Supernatural aired Thursday night with its mid-series finale titled “The Bad Place” where the brothers tracked down Jack, who is trying to right his wrong.
This week’s episode has the brothers on a goose chase to track down Jack (Alexander Calvert) to make sure he is ultimately safe. Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) got a call from Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) detailing a report about an art dealer being found with burnt-out eyes. The boys suspected this was Jack’s doing and drove down to investigate.
The audience found out that Jack tracked down the artist and art dealer, Derek, to ultimately be Jack’s eyes. Jack explained that he needed a dreamwalker to go into the alternate universe where Mary Winchester (Samantha Smith) was. Dreamwalkers are people who have perfected the talent of lucid dreaming, where they can control themselves in the dream while they are dreaming.
Derek painted a landscape that looked like the alternate place and when Jack convinced him to dreamwalk. He harnessed into his vision and saw Mary chained and tortured. Soon after Jack left, the angels reached Derek and killed him. Jack then found Kaia (Yadira Guevara-Prip), another dreamwalker to help him reach Mary. Meanwhile, Dean, out of desperation, called Patience (Clark Backo) and asked for help in finding Jack. Patience, after lengthy consideration, left home and asked Jody for help.
When Patience left home, he dad warned her with “You go now, you choose that life, you don’t come back,” which gave the audience a sudden flashback of John telling Sam that right before Sam left for Stanford.
Cutting back to Jack, the brothers found him being punched by Kaia. However, Jack explained the situation, Kaia agreed to help, but the team found out that angels were after Kaia and were breaking down the angel sigil that the brothers set in place. Kaia dreamwalked into what she called “the bad place,” which was the alternate universe. Jack harnessed her vision and walked with her, saw Mary, until it became too much for Kaia. Kaia screamed and suddenly Jack is in the bad place with Mary, separated from Sam and Dean. The last scene of the mid-series finale was of the brothers in a jungle of some sort. The camera panned an aerial view, revealing a Bigfoot footprint, leaving the audience ponder what larger-than-life dilemma Sam and Dean are faced against next.
The episode, titled “The Bad Place,” is fitting given the ambiguity of the alternate universe. Thus far in the season, there are several plots that weave into and out of each other. Compared to last season, the main storyline was figuring out why Mary was alive. However, this season deals with Jack figuring out whether he is innately evil, the alternate universe and now possibly Bigfoot. Executive producer Andrew Dabb says, “The danger is big. Where Sam and Dean have gone is a place that's of the Supernatural world, in that it has monsters in it, but it's meant to be alien and very different of any world we've seen.”
The episode, in its entirety, provided character depth. Dean, although still massively depressed and probably suicidal, shows signs of warmth towards Jack. Dean wants to find him and ultimately, Jack proves his goodness through his desperate attempts to bring back Mary. When Jack shows Sam and Dean what he sees, the brothers see their mom. For Dean, when he shakes the vision, he loses himself for a minute and is dumbfounded that his mom is very much, alive. For Dean, this is hard to swallow because he was convinced for so long that she was dead, as well as Cas. Dean blamed himself and even killed himself for his mistakes.
Supernatural airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
