Things are quite trying for the Winchester brothers at the start of the Season 10 opener: Dean (Jensen Ackles) is still a demon after Crowley (Mark Sheppard) turned him into one at the end of the previous season, and Sam (Jared Padalecki) is still trying to find Dean after he died and vanished.
Supernatural’s momentum has been decreasing for about six seasons now, and sadly Season Ten is no exception. The stakes continue to be high, but there’s only so much you can put your audience through when your central characters have already been killed and resurrected about a million times each. There’s no danger to get worked up over. All there is to worry about is the state of Sam and Dean’s relationship.
Most of the show’s signature brother-angst this season comes from Dean’s Mark of Cain, and the fact that he and Sam have no idea how to remove it. It’s interesting to see this new side of Dean, with the Mark causing him to become savage and volatile when he gets too hot under the collar, but again we’ve seen it before. This is just Sam drinking demon blood in Season 4 all over again. At this point, there’s very little Supernatural can do in future seasons to create an entirely new storyline.
The fun subplots that are woven between the big, beefy episodes are splendid as always, though they are also fewer and farther between than they usually are. Dean gets turned into a Taylor Swift-loving teenager, Sheriff Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) gets forced into attending an officers’ retreat, and Castiel’s (Collins) human vessel Jimmy Novak comes back into the picture (sort of) when his daughter Claire, played by the delightful Kathryn Newton (Paranormal Activity 4), decides Castiel should be a part of her life.
The highlight of the season, however, is the show’s 200th episode, ‘Fan Fiction’. It’s just a big, goofy, stupid masterpiece featuring Winchester-obsessed theatre kids, the Greek goddess Calliope, a high-school musical and a surprisingly emotional acapella rendition of ‘Carry On Wayward Son’.
