‘Supernatural’ season 11 episode 16 recap: ‘Safe House’ is a can’t-miss with Bobby and Rufus

“Supernatural” season 11 episode 16 titled “Safe House” has brought back Bobbi (Jim Beaver) and Rufus (Steven Williams) on Wednesday in the US. The elderly hunters paralleled Sam and Dean Winchester’s (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) timeline and case, which makes for an interesting and nostalgic episode.

Spoilers ahead for ‘Safe House’

After a weeks-long hiatus, the show returned with something that would certainly entice fans to come back watching. After all, it’s not every day that dead characters come back for the show. Okay, it’s not as rare as well, but certainly not as frequently as fans would like to see them return. To start off, Bobby and Rufus were still dead, at least in the present time. The episode showed parallel timeline of the past and present, showing Bobby and Rufus working on the same case as Sam and Dean in different timelines.

Back when the grumpy older men were still both alive, and before Sam and Dean were able to stop the apocalypse (season 5), Rufus asked Bobby to help him investigate a case involving a seemingly haunted house and a boy who fell into a coma. The boy’s mother also fell into a coma after hearing something in the house. The hunters first suspected a ghost is involved, but after burning the bones of the bodies that used to live in the house, they learnt they were facing another entity when the burning didn’t solve the mystery.

In the present time, Sam and Dean also thought of doing the same thing, but they found out that all the bodies were already burned (by Bobby and Rufus years before). Their case involved the same house, but this time, a daughter fell into a coma. The same thing happened to her mum as well, just like the mother and son in Bobby and Rufus’ case.

Both pair of hunters realised they were dealing with a soul eater, an entity that takes soul to a nest, which looks similar to the house it haunts but exists outside of time and space. Bobby and Rufus didn’t know how to kill it, but they were able to find a seal that could trap it. The symbol they painted on the house was broken when the mother and daughter moved into the house and attempted to renovate it, therefore freeing the soul eater.

Sam and Dean, on the other hand, were able to find a seal that could kill it. The problem with it was the seal must be placed on both the house and the nest. Dean and Bobby were forcibly taken into the nest by the soul eater, while Sam and Rufus tried to finish painting the seal on the house’s wall. The hunters in the nest were able to see the children who fell into a coma, as well as other souls eaten by the entity, before the soul eater possessed them.

Back in the real world, their bodies, possessed by the soul eater, attacked Sam and Rufus, delaying the painting of the seal. Once Sam and Rufus finished the seal, the soul eater was trapped (Rufus’ timeline) and killed (Sam’s timeline), allowing the souls in the nest to return to their bodies (or move on, in case of the older souls). Since the nest exists outside time and space, Bobby and Dean were able to see each other briefly just before they woke up.

Episode review

Bobby dying in season 7 wasn’t what the fans needed or wanted at all, but it was what they have come to accept after seeing his soul ascend to heaven. He was given a relatively happy ending, considering heaven wasn’t as great a paradise as one expected, and bringing him back on earth would be a disservice to the beloved character. So it’s great that the show didn’t resort to cheap tricks and instead brought back both Bobby and Rufus in a respectable manner.

The dynamics between Bobby and Rufus were still on-point. Their grumpy old men personas are perhaps what the show needs to bring back to make it less heavy. Bobby and Rufus being grumpy was charming; Sam and Dean being angsty (as they almost always are) is depressing. The now-dead characters should have a show together. Most likely not going to happen, but if they indeed get a spin-off, it would be a pleasure to watch them just banter.

The reference from “Lethal Weapon” (Bobby and Rufus’ fake FBI names of Riggs and Murtaugh) was cute, though younger viewers might have missed that altogether. Another smile-inducing moment in the episode was when both Bobby and Dean were looking for the soul eater. “Stay away from me, you son of a b----,” Bobby said, while Dean said the opposite, “Come and get me, you son of a b----.” Adorable, wasn’t it?

It was a light episode that stimulated sentimental vibes with the mere appearance of Bobby and Rufus together. It’s already an established fact that Bobby loved the boys as his own sons, and this episode just cemented it even more. It’s just one of those filler episodes that no fan should miss.

“Supernatural” airs Mondays on Eleven in Australia.

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