Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 13.12 “Various and Sundry Villains”

Here we go!

Then:  Flashbacks include Rowena, the huge book of spells, Lucifer killing her, Michael taking Lucifer’s grace in Alt World, Cas, Lucifer, and Asmodeus.  We also get a little glimpse of Scooby Doo on the TV.

Now:  On I135, north of Wichita, Kansas, a man walks into a convenience store, greeting Marty, the cashier.  He is attracted by two pretty girls laughing and approaches them.  One slips a hex bag into his pocket and mutters a spell.  His eyes turn purple and a dazed, happy look covers his face as sweet music plays in the background:  he’s in love!  

The girls are sisters, Jaime and Jenny.  They’re headed to Lebanon, KS, and need gas and money.  The man stares entranced, even when they suggest he rob the store.  “What about Marty?” he asks, but they don’t care and, obviously, under the spell, neither does he, because we see poor Marty thrown through a window.  The man exits the store with arms full of supplies for the girls; he’s oblivious to having done anything wrong.  All he wants to do is please the woman whose love-spell has him captivated.  The girls reflect on their mother’s lessons, one of which was to never leave a dead body behind looking like magic was involved in the kill.  So one hoists a huge hammer, knocks the hapless lover boy to the ground and then swings the sledge hammer brutally down.  Blood spatters her face as she smiles.  

In the bunker, Dean is bringing Sam books to research alternate realities.  Dean struggles to even pronounce some of the titles and wants Sam to “do your Sam thing.”  They reveal that Cas has been calling them every day, checking in with them.

The scene changes to Cas in a jail cell, Lucifer in the adjacent one.  Dipper, a hench-demon, taunts Lucifer, who is outraged that he lacks the power he should have as an archangel.  Lucifer asks Cas for some of his grace so he can regain his power and get them out of there.  Cas refuses and challenges Lucifer:  if Asmodeus was Lucifer’s weakest creation, as Lucifer claimed, what does it say about how weak Lucifer is, if he is incapable of overcoming even his weakest creation?

While Sam studies in the bunker, Dean has gone on a beer run.  As he exits the store, he hears a frantic call for help.  The witch sisters have made it to Lebanon, but they look like normal girls, one frantic and upset over the other lying still on the ground.  As Dean leans over to help, a hex bag is slipped into his pocket and an incantation is whispered.  Music plays.  His eyes glow purple.  He’s enamored.   At the sister’s suggestion, he wakes the prone girl with a kiss.

Dean enters the bunker and declares he’s in love.  He says he’s twitter-pated.  Have we ever seen Dean so light-hearted?  Sam is completely confused but definitely suspicious as Dean, still blissfully proclaiming about finding his soulmate, pulls out the Black Grimoire, the huge, old, deadly spell book.  He’s going to give to Jaime as a gift.  “Don’t you remember Becky in Vegas and the love spell?” Sam reminds him, but reasons can’t reach Dean through the powerful influence he’s under so Sam grabs away the Impala keys.  Dean won’t be stopped.  Utterly cheerful, he punches Sam in the jaw, knocking him out and declaring he’ll WALK back to the sisters to deliver the book they want.  

Dean approaches the girls, holding up the book like a trophy.  “I wanted the car!” one of them pouts.  She’s about to hammer Dean’s head in (though he’s utterly oblivious), when that beautiful black car pulls in.  It’s Sam with a gun, ready to protect his brother, who, still under the spell, tackles him!   As they struggle, Sam manages to get the hex bag out of Dean’s pocket, but nothing changes:   Dean is still twitter-pated.  Suddenly, purple lightning flashes.  Dean is set free by none other than Rowena, smiling triumphantly at them.

Back in the cells, Dipper the Demon tells Cas that there are “big plans for you.”  Lucifer says that Michael is coming and will kill them all.  The demon doesn’t care so Lucifer tries to influence Cas by saying how Michael is torturing Mary Winchester all this time.  Cas responds by describing Jack, how he loves heroes that crush villains, how he is thoughtful and good and nothing like Lucifer.  This upsets Lucifer, but he suddenly is struck with an idea.

Rowena and the brothers, back in the bunker, discuss how she used a resurrection spell to come back, eventually, to life after Lucifer crushed and burnt her.  She wants the Black Grimoire to reinforce the spell to protect her.  She wants them to work together because she put a tracking spell on the book and knows where it will be.  She says she has changed.  Then she asks, “Where’s my son?”  When they tell her that Crowley is dead, she’s upset and uncaring that he died heroically.  

The witch sisters are in a hardware store, collecting items and struggling to read the grimoire.  The female clerk is annoyed by them and reminds them that they have to pay for their purchases.  They eye a young employee as they say that they will need a soul to sacrifice.

Back in the bunker, when Sam says that Crowley helped lock Lucifer away, Rowena says that the devil’s never gone.  That’s why she’s got to have the spell book!  She wants their help, but they say they won’t help her.  She questions if Dean made it to fifth base with the witch.  “There’s a fifth base?” he asks, amazed.  

Jaime and Jenny are standing in an old house over the still body of a woman, laid out carefully on a table, skin looking patched together Frankenstein-style.  This is their mom, and they desperately want her back.  They haven’t quite been able to bring her to life.  They speak fondly of how much she sacrificed for them and how many people she sacrificed for them.  They miss her.  One sister tells the other, “I believe in us,” (like the Winchesters have told each other!)  On the other side of the room, the lovestruck employee, clutching a bouquet of flowers, is sitting in a chair ominously covered in plastic.  One sister stabs him in the heart to help with the spell; he dies still smiling at the woman he thinks he loves.

Sam and Dean are in the Impala with Rowena in the back seat.  Thanks to her tracking spell, they have followed the grimoire to Oklahoma.  Dean is going to try to track down the girls – “Ask other women,” suggests Rowena – while Sam will stay in the car to keep an eye on Rowena.  

Back at Asmodeus’ lair, Lucifer and Cas work together to kill Dipper and get out of their cells.  Two more demons approach; Lucifer and Cas turn side by side to face them.

Rowena is bored waiting in the car.  Sam tells her that even if she gets the book and works the protection spell, she’ll still feel helpless.  She doesn’t want to talk about what Lucifer did to her nor does she want to hear Sam talk about him either, but then she reveals that she’s scared all the time.  Lucifer showed her his true face.  Sam admits that he’s seen it too and that it still keeps Sam up at night.  Rowena wonders how he deals with it, and he slowly says, as if he’s only now realizing this, “I guess I don’t deal with it . . . not really.”  He pushes it down; he doesn’t talk about it even though he knows Dean would listen to him.  He says he doesn’t know how to talk about what he experienced.

Dean gets the info about the Plum sisters from the hardware clerk, who didn’t like them but does appreciate Dean, eyeing him as he walks away.  

In the Impala, Sam tells Rowena that they can’t change what happened to them, that they’ll still feel helpless and scared and that the feeling never goes away.  Rowena, upset, gets out of the car, asking for a moment.  Dean approaches with the address they need, saying “the girls are not fan favorites.”  Rowena snatches the address, hurls a hex bag to the ground and casts a spell gluing their boots to the ground.  Then off she goes, leaving them stuck in place.  

Rowena goes into the house and hears the girls, who are upset that their spell hasn’t worked.  She goes directly to them:  they had been working for HER to retrieve the spell book!  But they get insulted by her insinuation that they and their mom aren’t witches of Rowena’s caliber; they turned their zombie-like mom on Rowena.  When Rowena tries to control her with a spell, the sisters exult that she’s magic-proof!  Rowena runs as Zombie Witch Mother chases her through the house.  

Sam manages to reach the hex bag; once it’s burned, they can move again.  

Cas and Lucifer are outside the spooky old building where they’d been imprisoned.  Lucifer wants Cas’s grace.  His eyes glow a terrifying red, but Cas has learned from the mistakes he’s made in the past:  he stabs Lucifer!

Back in Oklahoma, Sam and Dean enter the house, guns drawn.  They have witch-killing bullets, but the sisters overpower them with magic before they can pull the trigger.  Empowered by magic, the girls are super-strong.  There’s a huge triple throw-down with Sam and Dean and Rowena fighting Jaime, Jenny, and Zombie mom.  Rowena manages to get her hands on one of the Winchester’s dropped guns and shoots the mother in the head.  Jaime and Jenny are horrified.  Rowena casts the Bestiarum spell.  She has used that before to turn a young witch on the Winchesters, and Cas on Crowley.  Sam and Dean expect the sisters to attack them, but instead the girls turn on each other, stabbing fiercely as they fall to the ground.  

As the next scene opens, Rowena is looking at the spell book.  The Winchesters say that she double-crossed them, but she says she triple-crossed them and helped them.  Despite that, they don’t let her have the book.  She tells them that Lucifer always comes back.  She’s so scared of him, but Sam takes the book away from her and she leaves without it.

Back in the bunker, the boys are having a drink, discussing how embarrassing the whole experience has been.  Dean tells Sam that Rowena is NOT their friend.  He shows Sam the book:  a page has been ripped out.  Sam has given the spell Rowena wanted to her.  Dean says that she got in Sam’s head, and Sam replies that if she uses her power for evil, he will kill her.  

Then he begins to talk:  he says that he feels helpless.  He had a plan, but now Jack is gone and Mary is in hell.  Dean declares that they’ll figure it out.  “How?” asks Sam.  They have no plan.  “I don’t know,” admits Dean, “but we will – you and me.”  “Yeah, right,” Sam says quietly, walking away.

Rowena is kneeing on the ground in the middle of a large symbol, surrounded by glowing candles, chanting in an increasingly intense voice.  As the spell culminates, she drags a knife down her throat.  She is surrounded by purple energy.  Her eyes bleed.  The room is flooded with power.  Then it receeds.  As the darkness deepens, Rowena calmly stares ahead of her, her eyes glowing a fierce, unnatural blue.

The End

A couple questions to discuss:

1)  Did you think Cas would give in to Lucifer’s cajoling?  Has he killed Lucifer?

2)  How will Rowena use her power?  What is the significance of the blue eyes?

3)  How did the familial love between Jaime and Jenny compare with Sam and Dean’s relationship?

4)  How do you feel about Sam sharing his feelings a little, first with Rowena, then with Dean?