A primordial chaos known as the Darkness was introduced in the last half of last season’s finale. As is traditional on this show, this threat took the shape of a human being named Amara. First she was a good-looking young woman who Dean met inside a cloud, and then she got herself born into a little baby girl. Also, that cloud infected some folks with Darkness Cooties, including Sam.

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Superior, Nebraska, aka ground zero for the release of the Darkness. The town seems largely abandoned, so Sam helps himself to a hardware store’s merchandise and concocts a makeshift taser. He uses this to knock out one of the infected, possibly choosing this guy because he has a couple things in common with him.

Meanwhile, Dean and Jenna have just arrived in Iowa with baby Amara. There’s some stilted dialog for the purpose of letting us know Jenna likes girls.

Jenna hands Amara over to Dean so she can carry the bags. “You’re so great with her,” Jenna says, even though the baby starts fussing as soon as she’s in Dean’s arms.

Jenna’s grandma is smitten with the baby at first sight. For some reason, nobody wonders whether this child has any next-of-kin they should be contacting.

As soon as Grandma puts Amara down for a nap, the baby uses some mental mojo to knock over a tub of kids’ toys. For some reason, nobody hears this.

*******

Back in Nebraska, Sam has chained up his fellow Darkness cooties sufferer. “What’s your name?” he asks. “Bite Me,” the guy says. Sam decides to just call him that, and so shall I. Bite Me agrees to cooperate with Sam in exchange for a pudding cup.

After some chatting, they discover that Sam’s been infected longer than Bite Me, but is noticeably healthier. Sam is confused.

He begs Sam to put him out of his misery before his head explodes.

*******

Dean calls Castiel, but Castiel doesn’t pick up the phone because he’s still chained up in last week’s abandoned building. His middle-management angel captors, Efraim and Jonah, proceed to torture him for information. “I asked for help,” Castiel says. “And I asked for a vessel that didn’t have psoriasis,” Efraim snits.

*******

Finally Jenna and Grandma hear Amara raising a ruckus and go in to check on her. To their horror, the baby has mentally flung some alphabet blocks into the wall, spelling out the words “FEED ME.”

“I’m calling Father Wyatt,” Grandma says. “Grandma no,” Jenna stops her. “Well, who are we gonna call?” she asks.

Next thing you know, Dean’s answering the phone with, “Ghostbusters,” almost like he read the script or something. As soon as he hears the news, he makes a quick U-turn and starts driving back to Iowa.

He calls Sam with the details. “So ya thinking demon?” Sam asks. “Or the kid got infected by something,” Dean says. “Who knows what was in that giant crazy fart?”

Pic Amara “Did he just call me a giant crazy fart?”

*******

Efraim and Jonah continue torturing Castiel, skewering him like olives for a martini. Efraim seems especially bitter that Castiel’s always picking the Winchesters over Heaven. Man, I hope someone was feeding Misha Collins throat lozenges between takes. All that gravelly screaming. Yikes.

********

Sam is looking up stuff on WebMD or whatever when he hears a woman singing “O Death” somewhere down the hall. Turns out she’s a Reaper named Billie and she has a fine set of pipes. She must have really liked her late boss, too, to be singing cool songs about him. If I sang songs about my ex-boss it’d be like…

She says she has a message for him: “It’s over.”

She says there’s no more coming back from the dead for the Winchesters. I guess I appreciate the show trying to inject some suspense back into the series, but it’s still kinda really hard to believe. Furthermore, they’re not going to Heaven OR Hell, and threatens to toss them into something called The Empty. “You’re unclean in the biblical sense,” she tells Sam.

********

The middle management angels continue torturing Castiel. They prod and poke him for information about Metatron, but he doesn’t know where that annoying twerp is or why he outlived cooler villains like Abaddon. Yeah, the angels got their reasons to be bitter and I got mine.

Efraim flicks him in the crotch with an angel blade, threatening to cut off his business, because the show does love its sexual violence. Just then, Hannah bursts through the door in her borrowed male vessel.

********

Sam decides to try praying to God in the hospital’s chapel. “This is my fault, and I don’t know how to fix it,” he says.

“If I have to die, I’ve made my peace with that,” Sam goes on, “but, please, Dean deserves better.” He also asks God to save all the other people in danger, too. “I need a sign,” he says.

As he’s walking out of the chapel, he’s hit with a vision of some Hellraiser shit going on with his body, like hooks and chains all in him. It’s kind of like Dean’s intro to Hell, but not? Maybe it’s Sam’s flashback to having Lucifer in the cage. “What does that mean?!” he shouts up at the ceiling.

God doesn’t answer and neither does the ceiling.

********

Much to Dean’s dismay, Crowley has passed himself off as a priest to Jenna’s grandma. “Do you know each other?” Jenna asks. “Dean was a rather scrumptious young altar boy,” Crowley says.

********

Hannah shoos away the other angels and eases Castiel into a chair. The cuffs stay on at Castiel’s insistence. “Can you heal me?” he asks. Hannah tries and fails, or maybe pretends to fail. Hannah knows about the “disturbance” in Nebraska, but prods Castiel for the Winchesters’ whereabouts. Like, how about you get your little borrowed butt to Nebraska and look for them yourself?

Castiel figures out that Hannah is only pretending to help him and set up the whole angelnapping scenario in the first place. “We were friends,” Castiel says. “That was before you freed Metatron,” Hannah says. “Before…” She doesn’t finish that one for some reason.

Meanwhile, Dean and Crowley have a chitchat outside so that Jenna can go upstairs and get herself possessed or whatever by Amara. They rush back in when they hear Grandma screaming, and find her lying dead on the kitchen floor, throat sliced open.

Castiel’s interrogation session continues. When Hannah tries to stop it, Efraim goes American Psycho on her. Castiel is so mad that he blows off his torture crown like an overheated Jiffy Pop. He kills Jonah and then Efraim kills Hannah in a really boring, predictable way, which REALLY sets Castiel off.

********

Back in Nebraska, Sam’s symptoms have worsened. He’s flopping around, having flashbacks, being sweaty. He remembers Billie telling him he was unclean in the biblical sense, and this gives him an idea.

One quick web search later, he’s holding a burning roll of gauze dipped in holy oil next to his neck.

Once he’s miraculously cured, he lures some other Cooties sufferers to the hospital and traps them in a ring of holy fire. Remember when holy oil was kind of rare on this show? Now it apparently comes in economy-size drums. Anyway, the cure works.

********

Dean has discovered the little Mark of Cain (which I guess is now technically the Mark of Darkness) on baby Amara’s chest. He looks horrified, which is pretty much how I look any time I think she might grow up to be his love interest.

Jenna’s in her grandma’s bedroom, busting up her collection of religious figurines. Crowley figures out she doesn’t have a soul. Dean’s like, “How’s that even possible?” Yeah, because that NEVER happens on this show. “Amara’s hungry,” Jenna explains. “She’s a growing girl.” She attacks Dean.

While Jenna fights Dean, Amara morphs into a kindergartner. She finds a cute dress and pitterpatters out of the house.

Eventually, Crowley kills Jenna because the fight scene is going on too long. He has designs on Amara and flings Dean into a closet when he tries to get in the way. “I want that child, and I get what I want,” Crowley says, as if his plans don’t almost always blow up in his face.

Dean manages to pin Crowley to the wall with an angel blade through the hand, but passes up the chance to kill him.

By the time Dean realizes Amara is gone, Crowley has freed himself and disappeared.

*******

The Winchesters return to the bunker, which is strangely in a lot better shape than the last time they saw it. I mean, the door’s back on, there are no dead Stynes or pools of blood. The books are in disarray, and that’s about it.

“We gotta get a maid,” Dean says, instead of feeling kinda bad he killed that one Styne kid. “You know, one with a little uniform and really big–” Dean doesn’t have a chance to finish his gross remark, because Castiel’s lying there on the floor asking for their help. The Winchesters look confused.

*******

Crowley approaches Amara on a sunny street and offers her a van full of bound-and-gagged victims. “Want some candy, little girl?” Ew. Like, yes, that’s an eons-old non-human entity. But it’s also a kid that said entity took over. She was a baby born to regular human parents in the wrong place and the wrong time.

And why does Amara even eat souls? She predates souls. Bah! This whole thing is giving me a headache like an angelic torture crown.

I give this episode 2 out of 5 Hellhounds.

–Tippi Blevins

