“Well, we should call the internet and find out as much as we can about these people.”
— Mary Winchester
What a weird way to open an episode! Supernatural viewers were likely wondering just what the heck was going on in the first few minutes of this week’s episode, as it opened with the rather unlikely sight of Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and Lady Antonia Bevell (Elizabeth Blackmore) in bed together. Just as we’re starting to wonder if Sam’s bad taste in women had struck again — in case we’d forgotten, Bevell did point out later on that one of his last serious girlfriends was Ruby the demon (Genevieve Cortese) — the show reveals this was all just a drug-induced hallucination (and an excuse to show a shirtless Sam). Bevell threatened to torture a lot of characters tonight, so it’s not surprising that fans of the show generally dislike her character. The events of the rest of the episode, however, certainly seem to hint that she won’t be much of a recurring character.
“Mamma Mia”, technically a continuation to last week’s season premiere, was a “can’t miss” episode for several reasons. To start off, Dean (Jensen Ackles), Mary (Samantha Smith), and Castiel (Mischa Collins) team up to find Sam. The big confrontation, in which Bevell overpowered Dean with some kind of magic sigil, ended up with Mary actually saving the boys and giving Bevell a well-deserved beating. (It’s interesting to note that on Supernatural, as well as on many other TV series and movies, female villains are often only defeated by female heroes.)
Regardless, this happy family reunion was cut short by the introduction of Mick (Adam Fergus), Bevell’s boss, who promises the Winchesters that the British Men Of Letters didn’t approve of her actions and that she’ll be punished. Later on, though, Mick teases the intrusion of what could possibly be the twelfth season’s major enemy, the as-yet-unseen Mr. Katch, a British Men Of Letters superior who carries neatly packed suitcases full of weapons and wants to know the same information about American hunters as Lady Bevell kept trying to extract from Sam.
Also integral to this season’s main plot is Lucifer’s new vessel, rock star Vince Vicente (Rick Springfield). After a series of special effects-laden hallucinations, Vince finds himself accepting the devil after he appears in the form of Vince’s ex-girlfriend, Jen (Bronagh Waugh), who’d tragically committed suicide years earlier. While I’m little surprised that we didn’t hear any of Vince’s music here (the episode’s only musical moment came via the closing scene set to Heart’s “Lonely Heart”), Crowley (Mark Sheppard) did describe him as a “second tier star”, and heavily hinted that his band is similar to or inspired by Motley Crue.
Crowley and Rowena (Ruth Connell) had some good moments, as they teamed up in a failed attempt to send Lucifer back into Hell’s Cage. (They did, however, manage to temporarily disfigure his face, in what is likely to be the best horror make-up we see this year.) Rowena doesn’t seem to have much of a crush on Lucifer anymore, as she pleaded with him to let her go so she could continue a magic-free life of leisure in Boca Raton. Instead, Lucifer said he had plans for her, which currently look like some sort of possession mixed with torture.
The moment that most viewers had been waiting for came towards the end, as Mama Winchester finally got a chance to bond with her sons. Dean had previously told Castiel that there was an unspoken awkwardness between him and his mother, but that was gone as he happily accepted her gift of blueberry pie. It might have seemed odd that Sam never really seemed surprised by the fact that his mother had been brought back to life, but then again, doesn’t that make sense, considering all the crazy things that have happened to him throughout the course of the series?