11.03 The Bad Seed

From Super-wiki
Jump to: navigation, search


SPN-1103.jpg
Title The Bad Seed
Episode # Season 11, Episode 3
First aired October 21, 2015
Directed by Jensen Ackles
Written by Brad Buckner
Eugenie Ross-Leming
On IMDB The Bad Seed
Outline With Castiel's condition worsening, Sam and Dean go on the hunt for Rowena to remove the curse. As Amara begins educating herself on the current state of the universe, Crowley attempts to manipulate her for his own personal gain.
Monster Rowena
Timeline
Location(s) Lebanon, Kansas
Fall River, Massachusetts
Denver, Colorado
Topeka, Kansas
« Previous Episode | Next Episode »

Synopsis

In an abandoned warehouse, Rowena is trying to gather new followers for her new coven, the Mega Coven, a name which unfortunately doesn’t receive the awe she's looking for. Instead, her main intention of creating a new coven is soon revealed: she needs her fellow witches to provide her with protection from the Winchesters and her other enemies.

Rowena gloats that she murdered her own son, the King of Hell, by bewitching an angel to do the dirty work. One of the witches then mentions that a friend of hers just made a deal with Crowley recently. This news upsets Rowena, and when the other witches are about to leave her, she uses a spell from the Book of the Damned to incinerate them from the inside out.

In the bunker, Sam and Dean are trying to find any information about the disappearance of baby Amara. When Sam mentions that God did put the Darkness away a long time ago, a chained up Castiel replies bitterly that he’s not confident of that happening this time. God is not the only one they need to find; there’s also Metatron, who might also know about the Darkness since he was the scribe of God. After Cas has a violent reaction, Sam and Dean switch their efforts to finding Rowena, to force to remove the attack dog spell from Cas.

In his lair, Crowley receives news from one of his minions that his mother was sighted alive, and commands her to be annihilated. Crowley then turns to Amara, who is studying various subjects, including a video of Hitler’s Nuremberg speech. On his attempt to bond with Amara, Crowley learns that she seeks protection from God, so He can’t seal her away again. However, Amara won’t reveal to Crowley how God managed to lock her up.

At Café Elta, Rowena attempts to recruit a duo of witches Mega Coven, promising them status they could never get from the Grand Coven. Suddenly, a demon attacks them, killing one of the witches while Rowena manages to escape.

Meanwhile in the bunker, Dean is trying to get hold of Crowley’s mobile phone, in hope that the King of Hell will help them find Rowena. Castiel is pessimistic that Crowley will hand Rowena over to help lift the spell, considering that he tried to kill Crowley the last time they met. Sam announces that Metatron is also nowhere to be found, since there are no incidents relating to a crappy ’78 Continental Mark V, which offends Cas, since he’s fond of the classic car.

When they're trying another way to find Metatron by searching places he might love to visit, Cas suddenly has convulsions and blacks out. Sam and Dean rush to Cas and, when he comes around, Castiel says that he’s hearing voices. This takes Dean aback, and he asks if the voices are telling him to hurt people. Cas tells them that it's angel radio, and that the angels have doubled their efforts in capturing Metatron. Continuing with his research, Sam finds the news of the weird incident involving the three witches at a café in Denver.

Back at Crowley's lair, Amara is researching the Earth, when she finds her adult self on the standing mirror in her room. The little girl is amazed at God’s creation after He sealed her away, but the adult Amara still wants vengeance. The talk between the two Amaras is cut short when Crowley walks in to check on her. Once again, when he tries having a conversation with Amara, Crowley can feel that the girl will be a handful.

Somewhere in a pub, a demon is having a drink when an angel walks in. The demon stands up and flashes his black eyes, while the angel brandishes his blade. However, the demon just sits back down and goes back to drinking, the angel soon joins him and the two commiserate over how bad the situation is both in Heaven and Hell, something as big as God and Lucifer.

Following up on their finding about the homicide at the café, Sam and Dean pay a visit to the police station where the surviving witch is being held. There they manage to convince the witch to help them by revealing Rowena’s location through scrying.

In another attempt to get close with the Darkness as a little girl, Crowley brings presents to her. But she doesn’t seem to like the Earthly gifts—she's more interested in darker things, such as Dante’s Inferno (in the original Italian). Amara suddenly says that she’s hungry, but when her nanny brings sweets for her, Amara prefers a soul to feast on instead and consumes her demon nanny. This is another eye-opener for Crowley—the more Amara consumes souls, the more her mind broadens and becomes darker, and hungrier.

While the Winchester boys manage to capture Rowena, Castiel fails in his attempt to find his car when the computer suddenly goes on the fritz, and opens on a porn site. Not understanding what just happened, Cas shuts the laptop and soon has a flashback to the day he almost killed Crowley. The boys bring Rowena to the bunker, and they discover that Rowena only has Nadya's Codex with her. When Dean sends Sam to get Castiel, the witch figures that Dean has unleashed something dark again into the world. Sam quickly comes back in a panic, and tells Dean Castiel is gone.

Crowley has realized what Amara can do with all the souls she consumes, and he soon assigns a new nanny for the little girl (the demon that failed to assassinate his mother) and commands him to inform Amara that she will need cut down on the number of souls she's eating.

On their way to find Castiel, Rowena reveals to Dean that she once made a deal with Sam, regarding the Book of the Damned, that should make Sam kill Crowley in return. Dean doesn’t look so pleased at this. Sam gets off the hook when he finds that the GPS on Cas’ phone has stopped moving and they are close. The three of them split up to find Castiel. After a little searching, Dean finds the angel almost strangling a woman to death in a warehouse. When Dean tries to calm him down, Cas turns to beat Dean. Before Cas can harm Dean further, Sam arrives with Rowena, who then lifts the spell off Castiel. As Dean welcomes the angel back, Rowena takes the chance to escape.

Back in the bunker, the boys are relaxing after everything and discussing their next step. Dean shows his apology to Castiel by refusing the angel’s offer to cure the wounds on his face from Cas' beating, saying that he had it coming since he almost killed him. Meanwhile, Crowley has new matters at hand: a teenaged Amara, who is even hungrier and more vicious than before.

Characters

Definitions

Music

  • "Cute and Hefty" by Hillary Thaddeus
(playing in Café Elta while Rowena is recruiting for the Mega Coven)
(playing in the bar where the angel and demon have a drink together)
  • "11pm Beijing" by Christophe Goze (Cavendish Music)
(playing on the Fortune Nookie website)

Quotes

Sam: God kicked this thing's ass once before, right?

Dean: Yeah, it'd be nice if he put down the Mai Tai and showed up for work.

Castiel: I wouldn't count on that.
Dean: Come on Crowley, pick up! I left you a dozen messages. Why isn't he answering the phone?
Sam: Because he's a dick, and that's not breaking news.
Dean: You know where you are? What's the date?
Castiel: Earth. Several billion years from the beginning.
The Darkness: Amara, you must stay fixed on our purpose, even we cannot undo what has already been done. But as you grow and become stronger, your true destiny will be clear to you. I am what you are becoming, and we are mightier than God.
Demon: You know our two operations will always butt heads, that's the set up. But this. We could be out of work.

Angel: Yeah. We get knocked out, it takes over.
Demon: Someone's gotta do something.
Angel: Someone?
Demon: Yeah. If management won't, it's up to the little guy.
Angel: Yeah, I hear ya.
Demon: Power to the people, my friend.
Angel: Well, not actually people.

Demon: You know what I mean.
Amara: Good, evil, Heaven, Hell, people. It all seems so unimportant.
Rowena: Your eyes, so burdened. What happened precisely when I removed the Mark? The book wasn't specific. Yes, I read quite a bit of it. What new hell has Dean Winchester released upon the world?
Demon: She looks at me like she wants to eat me.
Crowley: She wants to eat everyone, don't take it personally.
Castiel: Dean, I can fix that.
Dean: No, no, no, no, it's fine, Cas. Besides, I had it coming.
Amara: I said I'm hungry!

Trivia & References

"The Bad Seed" is a reference to the 1954 novel and 1956 film of the same name about an 8-year-old girl who is also a sociopath.
The three witches Rowena attempts to recruit into her Mega Coven are a reference to the Triple Goddess of Neopaganism, with each witch representing one of three female figures; the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. These figures were prominently used to portray the Three Witches featured in Macbeth.
Sam: Yeah, uh, no accidents, incidents, violations, or anything remotely interesting involving a crappy '78 Continental Mark V.

Castiel: You think it's crappy?
Dean: Eye of the beholder.

Taken from the idiom "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," meaning different people see the beauty in different things.
The scene in which the angel and demon share a drink together at a bar, and commiserate over the state of Heaven and Hell is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. In Good Omens, the demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale, while representatives of Hell and Heaven on Earth, have become friends and like to get drunk together.
Crowley: Dante's Inferno, in the original Italian.
Dante's Inferno is the first part of the epic poem The Divine Comedy written by 14th-century Italian Dante Alighieri. Inferno tells of his journey through the nine circles of Hell.
Crowley: That's God for you, not really thought out. The whole Big Bang thing? More of a big bust. I mean boom, bang, stars, evolution, Taylor Swift. I'm guessing you'd have done things differently.
The Big Bang was the cosmological event at the start of the universe.
Taylor Swift is a Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter. Her song "Shake it off" featured in 10.12 About a Boy and was the basis of the Hillywood Supernatural Parody.
Dean: Sam, why don't you grab Cas so Florence Nightingale here can do her stuff?
Florence Nightingale was a nurse in the Crimean war, who went onto be a leader in medicine, particularly in infection control and the use of statistics to determine contributing causes of mortality and morbidity.

Minutiae

This was Jensen's fifth stint at directing an episode of Supernatural. The previous 4 episode he directed were: 6.04 Weekend at Bobby's, 7.03 The Girl Next Door, 8.03 Heartache, and 10.03 Soul Survivor.
"The Bad Seed" marked Ruth Connell's thirteenth appearance as Rowena, officially becoming the longest-recurring female actor since Cindy Sampson, who appeared twelve times as Lisa Braeden.
Deni DeLory, who played Witch #1, previously played Dr. Silvia Pearlman in 2.08 Crossroad Blues.
The names of the three witches meeting with Rowena are eventually revealed to be Charisse, Melodie, and Thomasin in 11.22 We Happy Few.
Café Elta is a reference to Danneel Ackles, whose birth name is Elta.
Sam: You know what? I'll look for unusual occurrences at places he might hang out. Cas?

Dean: Places Metatron might hang out.
Castiel: Um... I mean, he loves waffles. You could try places that have those.

Waffles were one of the things that the newly-human Metatron claimed he enjoyed in 10.18 Book of the Damned.
Lane Edwards, who played the Head Angel, previously played Stephanie's father in 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon.
"Big One" is the second song from Louden Swain to be featured on the show. Their song "Worlds Collide" from the album Eskimo was used in 7.13 The Slice Girls.
The taxi cab that Dean has presumably stolen to trick Rowena is from a company called 'Sonny's Taxi Co.'

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

Promotion