SUPERNATURAL Recap: Sam and Dean meet a Scream Queen

Season 11, Episode 11 “Into the Mystic”

This was a fun episode. It was mostly  fun because of the presence of the fabulous and flirty Dee Wallace, who had her eyes set on Dean. Who could blame her?

I have to admit that if they hadn’t already told us that the bad guy was a banshee, I’d have suspected that Dee Wallace was a  werewolf, since she played a cute furry werewolf in The Howling and a blutbad on Grimm, which is basically a werewolf. She had some lovely outfits and a couple of nice statement necklaces. She looked great.

We open with a nice Irish couple with a crying baby. Dad is playing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” to quiet the baby. Dad hears a horrible noise and starts banging his head against the wall. Mom starts throwing a concoction together. A scary screaming banshee appears and hovers over dad’s unconscious body, tosses mom against the wall then goes for the crying baby. Mom cuts her hand and drips blood in the potion and the banshee is banished, but Mom dies anyway. The baby is the only survivor.

Sam is having bad dreams. He is hearing all of the bad things that Lucifer accused him of, including choosing a girl and a dog over finding Dean when Dean was in purgatory. Dean tries to get him to talk, then presents him with a case, an old guy with his head bashed in in a locked room in an old folk’s home, fifteen minutes away.

Castifer, as we will henceforth call Castiel possessed by Lucifer (courtesy of Valerie J. Meyers), relaxes in a park. This makes sense, because who wouldn’t want to be outside after being locked up in a cage in Hell for eternity? Besides, we know the devil loves gardens. He is approached by an angel who recognizes him and bravely but foolishly tries to kill him. He gets killed by a snap of Castifer’s fingers.

Sam and Dean go to the very swanky retirement home and meet the heartbroken manager,whose wife just left him, and Mildred, played by Dee Wallace. Mildred looks Dean up and down. Harold, the dead guy, had lots of enemies. He was stealing other resident’s Viagra. He was also stealing Jake Townsend’s pension checks. The boys figure that Jake stuck around as a vengeful spirit so they dig him up and torch him. They discuss retirement and that Sam was bothered by being around Lucifer again, but Sam is not ready to talk about it.

Unfortunately, torching Jake Townsend doesn’t work. It rarely does anymore. I can’t remember the last time the case was a simple vengeful ghost that was solved by burning the bones. This time it’s the heartbroken manager who is attacked and Mildred witnesses the whole thing.

They interview Mildred, who describes the screaming banshee and takes the opportunity to hold Dean’s hand. Sam spots another potential witness, a maid who says she saw nothing and is deaf. Dean figures out it’s an evil banshee while Sam is talking to Marlene the maid and goes back to the bunker to get a gold blade, which is what is needed to kill banshees. Sam stays behind to figure out who is vulnerable, since banshees pray on the vulnerable.

Castifer is at the boys’ place trashing the joint. He tells Dean he is looking for a spell against Amara, which is probably true and shows that Lucifer doesn’t have a clue either. And this is the part where not knowing that Cas was going to surrender to Lucifer leaves them vulnerable, because Dean levels with him and for the first time tells someone about his connection to Amara and the fact that he couldn’t kill her.

Sam decides that Mildred is the most likely next victim because of her health and tells her the truth about himself and Dean and monsters, which she takes very well. He finds out that there is no deaf Marlene on staff, and that Mildred says she would love to practice her sign language if he could introduce them. Sam hunts down the maid and she pins him to the hot water heater with a sigil and tries to stab him with a gold knife. She thinks he and Dean are the banshees because she read Dean’s lips when he was talking about feeding time. Sam talks her down and finds out that she is hunting the banshee. She was the baby. Her name is Eileen, and she was raised by a hunter after her parents were killed. Her mother’s father was one of the Men of Letters.

Dean comes back with gold daggers, one for Mildred. She gets another chance to flirt with him. They have their sigils set on the walls, waiting for the banshee. To their surprise, Dean starts hearing the sound and banging his head on the wall. Everyone gets tossed around a bit, and Mildred cuts her hand and uses the blood to activate the trap. The banshee is stuck on the wall, and Eileen runs it through with the gold knife. So the girls get to save the boys in this case.

They bid farewell and Mildred tells Dean she can tell he’s pining for someone else. Eileen decides to keep hunting now that her revenge has been taken. I guess she decided that she didn’t want to take up piracy.

The boys have a talk after everything is over. Dean says Cas is a little off. Sam says he should have looked for Dean when he went to purgatory, and apologizes. A long overdue apology, in my opinion. Sam wonders why the banshee went after Dean, and Dean refuses to admit that he is vulnerable.

Thoughts: Misha Collins playing Lucifer in possession of Cas is every bit as delightful as I thought it would be. He’s just Lucifer when he’s strolling through the garden and killing angels. No need for deceit. He does a great job of playing Mark Pellegrino. But then he runs into Dean, and has to play Lucifer playing Cas, and not very well. Then the voice changes and the shoulders slump and he tries to be sincere, which is the part that doesn’t work too well. And the minute Dean’s back is turned, he’s Lucifer again.

Dee Wallace was great, as I said before. If it weren’t for the atrial fibrillation, I think she’d make a good hunter. I like the new girl as well. There are a couple of hilarious bits where they are discussing the boys right in front (or back) of them in sign language, with subtitles so the rest of us know what they are saying. Eileen, played by Shoshanna Stern , is sweet but ruthless, independent and funny. And the boys are a little less alone than they were before. I hope we see her again.

The blurb on my DVR was wrong. It says that the case involves people being violently killed after listening to a particular mysterious song. No mysterious song in this episode.

Questions: Will Lucifer use this new knowledge to use Dean as bait? It seems the most likely course of action after finding out that he and Amara are somehow bound together.

Did the angel in the park send a message about Lucifer being out of the cage to the other angels? That whole scene seemed a little pointless.

New Info: Dean is somehow more vulnerable because of Amara. And not just to her.

Next week we see Sheriff Jody Mills again and both of her foster daughters, Claire and Alex. Claire has been hunting.

 

Supernatural airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on the CW