“If our goal is to end the supernatural threat here, we need to destroy every obstacle.”
So that’s what the British Men of Letters are attempting to do. What a lofty goal. The BMOL don’t kid around, clearly. Lady Antonia’s rant comes at the end of the second episode “Mamma Mia,” another solid hour in the early days of Supernatural‘s twelfth season.
Ending the “supernatural threat” probably means exactly what we think it means — getting rid of every supernatural creature to ever exist. Lady Antonia did say Britain hasn’t had a monster-related death since the sixties, right? But getting rid of the supernatural seems like a terrible idea. It’s a yin and yang thing. Dark and light, like what Chuck was saying about Amara last season. Even though the world at large isn’t aware of the supernatural’s existence, the supernatural world has always existed alongside the normal world, sort of like it does in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Getting rid of it could have it’s own detriments, but then again, I don’t think that’s the entire picture here. Especially in Lady Antonia’s case, who’s insistence of eradicating the supernatural seems a lot more personal to me.
But that’s all coming down the line. “Mamma Mia” starts right where the premiere left off, with Lady Antonia using more intimate and psychological means of torture to get Sam to talk. It works for a little while, but not before Sam spills anything major, and we’re right back where we left Sam — chained to a chair in a creepy basement. Lady Antonia starts listing off some major mistakes Sam has made, including bringing up Ruby. The BMOL really knows everything about the Winchesters, something that I’m having a hard time grasping as to how they know everything they do.
Meanwhile, Cas is out searching for Sam while Dean and Mary look for clues in the bunker. Mary is still getting used to modern technology, while Dean is trying to get used to having his mother around again. The two are awkward around each other, but the time Cas spends searching for Sam gives Dean and Mary some time to talk. Mary believes everything the boys have been through is her fault. Technically, this is true. Mary’s deal with the yellow-eyed demon is what puts Sam on Azazel’s path, but Dean tells her she can’t think that way. Dean admits to how Mary’s death changed John. It’s a nice mother-son moment that ends with Mary telling Dean she’s nervous to meet Sam, something Dean hadn’t thought about.
Once Cas locates the building Sam is being kept in, he calls Dean, who then tells Mary she would be safer in the bunker. I rolled my eyes a bit at this because it’s a tired way of inciting conflict, not to mention we already know Mary isn’t going to stay behind. We don’t really need the argument. Mary was a hunter, and now she is again. We saw her handle her own last week already. Dean doesn’t put up much of a fight, but I hope that’s the only time we hear that this season. As far as plans of attack go, theirs isn’t a very good one, and Dean gets captured by Lady Antonia pretty quickly. Sam, who believed Dean to be dead, gets his first surprise of the day in seeing Dean again. Lady Antonia does some more torture, bringing up Dean’s vampire friend Benny in the process, and then bam! Mary to the rescue. That would be Sam’s second surprise of the day, if you didn’t catch on.
There’s too much action going on, so Sam and Mary’s reunion doesn’t hold much fanfare. We do get to meet Lady Antonia’s boss though, a guy named Mick, who informs us that Lady Antonia has gone off script and none of this torture was supposed to happen, but now that everyone is alive, the Winchesters can just go on their way. Mick seems a bit more level-headed than Lady Antonia, but purely a business man. The next time the Winchesters see Mick again, it might not end as diplomatically as this first encounter did.
Then we get a proper moment between Sam and Mary, one that honestly steals the entire show from last night. I don’t think Jared Padalecki has had a single better scene as Sam Winchester than his heart felt meeting with his mother. And Sam giving Mary John’s journal? A nice surprise, considering I kind of forgot that thing existed.
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That was all the good stuff. The other part of this episode was Crowley’s search for Lucifer, with the help of Rowena. Last week, Lucifer was jumping meat suits, but this week he seems to have found the right vessel in the form of guest star Rick Springfield, who plays a depressed and alcoholic rock star. For the first time, Lucifer actually looks the part, but I wasn’t into Springfield’s version of Lucifer. Each time Lucifer is played by someone other than Mark Pellegrino, the other actors being Padalecki and Misha Collins, they have always adopted Pellegrino’s mannerisms. It might have been a different person playing him, but it was always clearly the same character. With Springfield, I’m not getting that, and he feels like too much of a new version of Lucifer. And the scenes spent watching Lucifer torture the rock star before possessing him is the exact same sequence of events that took place in the season five premiere episode “Sympathy for the Devil,” when Lucifer was haunting his first vessel, Nick (Mark Pellegrino). There was a lot of screen time dedicated to the build up of Lucifer possessing Rick Springfield, and it wasn’t necessary since we’ve already seen this before.
Anyway, it looks like it’s back to good old monster hunting next week. We’re jumping back into the monster-of-the-week stuff earlier than usual, but with the added addition of Mary Winchester for the foreseeable future, having three on the team will be a nice change up.
Rating: 8/10
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