- The Winchesters and Bobby Singer encounter the angry spirits of people they couldn't save.
- While Dean, Sam and Bobby worry about 20 hunters killed or missing in the area, they themselves are each attacked by angry spirits who blame them for getting killed during demon-eliminations. Dean notices they carry a brand, actually the 'witness mark', a sign that the Apocalpse may be on hand. Bobby convinces the brothers they must all leave his ghost-proof safe-room to perform a spell which returns the spirits to their graves. After that works, Castiel appears again, assuring Dean there is a God, and warning the celestial army has greater concerns then a few demon hunters. In fact the witnesses are only one of 66 'seals' required to release Satan, as Lillith is attempting, and this battle is lost, despite the trio's survival.—KGF Vissers
- Previously on Supernatural: Dean was dead and in Hell, but something pulled him out -- and lo, it was an angel of the Lord, and a smokin' Hottie McHotterson at that. Granted, his name isn't actually Mr. McHotterson, it's Castiel. In other news, Sam douched up the Dean's muscle car with a iPod and sensitive guitar rock, and Ruby the Demon is back in a brunette's bod. Only Dean doesn't know that Ruby's has returned, or that Sam is working with her -- or that he's been using his psychic powers.
THEN!
We see clips of all the people Sam and Dean couldn't save, including Meg Masters, FBI Agent Victor Henriksen, and Ronald Reznick, all of whom ended up deader than Dean -- James Dean, we should say -- after crossing paths with the Winchester boys and the demons they hunt.
NOW!
A woman sleeps on the couch with the TV on in the background, and a book open on her chest. Without warning the TV starts flickering ominously, losing its picture for a few seconds and hissing with static. And as we know, whenever the television reception goes out, something demonic is afoot. The woman wakes up suddenly, looks around nervously and begins to breathe heavily...and her exhalations turn steamy. She quickly gets off the couch and heads over to her closet, pulling back the clothes to reveal a secret compartment in the wall stocked with enough guns and ammo to make Ted Nugent salute -- she's a hunter! The phone rings as she does this and she lets her voicemail pick it up, conveniently revealing that her name is Olivia.
Olivia pulls out an EMF meter and switches it on as Bobby leaves a message for her on the machine. It lights up red, signaling serious paranormal activity in the house. As she loads a shotgun, Bobby leaves a message that something serious is going down and he needs her help. (If Bobby's asking for her help, she must a badass.) Olivia strolls around her house in her underwear toting her gun, and rounds the corner to see a man in filthy clothes standing there with a haunted look in his red-rimmed eyes.
"You," she gasps. Olivia plugs him with a salt round, making him disappear into a wisp of smoke. Quickly she grabs a sack of salt and pours a line across her bedroom's threshold. The man is back. Looking genuinely frightened, she steps back with the gun trained on him. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry."
She turns around -- and finds herself nose to nose with another filthy spirit with red-rimmed eyes, a woman this time. Before she can react we see the spirit reach out and, from the tortured expression on her face and accompanying squishing noise, into Olivia's torso. Olivia screams bloody murder. Literally.
Credits!
Elsewhere, Bobby's busily reading old tomes while Dean and Sam argue about what Castiel really is. Sam doesn't understand why it's so difficult for Dean to believe that he was rescued by an angel and that God needs him for anything, let alone exists. Dean insists he was not "groped by an angel," that Castiel must be a demon. Demons lie, he says.
Sam points out that Castiel was immune to salt rounds, devil's traps and Ruby's knife. "Dean, even Lilith is scared of that thing!" Sam says. Dean asks if angels are real, then why hasn't some hunter at some point somewhere seen one before? Sam replies that Dean has, so there. Dean asks for a theory with a little less fairy dust sprinkled on it.
"I'm not going to believe this thing is an angel of the Lord because it says so!" Dean says.
Bobby tells them to stop arguing and calls them over. Having consulted a variety of ancient texts, even a few in cuneiform, he has found that indeed, an angel can snatch a soul out of the pit. "What else?" Dean asks.
"What else?...Well, nothing!" Bobby answers. And that settles it. But not really.
Sam thinks this is good news. He was saved by one of the good guys! Dean then posits that if there are angels, does that mean there's a God? Sam says yes. This is becoming less about faith, Sam says, and more about proof. Dean refuses to believe there is a God, much less one that gives a crap about him.
"Why not?" Sam asks.
"Because, why me?" Dean says frantically. "If there is a God up there, why would he give a crap about me?...Why would I deserve to get saved? I'm just a regular guy!"
Sam replies that he's a regular guy who's important to the guy upstairs. We can hear the evangelical base getting energized as they speak.
"Well, that creeps me out! I don't like getting singled out at birthday parties, much less by God!" Well, too bad Dean, Sam says, because the Big Guy clearly wants him to kick ass in his name. He says he doesn't know a thing about angels, so Bobby tells him to start reading and hands him a book. Dean angrily swipes it and sends Sam out for pie.
Sam heads to a mini-mart, with Dean still yelling at him on the phone so he won't forget the pie, thereby ensuring he'll forget the pie. As he gets out of the car, he sees Ruby waiting for him. She asks if it's true -- did an angel rescue Dean?
"You heard?" Sam asks, and she replies, "Rumor has it."
Sam admits that yes, they believe it was an angel. Ruby nods and basically says "smell ya later!" as she quickly turns to beat cheeks outta there. Sam stops her from running and asks what the problem is. What, does he need a puppet show? Guess so. Ruby points out that no angel is going to be happy to see her considering that she is, hello, a demon.
Angels will not care that she has been assisting the good guys. "They smite first, and then they ask questions later." She says she's never seen one, but they scare the holy hell out of her. She tells Sam to watch his back.
Sam heads back to find Dean and Bobby waiting outside and ready to go. Bobby's worried that he's tried Olivia a number of times and she hasn't answered, so they're going up to check on her. Sam slides over so Dean can drive, handing him the convenience store bag. Dean rifles through the snacks and after a moment says, "Dude...where's the pie?"
See?
We skip the shots of them arguing on the road and the presumed swing through a Mickey D's drive through to obtain a hot pocket of apple delicious, and rejoin the hunters as they walk into Olivia's house, weapons drawn. They call out for Olivia, and as Bobby steps into the living room, he sees her -- and immediately dashes out of the place, either wracked with sorrow or overcome by nausea. Take your pick, because there is a massive crater where Olivia's midsection used to be, and a lot of blood. Dean finds Olivia's EMF meter, and they deduce there was spiritual activity in there, but those ghosts must have been on steroids. Bobby returns, neither bawling nor dry heaving. He was calling other hunters in the area, and none of them were picking up either. Something is terribly wrong.
Cut to another house, another answering machine (this time with Dean talking into it) and another hunter dead on the floor, his torso turned into a sausage-making demonstration.
Dean and Sam find him later, and a phone conversation with Bobby tells us the fates of two more hunters. "They've redecorated -- in red." Bobby tells them that until they find out what's going on, the boys should get to his place. They agree.
Sam and Bobby stop for gas, and Sam heads off to use the restroom as something watches him from a distance. As Sam is washing his hands, he sees his breath and watches the mirror frost over. Wiping the mirror, he notices a figure behind him -- it's Agent Henricksen! A quick montage reminds us that the last time we saw the good Agent was in a police station (in Jus in Bello (2008)) that Lilith blew up, killing everyone inside. Sam asks how he survived, and Henricksen lets on that he didn't.
"I'm sorry," Sam says, and Agent Henricksen says yes, he is. Because of the Winchesters, he continues, half a dozen innocent people died that night.
"You did this to me," Henricksen said. "It was your fault. She was after you, and I paid the price. You left us there to die!"
He picks up Sam and throws him against the wall, then hits him a few times. Just as the situation teeters on the verge of getting nasty, we hear a shotgun blast, and the Agent disappears as Dean steps in, gun smoking.
Strange stuff is going on at Bobby's house, too. He keeps hearing noises and tiptoes around, doing the standard horror movie cat-and-mouse seek and evade. He looks downstairs at one point, and sees nothing. Turning around, he's met by a pair of twin girls in dirty white dresses. Classic! Nothing's creepier than angry dead twins.
The Winchester boys call Bobby and, of course, get no answer. They race to the elder hunter's home and find it seemingly empty. Dean heads inside, and Bobby goes out back to the salvage yard, where crushed autos are stacked one on top of another. Bobby is hidden inside one of them, a dead girl's hand covering his mouth so he won't cry out.
Dean walks through the halls of Bobby's place, shotgun cocked, and yells, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
A ghostly woman complies. "Dean Winchester! Still so bossy." She has shoulder length blonde hair and would resemble a nice co-ed, if not for the dirt all over her blouse.
"What, you don't recognize me?" But in a montage of flashbacks, we get a reminder -- it's Meg, fashionably edgy demon girl. But the real Meg obviously did not think a tailored red leather motorcycle jacket and platinum blonde pixie cut was her style. "This is what I looked like before that demon cut off my hair and dressed me like a slut."
It finally clicks in for Dean. "Meg?"
She smiles cheerily. "It's OK. I'm not a demon."
"You're the girl the demon possessed," says Dean.
"It's nice to talk to you when I'm not, you know, choking on my own blood," Meg says, going on to tell the story of her so-called life in Hell: She was just a nice college girl who was jumped by some smoke on her way home. Next thing she knows, she wasn't in control of her body. She says she had to watch while Demon Meg murdered a bunch of people, screaming out for help all the while. And when help came in the form of Dean and Sam, they allowed her to be thrown out of the window to fall seven storeys to the street. She tearfully asks Dean why he didn't help her.
"I'm sorry," he says, and she yells, "Stop saying you're sorry!" She clocks him across the jaw.
"We didn't know!" Dean says. "No," Meg replies. "You just attacked. Did you ever think there was a girl in here?" She continues her speech -- do you have any idea of what it's like to be ridden for months by pure evil? she asks -- and as she grabs his shirt-collar, he notices a mark on her hand. "We did the best we could," Dean rasps, and Meg starts kicking him in the gut.
In the auto graveyard, the little girls are talking to Bobby in flat voices, recounting how he failed to save them. "You were right there, Bobby. You were in the house. You were so close!" Nearby Sam is looking in cars and calling Bobby's name. The girls tell Bobby that he was right outside their door when the monster had them, and just like he couldn't find them, Sam wouldn't find him. While one of the girls keeps her hand over Bobby's mouth, the other pinches his nose shut. Ah, little girl ghosts. In comparison to the disemboweling habits of the adult spirits, being smothered by plump little hands looks like a dainty way for a grown man to snuff it.
Going back to Dean and Meg, Meg is telling Dean that she had a sister who was never the same after she died. The sister killed herself after Meg's body was found. Meg tells him that if he had only had some consideration, her sister would still be alive. "That blood is on your hands, Dean!" she screams.
"You're right," Dean says, and Meg continues the boot party.
Sam is still looking around the cars and, catching a glimpse of the girls in a side view mirror, rushes over to free Bobby. He finds a crowbar and pries open the door. The girls turn on Sam, throwing him back against another car's windshield, shattering it. One leaps on top of him, and he dispels her by swinging the crowbar. The remaining sister leans toward him with a maniacal look in her eye, and dissolves into smoke and embers as Bobby comes through her from behind with another piece of metal.
Inside the house, Dean is still getting pummeled by Meg and crawls down a hallway. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a pistol, aiming it at Meg.
She smiles. "Did you brain get french fried in Hell? You can't shoot me with bullets."
"I'm not shooting you." Dean aims the gun at the light fixture above her and fires, bringing it down and turning Meg into smoke. "Iron," he croaks with relief.
The guys regroup and realize - again, duh - the ghosts are all people they knew! And they weren't just familiar, they were people they couldn't save. Dean also relays the information about the mark on Meg's hand, saying it looked like a brand. Sam says he saw something on Henricksen, too. Bobby has Sam draw it, and confirms with Sam that it's the same mark.
"I may have seen this before," says Bobby - just as the radio cuts on, unassisted. Bobby tells them they need to move to someplace safe. They grab a few books and head into his basement. Once down there, Bobby opens a metal door, reveals a compartment with a devil's trap on the floor, and one shining down through the ventilation system above. There's a spartan bed, a library, weapons, food. Sam touches the wall. "Bobby...is this --"
"Solid iron. Completely coated in salt. One hundred percent ghost proof."
"You built a panic room?" Sam asks, awestruck.
Bobby shrugs. "I had a weekend off."
Dean gasps, "Bobby...You're awesome." You bet your sweet buttcakes he is!
While chilling in the panic room, Dean launches into another speech about why he doesn't believe in God. This verse is the standard one concerning why God, if he exists, would let bad things happen to good people. If he's so great, why not intervene? You know, the atheist's prayer.
Bobby cuts his rant short by reporting he's found out the symbol -- it's the Mark of the Witness. Witness to what? The unnatural.
Allow him to explain: None of the spirits haunting them died what would be considered ordinary deaths. And, none of them wanted to rise. They were forced to, and now that they're up and about, they might as well be rabid dogs.
That's nice and all, but who made them rise? Bobby shrugs, but adds that whoever did this had big plans -- it's called the Rising of the Witnesses. It figures into an ancient prophecy. What prophecy is that, you say? Well, Bobby says, most people know it by the widely circulated tourist's version.
It's called Revelations.
Yep, the dead are walking the Earth. It's a sign. "A sign of what?" Dean and Sam ask in chorus. Bobby replies, "The Apocalypse."
"The Apocalypse?" Dean asks incredulously. "As in, Apocalypse-Apocalypse? The Four Horsemen, pestilence, five-dollar-gallon-of-gas Apocalypse?"
"That's the one," Bobby deadpans.
Sam asks what to do, and Dean suggests a road trip. The Star Trek Experience -- the Bunny Ranch! Nice to know he has his priorities straight.
Bobby doesn't disagree, but suggests they put the spirits back to bed with a spell first. He believes he has all the supplies in the house. Just not in the room. As if their luck would start now, Bobby quips. The spell has to be completed over an open flame -- the fireplace in the library. In the open, where the ghosts are.
The guys cowboy up.
Shotguns loaded and books in arms, Bobby advises them to cover each other and not to run out of ammo until he's done. They open the door and head out. It seems quiet. They step gingerly through the creepy basement, and it seems like smooth sailing until they get to the stairs, where Ronald Meznick (from Nightshifter (2007)) is waiting for them. Ronald blames the boys for his death, of course, and Dean blasts him. They head to the library, light a fire, pour a salt circle and get down to business. Bobby sends Sam upstairs to the linen closet to fetch a box (where he can face his own ghost). The two creepy girls appear, and Dean blasts them. Bobby then sends Dean to the kitchen cutlery drawer, where he'll find hemlock, opium, wormwood...seriously, opium?
Shoot now, smoke later, Dean! He heads off, and the Sisters Grim return, blaming Bobby for allowing a monster to eat them. Bobby keeps on preparing the spell.
Upstairs, Sam finds the box he was looking for, and Meg appears. "You know what really pisses me off, Sam?" Sam blasts her, and she reappears behind him. "All those months you spent with me, I thought you learned something." She's referring to Sam's secret deal with Ruby. Uh oh. She asks Sam how many bodies Ruby has burned through, how many innocent girls has she wasted, girls just like her -- and he doesn't send Ruby back to hell with his psychic hoodoo? Yeah, double standards are a bitch. Sam is clearly affected.
"You're a monster!" she yells. Sam raises his gun and shoots her in face.
Bobby hears the blast and calls out to Dean; he tells Bobby he's OK and to keep working. The moment Dean finds the supplies Henricksen appears. Dean tells Henricksen he's sorry, that the explosion was his fault and he should have protected him, all while surreptitiously trying to reach for a piece of iron on the stove. Henricksen sends it flying out of reach with telekinesis.
"Not so fast," Henricksen says. "You think you left and Lilith came and we all died in a beautiful blast of white light? If only. Forty. Five. Minutes. Lilith said she wanted to have some fun." Henricksen breaks it down: You remember the virgin secretary, right? Lilith flayed her skin off piece by piece and made them all watch. Ow. Owowowowowow. Henricksen was last.
Then the Agent's spirit reaches inside of Dean, squeezing his heart. Dean seizes up, and his face goes red. "Tell me, how it's fair that you get saved from Hell and I die? Why do you deserve another chance, Dean?" Sam steps in just in time and blasts Henricksen with salt. "Are you OK?" Sam asks. Dean: "No!" They head to Bobby.
Handing the last of the supplies to the older hunter, Dean turns around to reload and sees Ronald, who informs him he's going to eat him alive. Dean laughs. "Well, glad I'm not a cheeseburger." He goes to shoot Ronald, and he's disappeared. Bobby begins the ritual and the window flies open. All the ghosts appear, and the boys start blasting away in a scene reminiscent of "House of the Dead" -- the video game, not the cinematic abomination. Dean runs out of ammo and starts swinging a fire poker. One of the spirits pins Sam behind a dresser. Meg appears behind Bobby and reaches into his torso, causing him to convulse in pain and drop the crucial bowl of herbal magic, but Dean catches it in time. Bobby yells at him to throw it in the fireplace and Dean complies, turning the flames blue and blasting the souls out of the room. All better now!
Having dismissed the ghosts, we see the boys passed in the living room, Sam on a couch, Dean on the floor. In the middle of the night, Dean is suddenly awakened by the sound of flapping wings. He turns to look in the kitchen, and there's Castiel.
The angel congratulates him on handling the Witnesses. Dean is appalled that he knew about the situation and didn't make with the "angelic assistance."
"You know, I almost got my heart ripped out of my chest!"
"But you didn't," Castiel responds smoothly.
"I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos, you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks."
"Read the Bible," Castiel says. Angels are warriors of God, he continues, telling Dean he's not there to perch on his shoulder, that he has larger concerns. Dean retorts that his people are getting ripped to shreds -- and by the way, while all of this is going on, what in the heck is the Big Man doing? If he even exists.
Castiel begins to look angry. "There is a God," he says. Dean shoots back with, "Well, I'm not convinced. If there's a God, what in the hell is he waiting for?...At what point does he lift a finger and help the poor bastards stuck down here?"
Castiel starts to say, "The Lord works --"
Dean cuts him off. "If you say 'in mysterious ways,' so help me I will kick your ass!"
They both calm down, and Dean asks what the Rising of the Witnesses means. Castiel explains that the rising is one of the 66 seals, and those seals are being broken by Lilith. That's why the angels are here. She rose the witnesses to kill hunters elsewhere -- 20 others, in fact.
Why? To what end? Well, to the end we guess. Castiel tells Dean to think of the seals as locks on a door. And what's behind that door? Could it be....
...yes, Church Lady, it's Satan. Once the door's open, Lucifer walks the Earth. Dean now refuses to believe in Lucifer, saying he thought Lucifer was a legend they told kids in demonic Sunday school.
"Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me," Castiel says with a faint smile. "Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in 2000 years?"
"To stop Lucifer?" Dean whispers.
"It's why we've arrived."
Dean taunts him bitterly, telling him he's did a great job keeping the witnesses from rising. Castiel admits that they're fighting battles on many fronts, and some they lose. This was one of them. He explains that Heaven's army is not infinite. "Six of my brothers died in the field this week," he tells Dean (making us pause to wonder -- seriously, angels die? Really? They don't regenerate on a cloud somewhere? How odd.) and goes on to inform him that it's not his job to follow Dean around.
"There's a bigger picture here," Castiel says. He leans in and says in a gentle, but slightly menacing voice, "You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in."
With that, he disappears...and Dean wakes up. Sam awakens too, and asks Dean what's wrong.
"So...you got not problem believing in God and angels?" Dean says.
"No, not really," Sam answers.
"So, I guess that means you believe in the Devil."
Sam says, "Why are you asking me all of this?"
Dean prepares to give his brother the worst wake-up call in the history of life.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content