We turned on Supernatural this week, waiting to see the conversation between Castiel and Dean, and instead, it opens with a start of a case. A man going into a hotel room repeating to himself, “it’s not real,” until a dead boy ghost comes in to kill him.
In any other episode, we would accept this. Many Supernatural episodes have opened this way. It’s a classic old school case. Those are great. But that wasn’t what fans were looking for this week.
We waited for the entire episode and never got that conversation. The episode centered around a case Dean (Jensen Ackles) thought he had handled when they were kids. It also had Dean not telling Sam (Jared Padalecki) about the nest of kids he found during the investigation. Today, he says it was because it was the worst thing he’d ever seen at that point. I guess he’s had a problem talking about the hard things from the beginning.
The lesson from his past was definitely, to tell the truth, but he hasn’t learned that lesson yet. While he finally tells Sam about Billie (Lisa Berry) and Jack’s (Alexander Calvert) plan, he neglects to tell him why Jack is doing this: for Dean’s forgiveness.
Is Dean really still that angry that he’s okay with this? Sam has done some pretty horrible things too. He let Dean become a vampire when he didn’t have a soul. Without knowing there was a cure.
Jack lost his soul to save Sam and Dean. He didn’t mean to kill Mary. Dean likes to hold his grudges, but this is going too far. And I’m starting to really get mad at him, and this is not how I want to say goodbye to my favorite Winchester.
While we didn’t get an emotional moment from Jared last week, we did this week, and it was anger. If he knew the whole truth, he would probably be even more furious. The boys have had fights before, but I think this was the worst. Dean tried to speak, and Sam yelled, stop. He tried again, and Sam said don’t, and the next time told him just to drive.
I don’t think Sam has ever been more furious with his brother, and I felt it.
Not that we haven’t had Sam and Dean at odds with each other going into the final battle before. But now they are going up against the two most powerful beings ever. Everyone needs to be on the same page.
As for the rest of the episode, I wasn’t that impressed. I like a good old school case, and I like flashback episodes, but some of this was definitely phoned in, particularly the story. It just wasn’t interesting.
There were some key elements of the episode tying somethings together from the entire series. Sam decided all the way back then he wanted to go to college, and Dean made him think it wasn’t a good idea, he could never do it, and that this was their life. He later in the episode added that they made a good team. I’m not sure we needed any of this.
As I said, the lesson from the case was, to tell the truth. I don’t think the story was constructed well to give this message. It felt like a filler episode.
Billie was back, though. And it broke my heart hearing that all she had to do to get Jack to get on board was to tell him that Dean would forgive him if he sacrificed himself to kill God and get Dean off the hamster wheel. Dean, can you please step back and see how sorry this young man is and realize it isn’t even his fault!
Once again, we didn’t get much of Sam. Flashback episodes are probably great for Jensen and Jared because they don’t have to work as much. I get it. They work hard when they have to be on the screen all the time, but I miss Sam, and we only have four episodes left. I don’t want to skimp on Dean (even if I am not happy with him right now) to get more Sam time, but we need more of our boys in these last episodes.
As Billie says, “it’s go time,” so I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more of our boys as we near the finish line.
Will Cas (Misha Collins) find another way? Will Dean let go of his grudge and forgive Jack? How will the plan go horribly wrong? So many questions as we enter the final episodes.
Did you enjoy this flashback episode? Tweet me @MandyTTCarr or comment below.
