It’s official: The Winchesters is scary, Mary Campbell is going to break everyone’s heart, and you should never, ever underestimate Ada Monroe — even if you are a powered-up demon immune to holy water. Read on for our review of The Winchesters episode 3, “You’re Lost Little Girl.”
While last week saw the gang grapple with a monster fixated on strained parent-child relationships, episode 3 brought them up against Bori Baba, a decidedly creepy bogeyman from North Indian folklore that uses its victims’ desire to find the things that they have lost to trap them in its lair.
Fresh out of leads on Samuel’s whereabouts, Mary, John, Latika, and Ada are ready to dive into Ada’s mystically-acquired findings on the demons that attacked them during the events of the pilot, when Carlos arrives with news: something big, bad, and crawling with cops is going down at Mary’s neighbor’s house. Leaving Latika to man the phones at the Men of Letters clubhouse, Carlos and Ada head out to follow up on the demon that got away, while John accompanies Mary back to her neighborhood. There, they quickly discover that the kids next door have been targeted by a monster that likes to play with its food, and the key to saving them hits Mary even closer to home than she could have guessed.
“You’re Lost Little Girl” is creepy, tense, and doesn’t pull any emotional punches. To get into the nitty-gritty of why this episode has quickly become my favorite so far, let’s dig into some of its most thought-provoking moments and quotes.
The official synopsis of “You’re Lost Little Girl” reads:
FACE YOUR FEARS – When Mary’s (Meg Donnelly) next-door neighbor mysteriously goes missing, she and John (Drake Rodger) start digging into the disappearance. During their investigation, John unexpectedly reunites with someone from his past. Carlos (JoJo Fleites) and Ada (Demetria McKinney) bond as they stake out a potential lead for the demon’s partner. Meanwhile, Latika (Nida Khurshid) taps into old folklore passed down from her family in hopes it helps Mary and John. Claudia Yarmy directed the episode written by Gabriel Alejandro Garza.
’The Winchesters’ season 1, episode 3 review in quotes
“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.”
As we move through the season, it’s seeming more and more likely that Dean is an active participant in this overarching narrative. His focus in each episode’s narration reflects not only what is going on in the lives of his parents and their friends in 1972, but also where he is on his (presumably afterlife) journey along a road with no map. I’m increasingly fascinated by what it could all be leading to. In The Winchesters pilot, he told us that the story he’s laying out is a puzzle he is still putting together himself, and in the episodes since, his narration has shown him finding some of those missing pieces – lessons he either never quite learned, or just didn’t get a chance to meaningfully apply during Supernatural’s run.
In episode 2, he talked about learning from your parents before breaking free to make your way without them, which is something Dean absolutely struggled with as he spent a large part of his life attempting to be precisely who his father wanted him to be, while also taking on attributes he inherited from his mother thanks to filling her role in Sam’s life. He was in a lot of ways a living shrine to both of them, and it wasn’t until very late in the game that he started to allow himself to deviate from that mold he’d forced himself into. Admitting that he does like Taylor Swift and chick flicks (during the season 10 episode “About a Boy”, and the season 11 finale “Alpha and Omega” respectively) was part of that, but he was still more than a little stunted when it came to fully embracing things that fell outside of the framework he’d grown up inside of.
Now, in episode 3, he’s talking about the importance of letting friends and family help and guide you instead of trying to shoulder every burden alone. Given his words last week, combined with the themes of this episode, it seems that family here is largely referring to the found kind. Again, this is something that Dean always had trouble with. He’s notoriously reluctant to ask for help, and the number of times he claimed to be “fine” when in fact he was barely holding on by a thread is more than I can count. Hearing him come to this understanding now feels significant, even if we don’t yet know the plan for his part of this story. Somehow I get the feeling that Dean’s narration is going to have me re-enacting the Pepe Silvia meme every single week. I’m going to need to invest in a pin board and some red string.
Meanwhile, Dean’s words here also have me going back to comments made by showrunner Robbie Thompson during the NYCC event at the beginning of the month: “Supernatural became a show about a larger family, but it was a two-hander, and we really wanted [The Winchesters] to start with that family.” Whatever you want to call them – the core four, the Scooby gang, or the monster club, as this episode helpfully provides – this little band of hunters and hunters-in-training has the found family dynamic on lock. They each bring out something different in one another, and despite only having known them – or in John and Mary’s case, this version of them – for 3 episodes, it’s already clear that every member of the team has an important role to play.
(This also feels like a perfect moment to throw some love at this ensemble cast. It was clear from episode 1 that The Winchesters had struck gold with this group of actors, and that’s only becoming more and more evident with every episode. Their chemistry is off the charts all around, and I can’t overstate how much fun the behind-the-scenes videos they’ve shared during various Instagram takeovers are. If you haven’t already seen them, now’s as good a time as any to catch up.)
“So they’re still separated, then?”
The first reveal of this episode comes early, as Mary wraps up an apparently fruitless phone call with someone named Nina, and we learn that there’s a reason why The Winchesters hasn’t yet introduced us to Deanna Campbell. Evidently, Mary’s mom has been off on her own for months, having separated from Samuel at some point after their niece died the previous year, and she hasn’t been returning any of Mary’s phone calls.
“Nothing’s been the same since Maggie died,” Mary tells Latika in this opening scene. Though Mary does initially claim that she doesn’t know the reason why her parents separated, the fact that she almost immediately mentions Maggie’s death does make it seem likely that there’s a connection there. Whether it’s something as simple as the two of them processing the grief that comes with losing a child they both felt some responsibility for in incompatible ways, or something as complicated and heavy as one of them being directly culpable for her death remains to be seen.
At this point, though, the most interesting thing to me about this particular moment is the fact that Mary doesn’t seem remotely troubled by her mom’s radio silence. She seems annoyed, yes. Even frustrated. But she does not seem worried. The last Mary heard, Deanna was working with a group of hunters in Minnesota a couple of months back — longer ago than Samuel has been missing by far — but despite having had no response to the multiple messages she’s left, even since Samuel went missing, Mary doesn’t seem all that concerned for Deanna’s safety. She’s not actively looking for her the way she is looking for Samuel. I can’t help but wonder why.
Is running off on her own normal behavior for Deanna Campbell? Is Mary used to only having Samuel to rely on? Considering the fact that in this same scene, Mary goes on to say that she feels like her dad is just giving her “the silent treatment” by leaving her alone to worry that he’s in danger – along with everything we know about Samuel’s prickly attitude from his multiple appearances on the mothership – the idea that he’s the parent she’s most emotionally dependent on seems incredibly bleak, to say the least.
“You told him what you wanted. Maybe he’s trying to prove that he can do it alone so you can leave.”
Oh, Lata. You enigmatic little ray of determined sunshine. While it absolutely tracks that Latika would want to see the best in Samuel – who we know thanks to The Winchesters episode 1 is the person who saved her life – it’s intriguing that she should have such a charitable outlook on his behavior here, when she’s clearly got some parent-related problems of her own. It’s possible, of course, that she’s just trying to offer Mary a glass-half-full perspective in the hope that it will cheer her up, but honestly… the more we get to know Lata, the more questions I have.
She’s bright, and inquisitive, and brave – the way she shoves the Bori Baba away from her friends despite her fear was a hell of a fist-pump moment – but there’s also a shrewdness to her that comes out in this episode. That combined with the fact that she’s apparently been lying to Mary about her own parents has me starting to worry. Is there more that she’s withholding from her friends?
I wondered in my episode 1 review if she might even be an unknowing Men of Letters legacy – she certainly seemed to be telling the truth when she claimed to have never heard of them – but now I’m not so sure. Could she already have some involvement in that organization? Could her parents? If they’re not involved in that world at all, what other possible reason would she have for lying to Mary about them? And why is her mother not talking to her? What is the deal with Latika!?
“You guys have been at this for days. How about a little break at least, just for a couple of hours? I don’t know, maybe go see a movie?”
Now this is an interesting development. Previously, I’d speculated that there might be something more than friendship developing between Latika and John, given their chemistry and a few cute moments in both the pilot and episode 2, but here she is actively encouraging John to ask Mary out with all the pointed eyebrow raising of an obnoxious sibling. I really did not have “Lata attempts to be John’s wingman” on my bingo card. Although… now that I’ve used that particular turn of phrase, I’ve had the sudden wild thought that Lata could be a cupid in disguise. The angels have to show up sometime, right?
Could this be why she’s lying about her parents? Could it be that she’s not truly Lata at all? Perhaps she’s an angel who has distanced herself from Lata’s family in order to get the job done without having to deal with any interference. As far as theories go, I realize this one is a little thin, but it’s early days yet. Maybe next week she’ll do something with big celestial energy and I’ll have a little more to go on. Let’s just call this one an alarming thought experiment for now. (Also, while we’re here, John’s swing-and-a-miss in this scene really got me. He’s about as smooth as he is subtle, and I have to assume it’s wilful ignorance on Mary’s part that she doesn’t really acknowledge it.)
“No flies on you, huh?”
Ahh, so THIS is Betty. She is John’s ex-girlfriend, after all – but more than that, as we find out by the end of the episode, she’s someone who John proposed to before he shipped off to Vietnam. Someone who turned him down. (Smart move, Bets. Too young doesn’t even begin to cover it, and it’s fair to say you definitely dodged a bullet there.) It’s no wonder Millie thought that mentioning Betty would help her get through to John. If they were a serious enough couple for John to go out and buy a ring at age 17, she must have been with him for a while – though I’ll be interested to learn if Millie ever knew about the proposal.
John and Betty agree to try and be friends by the end of the episode, and while they both seem sincere in that, it does also seem as though there are still some not-quite-resolved feelings between them. With Betty working for the Lawrence PD, I won’t be surprised if she ends up crossing paths with the monster club frequently enough that those feelings become impossible to avoid addressing.
“My dad taught me how to use one when I was Carrie’s age. Had me scan the dial and listen for hunter code words in the chatter.”
I’m gonna need to sit with this one for a minute. At age 8, Mary already knew enough about hunting to help scan the CB radio for hunter code words. She had been as young as Carrie, whose room we see is filled with dolls and toys and crayon drawings of rainbows, who can’t sleep without her stuffed bunny Bernice, and who, by Mary’s own assessment, acts a lot older than she is. Samuel Campbell was already on thin ice with me for his future crimes, but he (and Deanna by extension) are rapidly reaching John levels of Bad Parent-ism thanks to this casually delivered story about Mary already being so resigned to a life of hunting monsters by the time she was 8 years old that even though she wondered what it would be like to have a normal life, she didn’t actually let herself fantasize about it.
What’s more, the fact that John reacts with surprise — but not outright disapproval — on hearing this story is telling. While there’s currently no reason to believe he’s going to remember any of this by the time he’s raising his sons (and I’m using the word “raising” very loosely here) his easy acceptance of what Mary tells him says a lot more about his moral compass than anything else. Sure, he encourages her to “make a new list” of plans for after she finds Samuel and gives up the life. He comments that she really wasn’t kidding when she said she started hunting young. But there’s no discernable sympathy there. No acknowledgment that a child of that age deserved to have dreams. Not even any expression of horror at the fact that she was robbed of a real childhood and thrust into a world that would be terrifying for an adult. The personality traits that will eventually play into John’s worst choices are all too visible, even now. Have I mentioned how much I’m enjoying this aspect of The Winchesters? Because I’m REALLY enjoying this aspect of The Winchesters. Deeply upsetting, extremely satisfying, can’t wait for more.
“My folks made sure this house was super monster proof, but an extra layer can’t hurt.”
Look, I know it’s probably tacky to ask someone this, but uh… Mary? Are your parents independently wealthy? This house seems big and expensive for a bunch of people who spend all their time out on the road killing monsters and dropping off the grid for months at a time. I know Sam and Dean always managed to do alright for themselves by running credit card scams and hustling pool to pay for motels and Biggerson’s Turducken Slammers and the presumably horrific amount of gas required to drive the Impala from one side of the country to the other every week, but it still feels extremely unlikely that the kind of low-level crime hunters usually use to generate cash would ever be enough to afford a spacious two-story house full of stained glass windows and creepy tapestries.
I guess what I really want to know here is where exactly the Campbells are getting their money from. What’s their side hustle? Is it soup? Have they secretly been the soup Campbells this entire time? Or – the more realistic but considerably less amusing option – could they possibly have a Bela Talbot type among their ranks, stealing magical artifacts to sell to the highest bidder? Soup or swindling, place your bets! (I really hope it’s soup.)
“It’s a fitting soundtrack for the end of my life, my youth withering to decay here in the most boring act of all hunterdom: a stakeout.”
Carlos passing this extremely dramatic judgment on the typically boring nature of stakeouts immediately before The Winchesters treats us to one of the least boring stakeout scenes I’ve ever witnessed is top tier comedy, and also gives us a perfect moment to talk about how dynamic the action sequences in this show are. Each character’s style shines through in the way that they fight. Carlos with his holy water pistol and scrappy, frenetic motion; Ada with her calculating, resourceful use of her surroundings, slamming the demon with the van door. It’s clear that there’s been significant thought given to the physicality of every individual, and that immediately elevates these fight scenes to another level.
Tangentially related to that, Carlos looked almost as happy to be forcibly dragged out of stakeout mode and into a fight with a demon as he did when he realized they were going to a commune last week. I’ve never seen such infectious delight in my life. I’m really going to need him to meet Dean. I don’t care how. I’ll accept the flimsiest of explanations without batting an eye. Carlos just has such strong Dean energy, from his fighting style to his sense of humor to his deep appreciation for music that they’d either end up the most intense of frenemies, or they’d get along like a – well, let’s maybe not say like a house on fire, considering Dean’s considerable baggage there. But you get my point.
“Bori Baba lures its victims by tempting them with an item they’ve lost. And not just any item. Something that has deep meaning to them. When a person wishes for this item to be found, the sack appears. Then Bori Baba emerges from it, takes them, and traps them in its maze.”
If you’ve read all of my coverage of The Winchesters, you’ll know that I have a severe case of Dean-brain. It’s incurable. I’m at peace with it. With that in mind, I hope you’ll excuse me for briefly having been absolutely certain that there was a picture of Dean nestled among the lost items in Bori Baba’s supernatural storage facility. Alas, it turned out to be nothing but a mannequin with Jensen Ackles ridiculous Golden Ratio facial structure, but the quick motion of the camera combined with a briefly glitching TV screen had my aforementioned Dean-brain convinced that we were seeing a similar situation to the one presented in Supernatural’s season 11 episode, “Safe House”, where the monster’s lair existed outside of linear time. While that particular item may have ended up being a false alarm, the actual contents of Bori Baba’s lair deserve some attention. Once again, I’m impressed with the level of detail and depth The Winchesters is delivering in its sets, both on a simple aesthetic level, as well as symbolically.
The lair is a blanket fort gone bad, set up in a dingy storage facility that makes all the soft blankets and stuffed toys that line the floors and walls feel menacing. Even the lighting in the lair adds to the feeling – Bori Baba is like an anglerfish, dangling something desirable in front of its victims so it can use the moment of distraction to capture and kill, and the brightly colored party lights that line the halls add to the sinister atmosphere. It reminds me in some ways of Pennywise the Clown in “IT”, tempting Georgie into the sewer with a balloon, and adds to the overall creep factor of a monster that is frankly disturbing enough on its own. Nothing friendly ever crawled sideways along a wall. That’s humanoid spider behavior, and I simply won’t stand for it.
While I’m on the topic of details in the set dressing, this seems like a good time to mention that I spied the Styne family name on one of the file folders that appeared in the Men of Letters clubhouse at the beginning of the episode. For anyone who blocked them from memory, the Stynes were the family of Nazi necromancers who brutally murdered Charlie Bradbury, one of Sam and Dean’s few close friends, and a character widely regarded as a gift to fandom from Robbie Thompson. The decision to kill Charlie off in season 10 was famously controversial – she was, at the time, the only confirmed-queer recurring character on the show, and one of very few recurring women – and was one that multiple cast members including Jensen Ackles publicly regarded as a bad move. So it’s certainly interesting that the Styne name should appear in this episode, considering the themes of loss, friends, and family. I can’t help but think that if any member of the Styne family does show up in The Winchesters, whatever happens to them will be extremely cathartic for everyone involved.
“A Colombian hag and now a North Indian bogeyman… do you guys find it weird that we’re coming across so many wayward monsters?”
I wonder how long it will take for the monster club to realize that not only are these monsters coming from far and wide to terrorize the residents of Lawrence, Kansas in particular, but that their motivations are also shockingly relevant to the current struggles of their immediate group of friends.
Characters becoming aware of the puppet master controlling their story is a trope that I’ll never tire of. Knowing what we do about Chuck and his many failed drafts, it seems entirely possible that they might – even temporarily – realize that the world around them is being manipulated. This was always a possibility on The Winchesters thanks to the nature of the source material, but given that Mary has already called direct attention to one aspect of the narrative that characters in stories generally seem immune to noticing, it seems even more plausible.
“Okay, well, why don’t you just ask your folks? I mean I’m sure they remember something about it.”
John, what we’re not going to do is casually ask people to contact their parents on the parental trauma show. C’mon, now. Use your head.
“You can put a demon in a plant?”
Has anyone else suddenly found themselves squinting back at that suspiciously hardy jasmine plant growing outside the Winchester Garage in episode 2? I’d assumed Ada’s inclusion of its leaves in her vision-inducing potion was incidental, but now… perhaps not. Could it be that there’s a demon in that plant? Several demons? Is that how the jasmine managed to stay alive despite Millie having no idea how to care for it – similar to the way a demon’s host body carries on functioning through what should be fatal injuries, right up until the demon is exorcised? Much to think about.
Also, besides being a super inventive addition to the lore that manages to slip seamlessly into established canon while also opening up a wealth of possibilities both horrific and hilarious, this spell to trap a demon in a plant just looks damn cool. Blood dripping onto a salt circle? Demon smoke spiraling its way into a bonsai? Glowing blood sigils? Awesome, creepy, 10/10. Once again I am very on board with all of the aesthetic choices being made by The Winchesters production team.
“Don’t look at me, dude. This one’s full of surprises today. I mean, she could have a hundred demons in that tree for all I know.”
People seem to have a bad habit of underestimating Ada Monroe. Carlos underestimated her by being surprised that she noticed the devil’s trap in his van. The demon underestimated her by assuming she would be merciful. At the beginning of the episode, Ada seemed put out by Mary telling her to take Carlos as backup, and while I initially thought it was just continued tension surrounding Mary’s tendency to put herself in charge (something she did acknowledge last week, but which is so instinctual for her that I imagine she’ll slip back into boss mode several times before any lasting change can be seen) I’m now wondering if it might have also been due to this ongoing issue of people not seeing how sharp and powerful she truly is.
We also learn definitively in this scene that Ada does in fact have aspirations of becoming a fully fledged witch, and the way she handles the demon she and Carlos are interrogating is surprisingly cold. What’s more, while Ada choosing to keep the demon in the bonsai does make sense if they want to keep him from talking to anyone else about the Men of Letters box or continuing to work with the Akrida, she also mentions that keeping the tree will make it easier for them to talk to him again if they need to. Has she done this before? Is it possible that part of her displeasure at having Mary send Carlos with her on this stakeout was due to other witchy plans? Would she have done more to make him talk if she had been on her own, or kept the existence of her demonic botany practices hidden? The chances of Ada taking a dangerous path seem higher than ever, and I’m equal parts thrilled and terrified by what that might mean for The Winchesters gang.
“None of this works without Mary. I need her.”
John’s desperation to save Mary here is a nice (read: upsetting) precursor to the all-consuming obsession that he eventually develops in seeking revenge for her death. As much as Mary doesn’t know who she is without hunting, John is quickly revealing himself as one of those people who defines himself by his current fixation, whether that’s a relationship or a mission, and it quickly becomes something that he uses as a device instead of stopping to think about his true motivations and feelings. For most of his life until now, it was his father’s disappearance that drove him, but as he told Mary earlier in the episode, even his pursuit of answers had become little more than a list. He kept checking off tasks because it gave him direction. That small semblance of control was enough to sustain him, even though in hindsight he can see that it wasn’t actually helping anything.
The problem is, now that he has some answers about what happened to Henry, he’s shifted all of that focus fully to Mary. What little clarity he might have gained about his own behavior in trying to encourage her to take steps toward positive change, he doesn’t even seem cognizant of the fact that he’s failing to do so in his own life. He’s just leapt from one fixation to another. From searching for his own father to helping Mary find hers, and from using the military as an outlet to using hunting. Even from coming on too strong and moving too fast with Betty, to being so swiftly dependent on Mary, who he’s known for less than a month, that he’s saying he needs her. That he can’t do this without her. This is one of those situations where I’d be shouting at Mary to notice all the damn red flags before it’s too late, except that we’ve already passed the point of no return. Oof.
“There may be one other person I can contact… but even if I could get ahold of them, I doubt they’d be willing to talk to me.”
I know I already asked this earlier, but what is the deal with Latika? What happened with her parents? It’s unclear who she’s speaking with on the phone, so the status of her father remains unknown, but she tells whoever she’s talking to to let her mom know that she’s safe, so we can pretty reasonably assume that the whole story was a lie. The question is why? I floated a couple of possibilities before – secret Men of Letters connection, angel-in-disguise – but honestly neither of those theories currently holds up all that well with the facts we currently have. Whatever the issue is with her parents, she seems to think that it’s unlikely they’d even want to speak with her, but also seems to be withholding information from them.
Is she on some mission from some other group we don’t yet know about? Are her parents completely unaware of the supernatural, and she’s concerned that they’ll be dragged in if she has contact with them? Could there be a demon deal involved somewhere – some pact she’s made to save them but a condition is keeping them in the dark? I have SO MANY questions about Latika. (She’s still in my pocket, though.)
“Technically radio waves act as background radiation in the universe, so wherever they are… it might get through.”
As soon as Dean told us during the pilot that he would be picking the music on this ride, I was ready to look at every song choice on this show with an analytical eye. That said, I do think I may have underestimated how big a part music – and by extension, radio waves – might play in The Winchesters. Like Dean’s narration, I now find myself wondering if it is an influential part of the story, rather than a simple framing device.
Between the way John and Lata finally manage to get in touch with Mary through the use of a CB radio that reaches beyond the physical world and into whatever creepy pocket dimension Bori Baba’s sack world is in, and Rockin’ Roxy summoning and possibly even controlling monsters through the songs she’s playing on her pirate radio station, it seems increasingly possible that by picking the music, Dean might be transmitting intent and influencing events on Earth.
Factoring in the established true-form of angels being previously described as “multi-dimensional wavelengths”, along with the fact that their frequent method of communication takes place in the form of radio – both the telepathic kind and the regular electronic kind, as we saw in “Dark Side of the Moon”, in which Castiel offered Dean condolences for his recent death before directing him to follow the road – as well as the prevailing theory that Dean is once again on the Axis Mundi as he moves through Heaven 2.0, where he’d reasonably be able to enlist the help of his angelic bff… when I tell you this episode has my brain humming on 100 simultaneous frequencies I am not exaggerating.
Is Roxy’s musical manipulation getting picked up on the other planes of existence? Is this what clued Dean into the Akrida situation in the first place? Or is this all just noise registering as a signal? Time will tell, but there are some potentially fascinating possibilities here, and I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on this one.
“Carrie, I know you love Bernice, but —”
One of many fun things that The Winchesters has carried over from the Supernatural universe is the kind of moment that has me laughing out loud as it happens, only to be absolutely devastated when I really let myself think about it later. Because Carrie does not hesitate to rip that bunny in two. Mary doesn’t even get the whole sentence out before she tears its head off, and yeah, it’s funny because it’s unexpected, and Carrie is an adorable little badass in that moment, but also… ouch.
Carrie loves that bunny. She was so unhappy when she’d lost that bunny that her distress and desire to find it was enough to turn her into the target for a monster. And now, here she is; an 8 year old child, forced to give up something she loves in order to survive. She’s a clear mirror for Mary here, though unlike Mary, she has a parent who does not withhold affection or contact, and the contrast there makes this even more gut-wrenching. What had started off as a scene that made me snortlaugh has now become one that absolutely guts me. Kudos on the surprise pain delivery, The Winchesters. You got me good this time.
“If we find my dad then I’m done hunting, and hunting… hunting is all I have. I’m not like you, John. I never dreamed I could do anything else. I was raised to hunt, and… if I give up hunting, I don’t know who I am.”
As I’d hoped to see, The Winchesters has continued to use the monster-of-the-week to its advantage, shining a spotlight on the inner struggles of one of our main characters as she fights to save the kids who’ve been captured. Where last week was largely centered on John and his issues surrounding his mother’s decision to shelter him from the truth, and his lingering fear that despite everything he now knows, his father actually did abandon him on purpose, this week focuses on Mary. Again, parent-related-struggles are the name of the game, but for Mary, it’s an entirely different beast. Unlike John, Mary’s parents told her too much. They taught her about the true horrors of the world from a young age, and in doing so, forced her to grow up far too fast, stunting her ability to truly want anything for herself.
What’s more, Mary’s suspicion early on in the episode that her father might be giving her the silent treatment doesn’t seem to come out of nowhere – she suggests it matter-of-factly. Casually. As though rejection as punishment is something she might reasonably expect of him. Where John’s parents (or mostly Millie, given John’s age when Henry went missing) withheld information in an effort to protect him from the world, Mary’s seem to have withheld affection in an attempt to toughen her up in spite of it, to make her the hunter they expected her to become, while cutting off any dreams she might have had before they could even form.
With identity and hope being quickly established as major themes for the season – despite the foreknowledge that at least where Mary and John are concerned, both are wholly doomed concepts – it makes me suspect that their story is actually inversely connected to Dean’s. It’s not a stretch to see how both of these situations relate back to him, after all. He felt abandoned by Mary despite knowing she didn’t die by choice, and felt anger toward her for keeping the truth about the supernatural secret. And despite always trying his hardest to follow his father’s commands, he resented John for never letting him be a kid, and for crushing whatever small hope he had to have anything more than hunting in his life.
Where Dean now seems to be learning and growing in these areas by looking back to his parents’ past, they are moving toward decay and despair. Something tells me that all of this is going to make a very satisfying rewatch once we have all the pieces of the puzzle.
“I think Ford’s gonna be a handful now. After he saw the Bori Baba go down, he wants to make monster club jackets.”
Oh, me too, little buddy. I’m honestly kinda bummed that this episode didn’t come out with enough time left before Halloween for me to plan a whole costume around the idea of Ford’s monster club jacket. Still, I’m sure there are plenty of industrious fans already well underway on making their own, and I’ll be shocked if I haven’t already seen a dozen of them on Twitter by the time the next episode rolls around.
“What’s a dime between total strangers?”
What with Lata’s failed matchmaking, the lingering feelings between John and Betty, and now Mary’s spur-of-the-moment movie date with a stranger at the end of the episode, I’m feeling more certain than ever that The Winchesters has some angelic interference looming on the horizon.
Assuming that The Winchesters is indeed following the established timeline, we know that John initially proposes to Mary only a year from now, in May of 1973, before they eventually get married in Reno in 1975. Sure, we now have the knowledge that John has made wildly premature proposals of marriage in the past, so they don’t necessarily have to have been dating for long when he asks her, but even so they must get together soon. From here on out, I’ll be watching every single person who appears on screen with an increasingly suspicious eye. Is Lata the cupid? Mrs Billups? The movie theater clerk? I know someone is a damn cupid!!!
“This is Rockin’ Roxy comin’ at you in the witching hour, with a new dark and dangerous sound. It’s guaranteed to bring the rarest of hell-raisers from near and far to our beloved Lawrence. So raise the volume and tune in.”
As we solve the mystery of who was in the woods last episode, creeping around doing spooky things in the dark, we’re introduced to several new ones: who exactly is Rockin’ Roxy, how did she get tangled up in all of this, and why do the Akrida want disrupt the lives of people in Lawrence so badly The demon that Carlos and Ada interrogated claimed that Roxy was “just some woman,” but given how little that demon actually knew I’m not sure if we can take his words at face value.
Has the Akrida taken over her body entirely in the way a demon does, or is it just hiding in her subconscious to corrupt her in some way? Does any of Roxy’s original personality remain? Who was she before? Was she a witch? A hunter? Someone involved with the Men of Letters before they were wiped out? Did she invite the Akrida to use her like the demons offered their services in exchange for the promise of safety? Or was she just some unfortunate civilian who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, already operating a pirate radio station that the Akrida saw as a fitting tool for luring monsters into town?
And even beyond all of that, what is it that she’s collecting from the remains of all these monsters that have been killed? There are so many directions that things could take from here, and I’m genuinely excited about all of them. Whatever happens next week, I’ll be back with more theories and yelling (and hopefully with a Monster Club jacket of my own.)