Previously: Dean got pulled out of Hell and we met Castiel. Also, Sam has murdery psychic powers now.
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Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester
Kirsti: A woman sleeps on her sofa. The TV turns to static in the background and the lights flicker. She wakes when the phone rings, and sits up with a jolt, her breath fogging the air. She rushes to her closet, and shoves the clothes aside to reveal a typical hunter’s arsenal. She flicks on an EMF meter, and it goes crazy. Meanwhile, Bobby leaves a message saying he could use her help on something big. She loads a shotgun and stalks through her apartment.
Everything seems normal, then a dirt covered young guy appears next to her. She stares at him in shock, and says “You!“. She shoots, and he vanishes in a puff of smoke. She grabs some salt and barricades herself in the bedroom. The ghost reappears as she finishes the line, and she does a very Tenth Doctor “I’m so sorry” apology. Then she spins around to find another ghost behind her. Womp womp. The second ghost reaches into her chest, and she screams us to the credits.
Marines: I’m pretty sure that at this point, getting a call from Bobby for help is a death sentence. STOP ASKING PEOPLE FOR HELP, BRO.
K: True.
CREEPY BIRDS.
After the Not Credits, Bobby’s doing research while Sam and Dean bicker. Dean insists that he wasn’t “groped by an angel“, and that Castiel’s a lying liar who lies and is also probably a demon. Sam poo-poos that because of evidence. Dean insists that if angels were real, a hunter would have seen them. Sam points out that Dean just did. Dean refuses to believe Castiel’s an angel just because Castiel said so. Bobby interrupts the bickering and tells them to come look at something he’s found.
He shows them the book he’s been studying, and says that there’s all kinds of lore saying that angels can pull souls out of Hell. Dean rubs his handprinted shoulder. Bobby goes on to say that literally nothing but an angel can do that. Dean looks pissed. Sam smirks a little, and says that clearly Dean’s been saved by one of the good guys. Dean continues to be sceptical because angels existing means there must be a God, and he’s not down with that.
Sam argues that it’s not about faith, it’s about proof. Dean refuses to accept that God would care about him, because he’s just a regular guy who saved some people which kinda made up for all the sex and theft. Sam says that clearly Dean’s a regular guy who matters to God.
Mari: I really like that you are focusing on the birthday party part of this. Meanwhile, I do have feels for Dean over this whole, “OMG WHY ME.” thing. It’s really rocking his world and I get that.
K: I’m a heathen. Of course I focused on the birthday parties part.
After some more arguments from Sam, Dean relents and asks Bobby what they know about angels. Bobby presents them with a huge stack of dusty books. Dean bitchfaces and tells Sam to get him some pie. PIE SHOTS! I can’t remember if those were a thing on our fictional drinking game, but they should be. So. PIE SHOTS! (M: Pie shots sound delicious is all I know.)
Cut to Sam pulling up at a truck stop. He’s on the phone to Dean, and promises not to forget the pie. He spots Ruby 2.0 lurking around a corner, and quickly hangs up the phone to go talk to her. Ruby asks if Dean was really rescued by an angel, and when Sam confirms it, she’s all “LOL NOPE BYE”, because she has no desire to experience death by angel. Sam asks what she knows about angels, and she says they’re freaking terrifying. (M: And one of them is FOINE. Okay. Sorry.) She tells him to watch himself, and bails.
Sam gets back to Bobby’s to find them loading the car. Bobby leans in the window to say that he’s freaked about not hearing back from Olivia, the woman from the teaser. She’s only a state away, so they’re gonna go check on her. Dean jumps in the Bromobile, and gets pissy because Sam forgot his pie. RUDE.
Olivia’s House of Napping Will Get You Murdered. Bobby leads the way inside, and they find Olivia’s mangled corpse. Bobby rushes outside. The boys investigate further, noting the salt line and the EMF meter, and realise that ghosts were involved. Bobby returns, saying that he’s phoned some other hunters that live nearby, and they’re not answering their phones either. They all look freaked.
Cut to a white house in a field somewhere. The phone rings inside. We get a bunch of quick shots of tables knocked over, salt-filled shotgun shells, and a blood covered corpse with his chest ripped out as Dean leaves a message asking the guy to return his call and confirm that he’s okay. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, it’s that night. Dean and Sam are at the white house, and Dean informs Bobby over the phone that the guy’s dead. Bobby confirms that two more hunters have been mangled to death too. He tells the boys to head back to his place and to stay safe. Cut to the Bromobile pulling into a petrol station somewhere. Dean’s asleep, his head hanging out the passenger window. From across the street, a shadowy figure watches Sam as he fills up the car then heads to the bathroom.
In the bathroom – which serves as a reminder to always carry tissues and hand sanitiser and to never pass up a McDonald’s toilet – Sam washes his hands, and then sees his breath in the air. He looks up to see the mirror icing over. He wipes the ice away and VICTOR FREAKING HENRIKSEN IS STANDING BEHIND HIM. Oh man. I’d forgotten about this. “Hi Sam. It’s been a while,” Henriksen says. That throws us into a reminder-of-who-Henriksen-is flashback. Sam asks if he survived, and Henriksen flickers. GUESS NOT.
Mari: Jus in Belo feels all came rushing back. D:
K: They do that.
Sam apologises, but Henriksen has no time for Sam’s sad panda feels. He says his death is totally Sam’s fault, because he’s the one Lilith wanted. Henriksen and the others who died during Jus in Bello were just collateral damage. He throws Sam around the bathroom, smashing his face into a sink. Somewhere in all the face smashing, Sam finds time to notice a brand mark on Henriksen’s hand. (M: Convenient.) Just as Henriksen’s about to get his ghostly murder on, there’s a gunshot and he vanishes in a puff of smoke. Nice timing, Dean.
Mari: This episode is trying to convince me naps are bad. I don’t like it.
K: I always hated naps, so I’m fine with it. (M: WTF. Naps save the day!)
Back at Bobby’s, the lights flicker. The Orchestra of Ominous Sound Effects strikes up as Bobby sees his breath in the air. He grabs an iron poker from the fireplace and walks towards a creepy giggling. The radio starts crackling, and the creepy giggles get louder as he walks through the house with the poker at the ready. A ball comes bouncing down the stairs to land at his feet. Bobby stares at it in horror, then turns around to see two creepy little girl ghosts standing behind him.
In the Bromobile, Dean freaks because Bobby’s not answering his phone. He asks if Sam’s okay, then asks what Henriksen wanted. “Revenge,” Sam says. He sad pandas some more, and Dean tells him to get his head in the game before they all die. Cut to them arriving at Bobby’s the next morning. They burst into the house, guns drawn, and look around to the tune of more ominous sound effects. They find Bobby’s poker abandoned at the bottom of the stairs, and decide to split up. Dean checks upstairs while Sam heads outside to check the junkyard.
As Sam walks through the junkyard calling Bobby’s name, we pan up a pile of beaten up cars to see that the creepy little girl ghosts are hiding Bobby in one of them, a hand over his mouth so he can’t call out. Upstairs, Dean calls Bobby’s names, and a bunch of doors slam shut. The door at the end of the corridor, however, opens on its own. Dean walks towards it, his breath fogging the air. A young woman with shoulder length brown hair appears behind him. “Dean Winchester. Still so bossy. You don’t recognise me?” she sasses. Dean has a convenient flashback to remind us that the girl is Meg.
She informs Dean that this is what she looked like before the demon “cut off my hair and dressed me like a slut“. Ugh. MISOGYNY SHOTS. Dean has another flashback and joins the dots on her identity. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Ghost!Meg assures him that she’s not a demon. She sasses that it’s nice to finally meet him when she’s not busy dying. Dean takes a step backwards and Ghost!Meg says she was just a college girl who got jumped by a demon, and ended up a prisoner in her own head. She could see everything that was happening. Dean flashes back to Meg falling off a building. She tearfully demands to know why they didn’t help her when they’re supposed to help people. She was screaming at them for months, and they never even realised. Dean apologises, and she punches him in the face.
Dean collapses on the floor, and Ghost!Meg kicks him. He reaches for his shotgun, and she flicks it away. He insists they didn’t know, and Ghost!Meg replies that they never even thought about the fact that there was a girl trapped inside the body they were stabbing away at. “You think you’re some kind of hero?” she says. Dean and his self worth issues insist that he doesn’t. She grabs him by the shirt, and Dean looks down to see an intricate brand on the back of her hand. Ghost!Meg asks if he knows what it’s like to be trapped inside an evil being for months while your family has no idea where you are. Dean gets “Uh, yeah. Just got out of Hell…” face before saying that they did the best they could. Ghost!Meg throws him down and kicks him some more.
Mari: I didn’t see the Meg episode, I don’t think, but this still got to me. I’M SORRY GHOST!MEG.
K: Sometimes I forget that you haven’t been here since the start…
Creepy Kid Car. The little girls ask if Bobby’s scared, and say that they were super scared when the monster came and took them while Bobby was in the house and did nothing to save them. Bobby looks panicky. You know, as you would if you were trapped in a wrecked car with a couple of ghosts. Outside, Sam sees his breath in the air, and starts searching cars. He calls out to Bobby, who can’t reply. The little girls say that the monster killed them because Bobby couldn’t find them, and now no one’s going to find him. One of them squeezes Bobby’s nostrils shut.
Upstairs, Ghost!Meg kicks Dean some more as she says that she had a little sister who worshipped her. When Meg’s body was found, she went off the rails and killed herself. That’s Dean’s fault too, because he was too busy thinking of his family. If he’d done an exorcism sooner, Meg would still be alive, and so would her sister. Dean says she’s right.
Back outside, Sam keeps searching. Contrivance dictates that he notice a car high up with one of its wing mirrors covered in ice. He yells at Bobby to hold on and finds a way up there. He busts open the door, and the creepy little girls promptly fling him onto a nearby car. He shatters the windscreen when he lands. He groans and looks up to see one of the little girls reaching towards his chest. He swipes at her with his iron crowbar, and she vanishes. Up in the car, Bobby somehow finds a piece of iron and swipes at the other little girl. She vanishes too.
Inside, Dean crawls into the room with the open door and collapses on the floor. Ghost!Meg sasses at him when he pulls his gun, reminding him that bullets can’t hurt her. “I’m not shooting you,” he says. He looks up and shoots the iron chandelier, which falls to the floor, banishing Meg. He collapses with a groan.
Back downstairs, they regroup and discuss how all the ghosts are people they failed to save. Dean asks if Meg had a tattoo or a brand on her hand when she was alive, and Sam realises he noticed a similar mark on Henriksen. Sam doodles the mark, and Bobby says he may have seen it before. The lights flicker, and he says they need to move. Sam asks where they’re going, and Bobby replies “Some place safe, you idjit.” BEST.
Bobby grabs some books and leads the way down to the Basement of Don’t Go In There. He opens a heavy iron door and flips a light switch to reveal an iron-clad room full of weapons and supplies and furniture. The boys look around in surprise. Sam touches the walls, and Bobby confirms that it’s iron covered in salt and is therefore totally ghost proof. The boys grin and declare Bobby to be awesome for building a demonic ghost proof panic room on his weekend off. I’m inclined to agree. That’s pretty badass. (M: +1 and A+ for Bobby.)
Bobby changes the subject by saying that he’s found the brand: it’s the Mark of the Witness. Someone forced the ghosts to rise, and they’re hella pissed about it. Sam asks who could have raised them, and Bobby’s all “The fuck if I know”. But it must have been someone powerful, because it left a mark on their souls: the brand. Apparently it’s all part of something called the Rising of the Witnesses, which has been prophesied in an ancient book. Dean asks what the book is, and Bobby says “Revelations,” before adding that it’s a sign of the apocalypse. YAY HAPPY FUN TIMES. Fade to black.
Mari: How many apocalypses have we been through here at the Snark Squad? I feel like a lot. Bring it on.
K: SO MANY.
After the Not Commercial Break, Dean’s all “Skkkkkkkrt, WHAT??” Bobby confirms that the Rising of the Witnesses is one of the signs that the apocalypse is coming. Dean wants to take a roadtrip to see the Grand Canyon. Bobby suggests they get out of the panic room first. He says there’s a spell to put the witnesses to rest again, and that it should work. He has all the ingredients for it in the house. Just, you know, not in the panic room. Also, it has to be done over an open fire. Sam conveniently reminds us that Bobby has a fireplace upstairs. Dean, however, is none too keen on the idea of leaving the panic room.
Cut to them getting ready to head upstairs. Bobby tells them to be careful and cover each other. He opens the door and they cautiously walk towards the stairs. Just as they get there, a guy appears at the top. “Hey Dean. Remember me?” he smiles. It’s Ronald, the dude who was kept rambling about cybermen in the shapeshifter episode of season 2, and who got killed by a police sharpshooter. Dean has a flashback to remind us of this. Ronald yells that it’s Dean’s fault he’s dead. Bobby shoots him and he vanishes. Dean looks shocked, and Bobby says “If you’re gonna shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” in this totally “God, I can’t believe I have to tell you this” voice.
In the library, Sam pours a salt circle around the fireplace while Dean lights the fire. Bobby tells Sam to head upstairs and grab a hex box, and Sam dashes off. The creepy little girls appear outside the salt line and call Bobby’s name. Dean shoots them, and they vanish. Bobby tells Dean to grab some ingredients from the kitchen, including opium. Dean gives him “WTF??” face, but complies. The little girls reappear and taunt Bobby some more as he tries to draw symbols for the spell. He shoots them, and they vanish again.
Upstairs, Sam finds the hex box, then gets confronted by Meg. He shoots her, but he’s too slow, and she reappears behind him. She tells him that he saw what she went through over months, and she thought he’d have learnt something from it, that she would have died for a reason. She tells him that what he’s doing is wrong, and that Ruby’s killing innocent girls just like her. Burning through their bodies. And yet he hasn’t done an exorcism. She calls him a monster, and Sam shoots her.
In the kitchen, Dean finds the supplies just as the doors to the library slam shut. He yells out to Bobby that he’s fine, and that Bobby should keep working. Henriksen grabs Dean’s hand, and Dean says he knows it’s his fault that Henriksen died. He knew the second he heard about the explosion. He reaches for his gun, and Henriksen sends it flying. He tells Dean that Lilith didn’t kill them right away. She played with them for 45 minutes, starting with Nancy. Lilith made them all watch, and she saved Henriksen for last.
Mari: OMGWHY. MOREFEELS. It’s worse than we thought.
K: Always.
Dean looks feelsy, and Henriksen slams a hand into Dean’s chest. We hear his heartbeat speeding up as he chokes. “Tell me how it’s fair. You get saved from Hell — I die. Why do you deserve another chance, Dean?” Henriksen snaps. (M: This is so good for his self worth right now…) Then Sam appears and shoots him, and Henriksen vanishes. Dean gasps and falls to the ground. Sam helps him up and they head back into the library.
Bobby prepares the spell while the boys keep guard. Ronald appears and tells Dean he’s going to eat him alive before vanishing. Bobby starts the spell, and all the windows and doors burst open. The house fills with wind, and the salt line blows away as Bobby struggles to get his papers under control. The wind drops and Bobby keeps chanting. Meg and Henriksen appear, and the boys shoot them. The other ghosts start appearing and the shots come thick and fast, shells bouncing on the floor as Bobby chants and dabs ingredients about the place.
Henriksen appears as Dean’s reloading, and flings Dean’s gun away. He goes for his back up, but it’s empty. Henriksen smirks a little. Dean rushes to the fireplace and grabs a poker. He swings and Henriksen vanishes. Sam goes to reload and Meg pins him to the wall with a desk. Dean goes to help his brother, but Sam tells him to protect Bobby. The creepy little girls stare at Sam with glee.
Bobby finishes chanting and Meg appears behind him, slamming her arm into his back and grabbing his heart. Bobby screams and drops the bowl containing the spell ingredients. Dean catches it, and tosses the contents into the fire. There’s a blast of blue-white light, and the ghosts vanish. The boys rush over and help Bobby up before staring around the empty room. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Sam’s sleeping on the sofa while Dean’s on a sleeping bag on the floor. There’s a feathery sound, and Dean wakes to see Castiel watching him from the kitchen. Dean checks that Sam’s asleep, then slowly walks towards Castiel, who congratulates Dean on defeating the witnesses. Dean bitches that he could have used some help from a guardian angel, and Castiel replies “Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier.” Dean says again that help would have been nice, and Castiel says he had bigger fish to fry.
Dean demands to know where God’s been during all of this, during all the genocide and murder and monster mayhem. Castiel gives a non-answer.
K: Something has to be.
Dean sighs and changes the subject to the apocalypse. Castiel says there are 66 seals, and that the Rising of the Witnesses was one of them. Lilith is the one who broke the seal. And twenty other hunters are dead. Dean says they stopped the witnesses, and Castiel replies that it’s too late. It’s already broken.
Castiel says that the seals are like locks on a door. When they’re all open, Lucifer walks free. Dean’s incredulous, and Castiel points out that he found out angels are real a few days back. That’s why angels are on earth for the first time in 2000 years – to stop Lucifer. Dean sasses about what a great job they did, and Castiel says there are other battles for other seals, and they’ll win some of those instead. Dean eyerolls. Castiel tells him that six angels died this week, so Dean should really look at the bigger picture. Besides, Castiel can always toss him back into Hell if he doesn’t show enough respect.
Dean looks terrified. Castiel vanishes, leaving Dean alone. He wakes with a jolt the next morning, and Sam asks if he’s okay. Dean asks if Sam believes in the Devil as well as in God. “Why are you asking me all this?” Sam asks in confusion. The zoomy cameraman zooms in on Dean as he stares at the ground, then looks up at his brother. Fade to black.
Well. We knew from the season premiere that the show was going to be turning in a new direction, and this is the episode that shows us just how dramatic that new direction is. I love Bobby’s panic room of awesomeness, and I love that Meg and Henriksen and Ronald got to come back and have their final say. And I love that Castiel is all “Uh, hi. Not here to do your bidding. Mind your manners, asshat”. But SO MUCH of this episode felt like Set Up For the Future.
Mari: That’s totally a rewatching thing. Set Up For the Future is only a bad thing when you know the future. I’m pretty stoked about all this set-up because it’s changing so much about the show, you know? Look, this show isn’t the best thing ever. It’s kind of cheesy and plot hole-y, but of everything I’ve seen, this has made me the most intrigued and entertained. These last two episodes, a sudden angel and sure, even an apocalypse.
Plus, we’ve talked so much about the incidental deaths of the background characters and WHAT IS THIS? AN EPISODE THAT KIND OF ADDRESSES THAT? Yep. The boys are faced with ghosts of people they couldn’t save. Only a fraction of them, but enough that it at least felt like a nod to the fact that our heroes aren’t heroes. They are doing their best and messing up and maybe they were plucked out of hell, but they don’t feel worth it. And maybe they have super powers but they are also keeping a demon around and maybe sleeping with it in a stolen body.
These are big themes and big things and hey, maybe the show will screw it up, but in the meantime I’m enjoying watching the set-up.
Next time on Supernatural: TARDIS-less time travel in S04 E03 – In the Beginning.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
