Supernatural Season 11 Episode 3 Review: “The Bad Seed”

In my last Supernatural review, I characterized The Darkness as a destructive force; chaos bent on breaking the rules, instead of playing by them. But I wasn’t totally correct. I thought The Darkness was more like a tornado, or a hurricane, or a nuclear bomb. I thought that she was, as her name suggested, a never-ending pitch-black night that blotted out everything around her.

But where I was wrong is that she’s as much a creative force as destructive. She’s not Lucifer, or Michael; she’s not a bulldozer. She’s also not a farmer, or a parent; she does not curate and create life. Rather, The Darkness is both. The Darkness is evolution.

She sees God’s plan as a failure; this world suffers because God made it that way, and she doesn’t understand why. She is puzzled by Crowley’s desire to turn the whole world evil. Would Crowley really enjoy a world where everyone was like him? The Darkness is much more interested in remaking the world into a better place, devoid of suffering; she believes that she would’ve done a better job creating the universe than God did. Crowley said, “The Big Bang was more like a Big Bust,” and she can’t agree more.

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What is going on in the rest of the Supernatural universe? I think about this sometimes when we come across characters who have existed independent of the Winchesters. Angels and demons and monsters and people, all who have lived complete lives without ever crossing the path of the two most notorious hunters on the planet. We mostly get big picture stuff when it comes to them; they deliver what is necessary to move the plot or the character, and that is the last we see of them.

An angel and a demon go into a bar, and they share a drink. You’d think this would end in bloodshed (or at the very least a really bad joke), but it doesn’t. It makes perfect sense that there would be overlap between angels and demons, that friendships would exist outside of whatever cultural norms paranormal beings ascribe to. It actually makes the events of the past make more sense and have more weight. There has always been a hanging question, dangling just above our heads, of whether monsters can be trusted. Usually, the answer is a resounding no. But it adds depth if it is true.

People who are scared, but who can’t admit it, puff up their chests and make proclamations; the gyrations mask the shaking whiskey held between their finger tips. This angel and this demon are scared.  They make proclamations about giving power to the little guy, and about doing something about The Darkness even when their bosses won’t. They are so afraid that they even meet out in the wide open, so that they can talk and drink, and lie to each other about how they can make the world a better place. The rank and file of Heaven and Hell are truly, deeply afraid.

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Sam and Dean cured Castiel by rescuing Rowena. But they did not ask her for help against The Darkness, and that is strange. They are underestimating The Darkness, and it doesn’t make much sense why they would.

The brothers are going to need all hands on deck for this one, and that means everyone. They no longer get to choose who they associate with. They’re going to need Metatron, and Rowena, and Crowley; they’re going to need Castiel, and Lucifer, and Michael, too. Last episode, Sam started having a vision, as brought on by God himself, that told him where he had to go. Lucifer’s Cage is the only place in the whole wide universe that has enough knowledge and power to truly give them a shot against The Darkness.

If they don’t, they lose. There is no other option. It’s going to be a bloodbath, and most of them will die. Hell, most of everyone will die.

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In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Sarah and John Connor manage to destroy the Cyberdyne lab and avert the rise of Skynet, or so they thought. But really, they had simply kicked the can down the road, and it eventually came to pass.

There is an alternate universe where Lucifer was never put back in the Cage, where Sam was totally taken over, and the world really did end. Present!Dean was sent there by Zachariah to show him the consequences of not cooperating with the angels. In that future, Future!Dean is killed, as is everyone else who makes an assault on Lucifer’s compound. This was supposed to come to pass in 2014.

“No matter what, you always end up here.”

Maybe they just kicked it down the road by stuffing Lucifer into the Cage. Maybe this has to come to pass, one way or another. Looking back at the last five seasons, it’s been a slow march towards getting The Mark on, and then off, Dean. The Leviathans lead to The Trials, which lead to Metatron and Abbadon, which lead to the closing of Heaven, which lead to The Mark. The Mark leads to The Darkness. There is no way to know if that was planned out, or just taken advantage of by the writers. Regardless, it is not implausible that, faced with a power too great to deal with on their own, the Winchesters turn to other great powers, like Lucifer, to back them up.

If God is as powerful as he seems to be, then the idea that his prophecy could be overcome is more than a little laughable. Perhaps this is the universe correcting itself, and bending itself to God’s will. Or maybe fan theories are cooler than the show itself. Very, very possible.

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Supernatural is more serialized than I’ve ever seen it. Like I said in my last review, this probably won’t last, but I like it a lot. It is, in my memory, the strongest opening stretch of episodes that the series has ever had. I am really into what is going on, and I hope that stays true.

One complaint: Supernatural can try too hard to keep the campiness going, and Crowley is suffering for a bit in his interactions with Amara. Less jokes about Crowley buying kids books would be good is all I’m saying.

[Photo credit: Diyah Pera/The CW]