The Misha Collins-directed Supernatural season 9, episode 17, “Mother’s Little Helper,” aired tonight, featuring a look at an old Men of Letters case.
Splitting up
The episode opens with Sam catching the case of a kindergarten teacher who beat her husband to death. Dean, though, would rather dig for information on Abaddon. Sam says Dean’s been obsessive since killing Magnus, which Dean simply calls doing his job. Sam takes the case solo while Dean stays behind with books and booze.
When Sam and the local sheriff get to the teacher’s cell, they find she’d written on the wall with her own blood before hanging herself. Sam calls Dean to update him, but Dean cuts the call short to white knuckle some Mark of Cain side effects. He calls Crowley but hangs up after one ring.
Base instinct
Sam’s eating at a diner when a kid comes in and snaps at the waitress. He then breaks a glass, and when the waitress says she’s going to call his mother, he stabs her through the hand. Sam knocks him out and they lock him up. The other jail cells also hold locals acting strange.
The kid doesn’t react to holy water but tells Sam he’s “clear” and doing these things because he wants to. Sam calls Dean, who is at a bar, and as he talks it out, he’s reminded of himself when he soulless. Now suspecting something is taking souls, Sam angles for some backup but Dean refuses and hangs up — to find Crowley behind him.
As Dean racks up a pool game, Crowley taunts him. He calls him out on lying to Sam and stalling on finding Abaddon. He tells Dean he knows using The First Blade made him feel both powerful and scared and that he shouldn’t fight who he really is — a Cain-like figure.
Testing, testing
After Crowley heads to the bathroom for some human blood, Dean catches a guy going after him with a knife. Dean recognizes him as an amateur hunter and intimidates him into stopping what would be a suicide mission. The hunter says he has a younger sister who doesn’t deserve losing him, and he leaves.
Outside the bar, Crowley calls Dean a fellow junkie, only Dean wants The First Blade. Dean leaves in an irritated huff, and we discover the amateur hunter was actually one of Crowley’s demons. That conflict was a test to see what Dean would do. “Now he’s ready,” Crowley declares. But for what?
History lesson
At the police station, Sam overhears an older woman, Julia, talking about demons returning. When he says he’s more open-minded than most, she recognizes him as a Man of Letters and tells him Henry Winchester and Josie Sands came through in 1958.
They were investigating a nun who killed two before dying herself. The walls of the nun’s quarters still had her blood on it as well as a symbol Josie recognized as belonging to the Knights of Hell.
That night, Julia saw the Mother Superior dragging a gagged figure through the convent so she was taken as well. She was held in the basement with other prisoners who would be taken to the back room, ne’er to return. Just before Julia’s turn, Henry and Josie burst in and exorcised one of the demons but failed to exorcise the Mother Superior — who was possessed by Abaddon.
After knocking Henry out, Abaddon threatened to possess him in order to study the Men of Letters, but Josie offered herself up instead because she loved him. Abaddon took her, told the demons to continue their work, then woke Henry up and told him they’d stopped the demons.
And while Henry was energized after the mission, feeling that he had a noble calling, Abaddon cowed Julia into silence.
Soul searching
Looking over surveillance footage of the grocery store the teacher visited before killing her husband, Sam sees a van from the convent. The kid who stabbed the waitress hitched a ride in the same van.
Sam heads over to the rundown convent. Inside, he finds jars filled with souls. He’s attacked by the possessed groundskeeper but stabs him. However, he’s knocked down by a possessed nun. She tells him that Abaddon is collecting souls to make them into demons and has factories around the world, manufacturing an army loyal to her.
She chokes Sam in an attempt to subdue him and take his soul, but Sam McSmartypants pulls out his phone and plays a recorded exorcism. The nun breaks the phone, but Sam uses the reprieve to stab her. He then sets the souls free, and they return to their bodies.
The face of true evil
The next day, Sam asks Julia why she didn’t warn Henry about Abaddon. She replies that she didn’t know what to do in the face of true evil and left the order shortly after out of shame. Sam assures her that her information was vital to saving lives, and she watches him leave, looking haunted.
When Sam returns to the bunker, he tells Dean that he was right about Abaddon. They need to find her and stop her from mining souls.
Watch a promo for the next episode
Supernatural returns with new episodes on Tuesday, April 15.
