Supernatural: The Foundry

Posted by: Kyle Tetarenko  •  October 27, 2016 @ 11:20pm

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

Frozen hearts, ghost children and a decaying vessel for Lucifer. Supernatural has it all in this week's episode, The Foundry.

Still adjusting to being alive again, Mary Winchester is feeling pretty off. Dean doesn't see it but Castiel and Sam notice that she isn't adjusting – she's struggling. Castiel can't sick around to help after finding a clue to Lucifer's whereabouts. Sam and Dean offer to help him but since he was the one that helped him get out of the cage, he feels like he should be the one to find him. Speaking of Lucifer, his vessel is starting to get a bit ripe and if Rowena decides to help him, he might decide to spare her life. Back at the bunker, Mary has found a case the old fashioned way: the newspaper. Thinking that this might be a great time to bond, Dean suggest that they all go on a family hunting trip and head for St. Paul, Minnesota. After getting into town, the Winchester family checks out the local morgue since Mary found it suspicious that the cause of death for couple had yet to be determined. Mary's hunch was mostly right but the ME did know what killed the man and woman - hypothermia. The two of them had their hearts frozen inside their chest but the ME found that pretty strange considering they were found dead inside a house that was sixty degrees. Meanwhile, Castiel is on the hunt for Lucifer and when he runs into Crowley. The former king of hell isn't done with Lucifer yet and is willing to team up with the fallen angel if it means getting his throne back. After going back to the hotel and looking up the history of the house, Mary is ready to start going door to door but Sam and Dean have already gotten into the police records and the town records. It turns out that several people have died there in the past and most of them were children over the past several decades. It's a strange case but one that will take three Winchesters to solve before the home can claim its next victim.

All in all, The Foundry was another average episode for Supernatural. As far as monster of the week stories go, there has been better and there has been worse. As for the story itself surrounding the history of the home, I wasn't overly fond of how Mary being possessed was the way that we discovered what little motivation that Hugo Moriarty (seriously, why pick the most ridiculous name possible for a ghost?) had. It would have served the story better if the boys were able to find more about him while doing all of their research. Second, the couple that died during the introduction to the episode wasn't connected to the story in a meaningful way. Hugo lured children to his home and bound them there and that fed into his power so what would he get out of killing adults? Why wouldn't he have lured more children into the home like he had with all of the others? Why was Lucas killed but not his mother? It would have made a lot more sense for the story I children were being lured to the home. Not purely for the sake of it but because it wouldn't seem as random as it does here. The story could have been a parallel for child predators but that's probably a bit too far for Supernatural.

Besides the haunted house and whatever new name they are calling those ghosts (Milings/Mylings?), the obvious highlight of The Foundry was the story between Castiel, Crowley and Rowena. Misha Collins and Mark Sheppard have a lot of chemistry and it's best to see the two of them playing off one another rather than trying to kill each other. The big surprise had to be Ruth Connell's Rowena rising up and growing into the hero role when facing off against Lucifer. I haven't always been Connell's biggest fan but I couldn't help but root for her against the devil; who is probably at the bottom of the ocean singing Jessie's Girl.

Alright, now onto the heavy stuff with Mary ditching Sam and Dean for who knows how long. Mary has felt quite out of place since coming back from the dead and just being around the boys. That being said, it makes her character very unlikeable to take off her giving it two weeks of the old college try. It also makes her character incredibly similar to John Winchester and he wasn't exactly the dad that was always there for his kids. Though I don't know what Supernatural has planned for Mary, an early (and later return) exit isn't going to help fans connect with her. Her reasoning was that she missed John and her kids the way that they were but how else could Sam and Dean take that besides rejection? I guess it really goes to show that the only people they have are one another.

Of the two stories that The Foundry had, one of them was interesting and funny while the other was about a drab ghost house that we have seen far too many times. We'll see how Mary's departure affects Sam and Dean on next week's episode, American Nightmare.

Tags: Supernatural, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Ruth Connell, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard

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