What happens when you lose your soul?
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
When people lose their souls, they tend to go bad in short order. A lack of conscience will do that to you. But since people have different experiences and personalities, it makes sense they’d react in varying ways to losing their souls, and we saw that in “Thin Lizzie.”
Amara harvested a couple of souls for seemingly random reasons, but I’ll come back to that. Len reacted to the change with an almost plucky attitude. He knew he’d transformed but had no idea why, and his matter of fact, clinical approach to the loss was amusing. Jared Gertner’s performance made the character endearing in no time, and it’s not often a guest star makes this strong of an impression. I’m happy he came up with the idea of turning himself in and also pleased Dean listened to Sam’s reminder about how they need to save people. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Gertner return as Len in the future.
Sydney offered another take on being soulless. She did go the traditional evil and killing route but expressed gratitude to Amara for taking away her pain. In Sydney’s case, ditching her soul meant not feeling the extreme pain and sadness she had about being abused. Amara entering her life and eating her soul gave Sydney peace for the first time since her childhood. Being at peace and you know, not being able to care about anything, opened the door for Sydney to take drastic actions and kill those she was angry with. Her motivations were sound, and it was more interesting to see Amara involved in the murders than a random ghost.
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photo Gallery:
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
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Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
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Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
Supernatural: “Thin Lizzie” Photos
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Amara’s actions led Sydney to practically worshipping her. Is that why Amara is satisfying her hunger with human souls? It’s reasonable to assume demon and human souls would be filling in contrasting ways. Human souls are likely to be more pure. Maybe Amara is trying to build an army on Earth, or maybe she’s simply trying to cause a little bit of chaos or send a message to Dean. We don’t need to see her entire hand yet, but it would be better to see some of her intentions.
Clues about Amara’s strength have been dropped here and there so far this season. We witnessed it with the zombie-like infection in the season premiere and in the way she destroyed demons left and right in hell, but we haven’t seen a demonstration to make the demons’ and angels’ extreme fear add up. What she did in tonight’s episode was pretty basic. I like how we’re watching her grow up and how we as an audience don’t know much more than the Winchesters. It adds an edge to the story, and the unknown factor makes Amara more scary.
That said, she seems to be in sort of an awkward stage now. She’s not reading as intimidating as she was when she was a little girl, and she doesn’t have the sassiness of the adult Amara. At the rate she’s eating souls, she’ll probably level up soon though.
“Thin Lizzie” showed another take on a soulless person and also showed how being soulless can bring peace to someone. It was a good lesson for the Winchesters and cool to see from an audience perspective. Aside from fleshing that out, the episode was entertaining — the Lizzie Borden red herring was a smart touch – but the Darkness didn’t come across as very threatening in her current incarnation.
