Dear Supernatural,

Trigger warnings are not a bad thing. Don’t be afraid to warn your audience when you’re about to depict IN THE TEASER, someone committing suicide.

That is how we open last week’s Supernatural. Kelly, having been taken prisoner by Dagon and derided, told that her baby’s very birth will be the end of not only her, but the world, feels so despondent she gets in the tub and kills herself.

Back at the bunker we get a Sam Research Montage as he tries to determine how much time they have before the bundle of certain doom arrives. He tells Dean that the baby will be born around May 18th (I see what you did there, Supernatural), and then out of the blue Cas walks into the bunker as if he hasn’t been MIA for weeks. Sam is glad to see Cas but Dean, on the other hand, feels betrayed and upset, which just gets worse when Cas tells them that his time in Heaven has yielded nothing in the Baby Mama Hunt. Not only did Cas abandon them, he ignored their messages, for nothing.

Later, in Dean’s room, Cas returns a mixtape Dean made for him in a totally platonic bro-dude kind of way, which Dean informs him was a gift. “You keep those.” Cas tries to explain that after he’s failed so much, he desperately needed to bring home a win for them, to which Dean replies that they work better together, and Team Free Will gets shit done a lot better than when they’re separated. Cas asks if they will be able to kill an innocent if the time comes, and Dean is of course, unable to answer.

Meanwhile Sam is still hellbent on not killing Kelly or her nephilim baby, and I wonder for the millionth time why Supernatural thought wading into the treacherous waters of reproductive rights was a thing they should do. Sam tells Dean that they can try to extract the Grace from the baby so it’s just a human, and woohoo everything is peachy. Dean jaunts off to tell his husband best friend, only to find that Cas isn’t in his room. Yes, folks. Cas has his own room at the bunker. Dean is sad that Cas left, and thinks he played him earlier to get the Colt, which Dean keeps under his pillow.

Said gun thief is meanwhile meeting up with Calvin, the angel who took him to Heaven, with the colt. When Calvin commends Cas for choosing his angelic brethren over the Winchesters, Cas is quick to correct him, saying that he is doing this for their protection, so they wouldn’t have to be faced with killing an innocent woman and her child. All I can say here is goddammit, Cas. What did Dean just tell you? I get that there wouldn’t be a show if these people actually talked to each other, but for fuck’s sake. Anyway, Calvin tells Cas that Joshua was able to track the “Celestial Pulse” they felt to a house nearby, so they’re off to kill Dagon and Kelly.

Kelly is, of course, not dead, which she sees as her baby protecting her, but Dagon says is him saving himself. Six of one, half dozen of the other, who knows what a hybrid angelbaby fetus’s motives are, anyway? The angels storm the house, but they fail to kill either Dagon or Kelly, since Dagon is smarter than that and it turns out Cas isn’t any better at killing innocents than the boys are. This shocks exactly no one, as Cas seems to have been, for the past eight years, the only angel to take God’s commandment to love humanity more than himself and run with it. Instead, he and Kelly escape, leaving Calvin to the tender mercies of Dagon, who gets a Super Scary Satan Scolding for letting Cas slip away with “the container”. When Kelly later thanks Cas for sparing her, he tells her he had a mission and failed. After talking to Joshua, Cas tells Kelly that he will take her to Heaven, which will kill both her and the baby but it will be painless. And his truck suddenly breaks down. Of course. But hey at least it broke down in front of a motel!! They head in and have a philosophical discussion of whether or not Kelly’s baby is evil. Kelly says when he brought her back to life she felt his soul and it was good. I think this baby could easily be powerful enough to manipulate his mother into believing that, but I could be wrong. Kelly is willing to die but she wants to be sure someone would take care of her kid. Baby Beelzebub kicks and Cas feels it, which gives Kelly a vision of Cas protecting them, which is a symptom of pregnancy I’ve never had.

There’s a knock on the door and wouldn’t you know, it’s Sam and Dean! They LoJacked Cas’s phone and followed him. Cas tells them his plan, which they counter with their plan. Cas reminds Sam that if a grown ass man nearly died from the extraction, what hope does a newborn have? Kelly tells them all to fuck off and leaves, since Sam and Dean want to “take away what makes her baby special.” OKAY. Dean convinces Cas to go back to the bunker with them and make a plan together. When Cas and Kelly get into the Impala, Kelly steals Baby and heads to the playground. On the way she tells Cas that her baby chose Castiel to take care of and guide him, and I have visions of Three Men and a Baby next season. What’s scarier: hunting monsters or teething?

When Sam laments how Cas could do this, Dean defends him as he fixes Cas’ truck. They’re not the only ones chasing him though, as Dagon pops in just in time to kill Joshua and deliver snark about how she’s been waiting for hours. She and Cas fight, then Dean and Sam show up and they all fight. Dagon destroys the Colt, breaks Dean’s arm, and throws insults like confetti. While Dagon is busy with the Winchesters, Cas and Kelly hold hands, which transfers some serious mojo to Castiel. His eyes turn gold and he kills Dagon with a touch while the boys watch in shock.

After the fight, Cas heals Dean’s arm and says the baby showed him the future, and Cas has to be sure he’s born. Cas is different, though. He’s definitely not himself, and he puts them to sleep before leaving again with Kelly.

So basically we’re back to “Cas is being mind controlled” storylines and it just annoys me at this point. It would be nice if we could see Team Free Will fighting alongside each other against an interesting enemy, rather than retreading old storylines that put them at odds with each other.

What do you think of The Future?

BAMF: Baby Beelzebub. Good or evil, Kelly’s unborn child has a knack for self-preservation and some serious powers, even before making his grand entrance.

 

There was a lot of stuff I loved about this episode, but I’d mark it higher if it didn’t feel like Cas was once again being manipulated.