The boys are back! The 12th season of Supernatural has officially begun. And as usual, we’d all better hold onto our butts, because the road ahead is never smooth.
Last season left off with the Winchester brothers saving the world from being destroyed by the Darkness, who also happened to be God’s sister. As a parting gift to Dean (Jensen Ackles), she gave him what he needed most – his mother, Mary Winchester (Samantha Smith). It wasn’t completely a happy ending, however. At the same time, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Castiel (Misha Collins) had a surprise female visitor at the bunker. After banishing Castiel, the woman stated she was from the London chapter of The Men of Letters, then proceeded to shoot Sam.
This is where our new season begins, with Dean clueless about what’s happened to Sammy and the viewers knowing he’s going to blow a gasket when he finds out.
The episode opens with Dean being reunited with his mom. At first, she has no idea who Dean is. After all, she has been dead for over 30 years and he’s no longer the four-year-old boy she knew then. Dean is able to convince her of his identity by sharing the stories of her he had been told by his father. Having been raised by a hunter herself, Mary accepts the fact that she is back from the dead relatively well and they are able to have a much-needed tender moment followed by some time to catch up.
Meanwhile, Sam is tied up in the back of his shooter’s car, having been shot in the leg. Antonia (Elizabeth Blackmore), his captor, makes a stop at a veterinarian’s house and has him patch up the younger Winchester brother before taking him to an unknown location and tying him to a chair.
By this time, Dean and Mary have returned to the bunker, immediately seeing the blood on the floor and knowing something is wrong. While they are looking around, Castiel returns, filling Dean in on the few details about what happened that he knew. Using the time of the attack and traffic light cameras, they are at least able to find a lead by getting the license plate number of the car, enough to begin their search for Sam.
Back to Sam, Antonia begins an attempted interrogation. She claims that she wants information about him, his brother, and how they stopped the darkness. Sam is understandably mistrusting, considering the woman shot him. In light of his refusal to cooperate, Antonia and her partner, Ms. Watt (Bronagh Waugh), begin the torture. Yet Sam, having been tortured by far scarier things than humans, maintains his stance with one response, “Screw you.”
After a long, freezing-cold water torture, Antonia tries to convince Sam to cooperate again, telling him he’s not the hero in this story. Instead, he’s just really bad at his job. She explains that instead of waiting for someone to die before taking care of a monster, they take a more proactive approach by finding and killing them before they hurt anyone. She also states that they are looking for hunters they can work with, ones they can teach their ways to, so they can make America safe. Not appreciating their methods, Sam still refuses to talk and their method of breaking him escalates further. Eventually, they realize that causing pain will not work to break Sam, and decide to drug him while he’s passed out instead.
Dean, Mary, and Castiel made some progress in their search, having followed the trail all the way to the veterinarian who treated Sam and managing to acquire Antonia’s phone number. The call with her doesn’t go so well, however, and the best Dean can do is threaten what will come of her when he finds them. Still, they have the number and decide to head back to the bunker to see if they can use the signal to get a location.
The trip is halted when a car slams into them, knocking Mary unconscious. As Dean is checking on his mother, the driver of the other vehicle gets Dean’s attention. It’s Ms. Watt, who somehow manages to put a major beat down on both Dean and Castiel.
Thankfully, Mary comes to in time to save them by stabbing their attacker with Castiel’s angel blade.
Mary is a bit shaken, of course. Not only did she just kill someone, she had run away from this kind of hunter life and did not want this for her children. Dean is understanding, yet explains that this is who they are and that he feels they “make the world a better place.”
Things are looking bleak for Sam though, as the drugs have kicked in and he begins to hallucinate about some of the worst moments of the last few years, memories that he feels guilty about. It gets to the point that he can’t handle it, so he breaks a mirror and slits his own throat.
Antonia is horrified that her plan went so terribly wrong, rushing down to the basement where they were holding him captive to see the damage. Sam turns the tables though, showing that he only cut his hand, knowing that he was being watched through a video camera. After a struggle, Sam nearly escapes. Nearly.
“But where is Crowley in all this?” you might ask. He apparently has his own thing going on. Throughout the episode, he followed a pair of demons around as they cleaned up a trail of dead bodies on orders from Lucifer, people with their eyes burned out. Crowley ends up confronting them, stating that he knew the deaths were caused by Lucifer jumping from body to body looking for a vessel. Crowley is trying to track Lucifer down. Why? We don’t know. But it certainly can’t be good and will be interesting to find out through the next episodes.
For now, we end with Dean and Mary still looking for Sam, the latter also dealing with how much the world has changed since she died. The episode has definitely opened up some storylines to make us want more, promising to be full of drama, humor, and the wild twists we’re used to.
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Supernatural airs on Wednesday nights at 9pm ET/PT on The CW.
