Saturday, February 25, 2017

Supernatural. Season 12, Episode 13: Family Feud



This is another monster of the week episode but a nifty one as it draws on some old plot lines and continues to peak my interest in one of the characters who has had some shifts lately

So the bad is a ghost killing teachers based in a museum which means it’s going to quickly rack up the bodies and quite gruesomely. The Winchesters drop in and do their investigating thing, looking for the ghosty artefact to salt and burn

In the museum they find a part of a sunken ship and its contents – it’s the ship Gavin Macleod was supposed to sail on from Scotland to the US


What Gavin has been doing wandering around the 21st century despite being several centuries old is a mystery

The Winchesters quickly seize on this and try to get hold of Gavin – Crowley refuses to help being extremely pissed at the Winchesters since he’s realised they failed to get Kelly an abortion to stop her giving birth to the Nephilim of doom – so they turn to Rowena.

These leads to a rather touching meeting between Rowena and the grandson she never met, securing his co-operation in identifying the ghost:

He was in love with a woman called Fiona way back when and she was determined to be with him when he fled to America. She stowed away on the ship and hid there: except, of course, he wasn’t there. Instead she was a woman on a ship with a reputation for chasing after a man: the men abused her and even the female teacher said she deserved it for being a slutwhorejezebel. In weird Supernatural ghost logic this turns Fiona into a force for death and torture against all teachers rather than against all rapists, misogynists or slut shamers (I suppose if she were the latter there would be less motive to remove her and more motive to send her amulet on a world tour).

Gavin tries to talk to her, but it’s been well established on Supernatural that spirits aren’t really things you can reason with (just look at Bobby‘s ghostly storyline).

So burn and salt the amulet which is her tether? For plot reasons the Winchesters decide they can’t because she may randomly be tied to something else? No real reason for this after all, she snuck onto a ship, it’s unlikely she’d have a huge number of possessions in that situation and we’ve only seen the necklace be the haunted object


This is a clumsy plot contrivance for the true solution: Fiona wouldn’t be a vengeful spirit with unfinished business if Gavin hadn’t leaped forward in time. They would have died together and, presumably, ascended heavenward for an afterlife of togetherness (or gone to hell and been recruited by Crowley, I guess. When you’re dad’s the king of hell death is a somewhat win/win proposition). In addition everyone Fiona has already murdered would be alive again

Gavin wants to do that – go back in time and fix the shenanigans that bringing him forward did. Which seems awfully simplistic – messing with time is supposed to be a huge big terribad awful taboo for it to be used simplistically.

Crowley is adamantly against this, losing his son who he cares for – and it’s only Rowena’s magically freezing him that lets them get away with it. I think this is the interesting moment of the Crowley family. We have Rowena, who earlier in the season already made the decision that power isn’t everything and is seeing that, from both her and her son (two decidedly evil people) has emerged a grandson who is pretty decent, still has hope and belief and has found love… I see her wanting to preserve that and you see it in her emotion. While Crowley, just an episode ago, risked his life and limb to try and protect the Winchesters from Remiel is now watching them tear away his son, effectively killing Gavin. So soon after Crowley’s willingness to sacrifice for them? That’s going to burn. That’s going to be a huge shift.

Of course, it’s not helped by Rowena revealing another motive (and I do think it was another motive rather than her sole motive): Crowley killed Oskar, the son she loved so she killed his son. Simple, nasty vengeance from the most dysfunctional family ever.

On the back of all this we also have Mary talking to Dean and Sam about the Men of the Letters and how she’s working with them: Sam and Dean are Not Happy About This since the Men of Letters tortured them

I think this is heading into a major rift between the Winchesters and Mary. Her lies and manipulations last episode were, frankly, inexcusable. And while the Winchesters have ALL THE MUMMY ISSUES watching her willingness to ally with people who brutally tortured them is shaking that connection a lot.

Especially since the Men of Letters are also pushing Mary to put some distance between her and her sons. When you consider that their bond is actually pretty hollow – sure they’re mother and sons but there’s been a huge estrangement after her death; exactly how close are they

Over to Crowley, we see he has indeed been uncharacteristically stupid. He has captured Lucifer. Rather than send Lucifer back to his cell, he has the devil all chained up so Crowley can lord over him and be all scathing and superior. Crowley this level of stupidity is beneath you. It’s only a matter of time before Lucifer escapes – especially with his son out there

And Kelly, pregnant with Lucifer’s son? Angels nearly catch her – until Dagon, Prince of Hell, intervenes, easily dispatching the angels. She acts as protector and guide for Kelly, giving her a new perspective on the whole heaven & hell thing – saying that it’s all a bit more grey and not so black and white (other than angels being dicks, this isn’t actually something we’ve seen a lot of in Supernatural. Hell and Lucifer are still, well, evil. Ok, god and angels are also, well, fairly evil. So I guess you’re fucked either way).

The most telling point she has is that baby devil is still a foetus – and no-one can judge whether they’re going to be good or evil yet. She also thinks the baby could save them all

Which sounds interesting – except Lucifer apparently knows what Dagon is doing and is happy about it…