Supernatural S10E09 Review
The mid-season finale of Supernatural, though a fantastic episode, didn’t feel nearly as ‘big’ as a finale should and, though it sent us off with a bang, it felt like it took a while to get there.
The order of the night is family relationships: brothers, mothers and sons, (somewhat) fathers and daughters. The seeds that Hannah planted in Castiel’s mind a few episodes ago come to fruition when Cas decides to see what Jimmy Novak’s family is up to these days. The answer: nothing good. Jimmy’s wife has up and abandoned his daughter, Claire, in order to ‘find herself’ (a little too-convenient of a plot point), while Claire is living it up, bouncing around kid’s homes and shady father figures who convince her to steal.
The highlight of this episode was definitely the relationship between Castiel and Claire, and the acknowledgement of how far Cas has come from the badass Angel we first met. It’s pretty clear that Castiel cares about Claire and, after a few false starts, Claire seems to come to find some sort of peace with Castiel. We also finally get some closure on what happened to Jimmy: when Castiel went poof in his attempt to stop the apocalypse, Jimmy did too, and it is only through Castiel’s grace that his meat suit was stitched back together.
Meanwhile, Crowley spends most of the episode ranting at Mother-Dearest for everything she ever did wrong to him. To be fair, it sounds pretty much well-deserved, for all that Rowena is proud that her little boy grew up to be the King of Hell. Whoever smashed out the content for Crowley’s rant this episode definitely deserves high praise for their originality in thinking: Crowley is definitely more upset that his mother tried to sell him for only three pigs (as opposed to five, which he was totally worth, thank you very much), rather than the whole child-selling thing. Gerald’s mother burnt him with cigarettes, mind you, but no one cares about Gerald.
Crowley did seem a little too quick to trust Rowena however and I’m definitely hoping that this is going to be part of some larger conspiracy he is cooking up. I can definitely see the potential in Rowena-Crowley scenes, but I’m hoping that Crowley comes out top dog at the end.
We also get a glimpse at how serious Dean is about not wanting to go back to his Deanmon days. Instead of extracting a promise from Sam, Dean goes to Castiel with his demand that, should the Mark turn him back, Castiel had to kill him. Not only did this prove to be a nice development in Cas and Dean’s friendship, but it also showed how serious Dean is: he’s not willing to risk Sam’s emotions getting in the way of putting him down if need be.
In what was potentially the only part of the episode that felt finale-y, Dean finally gave into the Mark of Cain when he massacred a gang of rapists and loan sharks. Props to Jensen Ackles for his portrayal of Dean losing control, and again for his almost catatonic post-battle state. This all leads Sam to demand that Dean tells him that it was them or him, but Dean can’t seem to form the words. Although really, from the way it played out, you could definitely believe that it was a life-or-death situation for Dean.
All in all, Dean’s descent into villainy through the Mark of Cain (and Cas and Sam’s attempt to stop him) should be interesting when Supernatural returns next year, although the mid-season finale only really started to feel like a finale when Dean started killing.
