Warning: Spoiler Alert
After a season opening episode, that failed to progress the plot, The CW veteran series “Supernatural,” traveled at warp-speed over the past two episodes, culminating in many changes in the third episode. Lets quickly jump to the highlights, starting with Dean Winchester’s return to humanity, after his brother Sam injected him with syringes after syringes, filled with sanctified human blood. Castiel went from knocking hard on death’s door, to almost good as new temporarily, via some stolen-grace, given to him by his “Frenemy” Roderick Crowley “The King Of Hell.” Anytime Crowley aids “THE BOYS,” or Castiel, there’s always something in it that benefits him and this time was no different.
Full Disclosure: Although very pleased with the turn of events in the latest episode, it surprised me that Demon Dean, only lasted three episodes, however the show-runners wrapped up this story-arc, far faster than Sam being possessed by the Angel Gadreel, last season, or when Sam got stripped of his soul after returning from Hell, as he helped avert the apocalypse. Perhaps the show-runners shared my opinion, that Demon Dean wasn’t an interesting enough character, to keep “The BOYS,” apart. In the end, the story-arc was just a plot-device to bring him back from the dead, after getting stabbed to death by Metatron, in last season’s finale. Dean’s troubles haven’t all disappeared, but we’ll get back to that later.
The episode begins with a Priest blessing someone or something, as the camera pans we realize it’s packets of blood from the hospital, that the cleric and Sam are standing in. Sam’s dressed as a doctor and when the Priest departs, he puts all the blood, in a duffel bag and heads to “The Men Of Letters,” headquarters, where Dean’s handcuffed to a chair. Sam trapped his brother in the closing moments of the previous, episode and his goal’s to make Dean human again, by pumping enough human blood in him to vanquish the demon within him. The fly in the Vaseline’s, that Dean likes his new mindset and tells his brother if he’s disease ridden, he doesn’t want to be cured. He tells Sam that he’ll move to the other side of the world and will never hear from him again, but the younger brother wants the real Dean back. The older Winchester, reminds Sam that he hates needles and his brother responds he hates demons before injecting him with the first syringe.
We join Castiel and Hannah, driving to help Sam cure Dean, but Hannah’s got them lost, due to her inability to read a map. They step outside the car and Castiel looks terrible, with dark circles under both eyes. Hannah tells him he needs to live, to accomplish the things he wants and they have options, but Cas tells her he won’t slit another Angels throat to steal their grace, or bargain with Metatron.
It’s not a great day in Hell either, but then again that’s why they call it Hell. Crowley, ensconced in his throne, gets approached by one of his toadies, that wants to replace Dean as Crowley’s wingman. He loves to party, loves the ladies and the classic rock and roll, he then says “The King Of Hell,” just needs to see what’s inside him. Crowley sneering, says he already does and turns the middle-management demon into smoke. He then sentences an Abaddon supporter to death, and up next a man, that did something disloyal, but Crowley doesn’t know what.
He’s about to sentence this man to death, when one of his inner-circle screams that this is all wrong. His minions supported him, even when he became a human-blood junkie, they supported him though his “Bromance,” with Dean and for all their support they acquired a King, just going through the motions. He then pulls out a metal cylinder and there’s an audible gasp from all in the room, save Crowley. “The King Of Hell,” looking cool, calm and collected asked what’s the underling’s next step and the demon screams, “this,” then pours some flammable liquid over himself, head to toe, sets himself on fire and dies. Roderick, quietly says to himself he didn’t see that coming.
Dean’s gotten injected with countless syringes and still tells Sam, he wants to remain the way he is, rather than the guilt-ridden, approval-seeking man he was. Then he starts ripping on their dad, then verbally lacerates his brother. He tells him he’s spent too long, being Sam’s babysitter, too much time covering Sam’s mistakes, then tells him he hates him, because Sam got their mother murdered by “Yellow-Eyes.” The younger brother responds that whatever, Dean says, the words mean nothing to him, as the man speaking to him is a demon.
Hannah and Castiel pull up to a gas station and for some reason Hannah heads into the convenience store (She’s an Angel, they don’t eat, or drink or need to relieve themselves.) She realizes no one’s in the store, shouts hello, notices some spilled coffee on the sale counter, then peers behind the counter and sees a corpse with its eye’s burnt out of the sockets, meaning an Angel’s present. She suddenly sees Adina, the Angel she and Castiel fought against in the season premiere, whose partner Daniel got killed by Cas, to protect Hannah.
The two women pull out their blades and start blaming each other for deaths, Hannah blames Adina for the death of the messenger Angel and Adina blames Hannah and Castiel for the death of Daniel. Cas walks in looking sicker than before, then notices Adina and tells her to kill him but spare Hannah, she responds she’s going to kill him slowly, so Hannah can watch him suffer.
Sam returns to the room Dean’s in and finds him comatose, when he wakes him and asks how he’s doing, he replies that if your blood’s boiling and drowning in your own sweat’s okay, then he’s fine. He again tells Sam he wants to remain a demon, then recounts a story about Sam, that at the least, questions Sam’s motives, and ties up two dangling plotlines from the first two episodes. In a flashback, Sam encounters Lester, the husband who sold his soul to get his cheating wife killed from the previous episode and we find out Sam introduced the idea to Lester of killing his wife. He takes him to the crossroads, gives him the words to summon the crossroad demon, who quickly appears and Lester sets up the deal and she kisses him to consummate it.
As he walks away, Sam captures her from behind and we realize she’s the demon Sam tortured in the premiere, who didn’t know where Crowley’s hiding. She then berates him for using Lester to conjure her up, he exploited his anger, arranged a murder and aided Lester in damning his soul for eternity. Dean then tells his brother, he killed Mindy and Lester and asks his brother, which one of us is the real monster?
Crowley arrives at the convenience store (he’s kept tabs on Castiel’s movements) sees the Angel, almost beaten into the asphalt and exclaims “talk about road-kill.” We head into the store and we see Adina torturing an unarmed Hannah and they’re still arguing about the deaths. She slices Hannah’s throat and we hear Crowley’s voice saying that will be enough of that. Adina turns around and “The King Of Hell,” produces an instrument that robs her of her grace and puts it into a medicine bottle, then stabs the Angel to death. Crowley and Hannah run out to Cas and Crowley starts to give him the stolen grace, but Castiel resists. Roderick tells him his hands are clean and though it pains him to say it, the Angel’s more important to Crowley than allowing him to die. Cas accepts the grace and immediately gets healed from head to toe.
Crowley then tells the pair that Dean in demon form’s nothing but problems for him so he wants the pair to do whatever it takes to end his demon days. Cas tells him that could involve killing Dean and Crowley responds he’s not sentimental.
Sam re-enters the room his brothers locked-down in to find his worst nightmare’s materialized as Dean’s escaped. We find Dean choosing a weapon to kill his brother with, first grabbing a large meat cleaver, before settling on a hammer. He then shouts to Sam that the blood made him human enough to escape the demon-cuffs, but he’s still enough of a demon to kill him. An extended game of hide and seek takes place, with Dean finally getting locked into a room by Sam, he uses the hammer to knock down the door. Just as he reaches Sam, Castiel arrives, grabs in a bear hug from behind and tells Dean it’s over, his eyes blazing blue. Sam puts the cuffs back on him and they put him back on the chair. Sam gives Dean another injection, and Dean’s eyes turn demonic black, then return to normal and his body relaxes. He looks at Cas and Sam and says they look awfully concerned. Sam throws Holy Water on his brother without a reaction, proving Dean’s human again.
Sam comes down after putting Dean back in his bedroom and he’s going to get all the cheeseburgers and pie he can find, as Dean’s regained his appetite. Castiel states they scored a huge victory, turning Dean human again, but they still have to deal with The Mark Of Cain. Sam replies they’re not discussing that tonight, he’s getting Dean junk food while Sam plans to get drunk.
Castiel walks into Dean’s room and Winchester thanks him for his help in bringing the real him back, then asks if Sam’s wanting to get as far away from Dean as possible. Castiel assures him that Sam’s well aware that Demon Dean tried to kill him and Demon Dean’s gone. He then tells him to take some R&R time, everything’s calm currently in Heaven and Hell.
The final scene features a woman reading on a couch somewhere, when something drips on her from above. The camera pans out and we see two men on the ceiling, their bodies violated by stakes, that hold them in place.
The Story Continues Next Tuesday at 9:00 pm on The CW.
