The Secret Circle - Witness

The episode opens right where last week’s left off. Cassie and Adam have just kissed and Jake walked in on them. Jake tells the kissers that he led the witch hunters away from Cassie before escaping to come back and share vital information. The witch hunters have a council and that council has a ritual they can use in order to kill witches with dark magic. Jake tells Cassie that 16 years ago, the council killed her father. Adam decides that Jake is a liar and that Jake is just trying to figure out how to really kill Cassie. Cassie trusts Jake, since Jake saved her life last time she saw him.

Jake tells Cassie that he remembers being at the boat on the day of the fire that killed their parents. He was a toddler, but he thinks that Cassie can use her magic to help him uncover his repressed memories so that they can see what happened that night. Unsurprisingly, Cassie is able to perform a spell that transports herself and Jake back in time. Jake is unable to move forward beyond the portion of the boat that he remembers clearly. When he tries, he gets a headache. Apparently the painfulness of the memories are too much for him to bear.

Cassie ditches him in the spell, and Jake wakes up, back in the real world. Cassie is still in a trance. Jake tries to wake her, but can’t, and calls Adam and Diana. Back in time/in the spell, Cassie sees Jake’s parents discussing whether to continue using magic. They think that if they stop, the witch hunters will leave them alone. They talk about how Cassie's father, John Blackwell, betrayed her mother, Amelia. They mention that John Blackwell is on the boat. Just then, witch hunters appear, kill Jake's father, and drag Jake’s mother off into a room with some other women. One of the women has a slit throat. Cassie sees the toddler version of Jake looking upset. A dark-haired woman inside the spell notices Cassie and tells Cassie that she is "not supposed to be here."

Cassie also sees Adam’s dad, Ethan, who had told Adam that he was NOT on the boat the day of the fire. Later, when she tells Adam this, everyone wonders why Ethan lied. We’re sure they will question Ethan later. Back to the spell world. Cassie follows the witch hunters to another portion of the boat. The witch hunters have John Blackwell. JB is hooded, so Cassie can’t see his face. It’s a creepy-ass hood, so we have no trouble believing he is both mysterious and a little evil. The hunters set JB on fire and Cassie starts to choke on the smoke in the room. In the real world, Cassie coughs and her friends are concerned.

Cassie sees her father break free and escape the boat. He’s alive. WE TOLD YOU HE WAS ALIVE. (see the fifth paragraph) We hope no one is surprised by this development. Cassie wakes up from the spell, shares her info, and then goes to the site of the boats remains. There, she finds a silver necklace that her dad dropped. She decides that this is what protected him from the witch hunters’ ritual and now that she has the necklace, she is safe. Jake tells Cassie that her father must be dead, because there is a grave with his name on it in town. Cassie and Jake dig the grave up and find a dog skeleton inside the coffin. Cassie’s dad was a dog?!!! Ha, just kidding. We’re not that dumb. Obviously John Blackwell killed a dog. And he will pay….

Annoyingly, Faye is still hanging out with Lee. She finds out that he and a creeper friend, Callum, dealt some sort of devil weed. It’s a drug with ties to Satan or something. Lee warns Faye that there is a reason he stopped dealing the drug, even though Callum still deals it. Callum gives some of it to Faye at the end of the episode. If we know reckless, curious, fearless Faye, and we do, we know she will try the drug soon. Probably in the next episode.

Charles is still on the outs with Dawn, since Dawn threatened his mother. Charles wants to find out Dawn’s ultimate plans. Dawn goes to Ethan, playing the damsel in distress, and says that Charles choked her. Ethan told Dawn that Charles choked him with water too. Ethan goes to Charles, knocks him out, steals his crystal, chokes him, and runs off. Charles tells Ethan that it was Dawn who killed Henry. Ethan claims to not believe Charles, but when Dawn asks for the crystal later, Ethan doesn’t give it to her. Ethan: smarter than he looks. How does he look? Pretty hot, actually.

We feel like this episode, while long overdue, only told us things we had already known or guessed. The Ethan stuff was the only interesting thing to us. Still, eventful. It moved the show along and thickened the plot.

Episode grade: B