‘The Winchesters’: I don’t know who I am.

by whitney hall, posted in the winchesters, the winchesters: season 1

The Winchesters
“You’re Lost Little Girl”
October 25, 2022

THEN: I’m never going to let you walk out that door again without telling you, I love you. 

NOW

Lawrence, Kansas. A precious little girl with a shooting star barrette in her hair sends out an urgent call on her CB radio. Twinkle Star is trying to reach Big Rig Mama, a long-haul trucker who’s 10 in the wind and halfway to Hog Town.

Carrie says she can’t find Bernice anywhere. She pleads with her mother to come home and help find her. The sense of loss that this young actress conveys through her voice … push it too hard and it turns into whining. But she’s in the sweet spot of, ‘Yes, I will tear this house apart for you, and will not rest until Bernice is found.’

Well played Avangeline Friedlander. Well played.

But Big Rig Mama doesn’t have the luxury of coming home early. She gently explains that the family needs her paycheck. She says she’ll be home in a few days. Until then, she needs Carrie to be a big girl. Carrie sadly acknowledges, 10-4.

Carrie switches off the radio and sits forlornly. There’s the sound of a thud and she turns to see a large burlap sack sitting in the middle of her bedroom floor. She opens the bag to find Bernice! The girl squeals with delight and hugs her stuffed bunny to her tightly.

Crisis averted, Carrie tucks herself up in bed and snuggles down with her stuffy. All is well. ALL IS WELL, DAMMIT. NOTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO CARRIE.

The bag on the floor begins to rustle of its own accord. Sharp clawed hands reach up out of its depths. A shadow looms over Carrie in her bed. The girl sits up and screams in terror.

There’s no map to being a hunter. No playbook. You gotta follow your gut. But that can only take you so far. Truth is, you can’t do it all on your own. You need other people to help guide the way. Your friends. Your family.

Otherwise, you just end up lost.

The wall of crazy from Ada’s bookshop has been set up in the chapterhouse. Books and coffee cups in various stages of consumption are littered about the room. Mary hangs up a call with someone called Nina. There’s still no word from her mother. I forgot to bring it up in last week’s recap—where is she, why isn’t she helping—and I’m delighted that Show addressed it this week.

Mary tells Lata that, last she heard, Deanna was working with a group of hunters in Minnesota. That was a couple of months ago. She’s been leaving messages, but Mary isn’t even sure her mom knows that Samuel is missing.

So, a parent who dips and goes radio silent while they process their grief and trauma. Whooo, nelly. I want to go deep on the parallels between Deanna and adult, post-Amara resurrection Mary but I hesitate, because resurrection Mary was so poorly written.

We didn’t spend a lot of time with her—the Mother Ship shoved Mary offscreen for episodes at a time. First, because she needed space, then to work with the BMoL (Ugh. Ketch.) She spent the better part of Season 13 in the Apocalypse!Verse and most of 14 in Donna’s cabin.

When Supernatural was forced to write for Mary, it was to portray her as cold and closed off, ready to ditch her family at the drop of a hat—without delving into why.

Mary’s sense of alienation and grief over what she lost—a safe life, growing old with her loving husband, watching her babies grow up, learning those now adult men were raised in a life she never wanted for them—was a profound thing that was worth exploring … but it wasn’t.

Mary was as much a ghost when she was alive as she was when she was dead.

I’ve written all this before—at length—but it is the hill I will die on. I will never not be angry about how badly Andrew Dabb fumbled Mary’s story line.

Okay, I’m done. I’m fine now.

Lata asks if the Campbells are still separated. Mary says her parents didn’t say why, but nothing has been the same since her cousin Maggie died … for any of them.

Mary heaves a heavy sigh. The’ve gone through every single one of her father’s journals, every note, every scrap … and nothing. And even if they do find something, Mary wonders, what does it matter if Samuel wants to stay lost?

She admits that the last time she talked to him, they got into a huge argument about her plans to quit hunting. Mary says that Samuel leaving her behind to worry feels like he’s giving her the silent treatment.

Oh, the silent treatment you say?

Lata tries to see the situation from a glass-half-full perspective. Mary told her father what she wanted, so now he’s trying to prove to her that he can do it alone, so she can leave.

There’s a part of Mary that wants to believe that’s true … but she’s met her father, so.

Lata suggests they take a break. Maybe just for a couple of hours? They’ve been at the research for days. Lata eyeballs at John that MAYBE HE SHOULD ASK MARY OUT. LIKE TO A MOVIE. John is like, YES. A MOVIE. Mary tells John he can take a break if he needs to—she suggests seeing The Omega Man—but she’s going to check in with Ada.

Mary disappears through the bookcase door. John looks at Lata and mimes, swing and a miss.

Ada has been analyzing the information she pulled from her possessing demon’s echo. An address—108 Magnolia Street Apt. 14—recurs throughout the writing. It’s not much to go off of, but it’s a start.

Carlos interrupts the conversation with urgent news for Mary. He says there are cop cars everywhere at her neighbor’s house. Mary confirms she’s close to the family: dad is out of the picture so she tries to keep an eye on the kids when Mom is on the road working.

Is Bobby Singer literally the only good and present father in all of the Supernatural!verse?

Mary hurries off with John at her heels. Ada says she’ll check out the address and Mary warns her not to go alone. Take Carlos and check in with Lata if there’s any sign of demon activity. It’s Mary’s little hand clap before leaving, for me. And break!

Also, Ada holding in the impulse to tell Mary she’s a grown-ass woman who can manage a job on her own. I guess it’s only been a few days since Carlos called Mary out for dominating the stage. Change takes time.

John and Mary arrive at the house to a scene out of Dragnet, just as Carlos described. John asks about the kids. Mary says Carrie is 8 and her brother Ford is 12. She calls them both handfuls—acting older than their ages—and says they remind her of her childhood self.

An officer on the scene reacts with happy surprise when she sees John. She gives him a hug but quickly shifts back to business. He’s at a crime scene because why? John stammers out that his friend lives here. Next door, actually. Mary introduces herself. Hi. She’s the friend.

And the officer is Betty. She recognizes Mary’s name. She says the children’s mother, Mrs. Billups, asked for the Campbells to look after Ford until she can get home. Betty points at the sweet, flannel-wearing lad standing by the Campbell’s front gate.

Wear flannel; don’t die.

Carrie, says Betty, is missing.

Mary excuses herself, leaving Betty to begin her good-natured interrogation of John. What’s the story with the blonde, huh? John is like, STUDY GROUP. He says he enrolled in community college when he got back. Betty is like yeah, I called you. The second she heard he got back, she called.

John stumbles over himself trying to find a response, but Betty waves it away. She says it’s okay. She just wanted to tell him she’s really glad he got home safe. She calls him Johnny.

Mary coaxes Ford to open up to her. He reluctantly tells Mary that he saw something in Carrie’s room grab her. A long, twisted arm pulled her into some kind of sack and disappeared into thin air. He says he skipped this part with the police. He was afraid they would think he was crazy.

Ford mistakes Mary’s pensive look for disbelief. She reassures the child that she believes him. Mary says she’s going to get his sister back. She promises.

Mary and John search Carrie’s room and banter about Betty. John notices the CB radio, surprised to find one in a kid’s room. Mary explains it’s how Carrie and Ford keep in touch with their mom on the road.

And beyond that practical matter, I don’t know if I can convey the grip that CB radios had on us in the 1970s. Mary has been using one for even longer. She says as a kid, Samuel would have her scan the dial and listen for hunter code words in the chatter. Sometimes she would fall asleep listening to the truckers.

It made her wonder what it would be like to have a normal life.

Mary shakes off the memory, but John asks what she imagined. He teases, asking what Mary Campbell wanted to be when she grew up. John says he wanted to be a catcher for the Kansas City Athletics.

“My parents never let me dream like that.”

“Dad says I’m supposed to practice with the double-barrel.”

The flames … the flames on the side of my face at the baseball comment. THE FLAMES. Because Dean never got to dream like that, either.

Mary says being a kid who killed monsters was her only option. In a little over a year, Mary is going to tell Dean Van Halen that the very worst thing she could think of, is for her children to be raised into hunting like she was.

John tells her when he was a kid, he made a list of all the places he was going to go to look for his dad. He kept it for years, crossing off places. Adding more. He says enough time goes by, all you see is a list.

Mary wonders if that’s his way of telling her she should stop looking for Samuel. John says once Mary finds her father—and leaves hunting for good—she’s going to need a new list.

Mary sits with that idea until she catches sight of something poking out from under Carrie’s bed. She channels her future son when she says to John, “Hey, check this out.” It’s a scrap of burlap with what appears to be Sanskrit writing on it. It’s maybe the kind of fabric that would belong to a disappearing sack.

Inside that sack, the camera zooms and tilts down a long hallway draped with fabric like a chair fort and strung with multi-colored Christmas lights. It seems like a pretty fun, inviting place … except for the [ominous music] and [low growling]. The POV shifts to a ground’s eye view that looks into a room filled with stuffed animals.

A tall figure with long arms and clawed hands stands in the open doorway. It growls and chitters and nooooope. Miss me with the chittering. So creepy! It begins to crawl across the wall and NOOOooooOOOOPE. It searches, hovering and sniffing over a large pile of stuffies. As it gives up and moves on, two terrified eyes pop open, peering from the depths of the improvised monster blind.

Mary takes Ford home and gets him something to eat. It’s the 70s, and she put it in a bowl, so I’m guessing it’s Chef Boyardee; Spaghettios we (I) just ate cold out of the can. The Campbell house is warded up the wazoo, but Mary fixes up a batch of protective hex bags—herbs, blessed dirt, and bone—just to be sure.

I imagine Mary dabbing a bit of the dirt on her tongue to taste it. She’s not sure why she does it—she’s barely aware she does it—but it’s a tactile trait she’ll pass on to Dean.

She hands John a bag to hang in the living room window. Ford reacts to the apparent aroma of the hex bag when John walks past. He acknowledges the smell but says it’s for good luck. Ford sighs and says he needs all the luck he can get. I want to wrap this sweet child in a blanket and feed him more soup.

Ford asks about Betty, and John sheepishly deflects. He says he has more important things to worry about right now. He tells Ford they just need him to stay put while they look for Carrie. Ford balks—he says he was supposed to look after Carrie, but he lost her. He insists he’s coming with them to help.

The Dean coding, though. The emphasis that Ford makes that the responsibility—and blame—falls on him is just … MY HEART!

M

Mary gently says the best way Ford can help is by staying safe, but the young boy will not be deterred. He intuits that the hex bags aren’t just for luck. The thing he saw take his sister was real! Mary crouches down next to him at eye level and lets him in on The Secret. She tells him she and her friends take care of things like he saw.

“Like a … a monster club?”

Young actor Tracye Malachi is a delight. We love Ford. PROTECT FORD AT ALL COSTS.

Ford sits with this information for a moment. There’s a hint of fear but mostly resolve when he asks if he can be in Monster Club. Mary says yes, but he has to remember the first rule of Monster Club:

The second rule of Monster Club is Ford does not go back to his house; he stays at the Campbells’ where it’s safe. He and Mary seal the agreement with the Monster Club secret handshake.

Carlos and Ada are on stakeout at a seedy hotel. The radio in the van is tuned to the siren of the airwaves, Rockin’ Roxy. She tees up a new song that she says is sure to have listeners bugging out. FORESHADOWING!

“Restless Feeling” by Elderberry Jak starts playing, a song about not knowing whether to stay and make it another day or go and make it another way. DOUBLE FORESHADOWING!

Carlos approves of the tasty ear palate that this new pirate radio DJ is serving up. He heaves a heavy sigh and calls it a fitting soundtrack for the end of his life. He bemoans his youth withering to decay in the most boring act of all hunterdom.

Ada serenely snips at a bonsai plant and counsels patience. Carlos is like: or—and hear him out—they just bust the door open.

The demon that hauls Carlos out of the van thinks a little punchy-punchy sounds like a great idea! Carlos tumbles and rolls on the ground. When he pops back up, the expression on his face is absolutely gleeful. He thanks the demon for ending his pain before whipping out his water pistol.

“Allow me to start yours.”

I will note here that Carlos is wearing a bolo tie that is identical to one Dean wore in Season 13’s “Tombstone.”

The stone is different, but the design is the same. Does it mean anything? Stick a pin in it.

The demon groans as he takes the spurts of holy water to the face. He grabs Carlos by the throat and slams him up against the van. He says he’s way out of Carlos’s league. He calls him Slick.

Carlos keeps spraying.

The demon tosses the gun and Carlos aside, perfectly teeing Ada up to smash the demon in the face with one of the van’s rear doors. Carlos grabs the disoriented monster and tosses him into the back of the van.

Carlos compliments Ada on her quick thinking and wonders how she knew he keeps a devil’s trap back there. Ada says she rode in the back of the van across three state lines, so.

The demon says it’s nice to see Ada again, calling her by name. Something about the way he says her name pings something for her. Ada smiles as she closes the doors to the Swagger Wagon. Rather than calling Mary and the others, Ada proposes taking the demon someplace quiet so they can talk with him first.

Second location. The demon is bound and kneeling in the center of a salt circle. Ada sits in the back of the Swagger Wagon mixing up herbs and other ingredients for a spell. Carlos wonders how a botany lesson is going to get the demon to talk. Ada chuckles. The demon knows.

Sideburns says he and his friend talked a lot while she was possessed. He knows all about Ada’s dreams—like becoming a witch. He calls it pathetic. He says Ada doesn’t have the know-how to pull off a spell like that.

Ada uses the herb paste to mark a sigil on the bonsai tree’s container. She explains that demons can possess non-human living things, too.

“You can put a demon in a plant?”

Y’all. As many people have pointed out, can you IMAGINE what Sam could have done with that information?

Ada places the tree next to the salt circle. A small thing, isn’t it? She says that little trees can live for hundreds of years. She asks the demon to imagine being trapped that long. Unable to scream or fight for centuries. The demon leans over, looking to Carlos to play the voice of reason. Carlos waves the demon off: don’t look at him.

“This one is full of surprises today. I mean, she could have a hundred demons in that tree for all I know.”

Ada says once the spell is started, it can’t be stopped. She takes a sharp, pokey shiny from her pocket. It looks like one half of an antique sewing scissor. She uses it to just break the skin on the tip of her index finger … because Ada, at least, knows better than risking permanent tendon damage but cutting into the palm of her hand. And it only takes one drop …

The demon is literally sweating it at this point. What exactly does she want to know? She asks him about the monster box. Sideburns says his partner was the details guy; he didn’t want to know. He doesn’t care. The two of them went AWOL from Hell and struck a deal with the Akrida. The box for their lives.

He says the Akrida can’t be stopped. Even with the box working there are too many of them.

Carlos asks who they made the deal with, but Sideburns doesn’t know that either. But he says the Akrida leader took a page from the demonic playbook: it’s hiding inside a human. A woman. That’s all he knows. Now send him home already.

Ada smiles and a single drop of blood falls onto the salt line. She speaks a word that means, move. The demon tries to fight the spell, but it’s soon smoking out of the meat suit and into the plant. The sigil pulses with energy, locking the demon in.

Carlos is nonplussed. Ada explains—correctly—that they couldn’t risk sending Sideburns back to Hell where he could give other demons ideas. And if they need any more information, they know exactly where to find him.

“Right, Slick?”

Lata has been on research duty while Mary and John were getting Ford settled. She identifies the pattern on the fabric scrap as a North Indian design that’s over 1,000 years old. She notes that, ironically, it’s not far from where she was born.

The only monster that Lata knows of that might leave something like this behind is Bori Baba, or Father Sack. She calls it equivalent to the bogeyman where she’s from.

John makes a joke about Bori Baba not delivering presents in his sack—but in a disturbing way, it does. Lata says Bori Baba lures its victims by tempting them with an item they’ve lost, something that has deep meaning to them. When a person wishes for the item to be found, the sack appears, Bori Baba takes its victim and traps them in its maze.

Lata says Bori Baba likes to play with its food—taunting and hunting its victims until it eats them alive.

Mary steps back to ask the EXCELLENT QUESTION that I was wondering myself last week—how does a Colombian hag, and now a North Indian bogeyman, end up in Kansas? She wonders if the others find it weird that they’re coming across so many wayward monsters.

WAYWARD, YOU SAY?

Mary isn’t sure what it means, but the timing tracks too closely to the Akrida popping up. But for now, they keep the focus on the Bori Baba.

Lata says there’s not much more to go on. There’s no written lore on how to track it or details on how to kill it. The stories are largely a part of oral tradition. Lata says her own father told her stories about Bori Baba. She doesn’t remember any details about how to defeat it or escape it but,

“To this day I still have nightmares about it.”

John suggests Lata ask her parents and Mary is like, yeah … they’re dead. Lata smiles and tries to put a bright face on it. She says she’ll try and contact some people back home. Maybe they’ll get lucky.

Ford is sitting alone in the Campbell living room listening to Rockin’ Roxy. We don’t hear the deep track she’s excavated from the record crate; [tense music] takes its place. There’s a knock at the back door. Ford answers, but there’s no one there.

Go back inside, Ford. GO BACK INSIDE.

He’s about to when he hears a thud and a rustling. He steps outside to investigate the burlap sack laying on the porch. No Ford, NOOOOOOOO. The hex bag can’t protect you outside!

He cautiously approaches the bag and opens it to find Carrie’s barrette. A hand shoots out of the bag, covering Ford’s mouth to stifle his screams as Bori Baba drags him into its lair.

Mary and John return home with cheeseburgers and fries for lunch. I will pause to note that the Campbell manse is literally my dream house. The leaded glass! The stained glass! The wainscoting on the stairs! The curved banister! And I’m pretty sure the sideboard sitting against the wall at the end of the front entryway is identical to the one that was in my great-grandmother’s dining room.

My house lust is interrupted by a tap at the door. John handles the unexpected caller while Mary looks for Ford. She checks through the house and her heart stops when she sees the open back door. She gasps, “no!” when she sees the scrap of burlap laying on the porch.

Her face hardens into an expression she will pass on to Dean that says, ‘Oh, it’s killing time, now.”

John answers the door and is like, Betty hiiiiiiiiiiiiii. He steps onto the porch, sliding through the half-open front door like NOTHING TO SEE HERE DOOT DE DOO. He says Betty just missed Ford; Mary took him on a snack run, so. Betty silently side-eyes the Roadrunner parked by the curb.

“They walked.”

Betty stops John before he can make his escape back into the house. She knows they didn’t end things perfectly, but she reminds him they had a deal that they would talk when he got back.

Lots of people talking about deals they’ve made with John Winchester.

John searches for a way to explain that he wasn’t avoiding her without revealing too much truth. He simply says some stuff about his dad came up when he got back. Stuff that confirmed that Henry is gone. He reassures Betty that there are no hard feelings; at least not for him.

He goes inside and notices how still and quiet the house is. He calls out for Mary. Her response is staticky and tinny. He follows the sound of her voice to Samuel’s study and CB radio. Mary is in Carrie’s bedroom. She tells him Bori Baba has Ford. John reassures her that they’ll get both kids back. He suggests calling Lata, but Mary cuts him off. There’s no time!

John knows what Mary means to do before she says it. She can’t leave the kids alone with the monster. She knows how to summon the sack. She says she has plenty of lost things to choose from.

John explodes with worry and fear. He reels it in and simply asks her not to do this. He starts to unspool a little, pleading with her to wait. They’ll find the kids together. Mary takes a deep breath and follows Carlos’ advice from last week, deciding what kind of leader she wants to be. She tells John to work with Lata. Trust his instincts.

“You found me once, John Winchester. I have faith you’ll do it again.”

Also, is this a clue to how their story is going to play out? FORESHADOWING!

The CB crackles with static as Spooky Tooth’s “Something Got Into Your Life” begins to play. And y’all. Music Supervisor Justin Kamps is killing it. Episodes 1 and 2 stuck to fairly familiar songs—which fair. New show. Ease people in. But the deep cuts in this episode? Not only does the music perfectly complement the action (especially in this scene), the lyrics comment on the story beautifully as well.

Well played Justin Kamps. Well played.

And keep in mind, Dean was picking the music in Episodes 1 and 2. Songs about change and love, and the ties that bind between generations. There was a sense of hope in Dean’s playlist.

But someone else is calling the tunes in this episode. Change is still a theme, but more in the sense of a personal transition. A shifting of identity and maybe choosing sides? There may be a battle of the bands developing and we’ll want to pay close attention to the lyrics for clues.

John drops the mike and races for Mary just as she’s kneeling and centering herself to summon Bori Baba. John vaults the fence and the sack appears in front of Mary. The song lyrics talk about something having a hold on you as Mary pulls a wide-brimmed hat out of the bag. “Gotta try to soon find out / What your life was all about” as a shadowy hand reaches up to take her.

John hits the door to Carrie’s room just as the sack is collapsing into itself. He grabs for it, but Mary and Bori Baba are gone.

Mary wakes up in Bori Baba’s lair laying on a pile of clothes. The camera pans into the room and passes by a mannequin and wait, WHAT?

She puts on the hat in a beautifully framed Big Damn Hero moment just as she hears Carrie scream.

Lata holds the sack in her hands, trying to process the fact that Bori Baba is real. John, pacing in the background, decides the best thing to do is follow Mary down the rabbit hole. He is agitated and at a loss. What are they supposed to do?

He tells Lata that hunting is the first time in his life that anything has made sense … and he can’t lose Mary.

“None of this works without Mary. I need her.”

OH WE KNOW, JOHN. WE KNOW. 15 SEASONS. WE KNOW.

Also,

Lata gets fidgety and admits there is one other person she can contact … but she’s not sure they would even be willing to talk to her. John begs her to make the call. Lata conducts the conversation in Urdu, so there’s no worry about John asking questions when she tells the other person to, “just tell mom I’m safe. That’s all she needs to know.”

Lata hangs up the old-timey phone and pastes a bright smile on her face to cover the sadness and longing. She says she has a mixed bag of information. Bori Baba is vulnerable outside of its sack. That’s why it leaves pieces of itself behind—it can’t survive in our world. If they summon him and kill him, it will destroy the sack and everything inside of it. They have to free Mary and the children first.

The good news is she knows how to do that. Lata says victims have to willingly let go of the items they’ve lost—it’s the item that keeps them trapped. But how to tell Mary? It’s not like there’s a phone in Bori Baba’s lair … or is there?

Carrie and Ford run through the pink-tinged, fabric-draped halls of Bori Baba’s lair. They turn a corner to be confronted by the black-eyed, leather-faced growling horror. Carrie screams and the children cling to each other.

Bori Baba howls as one of its arms drops off its body in a cloud of dust. The second arm comes off followed by its head. Mary is standing behind it, knife raised to strike again.

When the dust settles she wraps the kids up in a hug. She asks if they’re okay.

“NO. Monster Club sucks!”

Bori Baba growls as it stitches itself back together. Mary tells the kids to run. She raises the door of one of the storage locker rooms and hurries them inside. Mary grabs one of the lighters hanging on a string suspended from the ceiling.

So wait … all those years of Sam and Dean salting and burning and throwing the whole ass Zippo into the fire. Is THIS where they ended up?

Ford is outraged that the monster refused to die after having its head chopped off—and he’s not wrong. Carrie is just scared. Mary admits that she is too, but says her friends are figuring out a way to get them out.

John picks up the mike to Carrie’s CB and looks to Lata for reassurance. She says technically, radio waves act as background radiation in the universe, so his call just might get through. It’s not without precedent: Cas was able to communicate with Dean in Heaven via Baby’s radio in Season 5’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”

It’s one of my all-time favorite SPN episodes by the way—weirdly, written by Andrew Dabb. (I’m going to assume all the good parts were contributed by his then-writing partner Daniel Loflin.)

John says a silent prayer and speaks Mary’s name. His voice crackles through the lair. Mary leads the kids to another unit filled with radios. She uses a mike stand to lock the door and begins searching for the right radio.

Mary makes contact and teases that it took them long enough. As Bori Baba pounds on the door, John quickly relays the exit strategy—willingly let go of your lost object and you’re free.

Mary turns to Carrie, expecting a fight over Bernice, but in the shiny spirit of Miss Kaywinnet Lee Frye, Carrie is like, ‘Hell with this. I’m gonna live!’ The little girl doesn’t hesitate. She rips Bernice’s head clean off its floofy body. “It’s time to go home!” Mary’s eyes go wide at the tiny badass in PJs.

Damn straight.

Ford holds up the barrette. He guesses he won’t be needing it anymore. He snaps it in two and the kids disappear in a flash of light. They reappear in Carrie’s bedroom. John confirms their safe status to Mary and tells her she’s up. She blows out a deep breath and holds the lighter to the brim of the hat—her dad’s hat—but it won’t burn.

She radios back to John. Why isn’t it working??

John suggests that maybe the hat doesn’t represent her dad. Maybe it’s something else that she’s struggling to let go of … like what happens after she finds Samuel. Mary can’t answer. She seems stricken at the thought of what comes next.

John reminds her of their conversation that morning. He says he saw the look in her eyes when he asked her about life after hunting. She couldn’t even look him in the face—why? Mary says that if they find her dad, then she’s done with hunting.

And hunting is all she has.

Mary clutches the brim of the hat like it’s a lifeline. She says she’s not like John. She never dreamed she could do anything else. Her voice is thick with emotion and her hands are shaking.

“I was raised to hunt. And if I give up hunting … I don’t know who I am.”

Mary begins to break down just as Bori Baba gets leverage on the door and starts to raise it. John says he’s spent his entire life looking for his dad, but he’s trying to find a new way—with the Monster Club.

John knows it’s scary, but it’s time for Mary to start dreaming about what’s next. She doesn’t have to figure it all out right now. She just needs to take one step—being okay with figuring out who she is after hunting.

“Let the hat burn, Mary.”

Mary flicks the lighter and closes her eyes, willing herself to be okay with what comes next. The flame finally bends towards the hat and the felt ignites.

Also,

Mary pops into Carrie’s room in a blaze of light. The children have been sitting on the edge of the bed in anxious anticipation. Carrie is the first to rush to Mary, followed by Ford. YAY! HUGGING!

On the floor behind them, a low growl rumbles from the depths of the bag. Mary puts the children behind her as Bori Baba lashes out, throwing John against the wall. Lata yells out, NO, shoving the monster away. LATA, YES! John pulls out a knife and cuts its head off.

It hits the floor with a thud and rolls towards the bed. Carrie leaps up and gives the head a good solid stomp, just to be sure.

“Stupid monster!”

Y’all. Summon the banners, we ride with Carrie at dawn.

Mrs. Billups arrives and the family reunites in the street outside their house. YAY! MORE HUGGING!! John and Betty stand off to the side. ‘Carrie wandering off to look for a lost stuffed bunny’ is the story they’re going with. Betty thanks John for calling her. She says happy endings aren’t always a part of the job.

And speaking of unhappy endings, she brought him something. Betty hands him an engagement ring.

John tells her she made the right call. He says they were too young. He was moving too fast. They both agree to remain friends and admit they both still care about each other. John watches Betty walk away with something like longing tinged with a little regret in his big puppy dog eyes.

Mary is like, soooo … John quickly tucks the ring in his back pocket. They’re both relieved that everyone is buying the cover story—the kids are sticking to it too, although Mary thinks Ford is going to be a handful now. He wants to make Monster Club jackets.

John wonders if he’s going to have to compete with the kid for training, but Mary takes the conversation in a more thoughtful tack. She starts to revisit their lair conversation, but John stops her. He says she did the hard part. And step one in figuring things out is Mary Campbell taking the night off.

She takes herself to a movie at the Carver Theater. She’s short for the ticket but the man behind her says he’s got it. Some floppy-haired lad in a leather jacket WHO IS NOT JOHN sports her the dime. Jeopardy! GOAT and current host Ken Jennings still owes me 10 cents, by the way. I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, KENWARD.

Floppy says he likes seeing movies alone. He asks Mary if she’d like to see the movie alone together.

Mary. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MARY? He could be a demon. Or an Akrida. Or just a random dude but HE ISN’T JOHN.

Is this a clue to how John and Mary’s story plays out?

John and Lata are back at the chapterhouse. He thanks her for facing her childhood nightmare and coming in clutch. They clink beer bottles to toast the day’s win. Lata says it felt good—if not short-lived. She muses on confronting two rare monsters in a row.

Ada and Carlos join them. Ada agrees that the monsters are connected to the Akrida … and their leader. Carlos adds the new information that said leader is disguised as a human. And whoever she is, she’s powerful enough to terrify demons.

Rockin’ Roxy continues her broadcast in the witching hour, with a dark and dangerous sound. She says it’s guaranteed to bring the rarest of hell-raisers from near and far to beloved Lawrence … so raise the volume and tune in. She drops the needle on Percy Sledge’s “Spooky.”

In the cool of the evening
When everything is getting kind of groovy
I call you up and ask you
If you’d like to go with me and see a movie?

Mary and Floppy laugh and talk as they walk out of the theater and off into the night together. Carlos observes from a distance as Ada aggressively snaps a small branch off of the demon bonsai. Lata shelves books and broods about her not dead parents.

First, you say no, you’ve got some plans for tonight
And then you stop and say all right
Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you

John drops a match into a metal drum and lights up what’s left of Bori Baba. He walks away once the fire gets rolling. That’s when the creepy spider Laconian dog Langolier-looking IOUS thing skitters in to grab Bori Baba’s sack and drag it away.

If you decide someday to stop this little game
That you are playing
I’m gonna tell you all the things
My heart has been a-dying to be saying

Rockin’ Roxy steps outside of her makeshift warehouse studio. Her red hair is giving Rowena and her leather jacket and vibe are giving Abaddon. I approve.

The Laconian Langolier drops the sack at her feet. Roxy unscrews the lid from a small glass bottle and holds it over the bag. It glows red and an ember of energy floats through the air and into the bottle.

Just like a ghost
You’ve been a-haunting my dreams
So I’ll propose on Halloween
Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you.

The Winchesters airs on The CW and streams at CWTV.com. Whitney is also watching Big Sky airing on ABS and streaming on Hulu. Follow her on Twitter @Watcher_Whitney.

One thought on “‘The Winchesters’: I don’t know who I am.”

  1. Pingback: ‘The Winchesters’: Seeing past the darkness. – foolish watcher

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