Source: supernaturallydevoted.wordpress.com
Okay so before Christmas we were all (well, at least I was, I don’t know about you guys) left in a bit of a state of emotional turmoil. The Mark of Cain started affecting Dean which resulted in him killing the men who were holding Claire (Jimmy Novak’s daughter) captive. This episodes picks up where the last one left off and focuses on how Dean deals with his actions and also how Sam, Dean and Cas are trying to find a way to properly get rid of the Mark of Cain so that Dean will fully be back to his normal self. There were so many things happening in this episode so I won’t give you a full recap of it like I normally do but I am going to talk about some of the main events/points in it which I thought was interesting and to clear up what I think might be happening later on in this season.
This episode was a whirlwind of different things happening all at the same time. For starters, we have Sam and Dean getting in touch with Crowley to help find Metatron. We also have Castiel trying to make things up with Claire whom is dealing with her own issues and struggles and coming to terms with what’s been happening to herself, her mother, her dad and this world she’s been thrown into without any say in it herself and now she has to get by, knowing that all these monsters, angels and other beings exists. Castiel feels really guilty about being responsible for that and whilst he knows that he can’t be an actual father for Claire, that her real father is now dead, he still wants to at least try and be there for her and I think that’s a really important testament to how Castiel as a character has developed since we first saw him in S4 and how he’s well and truly adapted into life on Earth and dealing with all the emotions that humans have to deal with on a daily basis.
We also have the slightly bizarre and incredibly dysfunctional relationship between Rowena and Crowley. Personally, I would have loved to see more of Crowley’s past when he was actually human and to see what his family was like and why Rowena came to be what she was and also why everything went wrong. I think there’s some potential to really interesting story arcs with that as well. And let’s be honest, we all want to see more of Crowley. He’s also a character that’s developed interestingly since they first encountered him and I can’t help but to think that even though he’s a demon with his own agendas, maybe to some extent he actually feels like he’s attached to Sam and Dean and maybe he’s aware that he might even owe them something after everything?
Source: CW Network // Supernatural
Back to the Mark of Cain, I think there’s an interesting comparison here to when Sam was addicted to demon blood because in some sense I suppose you could say that the Mark of Cain has a similar effect on Dean which means a number of things. On one hand, it means that maybe now Dean finally understands what Sam had to go through with Ruby and how much it messed him up and how addicted he was to it. On the other hand a part of me thinks that maybe this is really painful for Sam to deal with. Not just because he has to see his brother suffer and being in pain, but because maybe it’s some kind of reminder of how powerful a force like that is how hard it is to get out of its grip which we’ve seen in this season. To find out about how to actually get rid of the Mark of Cain, Dean tortures Metatron but doesn’t realise at first that Metatron is using this as tool to taunt him because he knows what the Mark does to Dean and he enjoys seeing him suffer. However, after the torture when Metatron is being escorted out by Castiel he tells Castiel to not contact him again and he also says the following sentence: “The river shall end at the source.”
We all know Metatron is a liar and likes confusing people but this line really interested me as I think it not only is probably the key to how to help Dean but to what will come as the season continues. Who is the source? Is it a thing or is it a person? If it’s a person it someone biblical? What do you guys think? Is he referring to the source to the mark of Cain?
I liked this episode and I think this season is getting more interesting as it goes and I think, especially with the aforementioned coven of witches that Rowena was kicked out of, maybe there’ll just be more than one main villain or maybe there’ll be something different altogether. The writers of supernatural have always been brilliant and giving us clues as to what might happen next and this is one of my favourite ones as it could be almost anything. In the meanwhile, we’ll have to tune into next week’s adventures of Moose and Squirrel to find out
