Supernatural – The Bad Place

By: Stacy Miller

Jack (Alexander Calvert) goes to see a dream walker Derek Swan (Nathaniel Archand), an artist who has a painting of the Alternate Earth. The Nephilim offers to pay if Swan dream walks and takes Jack to the place Derek sees.  Accepting Jack’s money, Derek Swan goes on the dream walking journey to the Alternate Earth. But when Derek wants to stop, Jack puts his hands to the artist’s temples and can see what Derek sees. The screen fades to black and we hear Derek scream. A short while later, his girlfriend returns and finds Derek dead on the floor, his eyes burned out.

At the Men of Letters bunker, Dean (Jensen Ackles) leaves a message on Patience Turner’s (Clark Backo) cell phone. He needs her help as a psychic to locate Jack. Then, Dean receives a call from Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) telling he and Sam (Jared Padalecki) that a local Bismark artist was found murdered with his eyes burned out. Dean thinks it sounds like angels.  But Jody adds that the victim’s girlfriend identified the last person to see him and from the description, it looks like their boy Jack.

Patience’s dad James (Adrian Holmes) tells her that he received a call from one of her teachers regarding the ‘C’ she received on a test.  James reminds his daughter that in order to have her pick of the Ivy League schools she needs to have perfect SATs and GPA. But Patience is more interested in the message she got from Dean Winchester saying that he needed her help.

Sam and Dean travel to Bismark North Dakota and speak with Derek’s girlfriend Paula.  She confirms from the photograph that they showed her that Jack was the guy who came to see Derek. She also tells them that Derek was a dream walker.  Dean notices the painting of the Alternate Earth.  Later in the Impala, Dean reasons that Jack gave up on them and is looking for daddy and killed Derek in the process. Dean doesn’t want to believe that this is true as he’s starting to like the kid, and Sam refuses to give up on Jack.  Sam managed to hack into Derek’s email and found the name of another dream walker that Swan was corresponding with named Kaia Nieves (Yadira Guevara-Prip).  They decide that to find Kaia and question her about the painting they found at Derek’s place of the Alternate Earth.

Meanwhile, Kaia is in a therapy session in which the counselor is questioning her about how she was found unconscious from an overdose. “I hate putting that junk in my body but it’s the only thing that keeps me awake and from The Bad Place,” Kaia says. After the session, Kaia is approached by a young man who introduces himself. “Hi, I’m Jack.” Kaia asks Jack why he is there. “What’s your poison?” “I like cocaine,” Jack answers. When Kaia doesn’t believe him, Jack admits that he is a friend of Derek and Derek told him that she was like him a dream walker and one of the most powerful ones that he’d ever met. “And I need your help,” Jack tells Kaia, “And I can help you, I can get you out of here. Follow me.”

Sam and Dean pull up at the center.  Sam gives Dean (and viewers) Kaia’s backstory.  She never knew her father and after her mother died, the girl was taken in by an aunt, who later died of cancer. Then Kaia ended up at the center.

Jack and Kaia walk toward the exit with the Nephilim putting anyone he approaches them asleep. After Jack breaks the triple locked door, Kaia refuses to go anywhere with him because she doesn’t know what he is or wants. Sam calls out to Jack, which distracts him enough to allow Kaia to kick and punch the Nephilim to the ground. She runs off.  Jack then tells Sam and Dean how when he dreamed walked Derek’s mind he saw the Alternate Earth and their mother Mary (Samantha Smith). He puts his fingers to Sam and Dean’s temple and they also see Mary and that she is in danger. Viewers learn that Jack didn’t kill Derek, he was killed by a pair of angels, who also knock Kaia out when the pick up the hitchhiking girl. When Kaia wakes up, the female angel (Elfina Luk) tells her how they tortured and killed Derek for information on Jack, the son of Lucifer. And when that didn’t work, they decided to use her (Kaia) as bait to draw out Jack and The Winchesters.

In the Impala, Jack is hurt that both Sam and Dean thought that he could kill Derek. Sam explains that they thought he could have killed Derek by accident like the security guard. He adds that when Jack left he was in a dark place.  Dean says that they thought he had gone to look for his father.  “You mean Lucifer? Why would I look for him?  He’s nothing to me.  You, Castiel…you’re my family,” Jack tells Sam and Dean.  “Yes we are,” Dean agrees and tells Jack how he did a good thing by finding Mary. Suddenly, Jack gets a signal from angel radio and tells Sam and Dean that the angels have Kaia.

Patience is packing a bag.  She tells her dad that she had a vision that friends (Sam, Dean and Jody) were going to be in danger.  She admits that the visions never stopped.  Patience tells James that she has to go help them. “Patience, you go now you choose that life you don’t come back,” James warns.  But Patience choices to help her friends and walks out of the door.

Kaia tells the angels that they pick the wrong girl to kidnap; she doesn’t even rank a milk carton and is not the kind of girl people come for. “I’m not white, rich or blonde. I don’t matter,” Kaia says.  “Of course you don’t matter.  But they think you do. And when they come, we’ll kill them and take the boy,” the female angel tells Kaia. Suddenly, Sam and Dean arrive with Jack.  Dean is holding an angel blade to the male angel’s (Brahm Taylor) throat and demands that they give them the girl.  The female angel tells Dean that they don’t care about Kaia, the want Jack.  She urges Jack to come home. “I am home,” Jack response.  Then, he uses his powers to suspend the female angel in mid-air and stops the male angel from stabbing Dean with the angel blade.  Jack then has the male angel stab his own self with the angel blade. Kaia can’t believe what’s going on. Jack tells her they need her dream walking ability. But Kaia tells them how when she dream walks, she only goes to The Bad Place that is filled with blood and monsters. Kaia shows her arm marked with cuts that she gets when she wakes up. She refuses to go with them. Dean pulls out his gun and orders her to the car. Later, he tells Sam that they will find their mother at any cost.  Jack tells Kaia who he once was scared and didn’t know how to control his power. He asks for five seconds and puts his fingers to her temple and shows her a better place. The angels catch up to Jack, Kaia and The Winchester.  Our heroes run onto an old ship at Larson Bros Shipyard. With the angels in pursuit, Sam and Dean put up angel sigils. Jack and Kaia’s combined powers end up blasting the angel away for good.

In Sioux Falls, Jody leaves a voicemail for Sam asking him to call her back.  She is surprised when Patience arrives at her door. “Jody, I had a vision. Something bad is coming, “Patience tells her.

We get a glimpse of the shipyard where we see burned angel wings on the wall. Next, Kaia is lying unconscious on the road and Jack wakes up on the Alternate Earth where he finds Mary locked in a cage liked contraption.  As for Sam and Dean…God only knows where they are. But from the view overhead in looks like they just walked onto a seemingly large prehistoric footprint. Have the Winchesters traveled to Jurassic Park World?  That’s pretty weird even for them.  But as this is Supernatural, weird is the norm for Sam and Dean. We’ll have to wait until January to find out when the series returns from mid-season break.