Supernatural Season 14 Episode 3 Review: The Scar

This Supernatural review contains spoilers.

Supernatural Season 14 Episode 3

Now that the Winchesters are back together, it’s time for a good ol’ fashioned hunt. And by that, I mean, not that. Not that at all. This isn’t so much a hunt as it is a search for a weapon to kill Michael. The source lies with a hood-wearing assassin from another realm who ties up a loose end left hanging by the absence of Wayward Sister’s demise.

Our main storyline piggybacks off the cliffhanger set up by the Wayward Sisters backdoor pilot. Since the spinoff show was never greenlit, it looks like we’ll only see the aftermath here. The Kaia from the Bad Place is set up as the main villain, though it doesn’t take long to realize she’s not really meant to be dispatched as easily as our monsters-of-the-week.

The Kaia storyline doesn’t feel too dire. What it does accomplish is call out Dean on his own aggressiveness. Kaia points out how he overcompensates for fear with anger, especially after being possessed. That’s about all we get out of this storyline, besides the crew finding out that Michael has improved some vampires the same way he did with the werewolves.

further reading: Supernatural Season 14 Episode 2 Review: Gods and Monsters

The fighting action is pretty one-sided, making it prime material for Kaia to save them at the last minute with some admittedly sweet sword-staff swinging action. There was a great moment that led up to this. Kaia dives out the window away from the fight when Dean expects her to jump into the fray, leading to a look of disappointment on his face. This was a brief moment of comedy that worked.

Throughout the episode, Dean pointedly refuses dealing with his emotions post-Michael, which is so Dean, but also so done before. Every time one of the Winchesters goes through a traumatic season finale — i.e. death, possession, hell — they don’t feel like discussing it or they will only selectively remember. It reminds me of the convenient amnesia that ran rampant throughout Smallville. 

Luckily there’s not as much waiting as usual until Dean starts to open up. Being under Michael’s control, Dean was subjected to the sensation of constantly drowning. It’s a creative torture that’s particularly cruel and unique to Michael. We’ve seen torture on Supernatural many times before, and to keep it fresh, the writers keep coming up with new horrors. This did the trick for me. The little bit of aggression Dean showed this episode is only the beginning. 

We got a little bit of Sheriff Jody — enough to see her fighting and dealing with anxiety over how much to tell Claire. It wasn’t enough. That bit of angst over dealing with Claire on a case that the kid would surely want to be in on — that’s prime drama. Seeing Jody cowed not by a trio of vampires but by her adopted daughter? Priceless, though I felt there could be so much more. 

The B-Story was that of Cas and Jack trying to help a girl subjected to a deadly aging spell. This serves one very big purpose: showing Jack that he’s not useless without his powers. In the end, magic and angelic healing didn’t work. It was good ol’ problem solving and critical thinking that did the trick. I do question why the girl never took off the necklace the witch gave her, but that’s probably me being too critical. In a world of witches, curses, angels and demons, it’s only natural to question why a girl wouldn’t get rid of a gift from a problematic foster parent of sorts.

We didn’t have a lot of surprising revelations here. The aging spell conclusion – that the witch was literally stealing the girl’s youth – was easy to spot from the get-go, and we had to know that Dean wouldn’t be getting the weapon that would kill Michael in one episode. The biggest shock was when Jack coughs up blood at the very end. Being human does not look good on him. 

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