Supernatural: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Review

This Supernatural review contains spoilers.

Supernatural: Season 11, Episode 9

Amara is all grown up and ready to pick a fight with God. The only problem is, she’s having as much trouble as everyone else with finding Him, so she decides to leave a bloody trail of bodies wherever she goes to catch His attention. You don’t call, you don’t write, and now this? What a sibling rivalry.

Sam’s visions have come to a tipping point. His latest put him directly in the cage with Lucifer. This vision is more measured, dream-like. It doesn’t come across all random and hard to understand like the previous visions were. It seems that he really is getting closer to understanding God’s intentions for him. That is, until that devastating ending scene. More on that later.

Parallel to Sam’s plan to meet Lucifer, we see Amara wreaking a path of destruction, first at a park and then in a church. Probably more than that too– Amara’s not exactly subtle. The first scene with Amara felt too TV-movie -ish. Might have been the visual effects not living up to their usual standard of TV excellence — the fire and lightning looked especially fake. I’m getting too critical, aren’t I?

There’s a bit of a throwaway scene in which some angels we’ve never seen before (disposable characters alert!) plan to have all the angels set aside their differences, band together, and defeat the Darkness. It’s like the pep-talk before the ending scene of any sports or competition film, except without the knowledge that it’s all going to turn out alright. Nameless Angels 1 through 4 are summarily slaughtered by Amara in a later scene, in creative, flashy ways.

Dean catches up with Amara and they have a private chat. Amara’s testimony about God and how she doesn’t understand how humanity can believe in Him felt so honest and vulnerable. She really puts across an innocence, until you remember that she delighted in sucking peoples souls and frying them with lightning mere hours before. Finally Dean gets his head out of the clouds and goes to kill her with Ruby’s knife — which shatters ineffectually. Damn. I mean, we can’t exactly expect a demon-killing knife to end something as old as God but it was still shocking. That knife is practically a guest star on this show. That knife probably has its own fanfiction, for crying out loud.

There is a smidge of comic relief when Rowena is recruited into Sam’s cause. When she finds out that Sam wants to speak to Lucifer, she positively fangirls over the prospect of meeting this “Dark Prince” and agrees to help. Down in the Pit, she gushes over Lucifer, but rightfully assumes he’s not boyfriend material. It was a different side of Rowena for sure, and a nice little side trip into humor before things got serious between Sam and his old bunkmate.

The ending scene was nail-bitingly intense. The wards around Lucifer’s cage break down, and Sam is spirited into the cage with Lucifer who tries his best to pick up on the harassment he inflicted upon Sam years ago. Sam, showing a great deal of bravery and faith, closes his eyes and looks calm for a few moments, remarking how this is how his vision went. Lucifer has a bit of a laugh at Sam’s expense because he is actually the one who sent those visions. There have been a number of times in Supernatural when we’ve seen Sam in terror, but that moment in which he loses all hope and a single tear falls down his cheek hit hard.

It’s going to be difficult waiting until January 20^th.