The past three episodes of Supernatural have had little to do with season 11’s major strategy, but the latest episode’s definitely arc-centric. There were a few surprises (guess who’s back?), appearances from most of this season’s main characters, and even a rare exorcism duet from Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) Winchester, but the show still feels like it’s spinning its wheels.
“Hell’s Angel” started out interestingly enough, with Crowley (Mark Sheppard) receiving the Horn of Joshua (formerly crafted by God in order to crumble the walls of Jericho) from an archaeologist (Andrew Wheeler) who had sold his soul in exchange for history-making discoveries. Before you start thinking that Crowley’s one of the good guys, though, note that he then snapped the guy’s neck for no particular reason, even after he let the man out of his contract. Crowley appears to the Winchesters and they form a plan to trap Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino), exorcise Castiel (Misha Collins), and use the horn against Amara (Emily Swallow).
Meanwhile, Lucifer/Castiel is walking through the halls of Heaven, snuffing out a random angel (Graeme Duffy) and making his usual sort of dark, sarcastic jokes. He gathers the angels in for a meeting (apparently, there are only a dozen or so up there at any given time) and insists that he’s the only one who can stop Amara, and he’ll do it in exchange for being the new God. After Amara shouts throughout the whole world and fills the whole Heaven with smoke for no apparent reason, the angels fearfully seem to agree.
How many of us thought Rowena (Ruth Connell) was gone for good (or least for the rest of this season)? Well, thanks to a magical glowing purple object she concealed within herself, she was brought back to life. Afterwards, she befriends Amara, who’s been recuperating after being smote by an army of angels. The Darkness makes it clear to Rowena that her ultimate goal is to destroy the universe as we know it and rebuild something that’s more to her liking, but Rowena apparently still hasn’t learned anything from her dealings with Lucifer. She offers to aid and abet with her plans in exchange for a favor or two. Still, the next time we see her, she’s seemingly helping her son and the Winchesters in their fight to both save Castiel and destroy Amara, so her motives are left open to interpretation.
Trapping Lucifer in a quickly dissipating Star of Solomon, Dean attempts to get Castiel to will himself out. Finding Lucifer’s power too strong, Crowley inserts his spirit into Lucifer/Castiel via a plume of red smoke. Once inside, he finds a disillusioned Castiel attempting to watch TV in the imaginary place he finds most relaxing: the Winchester bunker. Lucifer’s spirit appears to torture Crowley, but before he can really do any damage, the Winchesters exorcise him out. Crowley disappears, Rowena hides behind a wall, and Lucifer/Castiel seizes the horn. Lucifer/Castiel attempts to choke both of the Winchesters to death (This marks the second time in two weeks that Sam has almost choked to death!), but Amara appears.
Amara may hate the universe, but she’s a devoted Dean fangirl, so she protects the Winchesters. Lucifer’s vow to kill them may have just been a way to lure her to her death, but the horn turns out to be powerless against her. She teleports Lucifer/Castiel to an undisclosed location, where she insists on torturing “God’s favorite son” in order to get God’s attention.
So the big question of the week, other than wondering what actually will kill Amara, is who is she talking about? Does she really think the devil is God’s favorite anything? Or does Castiel have a special significance that we don’t know about yet?
The next episode (airing April 27th) probably won’t give us any of these answers, as it adds a new monster to the show’s roster: “chitters”, strange porcupine-like humanoids who seem to assault people in forests. It seems we’ll have to wait until the final run of episodes before we get any real answers.