Just when you think smug hipsters only care about posting their Yelp reviews and lamenting the housing market, they surprise you by going into an abandoned building to rescue a crying baby. But on Supernatural, no good deed goes unpunished. No one is safe in “The Foundry,” no matter how cool and clever. All it takes is a ghostly cry and an über-creepy doll. They may be hipsters, but they still don’t deserve such treatment.

Home is Where the Hunt is

Mary and Castiel have a midnight rendezvous since Mary is restless and angels don’t sleep. Does Castiel normally wander through the halls of the bunker as the Winchesters slumber? Mary can’t sleep either, feeling like she hasn’t found her place in the world. Despite their earthly lives, neither Castiel nor Mary have come to feel at home.

The next day, Castiel is off to Cleveland to search for Satan. The boys are eager to help, but Castiel knows that Mary needs them. Sam is worried about his mom, but Dean thinks that with a little family time and R&R she’ll be aces. We love it when Dean talks like he’s from the 1950s. We learn that like Dean, Mary likes cold bacon and finding cases. Dean invites Sam and himself along, never worrying about what his mom may actually want or need.

Dean introduces his mom to the great variety of snack flavors in the modern age. When Dean starts the car, “Born to Be Wild” is playing on the radio. Sam signals to turn it down, but Mary ignores his request and turns it up. Mary Winchester has returned from the dead, and if she wants to crank the music, so be it.

An Angel and a Demon Walk Into a Bar …

At the Cleveland hotel, Castiel questions Vince Vincente’s bandmate. Cas is using the amazing pseudonym Agent Beyoncé. Mary Winchester isn’t the only one who doesn’t quite get the modern references. As Castiel heads out, he runs across Crowley, who offers to be his Agent Jay Z. They do make a great power couple.

Meanwhile in St. Paul, Agents Partridge, Cassidy, and Bonaduce are talking to the Medical Examiner about the couple found dead in the abandoned house. The victims froze to death in a 65° room. How ever will the poor Medical Examiner finish his report?

Crowley tries to convince Castiel that they should work together to hunt down Lucifer. They do a little dance outside of Cas’s truck. Cas’s truck?!?! Wait a sec! What happened to his crappy Lincoln? Crowley shows off a piece of information he gained breaking into Lucifer’s hotel room—the address of Vince Vincente’s sister Wendy. Last time these two worked together the Leviathans escaped purgatory. Who knows what hijinks they’ll get up to this time.

The Family Business

Dean is still feeling protective of his mom, but she assures him she can handle the EMF indicator. Mary finds herself in the room with the creepy doll. When she moves the blanket, the door slams. Just before her strapping sons are able to free her, a little ghost boy appears and grabs her arm. Though Sam and Dean free her and drive off the ghost, a red mark appears on Mary’s arm. They hustle her out, like security guards rushing Felicia Day through the crowd at Comic-Con.

At their hotel, Mary prepares to knock on doors and talk to people, but Sam and Dean have already done all the research needed on the internet. Sam points out that the internet has made a lot of the footwork “obsolete,” which appears to reflect how Mary is feeling. Sam has found police reports showing that a lot of kids in the area have died over the last few decades.

Sam thinks people are being killed by Mylings: vengeful child spirits whose cries lure adults to their deaths. Though Mary feels that the ghost she encountered was seeking help, the boys decide that the best course of action is to salt and burn all the dead children. Sounds like an awful night. Mary has a vision of the night yellow-eyes came to Sam’s crib and then sees the little boy ghost, causing her to almost collapse. She assures her sons she is fine, and Sam and Dean leave to burn some bones.

There No Demon in Teamwork

Even if Sam and Dean have gone high-tech, Castiel and Crowley are ready to knock on some doors—specifically, Vince Vincente’s sister Wendy’s. When she slams the door on them Castiel wonders if that ever happens to Sam and Dean. Hmmm … we’re going to say no.

Crowley takes his own approach by appearing inside the house. Lucifer paid a recent visit and healed Wendy while he was there. Crowley threatens to undo Lucifer’s work, but Castiel stops him. Castiel takes an honest approach, telling Wendy, “The thing that healed you, that wasn’t your brother. It was something else—something old and evil. I think a part of you knows that. We don’t want to hurt Vince; we want to help him.” It turns out when Lucifer came to visit he wasn’t alone—he had his “groupie friend” Rowena with him.

When Castiel confronts him, Crowley accuses the angel of being mad because he was second choice for the Lucifer hunting op. Then Castiel mocks Crowley in the most un-Castiel-like fashion we’ve ever seen. We have to assume Misha Collins got some pretty bad direction. When Crowley points out that Rowena is not only an incredibly powerful witch but also the only one who can lock Lucifer back in the Cage, Castiel comes around.

At the Cabin in the Woods, Lucifer wants Rowena’s help in making his vessel permanent because he’s sick and tired of burning through these human vessels like a pack of smokes.

There’s Something About Mary

After Sam and Dean leave, Mary tracks down the previous owners of the abandoned house the old-fashioned way—by calling. She calls the former owner and learns about the ghost she met—Lucas Kellinger—from his mother. At the same time, Sam and Dean are burning the bones of little Lucas. Sam’s worried about Mary, but Dean’s just relieved she’s back.

Sam: “No, she’s struggling. I mean She’s trying to bury herself in hunting to avoid dealing.
Dean: “And how do you know that?”
Sam: “Years of personal experience. I don’t know, man. Like mother, like sons.”

Mary returns to the abandoned house, but at least it’s daytime and she has a bag full of weapons. When the ghost of Lucas appears before her she tells him that his mommy misses him. He points to a barricaded basement door. It’s always the basement.

It turns out that there’s another ghost keeping Lucas at the house—the man who killed all the children. Before Sam and Dean can get to Mary, the ghost possesses her. The ghost tries to kill Dean, but Mary fights the possession long enough to direct Sam to the basement. In usual Supernatural fashion, Sam salts and burns the body while Dean fights off the ghost. Once the body is burned the spirit leaves Mary and burns away. The spirits of the children who’d been trapped in the house ascend. The Supernatural FX crew has really mastered these kinds of visual effects.

I Put a Spell on You

Rowena is using a spell that combines Book of the Damned and Celtic magic to give Lucifer’s vessel “the resiliency and strength of the mightiest tree.” He threatens her that this spell had better work. Rowena’s aware that Lucifer may kill her after he gets what he wants from her and tells him that she can still be useful to him. Rowena casts the spell, which turns out to be a way to destroy his vessel, not strengthen it. So much for getting Vince back safely. As his vessel begins to weaken and age, she tells Lucifer, “You thought Keith Richards was bad, try Iggy Pop.” Finally, she casts a spell to send him to the bottom of the ocean, where there’ll be no vessel in sight. She is one powerful witch.

Castiel and Crowley show up at the Cabin in the Woods to find that Rowena didn’t need rescuing. The fight with Lucifer has renewed her desire to see him back in the Cage. A witch, a demon, and an angel—it’s a Supernatural Dream Team.

Heaven is the Home of our Hearts

The Winchester family has returned to the bunker. They have an awkward conversation about Dean jumping into Mary’s hunt. Then she explains what had happened to the man to make him a vengeful spirit—he lost his child and couldn’t bear to live with it. Though Dean is happy to be home with his family after this hunt, Mary is feeling differently and she points out that this isn’t her home.

Mary: “I miss John. I miss my boys.”
Sam: “We’re right here, Mom.”
Mary: “I know. In my head. But I’m still mourning them as I knew them. My baby Sam. My little boy Dean. Just feels like yesterday we were together in Heaven, and now … I’m here, and John is gone, and they’re gone. And every moment I spend with you reminds me every moment I lost with them. And I thought hunting, working, would clear my head.”
Sam: “Mom … What are you trying to say?”
Mary: “I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m so … so sorry.”

Dean is too hurt to respond, but Sam hugs Mary and their mother walks out the door. Sam kept trying to warn Dean that she was struggling, but Dean just wanted to believe being all together was all that mattered. It’s not clear what Mary needs to do in order to heal. Does it involve simply being away from the overgrown men that her children have become, or will she be revisiting her past? Along with giving us a classic Supernatural ghost story, “The Foundry” reveals that jumping back into a family that has moved along without you is not an easy emotional process.

See our review of “The Foundry’ here.