‘Supernatural’ Season 15 Episode 14 Recap: “Last Holiday”

By
Saim Cheeda
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Supernatural Season 15 Episode 14
Meagen Fay as Mrs. Butters, Jared Padalecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean in ‘Supernatural’ season 15 episode 14 (Photo: Colin Bentley © 2020 The CW Network, LLC)

We’re back with The CW’s Supernatural after so very long. And you know what? The show proves once again why it can do everything. After ending the previous episode hinting that Jack’s grief at causing Mary’s death will usher in a heavy-handed follow-up, season 15 episode 14 – “Last Holiday” – turned out to be an episode that brought in heartwarming moments aplenty.

We start off with Jack (Alexander Calvert) still moping about Mary’s death now that he has his soul back, while Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) deal with the Men of Letters HQ’s weird technical issues. Dean – who’s strangely hopped up in this episode as if the show got a sixteenth season – simply presses the reset button in the console room. For once, this doesn’t bring in anything bad for the Winchesters. Quite the contrary, as an elderly woman named Mrs. Butters (Meagen Fay) shows up. She claims to be a wood nymph who had been trained by the Men of Letters – the guys Abaddon had killed in the past – as the HQ’s caretaker.

As it turns out, Mrs. Butters had kept herself on standby back in 1958 in hopes the Men of Letters would return and release her, so she’s pretty much stuck in 2020 now. Sam’s initial skepticism in keeping Mrs. Butters around is waved off by Dean, who loves the idea of a motherly figure taking care of them (projecting much, Dean?). She does prove herself to be handy, activating the true potential of the HQ, meaning Sam and Dean can now track monsters from the console room and easily ambush them. This basically gives them easy hunts they can finish like nothing now.

For the first time ever, Supernatural opts for a montage that skips forward in the timeline – by a lot, I might add. We get to see many holidays and events celebrated, ranging from Halloween to birthdays. The fact that we see Sam’s birthday being celebrated in May confirms that Mrs. Butters has been in the boys’ life for almost a year by this point. And I just love it because it means our heroes got to have a family life where they actually enjoyed themselves. Sam, Jack, and Dean were happy and had a “mom” taking care of them. My issue with Mary had always been her lack of motherly affection, so watching Mrs. Butters in this role felt somewhat cathartic to me. If only Castiel were there to complete this group…

Anyway, fast forward to present-day and Sam’s leaving for a date with Eileen (yes, they’re doing normal stuff like date nights too now). Everything’s perfect, but it wouldn’t be Supernatural if things didn’t go south, would it?

Jack finds a tape from the ‘50s where Mrs. Butters was shown being trained in brutally killing people by the Men of Letters. Before he can tell Dean about it, Mrs. Butters ambushes him. She’d been handing him smoothies all these months and it turns out these were designed to drain his powers.

Mrs. Butters was basically brainwashed by the Men of Letters to see evil in black and white. So, Jack being Lucifer’s son and all, she’s made up her mind that he needs to be killed. Dean’s disappointed, in particular, because this means all those tasty meals are over. Mrs. Butters overpowers him too when she realizes he’s not going to kill Jack.

Supernatural Season 15 Episode 14
Meagen Fay as Mrs. Butters, Jared Padalecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean in season 15 episode 14 (Photo: Colin Bentley © 2020 The CW Network, LLC)

While locked up, Dean admits to Jack that he’s still angry to some degree about Mary’s death (seriously, aren’t we done with this whole Dean angry stuff already?) but assures Jack he won’t let “Evil Mary Poppins” hurt him.

Sam’s the next one to be caught once he returns from his date. Being the more compassionate one, he argues with Mrs. Butters that Jack isn’t bad and that he cares about him. Mrs. Butters reluctantly starts torturing her “favorite” Winchester (sorry, Dean) before she’s interrupted by Jack and Dean, who fumbled their way to freedom earlier.

Eventually, the guys are able to convince her that Jack really isn’t evil. Mrs. Butters has to concede that Jack might not be like she thought, although she decides to return to the woods to find peace from her brainwashing. Dean, realizing just how important and valuable their great times were, makes a (horrible) birthday cake for Jack, so there’s hope he won’t go back to being sour with him.

Overall, this episode reminded me how much I’ll be missing Supernatural because it delivered so many heartwarming moments. With just six episodes left, I doubt we’ll be getting such a fun story again and I sure will appreciate this one.




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