Love Hurts

Season	Episode	Overall
11	13	231

Series

Supernatural

Airdate

February 10, 2016

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Don't You Forget About Me	The Vessel

Love Hurts is the 13th episode of Season 11. It aired on February 10th, 2016.

Summary[]

There was something about being there... It felt pure.

This episode summary is an official CW press release. It may contain errors.
DO NOT CHANGE!

Sam and Dean investigate a set of murders on Valentine's Day and discover they are dealing with an ancient curse. Once kissed by the curse, the person is marked to die.

Plot[]

On Valentine's Day in Hudson, Ohio, a man and woman are getting ready for their date when their kiss is disturbed by the doorbell. The man, Dan, goes downstairs to answer the door and let in the babysitter, Staci. Staci walks in, asks after Melissa, the wife, and then proceeds to make out with the husband, right in front of the nanny-cam. Dan and Staci have an argument about whether he is going to tell his wife about them that night - she wants him to, and he argues against it. Melissa comes down in the middle and the couple leave for the night. Later, Staci fixes herself a snack and then settles in to watch a movie. As she flicks through the channels, the patio door behind her opens, and a man walks towards the couch. He touches her shoulders and she startles but calms quickly once she sees who it is. Asking what he's doing there, the man starts to give her a shoulder rub, and then rips her heart out.

In the Bunker, Sam is reading about Staci's demise when Dean shuffles in, grunting, with a big hickey on his neck. Sam makes fun of him for his Valentine's Day activities, and then tells him about the case. They decide to go investigate after Dean's had a shower and breakfast. When Sam and Dean arrive in Hudson, they speak with the husband and wife about what they saw, hitting all the routine questions about who might want to hurt Staci, whether she had a boyfriend, etc... Melissa reports that the only thing missing from the house was the nanny-cam. On their way out, Sam and Dean discuss how "hinky" the husband was. They agree that Sam should go to the morgue while Dean goes to talk to Dan at the office. They hope he'll be a bit more forthcoming without his wife around.

At the morgue, Sam and the coroner examine the body. The coroner shows him how the killer thrust the heart all the way out of Staci's back before pulling it back through her chest. They also discuss how normally the coroner would call this an animal attack, but the attack was inside the home and there are no claw marks on the body, so she is "stumped" as to what could have killed the girl. At Dan's office, he mournfully looks at Staci's Facebook page as Dean walks in and says that he needs Dan to be straight with him. Dan fesses up and admits that he was having an affair with the babysitter. He also confesses that he stole the nanny-cam because Staci had kissed him in front of it, but when he watched the video he saw someone that looked like him come in and murder Staci. He shows the video to Dean. Afterwards, Dean tells him he believes Dan when he says that it's not him, but he needs Dan to sit tight while they take care of it.

Back at the hotel, Sam lounges on the couch, trying to find evidence of a werewolf but coming up empty. Dean shares the video with Sam; Sam notices the eyes flaring on "Dan", indicating a shapeshifter. At Dan's office, his secretary leaves for the night, and a young woman brushes roughly past her on her way out of the elevator. The shifter, looking like Staci, shows up and confronts Dan, asking him to give her his heart. She rips his heart out the same way Staci's heart was ripped out. The next day Sam and Dean are the crime scene, talking to the secretary. She identifies Staci as the girl who came out of the elevator. They posit that the wife is probably the shifter.

Sonja's Qareen attempts to attack Melissa — Sonja's Qareen breaks into Melissa's house

At Dan and Melissa's house, Sam and Dean confront Melissa about her husband's affair. They asked her if she knew, and she confesses that she did, but she didn't kill him. They have her sign one of their cards with a silver pen to check, and are disappointed when nothing happens. As soon as Dean and Sam leave, Melissa runs to a cupboard in the house and pulls out a box of spell ingredients. One by one she feeds them down the garbage disposal, while making a phone call to someone. He or she doesn't answer, so she leaves a message explaining that she thinks she messed up and asking that they call her back, ASAP. Later that night, Melissa is drinking a glass of wine when there is banging on her door. Calling out, she asks who's there; there's no answer. She peeks out the peephole and sees the shifter, as Dan this time. He asks her to let him in, claiming that he loves her. When she refuses, he punches through the door and lets himself in, and proceeds to chase her through the house. Melissa manages to hold him off until she can escape out the patio doors.

Dean, Sam and Melissa confronts Sonja's Qareen — Dean, Sam and Melissa facing off against Sonja's Qareen

Dean arrives back from the bar with some takeout, and asks Sam what a "dad bod" is. Sam laughs and is about to answer when Melissa pounds on the door. They let her in and she explains that her dead husband just tried to kill her, and tells them about the spell she got from her hairdresser, Sonja-a "return to love" spell, that's sealed with a kiss. She pulls out a copy of the spell that Sam immediately starts to research. He finds out that it's not a spell, but a curse that's passed on through kissing. They hypothesize that the curse is working its way back to her. Suddenly, Dan busts through the back patio. Dean fills him full of silver bullets, to no effect, but Sam is able to put him down for a minute by smashing him with a chair as Dean kisses Melissa to pull the curse onto himself. They have just enough time to grab their coats and escape. In the shadow of the window, the shifter changes shape again.

Dean and Sam discovers Sonja's spellbook — Dean and Sam finds Sonja's spellbook

The Winchesters and Melissa pull over to the side of the road to regroup. Sam and Dean have an argument about how Dean always tries to be a hero by himself and that he doesn't need to do that anymore. Melissa joins them at the back of the car, a little hysterical. She pulls it together enough to notice all the weapons in the trunk. They ask her about the white witch, and gather that she does her spellwork in the basement of the shop. At the salon, Melissa waits in the car with a knife she reluctantly accepted from Sam. Sam and Dean get into the salon and look around, going downstairs to the basement. They find her grimoire, and discover that the monster they're dealing with is called a qareen, which is controlled by the spell. The qareen takes the form of your deepest, darkest desire. In order to kill it, they have to stab it in its heart, which is not inside its body. They split up to search for it, but not before a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to go upstairs. Dean, for the first time, wins and is so pleased with himself he doesn't even care that Sam goes upstairs anyway.

Sonja binds Sam to a chair — Sonja pins Sam to a chair

Upstairs, Sam finds the heart in a drawer, locked in a box. When he starts to pick the box open, Sonja surprises him and magically pins him to a chair. Downstairs, the qareen has come for Dean, in the shape of Amara. The qareen tells him that she also feels the longing in his heart, but he calls her out for being the qareen and not actually Amara, which gives her pause. Sonja takes the heart from Sam, who still can't move from the chair. She figures out that he's a hunter, and he gets her to explain that she's been hawking death curses as love spells to punish cheating men who get away with their betrayals. Back downstairs, the qareen says Dean's in love with Amara, but that he's ashamed of it for no reason, and he should just give in to it. Sam's conversation with the witch continues, and she reveals that she changed the curse, so that now not only the men get punished, but the foolish women who stay with them do as well.

Dean and the qareen begin their fight, while upstairs, Sonja starts casting a spell on Sam, effectively force-choking him so he can't breath. The qareen chases Dean around the basement, punching her hand through all sorts of surfaces while Dean narrowly avoids her fist. Melissa bursts in the door upstairs and distracts Sonja long enough that her spell on Sam is broken and he can lunge for his gun. Melissa tells Sonja to stop, while Sam shoots her with his witch-killing bullets. Meanwhile, the qareen has cornered Dean in the basement. She is about to punch her fist through his chest when Sam stabs the heart with his knife. Her fist stops just short of Dean's chest, and she screams while she bursts into a ball of blue fire and then zips into nothingness. Sam comes down, asking if Dean's okay. Dean says he's fine and leaves, while Sam surveys all the holes in the wall.

Packing up the motel room, Sam asks Dean what the qareen appeared to him as. Dean admits that the qareen came as Amara. Sam asks him if that surprises him, and Dean is surprised that Sam isn't surprised. Dean gets indignant and claims that he can't love the Darkness, but Sam cuts him off, asking if he thinks that makes him evil or complicit, or weak, and explains that he never actually had a choice in the matter because he was chosen by the sister of God. Dean says that he wants to kill the Darkness, but for whatever reason when he's near her he can't, and he can't explain why. Sam tells him it's okay and that he's got it.

Characters[]

Main Cast[]

Recurring Cast[]

Co-Stars[]

Emily Swallow as Sonja's Qareen
Venus Terzo as Sonja
Zoe Fraser as Staci Altman
Luciana Carro as Melissa Harper
Jim Thorburn as Dan Harper
Lucia Walters as Gladys
Carmen Aguirre as Corner

Featured Supernatural Beings[]

Primordial Entities (The Darkness, form taken and mentioned; God, mentioned only)
Qareen (Sonja's Qareen)
Shapeshifters (mentioned only)
Witch (Sonja)

Continuity[]

Dean reveals his "attraction" towards Amara to Sam.

Trivia[]

Sam and Dean play Rock, Paper Scissors again. This time, Dean actually wins. (Pointing out that Dean always uses scissors when playing with Sam, so he always loses, which is why Sam is surprised to see the result)
Before the title scene, Staci Altman is shown watching Rick and Morty, due to the quote "What people call love, is just a chemical that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, and it slowly fades. I did it, your parents did it. Rise above it, focus on science." How ironic.
While convincing Melissa to harm The White Witch if she comes, Dean states: "You drop a freaking house on her if you have to." This is a reference to The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz.