

Previously on Supernatural, rhyme style!

Dean got a raised red mark on his arm

That caused him to come to demonic harm,

So Sam and Cas planned to repair

Along with Rowena, the witch with red hair.

But plans never go on without festering

When you simply keep on Winchestering.

In the end, Charlie died for no reason

But to move along a rather stale season.

Castiel was bespelled and bled from the face

While Crowley was merely frozen in place.

Meanwhile, Death partook of Dean’s queso,

As Sam prepared to die on his say-so.

Yet ridding the Mark unleashed a Darkness

Shaped like tornadoes made of a sharkness.

Was it ever mentioned that Dean had a key?

Ha ha no, this was “last moment,” it seems to me.

And if this weren’t already awful enough,

It was gool ol’ Death that ended up snuffed.

Currently on Supernatural

Dean finds himself standing in a field, inside a swirling black cloud.

He’s not alone. The clouds swirl some more to reveal a beautiful young woman wearing a black dress. “What the hell’s going on?”: Dean asks her. She doesn’t say anything because it’s time to check in on Sam….

…who is currently passed out in the Impala. A flashback shows us what the previously just showed us, which is the Darkness swallowing the car while the Winchesters look like they’re pooping themselves. But then it also shows Sam realizing that Dean has vanished from the driver’s seat.

He randomly picks a direction, walks for a mile, and finds Dean lying face-down in a patch of wildflowers. Headcanon: Dean wears too much aftershave and Sam was able to sniff him out, possibly whiffing his long hair along the ground like a basset hound’s ears to gather scent molecules.

Dean has a flashback to seeing Ms. Darknesss outside the car as the darknadoes hit. “She saved me,” he says. “What, who?” Sam asks. “The Darkness,” Dean says, as the music tries to make this sound very shocking. The Darkness… looks like a person? Dun dun DUN!

New title card! Which is actually the old, old title card.



The Winchesters apparently walk in silence for a mile back to the car before they start talking again about what happened. Dean says Ms. Darkness thanked him for setting her free. Sam’s like, well, I’m the one who did that, technically. And Dean’s like, nah man, we’re probably gonna gloss over most of that so we can be bros again. He also says Ms. Darkness didn’t say much else to him, which we’ll later learn is a big ol’ lie.

Meanwhile, Castiel is hiding out in a grody little chicken coop somewhere, remembering that, while under Rowena’s spell, he whaled on Crowley and possibly stabbed him to death. Then for some reason we see a perfectly fine dog lying outside the coop, who is not bleeding and dead and whom Castiel definitely did not murder.

A farmer and his sons go check out the coop, where Castiel is having a clarifying flashback. This time he remembers Crowley smoking out of his meatsuit before getting stabbed. Still bespelled, Castiel’s like, “RAH! I DON’T WANNA HURT YOU!” The farmers try to shoot him, but they have terrible aim and he escapes to safety.

*****



Back in… wherever town it was where the finale took place, the Winchesters have driven upon a gruesome scene. A bunch of road crew dudes lie dead in the street, their necks covered with black veins. The one guy who’s still alive walks toward the Winchesters. He’s not being especially threatening, but a sheriff’s deputy pops up from behind her car and shoots him in the back. She keeps her gun up. “Show me some skin,” she demands.

She just wants to check their necks for black veins. One everybody passes inspection, Deputy Jenna reveals she accidentally gouged herself on some rebar while trying to hide from the murderous road crew. “They were like rabid dogs! I fired off a warning but they didn’t stop.”

They cart her to the hospital to get her stitched up, but find the place mostly abandoned except for bloody corpses. This gives Sam and Dean time to exposit about how the darknadoes mutated anybody who was exposed. Luckily, it probably only affects a small portion of middle America.

While Dean takes Jenna off for medical care, Sam has a look around. He soon finds an infected road worker trying to bust into the janitor’s closet. A baby cries inside.

Jenna questions her decision to shoot all those guys as Dean sews her up. “This job is supposed to be saving people,” she parallels.

Talking about saving people spurs Dean to have a flashback to his chat with Ms. Darkness. She says she feels so peaceful with him. “I know what you are,” he says. She seems surprised.



For some reason, Sam hides around the corner while the mutated worker tries to get to the baby. Like, I know you’re trying to be all “let’s not kill anybody” but there’s a kid at risk. Luckily, the worker wears himself out or something, and drops dead before anybody has to shoot anybody.



******

Elsewhere, Crowley smokes himself into an attractive 40-something woman in suburbia. For some reason, he has no demonic power in his new meatsuit. So he picks up a crowbar and heads into his meatsuit’s house.

This is where it starts getting gross. Meatsuit’s hubby is in there with another married couple, and everybody’s been waiting for her so they can start an orgy. I have to think the writers KNEW this was gross, because everyone makes it clear that it was Mrs. Meatsuit’s idea to have the orgy, as if this waves away any issues of consent once she’s possessed by a demon. (And if the goal was to show Crowley is unarguably evil for doing this, they wouldn’t have bothered with the half-assed explanation, either.) Crowley gives up the crowbar for the time being.

******

Everybody meets new dad Mike who’s been hiding with his baby daughter in the closet. Mom died shortly after giving birth and then the rabid road crew showed up and started killing everybody else. The hospital seems strangely abandoned. Are there other people they should be looking for? Other babies?

Unfortunately, one of the infected attacked Mike and now he’s infected with the Darkness, too. “I can feel it inside,” he says, despondent.

Dean, Sam and Jenna argue about their plan of action. Dean wants to kill him before Mike can kill them. Sam suggests just waiting for him to die on his own. “There was a… rabid… attacking the closet door, and he just died,” he explains. That… doesn’t sound less cruel than killing him now, tbh. Also, I hope they don’t settle on “rabid” as a monster name because I’m gonna constantly mishear that as “rabbit.”

“I’m sorry but this is untenable,” Dean vocabularies. Mike agrees. He decides to hand his baby over to Jenna and leave while he’s still in control of himself.

Dean gets ready to shoot their way out of the hospital parking lot, but Sam isn’t down with that plan. “We can just wait for them to die,” he says. That is not really a better or kinder plan, but whatever. Dean points out they’ll infect others. “We did this,” he says. “We broke it, we bought it.”

Castiel calls and Dean answers with, “Where the hell are you, Cas?” Cas is like, “I’m okay.” That’s not what he asked, angel muffin. They catch up a little and then the Winchesters get to their latest problem. “Talk to us about the Darkness,” Dean says.

But before they can get much into the particulars, some angels have come along to collect Castiel. Like, he called them for help but he’s gonna regret it.

******

A pair of underling demons show up at the aftermath of Crowley’s suburban orgy. All the other participants are dead. The underlings fumble with what to call their King now that he’s in a female body, and then diagnose him with menopause because he feels hot in his meatsuit.

******

Sam and Dean argue some more about how to proceed. Dean wants to fight their way through to safety, like usual, but Sam has other ideas. “Dean, if we don’t change right now, all of our crap is just gonna keep repeating itself,” he says. He doesn’t want to “kill first, ask questions later” anymore. Y'all remember this the next time they gank a demon instead of exorcising it.

He eventually persuades Dean to take a slightly less bloody path, which involves getting Jenna and the baby to the Impala while he, Sam, leads the infected away from them.

Unfortunately, he locks himself in a supply room that’s already occupied by one of them.

She pounces on him and he slits her throat, getting a big mouthful of infected blood in the process. Nothing good comes of Sam getting sprayed in the face by monster blood, as we know from past experience. When the other infected people bust into the room, they sniff Sam over and then back off, seemingly aware that he’s on his way to becoming one of them.

Meanwhile, Mike shows up to get his baby back. He’s super veiny and gross, but he manages to sputter out, “Her name is Amara,” before dropping dead. How is this contagion supposed to spread when the infected die so quickly? That just seems like a huge design flaw, right there.

*****

Crowley smokes back into his usual meatsuit. His underlings tell him that the Darkness has been released. Suddenly everybody knows about the Darkness. An underling says there’s been trouble from the cage. “The rumor is that Michael or Lucifer…is trying to warn us.” Now a bunch of demons are freaking out? “What do we do?” he asks. Crowley just stares off in silence.

******



Two middle-management angels bring Castiel, in shackles, to yet another Abandoned Building of the Week. He thinks they’re taking him to Heaven, but instead they chain him up right there.

******

Dean pulls over at a gas station so Jenna can change Amara’s diaper before they head on to her grandma’s house some hours away. This gives Dean a chance to call Sam and let him know that the infection seemed to be isolated in that one town. Sam does not tell Dean that he’s been infected, and Dean does not tell Sam that he knows more about the Darkness than he’s let on. Remember that whole chat they just had about NOT wanting to repeat their old patterns?

HAHAHAHA

Dean has another flashback to his meeting with Ms. Darkness. She tells him they’re bound together and shows him the mini-Mark on her chest. “No matter where I am, or who I am, we will always help each other.” She tilts her head up like she’s going to kiss him.

Now, guess what? Wee baby Amara has the very same mark on her chest.

How long before she rapidly ages up to someone Dean can date? If I could stop shuddering long enough, I’d write more about the prospect.



So here we are, one episode into the 11th season. Do you feel like we’re heading anywhere new, or are we destined for a retread? You can probably guess how I feel already, but I’m open to being pleasantly surprised.

I give this episode 2.5 Hellhounds.

– Tippi Blevins

** Those who backed the Kickstarter recap campaign got special spn-themed bingo cards, and the suburban orgy filled in at least two squares.