dean’s quick step back) of all the angels looking for him
and Metatron.
While Crowley has taken in the evil soulless child and
educating her on how to be super duper evil. All Amarra wants is to be saved
from god. He’s also dispatched demons to hunt down his mother.
Which completely interrupts her latest recruitment
attempt. Being Rowena she leaves with class and grace (and an awesome furniture
barrier spell).
Amarra has been looking through pictures of the Earth and
is impressed by what god made which she tells Darkness Lady, communicating
through a mirror (and here I thought she was Darkness Lady but since she says “I
am what you are becoming” she may be). Darkness Lady wants to make sure she
stays on message and even if god has made pretty pretty things.
She’s also learning at an extreme pace while Crowley is
fumbling around trying to play kindly uncle. Amarra continues to kind of scare
him eating souls – demon souls. She thinks god screwed up with creation and
Crowley tries to push her towards changing the world – to make it pure evil.
She’s not a big fan of that plan (nor is he, after a moment’s thought because
the joy of tempting people to evil would be lost). She just doesn’t care about
good or evil (or, which I don’t think Crowley has realised, creation at all).
Crowley keeps feeding demons to Amarra and he worries
about Amarra becoming too powerful and too confident before he’s sure she’s on
side. He wants to limit her consumption – Amarra doesn’t agree with that. A few
souls more she’s grown up again and not even slightly willing to listen to
Crowley.
An angel and a demon meet in a bar. No, it’s not a joke –
they meet up to complain about how bad things are and how both sides have huge
alarms going off and their bosses aren’t doing anything about it. They both
lament being the grunts at the bottom of the ladder. They even discuss working
together to stop it.
Meanwhile Castiel tries to use the computer to help find
Metatron but instead gets Dean’s awful, fetishistic Asian woman porn (“Fortune
Nookie”? Dear gods no).
Sam and Dean catch up with one of the witches who met with
Rowena (“I have rights” “and I have a fake badge.”) They want to know where
Rowena is using her to do the magic searching so Crowley doesn’t kill her on
general principles.
They do catch up with Rowena and after some attempted
dramatics but they do get some magic cuffs on her. This means they retrieve the
codex and Charlie’s (who is dead, utterly wrongly and I’m still not over that) code
breaking but not the terribad evil book. She doesn’t want to give it up – and she
calls Dean’s bluff when he threatens to call Crowley. Because she’s Rowena and
she’s good at these deals. She also pokes his fresh crop of grief and guilt
over unleashing the darkness. Yes she’s good at that as well
To top it off they can’t even get her to cure Castiel
because he’s gone wandering. They go looking, putting Rowena in the back seat
(despite everything, I do like her). She also nicely pokes at the secrets Sam
has kept from Dean (the deal he made with Sam to kill Crowley in exchange for
removing he mark). Rowena is an expert at poking sore spots
Dean does find Castiel hunting and strangling an innocent
woman he’s run across – Dean manages to talk Castiel down – and then Castiel
attacks him. Been there before – when Rowena arrives at Sam’s gunpoint and
de-spells him. Castiel is, presumably, returned to normal. And Rowena escapes –
of course she does (even though they promised to let her go, she wasn’t going
to trusty them on it.)
Back at the Winchester cave, Castiel is all guilty and
Dean is all reassuring – but won’t let Castiel heal him because of his own
guilt issues. Angst angst angst.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a gratuitous Castiel
picture – and he as mega cute and fun this episode it’s time for another.
Actually this whole episode had some excellent one
liners. There wasn’t a lot of solid plot per se but I think everything is being
set up – Castiel cured, Crowley and Amarra as well as Dean’s issues
I wasn’t a fan of Rowena and Crowley together last season
but on her own she’s a very very fun character (once we remove the dynamic that
kills both her and Crowley’s character).
Supernatural
has been using Dean’s nasty fetish for Asian women as comic relief for a
gazillion seasons now and there has never once been even a hint of rejecting
the wrongness of this. It’s not even a plot point – it’s a recurring joke and
it’s both not funny and creepy. Racial fetishisation is generally nasty – and Asian
women are all-too-often a target of it.
