Avengers Initiative: Kansas edition a.k.a. The Wannabe Hunters
We open with a pair of adolescents making out in a car, on a deserted road in Conway Springs, Kansas. Turns out, the girl is Krissy Chambers, the obnoxious teen who “helped” Dean take down a couple of Vetalas, a while back.
A few minutes later, a blue van pulls up near the car, and we get the stereotypical “who’s there?” moment when a random shadow passes by the car a few times. At first the boyfriend, Aiden, tries to start the car, but as I said, “typical moment”... and the car won’t start. The boyfriend waits a couple of heartbeats, then makes a run for it, leaving her pleading ass behind.
The shadow, a young man, breaks the passenger side window and grabs her, yanking her out of the opening... And just as I’m about to hope for Krissy’s “I’m (not really) a Damsel in Distress” Mina Harper move, the boyfriend sneaks up behind the attacker and cleanly slices his head off. Then a third girl comes running from somewhere with what looks like a shotgun under her arm.
The boyfriend confirms the identity of the victim – “it’s him” – and Krissy looks at him unfazed and says, “One down, two to go.”
*Sighs* Welcome to Supernatural 2.0: Generation NeXt, folks! Alternatively... yet another Meh! filler episode, until the action (hopefully) starts next week.
The Hunters
The BrothersWinchester show up the next day, sniffing for the Headless Nick.
They have a small heart-to-heart, where Dean wants to talk about Sam’s“that thing Cas said Sam got that he can’t cure”. Sam diverts the attention to Dean with “Are you okay? I mean Cas dinged you up pretty good.”
“What? My feelings?” Dean snaps... and hey, Dean, you brought up feelings!
“If that’s what you wanna talk about, sure,” Sam mutters and Dean makes a couple of lame-ass retorts... and suddenly it’s back to normal. Or as normal as can be with the Winchesters around.
The Brothers show up at the local Police Station as FBI Agents and the Sheriff guesses that they have come for the Lady Killer Murders, a name he coined. According to the reports both the vics were female, under 21 and drained of all their blood.
So, he tells the “FBI Agents” they set up surveillance cameras around town and Krissy and her cronies’ shenanigans showed up on camera. And the police have put an APB on the teenagers.
Dean recognizes the young girl whose dad promised to “get out of the life”. He and Sam conclude that either her dad has gone back to his previous ways and has no idea what his daughter is up to, or... he is, in fact, training her and has no idea what he is doing if she shows up on the surveillance camera.
Either way, they gotta shut the little teenage drama down.
Cut to a motel somewhere, where Krissy pays cash and books a room with a fake ID under her real name. Amateur.
She is joined by Aiden, who flirts with her, but she’s not interested. The third girl comes in and Krissy hacks in to the hotel security, confirming that “the Vamp” they are hunting was last seen checking into the hotel.
Team NeXt prepares for the assault. I hate to admit it, but Aiden is what Dean would’ve been as a teenager. While Krissy stays inside the room, the other two make their way down to the Vamp’s room.
Meanwhile Sam and Dean break into motel room, which turns out to be Krissy’s base. Krissy’s informs Dean that her dad is dead... and “we got this.”
“We who?” Sam wonders, the same time as Dean asks, “Got what?”
Back to the Teen Avengers, Aiden and the girl, Josephine, break into the Vamp’s supposed room where they find a girl tied to the bed. She’s not hurt, just really scared and the Vamp’s MIA.
Josephine and Aiden go to help the girl, when Vamp makes an appearance. He pushes Josephine out of the way and turns to Aiden, when the Winchesters arrive, guns blazing. The Vamp hisses at them, then takes off out the window.
Dean leans out and sees the Vamp running towards a blue colored van, even as Krissy takes off after the Vamp, leaving Dean no choice but to follow behind. Sam, however, stays back to help the others with the girl.
Krissy halts the guy with a bullet filled with dead man’s blood, but as Dean moves in for the kill, she halts him. “It’s not your kill,” she practically orders him.
Just then they are joined by the others. This time, Josephine moves forward, reading the Vamp his riot act – you killed three people... a family... my family – and with Vamp going “I didn’t do anything, I am innocent. You gotta believe me!” slices his head off.
Dean wonders about the blue van, but Krissy has no idea what he’s talking about, so he lets it go.
As the kids wrap the body to dispose of it, Dean pulls Krissy aside for a one-on-one. Krissy tells him that they are being mentored into the life by a veteran hunter named Vector, who’s also helping them avenge their families’ murders by taking down a Nest of Vampires.
“Hunting is not about Revenge,” Dean grits out, which she pointedly ignores.
Y’know... I know the Winchesters have to, occasionally, interact with other hunters... and some may even be unlikeable... but I really think what Krissy needs is someone to bend her over the knee and give her couple of hard smacks.
Also, I’m pretty sure Dean is probably the only hunter – aside from the Campbells and Elliot Ness– who hunts “because it’s the right thing to do”. Almost everyone else, including John, Sam and Bobby got into it for revenge.
Anyways, Sam and Dean confer and decide that they need to meet the kids’ mentor.
Professor UtoniumVector
The Winchesters follow the Teen Titans to a Regular Joe White Picket Fence house.
Turns out, Vector is more like Professor from Powerpuff Girls than Nick Fury. He even hugs them an’ everything.
After he sends the kids to bed, Professor Utonium Vector tells the Brothers of his plans to raise the next generation of hunters – who are better than they ever were.
Yeah, tell that to the Dick Angels, dude. No one’s better than Winchesters because they were literally bred to be the bestest. Like some kind of freak Angelic experiment.
Anyways, Vector waxes poetics about his mentees and how they are actually balancing both the lives quite nicely - Students by morning, Vampire hunters at night. And that avenging their families, is the first step into this life, because it gives them the drive to perform.
He says that he knows the life is hard, and fate of Winchesters’ friends which is why it’s important to strike that balance. And the kids know what they are doing.
The Winchesters take their leave, but Dean’s still skeptical “because kids aren’t supposed to hunt”.
“We did,” Sam argues... but Dean closes that road with a few placed jabs.
Even after all this time, Dean still feels guilty for not letting Sam get out when he had the chance. Or maybe I think, like Cas said when he first came on the scene, Dean doesn’t really believe that he deserves that chance...
Moving on. Dean says that the only way to get the kids to back off – because teenage rebellion an’ sh*t – is to find that Nest. Also, there’s that “blue van” which doesn’t exactly fit in the story. So he sends Sam back in to keep an eye on the BradyBunch and goes off to recon... while a blue van parks outside the house and the driver in a hoodie smirks at the place.
By this point, as Lyle Masaki hoped yesterday, I’m more than ready for Benny to make an appearance.
The mornings at Team NeXt HQ are straight out of an 80s family sitcom.
The kids sit for breakfast together and joking and just being a family... Vector makes waffles because Krissy loves them, Josephine studies for a test while Aiden lays about... etc etc.
By the time Sam joins them, the kids are more than ready to leave for school.
Sam and Vector have conversation where Vector tells him that apart from raising hunters, he also wants to give the orphans a chance at being a normal family, “not like the we have – no crappy hotel rooms, no life”. Also, Vector’s own family was killed which got him into hunting in the first place.
Cut to Dean visiting the Vampire’s victim.
Apparently, the girl knew the vampire, Jimmy, an Afghan Vet who came back only a few weeks ago. She tells Dean that she saw him waiting in the parking lot when she left for work, when a blue van pulled up and a man in hoodie asked for directions. Next thing she knew, she was tied up in a motel room and Jimmy was standing over her crying that he was sorry and he seemed scared.
That sends off warning bells in Dean’s head.
Sam’s laying about the house, when suddenly the Team NeXt makes an appearance.
Apparently Vector pulled them from school for the day because he found the their Vamp... the one that killed Krissy’s dad.
He hands them a ready-made dossier about the supposed Vamp, complete with a surveillance photo – without time stamp on it – of the woman wearing Krissy’s mom’s necklace, which her dad carried around.
And while that is enough for the Junior Avengers to run off like good little robots, it irks Sammy because the photo is clearly fake.
Just then, Dean calls in report about how Jimmy the good guy became Jimmy the scared Vamp and Sam relays his misgivings about the Avengers Initiative: Kansas edition.
Dean concurs, because he also more or less reached the same conclusion, and decides to pay another visit to the Motel where Jimmy and his “victim” were found.
The clerk is not really helpful – apparently it’s “a couple fifties buy silence” kind of place, but Dean wriggles out that a Man in a Hoodie checked into the room and he was looking at some hunting lodge brochures. The clerk has no idea about the van.
Meanwhile, Sam spies blue van stationed outside the house and alerts Vector. Vector agrees to check it out and Sam accompanies him.
Uh...oh! It can’t be good.
Dean finds the Lodge all right, complete with a very scared girl who looks very similar to the supposed “vampire that killed Mr. Chambers”.
The girl, scared out of her wits, tries asking Dean for help when suddenly her new fangs drop out. She is now more confused than scared because she really has no idea was happening to her, but Dean has some ideas.
All she knows that she was kidnapped by a man in a blue van and he did something to her.
Just then the Teen Avengers arrive, guns blazing... and all that’s standing between the poor girls and the brain washed idiots is Dean. (Coz I always wanted to write that)
Meanwhile, Sam is still tracking the guy in the hoodie with Vector.
He spies someone behind a tree and sneaks up on him. Just as he is about to reach the guy, Vector sneaks up behind him and knocks him out.
The guy in hoodie comes to stand before Vector and grins... showing off his fangs. O, Crap!
Back at the Creepy Hunting Lodge, Dean is still facing the idiots with shotguns.
Dean tries to reason with them, but they are adamant. Hell, Krissy even tries to intimidate him. Hah!
Dean persists claiming that Vector has been setting up fake targets and having them kill innocents, so he can have a ready army at his beck and call.
Also, since the woman is fresh-made and hasn’t made her first yet, they can reverse the process by feeding her her Maker’s blood. Kind of like how Dean got back to normal, way back in season 6.
Aiden snarks at him, and finally Dean loses his cool. He doesn’t do much more than disarm Aiden, but apparently that’s enough...
I’m still hoping for a bit of Krissy whumping, but it’s okay.
The kids put away their guns, but getting them to help the girl is a little more difficult. They are adamant to kill her – as Dean once would’ve been – because she’s still a monster.
But of course, Dean can’t just lie back and think of Queen and England now, can he?
The woman is still an innocent, he explains, and hunting is about “saving people” not killing for revenge.
And the kid’s finally relent.
What? Lord Voldemort did it too!
Moving on. Sam comes to, tied to a chair with Vector and Hoodie Monster standing over him.
Vector is clearly on a bender, because he has ready a story about how “the nest” they were hunting had been out for blood and found Sam and killed him, thereby inspiring them even further.
“I don’t need to justify my actions to you... or your self righteous ass of a brother,” he yells, then goes on to give a very David Carradine-sque speech about how it’s “all for the Greater good, Sammy boy” and how he has been given a second chance to create a next generation hunters “stronger... faster... harder...” blah blah.
One thing that all super-villains have in common is that they really like the sound of their own voice, which is more often than not their main downfall. Just as well, because just as the speech comes to an end and the applause dies down – C’mon! Show ‘em some love, folks! – Dean and the Teen Avengers walk in.
Since he is caught red-handed, Vector confesses that he had been keeping tabs on the kids like a good old fashioned pedo, and when he was satisfied that they met criteria, he had the Hoodie Monster “take care” of the little hurdles a.k.a. their families.
This served a dual purpose because they murders fueled their thirst for revenge and mentoring earned him their trust. “Think of the better world we’re building,” he implores maniacally. “What’s a couple of innocent deaths for now? Think of all the lives you’ll save in the future...”
Then he pulls a regular “Who’s with me?” routine. Krissy, the mutually appointed leader, shakes her head the others back off.
Which is another signal for the Hoodie Monster to attack.
He grabs Aiden as a shield, as the remaining two and Dean, because Sam is still tied up, clamor to action... and Vector cackles maniacally while giving a farewell speech. Seriously?!?
Apparently it’s enough for Krissy to pull out her Dead-blood bullet gun and shoot the Hoodie Monster through the eye. He collapses and Aiden is safe.
Then she turns on Vector with a regular gun, but Dean tries to talk her down because he’s still a human, and they don’t kill humans.
Krissy still fires but... turns out, the gun is empty. She’s taking the high road, and Vector can rot his life with his guilty conscience.
As she turns around, Vector pulls out his ankle piece – and for a moment I thought he was pulling a suicide by Dean – and blasts his own head off.
Well, Good riddance!
Cut to... the case is closed and the victim is restored back to human. Everything is fine and dandy.
Dean asks Krissy to come with them so they can leave her at her aunt’s, but she’s perfectly happy here with these two.
She promises Dean to not go looking for trouble, but if trouble comes looking for them she can’t exactly say no. It’s a fair deal and Dean will take what he can get. They shake on it.
Outside, Sam offhandedly comments that maybe these kids will find that perfect balance he always strived to achieve between Apple-pie and hunting, but Dean is not ready to let that go.
“We’ll complete the tasks and slam the gates of hell shut, and they won’t have to. They’ll have normal lives,” he comments slipping behind the steering wheel.
“Maybe they won’t be the only ones,” Sam mutters under his breath as he slips into the passenger seat.
Like last week, this week too, I have nothing to say, albeit for a different reason. I didn’t exactly dislike it, but it was so dull...
What did you think? Tell us in the comments... and Happy Easter!
