SUPERNATURAL: Who’s Afraid of the Darkness?

Episode 11.3 “The Bad Seed”

[photos: Diyah Pera/The CW]

The story opens with Rowena attempting to recruit three witches to her new MegaCoven. It looks like she has an altar outside, in a junkyard, maybe, with battered cars and trash cans providing the fire. She is like the girl in high school that tries too hard to get in with the cool kids. The witches tell her she has no guts or chops and Rowena brags that she killed the King of Hell, her own son. They tell her he didn’t look so dead yesterday. Rowena is furious that Crowley is still alive and turns the witches to dust.

Dean is still thinking about the Darkness and the three of them — Sam, Dean and Cas — discuss what little they know about the Darkness and the baby’s disappearance. Cas is chained to the floor and suffering from the evil flu, the spell that Rowena put on him. They turn to the more immediate problem of curing Castiel, acknowledging that they will have to find Rowena. It doesn’t look like they’ve had time to return the books to their shelves properly since the last episode. They don’t need a maid, they need a librarian.

Crowley’s operatives have found Rowena and Crowley gives them the go ahead to kill her. He has Amara in his headquarters in Hell, complete with a nanny and laptop full of Hitler’s speeches. He is careful with her and is seeking information. When Amara mentions that God trapped her, he asks casually how He could do that, but gets no answer.

Rowena makes another recruitment attempt, this time in a better setting, at an upscale luncheon. She gets no better response from these two witches until she mentions that she has the Book of the Damned. Just when she is getting some interest, a black eyed waiter attacks them and kills one of the witches. Rowena tosses furniture around to make her escape.

Cas has a seizure and then says that on the Angel radio, the buzz is that they are looking for Cas and for Metatron. The three of them are looking for Metatron, too, because he might know something about the Darkness. They then see a report about the attack at the café. As an aside, Castiel is definitely not one that believes in the Bible’s timeline for creation. The boys ask him where and when he is, and he says earth, several billion years after the beginning.

Crowley is still working on spoiling Amara. He brings her a floofy pink dress, still covered in the previous owner’s blood, and an Uncle Hoppity book. She says that she prefers the book her nanny gave her, Dante’s Inferno in the original Italian. She says she is hungry and Crowley offers her goodies — which look really good — very decorative chocolates. She prefers to suck out the nanny’s soul, and announces that she has killed her. Crowley corrects her, saying that the meat suit was already dead and the soul was all that was keeping it alive. Which sounds pretty much like what one would expect — but it isn’t. When Jenna’s soul was eaten, she was still alive and running amuck. Later Crowley makes sure that the café is presenting only dead meat suits, which Amara can suck the souls out of without leaving a soulless crazy person running around to deal with. Because, you know, you can’t have that in the King of Hell’s court.

The boys catch up with Rowena, who is in disguise in a blonde wig. Dean is also in disguise, wearing a tropical shirt, sunglasses and a straw hat. Rowena tosses him around a bit and Sam sneaks up behind her. They bring her back to the lair and she tries to negotiate better terms for taking the spell off of Castiel. Unfortunately, they find that he is gone and have to set off in search of him.

Amara appears to not be learning the evil lessons that Crowley wants her to learn. There’s no evidence that she is bonding with Crowley, no matter how much he spoils her. She also sees no good in anything, as she eats her first nanny, who loves her. She is nihilistic at heart, seeing futility in everything. She is bothered by the images of the natural world that she sees on the computer, surprised that God did so much after her incarceration. She can feel awe. She talks to herself in the mirror. The image of an adult Amara reminds her that they have a plan and that they are still peeved by what God did to them, and that she is going to grow up to be the Darkness in the mirror. It’s creepy to think that who you are is before you and there are no other options.

An angel and a demon walk into a bar… and sit down and have a drink and complain about their respective jobs. Their assessment: everything is going to pieces and management’s not doing a thing. It’s a strange little scene that’s a bit out of place, and I’m not sure what it’s supposed to tell us except that Heaven and Hell both feel the Darkness but don’t know what to do, and that the worker bees may try to take things in their own hands.

The second nanny, who failed to kill Rowena for Crowley and has been demoted, is tasked with telling Amara that she has to to slow down on her soul eating. It’s smart that Crowley ducks responsibility for putting her on a diet.

While they are hunting for Castiel, Rowena tells Dean from the back seat that Sam made a deal to kill Crowley for her, just because she is bored or wants to stir things up. Dean takes it pretty well, although he’s not happy about Sam keeping secrets. They undoubtedly don’t want to argue about it in front of Rowena.

Castiel has become Jack the Ripper, or maybe the Boston Strangler. He is pursuing a hapless young lady and they actually find him with his hands around her throat. Dean commands him to let her go. He does, and then beats Dean up. Sam threatens Rowena with witch-killing bullets and she takes the spell off Cas in time to keep him from killing Dean. Rowena then knocks the gun out of Sam’s hand, uses her powers to bring down a gate between them and her, and takes off, proving that she is canny and good at surviving even though she’s an idiot with no people skills.

Our three heroes gather to lick their wounds and assess the situation. Dean has an ice pack on his face and refuses to let Cas cure him, saying that he had it coming. Sigh. He’s bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders again. They’ve lost Rowena and the Book of the Damned, although they got the Codex, and have no idea where the Darkness is. However, everyone is healthy in a metaphysical sense. No Marks, no Darkness in the veins, no spells. The only vulnerability is Dean’s tie to the Darkness and I think Crowley is inadvertently delaying any consequences to that by raising Amara himself.

The story ends when Crowley visits Amara, past the body of the second nanny, and finds her looking in the mirror, now a tall and slender teenager. “Amara?” he asks. She says she is hungry. He tells her that that’s fine, but they should have a chat first. She is not having any of that. “I said I was hungry!” There is nothing more frightening than a hungry teenager.

From the previews it looks like next week may be one of the rare lighter episodes. It’s a good time for one to  help us recover from all of the major trauma of the end of last season and building up a new Big Bad for the beginning of this one. However, appearances can be deceiving.
Supernatural airs on Wednesdays,  9pm/8 central on the CW.