Supernatural and Why We Love It: Seasons 3-4

The Winchesters are growing up. They’ve become… wiser. Learned some new tricks. Saved a few lives. Oh, and accidentally let hundreds of demons out of hell. And realized how very, very little they actually know.

Eric Kripke, creator and showrunner for Seasons 1-5, had horrified and laughed the Winchester boys into the hearts of viewers across the world. Because that’s what they were: boys. In just two seasons, fans had met, learned about, cried with, and laughed at these mostly everyday guys. Now, in Seasons 3 and 4, they’re full-fledged teenagers teetering on the brink of adulthood, and it hurts. Season 2 ended with the death of the Yellow Eyed Demon, wrapping up two years of sleuthing and revenge; the sale of Dean’s soul for the price of Sam’s life, an escaped army of demons, and an audience swearing it had better find out what happened next.

Supernatural did not disappoint.

The mystery surrounding Sam’s specialness remained. How would they deal with Dean getting exactly one year? What would coming back from the dead entail for Sam. We wondered how the two would wiggle out of this predicament.  So, we settled in to watch the next round of the Winchester’s increasingly desperate misadventures. And as fan[atics]s are wont to do, wikis had already sprung up (yes, that’s five beautifully different fan sites)(out of thousands) across the internet. What was canon?  What did Dean say this time? What music was Kripke adding to the soundtrack? What easter eggs were in last night’s episode? Was that monster of the week based on anything real? (Note: Rule of thumb on any monster or creature in Supernatural: it had better be Google-able, at minimum.)

Seasons 3 and 4 of Supernatural were 38  episodes of growing pains. Following the introduction of the whole mythos of hunters versus evil in Seasons 1 and 2, viewers were dumped right back into the Winchester world one week after the devil’s gate. Things weren’t pretty. But life continued, monsters and all, even while hunting down loosed demons. Dean’s solid proof of this is hilariously illustrated by his twin tango in Season 3’s opener, “The Magnificent Seven.”  Just like that, we’re back in the Impala, crying and laughing with and at the Winchesters, shielding our eyes and hearts when things get a bit too rough.

It’s fact that Kripke originally planned on a 3-season storyline which thankfully was expanded into five.  This show couldn’t have ended at Season 3 with the writers strike and the sheer amount of content that still needed telling. Jamming Season 4 (and the upcoming Season 5) into the end of Season 3 would have been catastrophic, and would’ve infuriated a legion of fandom.

When Season 3 began in October 2007, it was a homecoming. Though there are many mini-arcs within each season’s main arc, let alone the five-year arc. There’s a climax approaching. We just won’t be privy to it until Season 5. But Seasons 3 and 4, they fill in a lot of desperately needed blank spots. As usual, even more problems are thrown at the Winchesters.

As Sam did every last thing he could to get Dean’s soul back, he’s shocked – we all are – to find that the demon wiki that hunters have is a bit, well, short on the factual data. In two seasons, the Supernatural world mythology doubled in size. Demons? Sure! Ghosts? Old hat. Vampires? Last one the brothers encountered was Gordon, who Sam dispatched handily. Pagan Gods? The Trickster and some old-time Christmas fellas were no big deal. Crocotta? Smacked down. Babylonian coin? Eh, we’ve got the power of internet research on our side. But Lilith? The Seven Deadly Sins? There’s a real Lucifer? This is all new.

The new demon FAQs are woven nearly seamlessly into the new story arc, brought about as Dean races toward his prom date with the hounds.  However, if we thought the demon wiki was shorted, try finding the angel wiki. Season 2’s “Houses of the Holy” was a discreet nod to this. But that’s all we got. Season 4 opens with a handprinted Dean, and yes, there is a God. Oh, and here are His angels who are now going to screw with the Winchesters in ways we didn’t imagine possible.

In the three years before Dean’s lava cliff jump, the brothers had escaped and bargained their ways out of more deaths than is just proper. Half of that was training, another half was common sense and planning, the third half was sheer dumb luck. And because three halves don’t make a whole, the fourth half was the sometimes there is no way out lesson. When Dean finally confessed that he didn’t want to die, we all believed there’d be an out. Season 3’s finale is a gut punch. Everyone thought the boys had a leg up. Sam’s new mojo. They knew who Lilith was, if not exactly what. The FBI, courtesy of Henrikson, were no longer giving them grief. Dean didn’t have to die, right?

Well, yes. Yes he did. The fact that he was then raised by angelic means didn’t take away the sting. In fact, it made it worse as we realize through Season 4 that Dean remembered every second of his hellcation. “Lazarus Rising” is one of the most bittersweet episodes of these two seasons. And while Dean is busy being manipulated by the denizens of heaven, Sam is being ridden by the agents of hell.

See, we realized how much we loved the brothers very early on in the series. Even more so, the things these two would do for each other would trump everything.  The writers took great pains to make us not just love them, but empathize with and believe in them. The fanbase was split when two new regulars, Bela and Ruby, were added. The brothers didn’t need anyone! They had each other, they had Bobby. However, Bela, while often just a way to hook the threads of the previous episode, became the tool that informed us just who had Dean’s contract. And Ruby, well, she’s a demon, we knew that. She’d been helping Sam. And sleeping with him. Oh! And feeding him the giant pack of lies. By Season 4’s finale, we applauded when Sam pins her arms back as Dean purges her existence.

But if the fans were divided on Ruby and Bela, there was no such bickering with Castiel, another newcomer. A third main character now, in his own right. His was a near-instant welcome with outstretched arms and wings. It wasn’t because he was the one who raised Dean from perdition; orders, remember? It’s not even that Castiel is a human vessel. It was because in this increasingly disturbing political halofight, Castiel questioned. He aided. And he shouldn’t have. In “Lucifer Rising,” the symmetrical pairing to “Lazarus Rising,” Castiel chose. Chose Dean over superiors and father. We fell in love.

Unsurprisingly, with the overlords of heaven and hell becoming major players, the story became darker, more intense. Yet, intelligently as always, interspersed through the unrelenting episodes are the ones that have us laughing almost the entire way. Fans tweeted and blogged their way through “The Kids are Alright,” goggling at the audacity of a mini-Dean. Groundhog Day spoof, “Mystery Spot” was gruesomely hilarious. “Wishful Thinking” took wishes and made them grossly literal; “Kneel to Tod!” one over-bullied kid yelled, while a newly-animated teddy bear blew its stuffing out.  In “Monster Movie,” the show not only poked fun at the brothers, it took the classical history of horror and contrasted it with the reality of what hunters face. It was brilliant. Supernatural never gets too pretentious for itself to pay homage to its roots, or to be a bit of a joke unto itself. That’s part of the magic of Supernatural.

Even in some of the darkest situations (“Jus In Bello,” “Time Is On My Side,” “Heaven and Hell,” and “When the Levee Breaks”) there’s always that touch of humor. The acting chops of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki continued to please and surprise. Jim Beaver’s rough tenderness and constant inclusion was a much needed head-slap to the often impetuous brothers. And Misha Collins. Misha. Watching him switch from Castiel to Jimmy and back again was riveting. It showed that angels are unknowable, but this one, who is in awe of Dean, will try. As the internet would say, these guys gave us the feels. Emotional brother-to-brother conversations that had viewers crying also had pinpricks of light where one couldn’t help but laugh. It’s laugh or die crying, right?

Right.

So when Season 4 was reaching toward its apex with “It’s a Terrible Life,” the writers knew they were going someplace that maybe, just maybe, might toss viewers over the edge, lemming-style. So they did what the’ve done since the beginning, they ran with it, never abandoning the core storyline, the sharp dialogue, or the blurry lines of morality. And it worked. They weren’t kidding around when the Prophet, Chuck, is introduced in “The Monster at the End of This Book.” They took meta meta.

They’d done it in tiny bits before with “Hell House” and “Ghostfacers,” but there was more at stake now. It could have failed so miserably. We waited, expecting the worse, when “Jump the Shark” aired. While overall it was  lacking, we were rewarded with more questions than answers. As the final three episodes of Season 4 followed, we went through “The Rapture,” to “When The Levee Breaks,” all the way to a little convent in Maryland in “Lucifer Rising.” What we thought would be touch and go, beginning with “Jump,” ended with Dean choosing forgiveness over anger. Sam, still that earnest little boy, doing all the wrong things for mostly all the right reasons. We wondered what happened to Castiel, wanting him back as he gave Dean and Sam a fighting chance.

Thing is, Castiel will return. And he’ll Fall for it. Sam will fall too, if for an entirely different reason. Dean will shoulder an even heavier burden then before. For Season 4 ended on a disturbing two-fold note. The heavenly host used Dean’s humanity against him in ugly ways. He remembered hell. How he, the tortured, became the torturer, both in the pit, and back on earth when he was told to do it again, with the final, fantastically creepy Alistair, his very abuser. And they continued, Uriel and Zacharia, slyly informing Dean he is the sole reason the apocalypse has begun, for his righteousness no less. Oh, and stop the apocalypse? No. Use Dean. Use Sam.

Sam, led down an expertly crafted path by Ruby and Lilith, to open that 66th seal, out of 600. Who knew? He became other, choosing the blood of demons over his brother and breaking the generally agreed upon rule: don’t become the monster. A little brother, overshadowed, wanted to make a bigger difference. With horrible results.

Two young men, pawns in a terrible war. And to heaven or hell with the human life it took. Of the many elements in Supernatural, the most bluntly crafted one is that the distinction between good and evil is a meaningless title. They often intersect in disturbing ways. As the brothers stood there, clutching at each other, each realized by his mistakes and  confronted by the consequence, the finale ends. Lucifer’s cage opened. What now?

We continue on our wayward path with the Winchesters. They’ve been abused from above and below. Both changed. Dean a servant of the lord. Sam an unwitting part demon. They need answers. We want them safe. Except, we know they won’t be. That’s not the way the earth revolves.

Ready? Well, with the father of demons arriving, and discovering that humans can exist without souls, does it really matter if you aren’t? Exactly. Carry on, apocalypse!

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