'Supernatural' Review/Recap: "Girls, Girls, Girls"

Emily Dunbar ’17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Supernatural’s 10th season is well underway, and there’s no question that its trajectory looks much better than last season’s ever did. After last week’s fun-filled Clue-themed episode, it was important for us to get back on the road (so far) to the overarching plot, and “Girls, Girls, Girls” delivered in a big way.
First off, it’s important to remind everyone that at the end of last week’s episode, Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), recovered demon (we think?), performed a routine overkill. He shot that shapeshifter full of enough silver bullets to drop an elephant-sized werewolf, and his litter brother, Sam (Jared Padalecki) was rightfully worried. They had the “Are you still sort of a demon, Dean?” heart-to-heart at the end of that episode, with Dean deny-, deny-, denying everything and Sam looking concerned all the way into this week’s episode. This was more than just the Winchester tradition of worrying—this means we should be keeping an eye out for the moments where Dean loses control and slips back into the black-eyed version of himself we’ve only really caught glimpses of.
Secondly, we finally found out who the recurring redheaded gal is and what she’s up to. Rowena (Ruth Connell) is a very powerful “natural” witch, meaning she was born with her powers. Though she’s unlike any witch the Winchesters have ever seen, Rowena still seems to desire human companionship, and she beat the boys to breaking up a demon prostitution syndicate, taking the two human girls she finds there under her wing. As the episode progressed, we saw that her power comes with a cost, and most people she uses her magic on die shortly after. Dean failed to capture Rowena because Cole (Travis Aaron Wade) jumped out of the shadows to finish that unfinished (family) business, but don’t worry: Crowley’s people captured her. The King of Hell (Mark Sheppard), himself, let it slip in the waning moments of the episode that Rowena is his mother, so we definitely haven’t seen the last of her this season. Maybe she and Crowley will team up and become an immortal crime-creating, mother-son duo. Weirder things have happened.

It wasn’t easy for Dean to shake Cole off, even after he told him what a hunter does for a living and why he had to kill his father. He had to relate to him and explain that he’d been in that position before; he knew what it was like to have a family tragedy define you. Both the audience and Sam had our biggest “aw, Dean!!” faces on, but at the end of the episode, Dean assured Sam he was just telling Cole what he needed to hear. Cole is a really interesting character who would only benefit from a few more episodes’ development. However, for his own sake, we can only hope we don’t hear from him again because he’s gone home to his family.
Amidst all this, Castiel (Misha Collins) and Hannah (Erica Carroll) were still crisscrossing the country trying to get all the rogue angels to return to heaven. Hannah was struggling with human feelings and desires, and it didn’t help matters that her vessel, Caroline, has a husband who loves her very much and has been looking for her. He shows up at the hotel Hannah and Cas were calling home, and she pretended to be a cheating Caroline, to spare the husband the pain of the truth. All this proved to be too much, and Hannah announced that she thinks that she and Cas have forgotten what their most important mission is and always was: to protect the humans. She said she was going back to Heaven and allowing Caroline to live her life. Cas was sad, but understands… maybe a bit too much. His portion of the episode closes with him, Googling “Jimmy Novak,” his vessel’s name.
While Rowena is an interesting character, her appearance and explanation in made for a fun mystery, this episode worked really hard for the season as a whole; it marks a turning point. This is the seventh episode of the season, which means we’re about a third of the way through. The writers are getting serious about what the season is actually about. Up to now, we have Dean’s found and lost demonhood, which we can only assume (and hope!) is not a lost plot point. We have Cas and Hannah’s mission, which is now left solely to a self-doubting Cas.

We have Rowena’s capture, and by her son, no less. There are a lot of possibilities, here, and this episode has laid the groundwork. Is the Deanmon latent, but still inside the eldest Winchester? Will the boys be able to figure out how to get rid of the Mark of Cain? Is Dean going to fall off the wagon, leaving Sam without a clue how to get him back again? Is Cas going to return to Heaven, allowing poor Jimmy Novak to go back to his family? Is Jimmy even alive in there? (Don’t forget that Jimmy was dying when Cas inhabited him for the final time, in season 4.) What’s going to happen to earth if Cas doesn’t finish rounding up the rogue angels? Will Crowley and Rowena team up to create Hell on earth? Will there be a power struggle in which mother knows best? Are we going to (finally) see a Queen of Hell? Season 10 has got possibility, if nothing else!
The only way to find out what fate has in store for our favorite heroes and villains is to keep watching Supernatural, Tuesdays at 9 PM on the CW. Tune in next week to watch our favorite Sheriff, Jody Mills, team up with that hilarious, donut-loving sheriff, Donna Hanscum, from season nine’s “The Purge,” in “Hibbing 911.”