There’s a whole lot going on in this week’s Supernatural. The Trans are back and get caught by Crowley (again). Castiel is back after escaping Purgatory with a little help from a mysterious new character who may or may not be the season’s Big Bad. There’s also a witch who instantly becomes one of my favorite minor characters in the Supernatural universe.

And we learn a whole lot more about the Tablets, the Prophets, how Dean and Cas escaped Purgatory, and Heaven. It’s like an exposition lover’s wet dream.

The Return of Castiel

Dean starts to see hallucinations of Cas, only they’re not hallucinations. The real, actual Castiel shows up in Sam and Dean’s motel room, claiming that he has no memory of how he escaped Purgatory. Dean thinks something is definitely fishy about the story. I just assume it was God, because that’s ALWAYS the reason Cas magically comes back to life.

After a quick shave and laundering, the ratty beard is gone and good, old Cas is back with his shiny trenchcoat. He also offers some exposition on prophets. It seems they’re like Slayers. Every generation has many Potentials, but only one can be the actual Prophet at any given moment. In other words, Cas assumes Chuck is dead. Let’s hope that’s not true, and let’s also hope the fact that the show just mentioned Chuck means he’ll be back.

The Trans Hire a Witch
    
Kevin and Mrs. Tran are still on the run, but Mama Tran decides to fight back by hiring a witch on Craigslist to collect ingredients for the demon bomb Kevin made the last time Crowley abducted him. The witch is a sexy rocker chick named Delta.

The problem is that Delta is betraying the Trans and secretly working with Crowley, who shows up, takes Kevin, makes Delta disappear and sends his demon henchmen after Mrs. Tran. His only problem is that Mrs. Tran is one bad-ass mama who takes down the demon, kidnaps him and calls up the Winchesters.

I hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of Delta the Two-Timing Rocker Witch, because I would love to know more about her. She’s a cool character who deserves her own web series.

Crowley’s New Plan

The boys notice a series of people have gone missing all around the world and they suspect demons are behind it. They’re right. Crowley tortured Samandriel the Wiener Hut Angel to get a list of the Potential Prophets and then gathered them all to see if they can read the Demon Tablet. Unfortunately they all think they’ve been abducted by aliens, so they’re of little use.

When Crowley gets Kevin he forces him to translate the Demon Tablet or else he’ll kill him and one of the other Potentials will take over as the Prophet and he’ll force that person to read it. After Crowley chops off one of Kevin’s fingers, the kid reluctantly agrees.

He reads the Demon Tablet and lets Crowley know about the plan to close the Gates of Hell. It also turns out this is part of a compendium, meaning there are many other Tablets besides the ones for Leviathans and Demons.

While this is going on, Mrs. Tran meets up with the Winchesters and uses the demon to lead them to Crowley’s base. The boys storm the warehouse with the help of Castiel. Sam rescues the Potentials while Cas has a face-to-face with Crowley. Cas summons every last bit of angel power he has to break the Tablet in two and send Crowley scurrying away in fear.

Secret Agent Cas

In the aftermath, Sam gets Garth to take care of the Trans while they go after the other half of the Tablet Crowley still has. Dean and Cas hash out their issues regarding the escape from Purgatory and Cas reveals he didn’t come with Dean because he didn’t want to, he wanted to pay his penance for all the awful things he’s done over the past two seasons. So all that guilt Dean’s been feeling is for nothing.

But that’s not all. With a blink of Castiel’s eye, he’s magically transported to Heaven. Not just generic Heaven, but the headquarters, what I’m assuming is God’s Inner Sanctum.

There’s a woman named Naomi who informs Cas that she helped him escape from Purgatory and it cost a lot of angels their lives, so now he’s going to act as her personal spy on everything the Winchesters do regarding the Tablets, the Trans and Crowley. Why would Cas agree to do this? He wouldn’t, but Naomi has some type of weird hypno-magic where Cas has absolutely no idea that he’s even doing this. So he’s basically a sleeper agent. Or a Cylon. That can’t be good.

Next time on Supernatural: The show is off next week for Thanksgiving, but it returns November 28 when Cas decides to become a Hunter and encounters a series of cartoon-y deaths. Get ready to laugh.

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(Image courtesy of the CW)

John Kubicek

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire DiariesSupernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.