This week’s (Feb. 10) “Previously” montage reminds us the low regard in which “Supernatural” tends to hold witches, as a general rule. They’re generally vengeful and power-hungry lot in this particular fictional universe, and remembering the time Dean (Jensen Ackles) called for a good burning of ’em is a bummer, given the history behind the real witch trials.
On this particular subject, Supernatural Wiki makes a brilliant observation — Dean and Sam (Jared Padalecki), even Bobby (Jim Beaver) when he was still with us, have used many a spell or ritual to achieve a nobler means. And they clearly don’t consider themselves witches. Makes you think.
In any case, there’s a special, extra-juicy poetic justice in seeing our all-time favorite witch Rowena (Ruth Connell) defy the Winchesters’ low expectations of both herself and her kind — putting her own life on the line to save Dean’s in “Regarding Dean.”
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Rowena admits it’ll be nice to have the Winchesters owe her one, sure — but what strong woman hasn’t learned to look out for herself as well as others? It’s also no small detail that the family of witches responsible for hexing Dean is the same family who, once upon a time, took in a vagabond, near-death, flea-bitten Rowena after she was driven from her home by the Men of Letters… Only to be kicked out soon after for being “unworthy” of their special brand of powerful witchcraft — or, more likely, for basically being her usual spirited, feisty self, given the Rowena we’ve come to know and love over the past few seasons.
This episode gave Rowena a much-deserved chance to shine — and even provided a glimpse of her softer side for a nanosecond.
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Hexed by a powerful witch named Gideon, Dean begins to lose his memory rapidly — at first this descent is played for laughs, but we’re quickly reminded that memory is a double-edged sword: We’re often weighed down with recollections of our past sins, shortcomings, and shame, but it’s also the raw material from which our most basic sense of self is forged: Our passions and preferences and dreams, our closest relationships and love in its many forms, our happier times, combined with whatever unpleasantness we stuff into the subconscious shadows, is the sum total of who we are — and all of that hinges upon our memory of who we are.
By the time we’re watching a tearful Dean struggling to recall even his own name, it’s as poignant as it is scary: One of “Supernatural’s” hallmarks, of course, is interweaving the comedy and tragedy of life so deftly that there’s often no telltale border of demarcation. And so as Sam says, losing Dean like this is worse than any of the times he’s seen his brother actually die — to become a sort of magical-Alzheimer’s shell that looks and sounds like Dean, but is really just a living corpse. (Even the demonically-possessed Dean-mon doesn’t count — at least that guy had plenty of spark and chutzpah, albeit in a “pure evil” kind of way.)
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Leave it to Rowena to offer a more rogue perspective on Dean’s memory loss: “What a gift, not to recall the things you’ve done.” By episode’s end, Sam also admits envying this aspect of Dean’s experience. If your identify is soaked so thoroughly in violence and painful loss, as it is for the Winchesters, ignorance may indeed seem like bliss. But you have to take the good with the bad — or in this case, lose the good with the bad. Dean eventually concludes that you have to accept the whole package in order for the moments of happiness, however fleeting or infrequent, to given them any kind of meaningful context at all.
Dean’s amnesia also allows Rowena a rare moment of confession and self-reflection. As they chat, alone at one point, she admits to him that the pursuit of power feels largely pointless. Seeing that God Himself had all the power, and still wasn’t a happy camper, was an eye-opening revelation (no pun intended) for her. It does make you wonder what she does long for now — and with any luck, we’ll get to find out.
Yes, Lily Sunder (Alicia Witt) did strut onto the scene like a tornado of fresh air last week, but this episode reminded us that Rowena is still a largely as-yet-untapped supernova of depth, complexity, strength and vulnerability — along with those killer spell-casting skills and equally epic one-liners…
Any case: Back to back episodes, showcasing two distinctly kick-ass broads? We could get used to this!
“Supernatural” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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