Supernatural delivers another memorable episode with “The Werther Project.” Written by Robert Berens and directed by Stefan Pleszcynski, the episode is rather unique: Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) thinks it’s a Monster-of-the-Week, while his brother Sam (Jared Padalecki) knows it’s actually a myth-arc installment.
The episode opens in 1973 St. Louis, Missouri. A teen girl, Suzie, decides to take out a wall in the basement, revealing an engraved safe. She tries to open it and winds up being thrown backwards; a black and yellow smoke (never a good sign) wends its way upstairs. When Suzie awakes, she goes upstairs to find her father already dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head; moments later, her brother hangs himself from the upstairs balcony. Suzie finds her mother in the kitchen and grabs her, crying. Her mother offers comforting words, but Suzie, who has her face turned towards her mother’s hip, doesn’t see that she also has a knife in hand. As Suzie’s screaming, her mother slits her own throat. It’s a macabre and disconcerting opening.
Post title card, Sam and Rowena (Ruth Connell) are still at the restaurant seen at the end of last week’s “Book of the Damned” talking terms. Rowena wants Sam to kill Crowley, a task that the youngest Winchester accepts without hesitation. Rowena says that she can understand the Book of the Damned, though not in its perfect form. Sam starts to rescind his offer, but Rowena calls his bluff; she’s his last resort, and she knows it. Taking full advantage, Rowena says that a particular witch’s codex will enable her to decipher the book. And, guess what? The codex is in the possession of the Men of Letters, who murdered its owner, Nadia. As the two “discuss terms,” Sam gets a text from his older brother Dean, who’s heading to Tulsa to take out a vampire nest.
The scene shifts to a blood-splattered Dean beheading a vampire. He’s digging through a blood-streaked refrigerator for a beer when Sam comes running into the yard, blade in hand. He’s shocked to find that Dean’s killed all the vampires by himself. However, I contest Dean’s claim that “six vamps solo – think that’s gotta be a personal best” – let’s not forget “Live Free or Twihard” (6×5). Though the brothers’ exchange is brief, it’s important: We learn that Dean’s killing like this to “take the edge off,” and he can’t stand Sam looking at him like he’s a “diseased killer puppy.” Dean says he wants to get back to the bunker, drink, and pass out watching Speed 2: Cruise Control. It’s a scenario all too similar to Dean’s past coping mechanisms, though I suppose it’s a good sign that he’s aware of them this time around. The fact that he has to “take the edge off” is also another reminder that, yes, Dean’s condition is getting worse.
Sometime later, Sam checks on Dean. His brother’s asleep on top of his beloved memory foam mattress, fully clothed (has he even showered since the blood-soaked kills?), with headphones on and laptop open. Sam begins searching the bunker’s archives for the codex; he listens to an audio recording of a 1956 Men of Letters meeting where Cuthbert Sinclair (Kavan Smith) is being reprimanded for his creation of a Werther Box, which has a 98 percent lethality rate.
It’s interesting to hear Sinclair accuse his colleagues of ineffectiveness, “You’re not men. You’re librarians, nothing more.” The gendered comment catches my attention, as does Sinclair’s unwillingness to work behind the scenes. At this point, his desire to use the dark tools and knowledge their finding seems like foreshadowing, especially considering how the episode plays out. After Sinclair leaves the meeting, the decision’s made to inter the Werther Box and guard it where it stands “in perpetuity.” Sam finds the address for former St. Louis chapter, and the connection to the opening scene is solidified: Suzie tried to open the Werther box, and the lethal protections Sinclair wrought led to her family’s deaths.
Sam calls Rowena asking for “a spell to break the spell,” and she does give him information – but her tone and facial expressions suggest that she’s trying to manipulate him. This time, Sam bluntly refuses her offer of personal assistance, and he heads to St. Louis. The once-pristine house is now a neglected wreck, but it’s not abandoned. When Sam tries breaking in, a gun noses its way through the mail slot, and a woman yells at him to leave, which he does – hastily.
Sam’s back in his presumably stolen car, looking exasperated, when Dean gets into the passenger’s side. “Heya, Sammy. How’s the case?” Sam’s shocked to see his brother there, and Dean, who thinks Sam is getting even for the solo-vamp hunt, apologizes for going to Tulsa on his own. Dean expresses surprise at this cold case, though, telling Sam it’s not in their “wheelhouse.” (Has anyone else noticed how often that word’s been used this season? Is the repetition intentional? Or just accidental?) Sam explains his interest with the Men of Letters connection, and he tells Dean about the Werther box, “a time bomb [that] needs to be defused.” Dean accepts the case’s relevancy and offers to help.
Dean knocks on the door, pretending to be from the neighborhood watch, while Sam sneaks in through the back. Suzie (Brenda Bakke), whom we learn has been alone for over twenty years, allows Dean into her house, but she’s suspicious. He does learn that her aunt died after going into the basement. Suzie recounts forlornly, “I told her not to go in the basement; no one goes in the basement.” Dean takes the opportunity to ask what’s in the basement, but instead of answering, Suzie pulls a gun on him; she’s realized that he’s there for the box and that the “tall one [with] pretty hair” must be on the premises too.
In the basement, Sam’s casting a spell, and even though Dean calls to him, Sam doesn’t stop. The spell doesn’t work, and the smoke again wends its way through the house, hitting Dean and Suzie in the face. Immediately, Suzie begins hallucinating her dead family members. She flees them and winds up in her father’s study. While she’s battling ghosts from her past, Dean’s chastising Sam for coming into this situation without a plan or a defense. Dean has a point, though also, to be fair, he doesn’t realize how much Sam is planning. Still, this exchange seems to foreshadow what is likely to come in the final episodes of season ten.
Sam goes after Suzie and knocks at the study door: “Let me in. I can help you.” But Suzie ignores him; her mother is telling her, “You don’t have to be sad and you don’t have to be alone.” Meanwhile, Dean, who was following Sam, suddenly finds himself in Purgatory. He calls for Sam, but his brother isn’t there; Dean’s alone in this illusion. Sam is still trying to get into the study when he hears a gunshot, and once he’s in the room, he sees that Suzie has committed suicide. She appears to him, accusingly delivering some truth bombs: “I survived 40 years in this house keeping that thing on lockdown… [I’m] the first casualty of your misguided mission… Anything’s worth it – as long as you two make it out alive.”
Somewhere along the way, the “saving people” side of things has been shunted off in the interests of self-preservation, and the costs of those choices grow ever higher. Where will this season end? What will be the consequences of the Winchesters’ choices this time around? Apparition!Suzie tells Sam, “You think Dean’s the wild card… [but] you’re the reckless one.” She prompts him to end his life, arguing, “The only one who can stop you is you.” Suddenly, a spell is cast, and the apparition vanishes. Sam, startled, sees Rowena in the doorway, smiling: “Told you you’d need me.”
Sam warns Rowena that she can’t allow Dean to see her, but there’s no worry on that front: Dean’s no longer aware in their reality. He’s in Purgatory, conversing with his friend Benny Lafitte (Ty Olsson). It’s worth remembering that Dean killed Benny, with the vampire’s consent, in “Taxi Driver” (8×19) so that Benny could guide Sam out of Purgatory. (I’ve mourned Benny’s loss ever since and hope we’ll see him again.)
Dean understands that this isn’t really his friend, though. He calls Benny “a figment” and “subconscious junk.” Benny asks, “If all I am is your subconscious junk, how can I lead you wrong?” Their conversation prompts the suggestion that Purgatory was a “happy place” for Dean, or at least, a place where he felt “pure” because he could kill “with no consequence.” The scene shifts briefly to Sam and Rowena working together to open the Werther box, and Sam discovers that doing so requires legacy blood, which he willingly provides.
Benny’s reminders of Purgatory’s attributes don’t convince Dean, who tells his subconscious that he’s tired of fighting; this sentiment fits with the other internal and/or private moments of expression Dean’s had lately. But Benny voices a major impediment to Dean experiencing “things…people, feelings” differently (10×16): “The Mark ain’t [tired of fighting].”
Benny suggests that Dean take the “third way out. You can’t say you haven’t been thinking about it.” But Dean takes a hard line against it, and Benny subsequently changes his tactics. He asks if Dean’s going to kill Castiel (Misha Collins) and Sam, and he questions the plan that they’ll “put [Dean] down.” Benny points out, “Say they do. You think they will ever recover from that? It will ruin them.” In Suzie’s house, a bespelled Dean manages to break free of the rope bonds he’d been confined with and finds an empty bottle. In Purgatory, he takes Benny’s cobbled-together weapon, as Benny reminds him (or rather, as Dean’s subconscious reminds him), “What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory.” In reality, Dean breaks the bottle and holds it ominously – will he try to kill himself?
While the Werther box responds to Sam’s blood, Dean’s in Purgatory, looking around and reminiscing: “I always did love it here. It’s as good a place as any to call it a day, huh?” Rowena regretfully observes to Sam that the box wants all of his blood, and Sam gamely makes another cut in his forearm. However, Dean isn’t so easily persuaded to shed blood because he realizes that while he would commit suicide if it meant saving Cas and Sam, “the real Benny would never let me.” He’s also reminded that the Mark “wants me alive.” Instead of stabbing himself, Dean stabs Benny: “Thanks, pal, but no thanks.” Benny disappears, and Dean comes out of the spell to discover the broken bottle still in his hand.
In the basement, Sam is on the verge of passing out, as Rowena rather gleefully watches. Dean bursts in, and Sam protests when he’s pushed away from the ceremonial bowl, arguing that the Werther box needs legacy blood. Dean’s answer is simple, “If it needs more blood, it can have mine.” He slices his arm open and in seconds the box opens and – plot twist! – Rowena, whom Dean still hadn’t noticed at this point, disappears. She was a projection of the Werther box and was never really there! Dean retrieves the codex.
The Rowena plot twist reveals quite a bit about Sam’s state of mind: He’s divided between the Winchesters’ original mission (“saving people”) and his desire to save Dean (“so long as the two of you make it out alive”). That Rowena!Sam vanquishes Suzie!Sam says a lot about which voice is loudest in his head right now. By contrast, Dean’s ability to quiet the voices in his head suggests that he’s in a more stable place right now, even if he is the one carrying the Mark. It all raises interesting questions about whose humanity is truly on the line here: former Knight of Hell Dean’s? Or dabbling in the Dark Arts Sam’s? It also seems telling that Suzie’s death is forgotten in the aftermath; after all, she was surviving and living her life until Sam came after the Werther box. Do the Winchesters at least arrange for her body to be found?
Sam waits in the car, weakened and pale, until Dean returns from taking a sledgehammer to the Werther Box. Dean observes that in an hour, both were “on the brink of death” and apologizes again for “going rogue.” Sam shrugs off the apology, commenting that it “makes us even.” Dean tells his brother reassuringly, “The universe is trying to tell us something that we should already know. We’re stronger together than apart.” It’s a nice sentiment, and one that’s woven throughout the show, but in this instance, while Dean may see them (or want to see them) as a united front, they’re actually divided in many ways. After all, Dean still thinks this is a regular monster hunt, while only Sam knows the stakes are much, much higher. To reiterate that Dean’s assertion is ideal rather than real right now, Dean verbally questions why the codex was under such protection. Sam doesn’t give an answer, so “Whatever it is, we’ll keep it safe.” Dean cranks up the Impala, and off they go.
However, will Sam keep the codex safe? In the very next scene, he escorts Rowena into a heavily warded, apparently abandoned warehouse; she spies the codex and the Book of the Damned on the table and practically salivates over Nadia’s book. When she confirms that it’ll allow her to translate the book and find the cure for the Mark of Cain, Sam puts her in cuffs. Rowena, looking especially petite next to Sam, demands, “What in the hell is this?” It’s insurance, of course, but Rowena doesn’t take kindly to being double-crossed: “We had an agreement, giant.” Sam responds, “The agreement stands…” but he’s taking measures to (try and) ensure that she doesn’t get anymore from the deal and codex access than they’ve already agreed to. Will his precautions work? I’m going out on a limb and predicting, “No.” The last scene is a chained and obviously furious Rowena left alone in the warehouse.
“The Werther Project” is a compelling twist on the standard MOTW episode, and I’m so happy that Supernatural’s streak of strong episodes is continuing. This week’s episode, “Angel Heart,” sees the return of Claire Novak, and there’s a promo, a sneak peek, and an “Inside” clip to whet our curiosity. Supernatural airs on Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on the CW network.