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Thank you, @putowtin, @sayessa, @buffyslittlebangs, Ciar, @kevvoi, Carol B, @ominous-musings, @snazzyo , @eriquin



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Previously on Supernatural:

Ghosts existed.

Also, the Darkness was an attractive young woman inside a smoke tornado. Then she got herself reborn into a little baby and ate souls to age herself up.

Currently on Supernatural:

We’re in Fall River, Massachusetts with a young couple staying the night in a frou-frou little inn. The male half of the couple has Justin Timberlake’s old ramen noodle hair. The young lovers hope that something creepy happens there, as promised by the Ghostfacers.



I momentarily clench up, dreading the appearance of the Ghostfacers, but it was for naught.

The lights flicker, then blink off. “Ooh, she’s coming to get you,” Ramen Noodle teases. Additional creepy things happen, culminating in the appearance of a shadowy female figure wielding an ax. The girlfriend gets it first, then Ramen Noodle. The door hanger on the knob, now bloody, identifies this quaint inn as Lizzie Borden’s Bed & Breakfast.

At the bunker, the Winchesters mull over possible new cases. Sam thought he had something in a town where half the people went mad. “But it turns out they had eaten rabid possum meat,” he says. “You do realize a possum is a giant rat,” Dean says. “It’s a marsupial,” Sam corrects him.

Okay, since we’re teaching people about “possums” today:

Sam presents Dean with the recent ax murders in Lizzie Borden’s old home. They have their usual discussion about whether or not it’s really a case. Isn’t it always a case? Dean thinks Sam just wants to indulge his serial killer fetish.

Dean ultimately gives in. “What do you wanna do about Cas?” he asks. “He’s knee-deep in binge watching season two of The Wire,” Sam says. Haha boy, is he gonna be confused when he gets to this familiar face.

They get to Massachusetts much more quickly than they got to Oregon last week. Also, the Impala is 100% fixed up and pretty again.

The bed and breakfast is run by a son and his mother. There is chitchat about how trying it can be to work with family. I imagine it’s especially hard when your mom is clearly younger than you.

More talking. The recently dead guy was a descendant of the Bordens. This will ultimately have nothing to do with the story, but for now it makes the Winchesters curious. They rent the room, blessedly without any jokey-jokey nudge-nudge “so you guys must be a couple” references. Good job, new writer!

Sam discovers some odd EMF readings, but seems more perplexed by a bottle of perfume.

The bros split up to search the house. Dean sees a cherubic guy in his 30s outside, taking pictures with an old-timey camera. He splits as soon as Dean tries to get his attention.

Meanwhile, Sam has found an EMF generator in the attic. Like, an actual machine and not a ghost just puttin’ vibes into the universe or something. He meets back up with Dean in the room. Big bro has found timers that flicker the lights and speakers in the walls to broadcast ghostly weeping.

As soon as the Winchesters leave in search of beer and lobster rolls, the innkeeper’s “mom” gets axed in her bedroom.

******

After getting the particulars of the case from a local detective, the Winchesters once again split up to cover more plot. Dean has a chat with Len, the cherubic photographer, while Sam investigates another murder that just happened one county over.

Particulars of the latest murder: A babysitter found her charge’s father dead in the driveway. The babysitter is adorable. She’s probably evil just based off that. “I heard Jordy’s dad pull up,” she tells Sam, “then there was this shout.” The mom comes home and cuts the interview short very curtly. This makes Sam suspicious

Meanwhile, Dean chats with Len, who is a Lizzie Borden superfan. Len is chipper and friendly. “I was trying to get a picture of Lizzie’s ghost,” he says when Dean asks him about his late-night prowling. He couldn’t go inside because the innkeeper has a restraining order against him.

Dean notices a drawing of the Mark of Cain on Len’s coffee table and picks it up.

Through Len’s flashback, we see that he met tween-age Amara outside Lizzie’s house a few nights earlier. Turns out primordial chaos is a Lizzie fan, too! She’s pretty creepy.

Now Dean knows that Amara is growing up fast.

Len continues his flashback so that we can see Amara suck out his soul. “I don’t know what that girl did to me, but I haven’t been right since,” he says. He can’t eat or sleep and nothing feels like it’s worth doing anymore. He says he’s just been going through the motions hoping to get back to himself. “I’m like a robot puppet man,” he sighs.

******

The Winchesters meet up to catch each other up on their investigations. Dean wonders why people react differently to losing their souls. Jenna went stone-cold killer while Len is cuddly but depressed.

Sam thinks the mom at the recent crime scene might have lost her soul, too. “She couldn’t have cared less that her husband died,” he says. “That’s kind of the way I I felt the whole time I was soulless.” He figures she could be the ax murderer.

******

They go looking for the mom with Len in tow, since they can’t leave him on his own in the event he finally goes murdery. The babysitter admits the mom might be at her “special” friend’s house.

Len babbles cutely about his symptoms. Was it a stroke? A brain tumor? Why doesn’t he like chicken and waffles anymore? “I feel like something is hatching inside of me, something dark,” he says. “You don’t have a soul,” Dean finally blabs, cuffing Len to the Impala’s door handle. “Well, how do I get it back?” Len asks. “Generally you don’t,” Sam says.

Noticing that the inside of the boyfriend’s house looks wrecked, Dean picks the lock on the front door to get in. The Winchesters split up so they can use up more of the episode’s running time. You know, for guys who spend a lot of time sneaking around, they really should invest in quieter shoes. They sound like tap-dancing horses.

Anyway, Dean finds the mom and her boyfriend hacked to death in the basement. Somebody sneaks up behind him and knocks him out. Meanwhile, Sam finds Jordy tied up in a closet. The same somebody sneaks up on Sam, too! It’s the babysitter.

When Dean wakes up, he finds that he and Sam have both been tied up in the basement. “You two are an offering to my new friend,” she says.

The babysitter proceeds to tell them about how she met Amara after leaving a bar one night, broken up about her boyfriend dumping her. Amara took her hand and worked some kind of emotional bliss-mojo on her.

Then little Amara sucked out her soul and wandered off to her next meal.

The babysitter talks about her abusive childhood and her boyfriend (Ramen Noodle) bringing his new girlfriend to the inn. She killed all the other people for various reasons, too, and goes into detail so that the Winchesters can work on surreptitiously untying themselves.

Fisticuffs ensue! Just when it looks like the babysitter has shot Sam, Len pops up from behind and axes her. “The Darkness is coming… it’s so peaceful,” the babysitter whispers with her last breath.

******

Len is concerned that he doesn’t feel anything about killing the babysitter. Why does he even feel worried about that, though? Did Amara only take 99% of his soul? He asks Dean to kill him, but Dean doesn’t want to do that.

Len decides to turn himself in so he doesn’t kill anyone else. Well, I guess he could kill fellow prisoners, but let’s just say he won’t.

*******

The brothers have their episode-ending moment while eating burgers with the Impala. They muse over the Darkness’s differing effects on different people. “What was it like for you?” Sam asks. “It was quiet until she started hatchin’ monsters,” Dean says. He’s either dodging the question or the show doesn’t know exactly where it’s going with this.

Incongruously happy music plays as they drive away. Amara watches them from the side of the road. “Bye, Dean,” she says with a little wave. “I’ll see you soon.”

I give this episode 3.25 Hellhounds:

– Tippi Blevins