I survived this one. It’s Thanksgiving day as I type this up, and I’m giving thanks for that.

Despite my personal issues with this one, there’s a ton of important stuff for Dean here-- stuff that I believe will haunt him (and in some ways stunt his emotional growth out of the fear that he could become That, or that Cas could, if he’s not careful) for years to come. Plus this one really doubles down on his previous feelings about Zachariah. None of them are positive, lol!

ANYWAY, let’s just be glad I got through it and get to the links!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

An EW interview with Jensen about this episode

Two promo videos, one from the CW and the other from SpaceTV

(also not a link, but a reminder if you have the DVD/bluray, there’s a commentary track with Edlund and Kripke for this episode too!)

We all love this one for the wonderful growing relationship between Dean and Cas, and wail at the horror of everything Sam experiences-- from being force-fed demon blood, the compounding guilt, the fear that he can never get out or his life and destiny can never change, and his first face to face with Lucifer... it’s a big one.

How free are they, really? Is destiny still coming for them? Are they doomed to play out the Grand Narrative being written for them?

(points forcefully at the series finale and screams incoherently)

Links that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

My rewatch notes from June 2019

The CW promo video for this episode

Lizbob’s two posts from the Dean and Cas are in love series (here and here)

Edwin Starr gave us the perfect title for both halves of this episode. :’D

Good God... or at least Cas is hoping God would care about his creation, even if we eventually learn the truth years down the line. The hope and faith Cas has now is destined to be shattered in horrific ways that will power his arc for the rest of the series, though, so I am here for it.

And War, the first Horseman of the apocalypse we meet and definitely the easiest to defeat at least. Even if you can’t actually kill War, you can see it for what it is. It’s definitely an eye-opener for our heroes, yes? Seeing through the cosmic manipulation, even on this relatively low level, will become their biggest tool in defeating The Narrative™.

(too bad it finally crushed them for good in the series finale, but anyWAY >.>)

(yes, sorry, I end up yelling about that quite a bit, as is to be expected)

(I’ve just accepted that every episode of the series will just involve me yelling about why the finale sucked at this point)

that said, have some LINKS!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

Two different promo clips from the CW and SpaceTV

Welcome to Season 5, where every angel suddenly has a sword with zero explanation! That sentence sums up my general feelings about season five in a meta fashion. It’s all very Chuck.

Dean is having a really hard time dealing with the fallout of s4-- the devil’s on the loose, and it’s all because he failed Sam, and because Sam basically renounced him, trusted a demon more than him...

Sam was manipulated all last season into Doing The Thing He Did, so convinced of his own power, his own righteousness, thought he was saving the world instead of damning it... and explained away Dean’s hesitancy at all of it as “weakness.”

Cas is resurrected for the first time and is “cut off from Heaven,” gradually falling closer to humanity, and also slowly realigning his faith in his terrifying new reality.

and a bunch of other stuff! lol... it’s a season premiere, there’s lots of stuff... Becky the Really Unflattering Fan Avatar (who was more “the fan Chuck chose because her understanding of the line between fiction and reality was just as askew as Chuck’s was and that suited his purposes”), Nick the vessel of convenience for Lucifer, the return of Meg, Bobby paralyzed and in the hospital after stabbing himself to save Dean... so much... maybe a little too much...

Here’s some links that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

Rewatch notes from June 2019

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas Are In Love series posts for this episode (part 1) and (part 2)

September 2017, notes on retcons, destiny, and free will

Article from SpoilerTV with a page of the script

A bit on the Angel Blade retcon (post 1) and (post 2)

Spoiler alert: Chuck won. Mostly, anyway. Team Free Will is just finding their spark, and just having their eyes opened to just how badly the story had been manipulating them before. Only none of it happens in time to stop the apocalypse, and Chuck’s story gets to continue chugging along.

I hacked out this post the other day that sort of sums up my feelings on 4.22 vs 15.20, and I think it serves as a nice intro piece to this episode

We all know what happens in this one, and I have lots to say about it all.

Links of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode (17 pages of posts! so many!)

An ask about Cas and doubt and free will

My rewatch notes from June 2019

Zachariah, Ruby, and Sam’s tampered voicemail

Chuck’s moment of perfection, only slightly marred by Cas’s rebellion

The CW promo video for this episode

The penultimate episode of any season ramps up the drama, but hooboy, this one is made of angst! We’re closing in on the end of Chuck’s One Perfect Season, where everything worked perfectly for his story from start to finish. At least he’s never really gonna meet with this much success ever again (because 15.20 doesn’t count lol).

Sam’s in demon detox, Cas is doing Heaven’s errands, and Dean is breaking his own heart. But Sam? He gets some twisted A Christmas Carol experience, Dean wrestles with his complete inability to save Sam from going darkside that he’s been terrified of since 2.01, and Cas is Causing Problems on behalf of Heaven’s agenda.

A few links to stuff that may be of interest:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

A post from January 2020 about Chuck’s narrative and s4 being the closest he ever got to success (before 15.20, which is another story)

Rewatch notes from June 2019 (also linked in the above post)

The CW Promo video for this episode

Poor Jimmy Novak. And poor Sam. And poor Dean. And poor Amelia and Claire. And honestly, poor Cas. Poor dude just got heaven-tortured into a mental reboot. All those "doorways to doubt" have been slammed shut, and his compassion for humanity has been erased. (don't worry, he'll get that back eventually)

As for Sam, his whole bleak secret gets exposed in the worst way possible (driven into withdrawal by Ruby deliberately ignoring his pleas for a refill, and then pushed into a situation where he had a whole demon *right there* to drain, and innocents' lives on the line to save). And then he gets shoved into detox.

And Dean has to witness it all. He's been worried for Sam all year and the tower of lies has collapsed, just when he's also lost the helpful Heavenly ally he'd just been winning over to his side. He hasn't even got anyone to turn to for help with Sam now. Well, he's got Bobby, but Bobby is also flying by the seat of his pants and has no concrete idea how to help Sam.

Amelia and Claire have had their lives upended all around, too. They'll never be able to unsee what they've seen, they've lost Jimmy forever, and even the stability they'd gained after Jimmy left the first time is shattered. Amelia will become desperate to get her husband back at all cost, and Claire will become embittered toward the angel that possessed her for a hot minute, stole her father, and then abandoned them (and especially leaving her abandoned when her mother disappears).

Marching toward the season finale, everyone's about to go up in flames.

Links for this week!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

I lied, have some rewatch notes from June 2019

Destiel in two screenshots

The McShane Network Outline of the entire episode (9 pages)

CW promo video

SpaceTV promo video (better than the cw one)

Extended CW promo (last 40 seconds of the cold open)

Golly, I spend this whole podcast talking about the pointlessness of revenge, but that’s rather conditional. And specifically in this case, in s4 overall, and every other revenge arc that comes to failure in this entire series, that condition is ACTUALLY KNOWING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SITUATION!

Blind revenge is always doomed to fail. These ghouls enacted this massive plot for revenge against John Winchester, not even knowing he’d died more than two years before. This was entirely a situation of their own making. They could’ve gone on the rest of their lives just doing their ghoul thing and never come to the attention of hunters, let alone Sam and Dean. But nope, they set out on this mission without having all the facts, and paid the price for it.

Just like Sam and Dean in all of s4. Sam’s on this revenge mission against Lilith, is absolutely convinced he’s doing the right thing, and only with our benefit of hindsight know just how incomplete their data set is going into it. They’re literally spending the entire season working on the wrong problem, by design! And they end up manipulated into exactly the situation they’d spent the season trying to avoid. If only they’d had all the facts up front...

So yeah, revenge, ghouls, the Winchester Brother who was never intended to join the narrative in any larger way, to have died before his first appearance on screen. And round and round we go with the emotional manipulation! Right into the apocalypse.

Bonus materials for this episode:

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

A brief interview with Dabb about this episode from the official s4 companion book

An interview with Jake Abel from the official Supernatural magazine

Rewatch notes from June 2019

The CW 20 second Promo video for this episode

If you need to see it, here’s Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli jumping the shark. They REALLY dragged this out :’D 

Welcome to Chuck’s story. Was Chuck written deliberately to eventually grow into the Overarching Big Bad of the entire series? I really doubt it. Does it work perfectly anyway? Yes, yes it does.

And because of that, rewatching this episode with the clarity of hindsight becomes a transformative experience. Oh Chuck, I see what you did there... you cruel, capricious god

(who really should’ve been properly overcome within the narrative, but it was always His Story, and the show we watched on our screens was His Narrative... and understanding that makes it weirdly easier to cope with the lack of a decent ending in some ways, so I’ll probably never stop talking about it...)

All that said, there are copious volumes of bonus material this week for anyone interested in Chuck’s Process (which he even says directly in THIS episode, it’s not just a s15 concept, he’s really that deep in his role as the Author). Let’s start with the easy stuff first, though:

The Superwiki Page for this episode

My tag for this episode

But especially these posts:

The regular 20 second CW promo video

The special extended promo video that’s essentially a book promo for the Supernatural novel series. Fun and meta!

And if you’re feeling intrepid, please enjoy exploring these tags: Chuck’s Process, Free Will in the narrative, and my standard Chuck tag... “if you say mysterious ways so help me i will kick your ass”

There’s probably more I could add to that list, but that’s well more than enough for a good start :’D

Gosh I love this episode. It throws the viewer off balance wondering what the heck is actually going on, right up to the end when Zachariah boops Dean and all the rest of us back to “reality” and washes the bright colors away again. The real hunt/case of this episode isn’t the ghost Sam and Dean learn to deal with, it’s whatever the heck Zachariah’s actually up to with the entire charade. And what that boils down to is the concentrated essence of manipulation by cosmic forces that is s4. And all that ONE EPISODE BEFORE we meet Chuck for the first time... but we’ll save that rant for next week.

There’s some pretty detailed meta on this week’s episode, though, and I’ll again encourage everyone to at least give a skim to those links... all the links of interest can be found right here:

The Superwiki page for the episode

My tag for the episode,  it’s only four pages and about half gifsets, but all the meta posts are worth it

The blue revisions script with a special extra: the director’s hand written notes

The full Ghostfacers instructional video on youtube

The CW promo video for the episode

An interview with AJ Buckley (aka Ed Zeddmore) from around the time this episode aired