"All roads lead to the same destination."

Whoa. Wow, but we are barrelling along Mytharc Road at a rate of knots so far this season! It's awesome stuff. Exhausting, but awesome.

Also? Another Biblical episode title, and oh, how very apt it is.

Then

John and Mary Winchester and their young sons Dean and Sam appeared to be the most normal family in the world, until Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed Demon, visited them one night to drip his demon blood into baby Sammy's mouth. Running into her son's nursery, Mary recognised the demon in the moments before he killed her. John then spent the rest of his life searching for his wife's killer. And when Dean and Sam encountered their mother's spirit, 22 years later, she apologised to Sam, for reasons unknown.

Samuel Colt made a special gun, with the power to kill anything, and Dean used it to kill Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Dean was later pulled out of hell by an angel named Castiel. "Because God commanded it," Castiel explained. "Because we have work for you." And seeing those two clips together like that – Dean killing Azazel followed by Castiel explaining why Dean has been brought back – really drives home just how much of a warrior for the side of good Dean really is, whether he believes himself to be anything special or not.

Now

Willow Tree Motel

It seems the brothers Winchester have moved on from Bobby's and are back into their usual routine of travelling from one motel to the next as they move from town to town. We aren't told how much time has passed since the last episode, nor what kind of job brought them to this particular town, or even what town they are in – maybe just passing through on their way elsewhere. They may even be wandering aimlessly, lacking an overall purpose for the first time in what seems like a very long time. Lilith is still out there, along with all those other demons, and Castiel has plans for Dean that remain unspecified…but John was found and is now dead, and Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed Demon, is also dead, and Dean's soul has been saved from hell, which means that the over-arching goals that drove the last three seasons have been removed. Back to searching out random leads and hunting for the sake of hunting, no ultimate goal to drive them on – at least for the time being.



Dean is asleep on the bed nearest the door, atop the covers, with his leather jacket draped over him. Yay for the leather jacket, and that Dean has been reunited with it, which suggests that Sam did store his brother's effects, rather than disposing of them – some of them, at least – and has now retrieved them from wherever they were stashed. Why could that not have been a cute domestic scene worked into a plot somewhere and somehow?

Maybe Sam pulled the jacket over his brother, seeing that he'd fallen asleep on top of the blanket, and he does rather look as if he just crawled into the room and crashed…but then again, he used his coat as a blanket last week, as well. We've been seeing Dean sleep a lot since he got out of hell, and he never looks what you'd call comfortable, as if he's falling asleep wherever he is when he can no longer stay awake, rather than choosing to settle in for a good night's sleep. It doesn't exactly suggest healthy rest, does it?

Whatever. Dean is asleep. And Sam? Sam still isn't savouring his brother's return in any way. He's taking the opportunity to sneak out and away from Dean once again – that's the second time in three episodes. It's as if he's too busy trying to lead this double life of his to stop and appreciate the miracle he's been given, no time to pause and take stock. Maybe no willingness to pause and take stock, if it means weighing up his own actions and maybe finding them wanting, having to give up the new power he has admitted he enjoys so much – or having to choose between that power and his brother. By maintaining his secrecy, he is able to postpone that inevitable moment of truth.

And it is sad, because it means there has been little or no opportunity for us, as viewers, to see the brothers get re-acquainted. We've had barely any scenes with the two of them alone together, and are longing to see them just hanging out and being brothers again, talking through their experiences and hunting together, as in days of yore.



This is clearly a deliberate plot choice, hinting at Sam's state of mind – although not exploring it – and building up to confrontation later in the season. It would be good, in that case, however, to see some hint that Dean has noticed that things aren't quite how they should be. Because if Sam is concealing his double life so successfully that Dean has been completely fooled, that should mean that there have been satisfying brotherly bonding sessions since Dean got back, and we'd really like to share a few of those moments! And if Sam isn't hiding his distraction that well, Dean should be more concerned about his brother than he is, unless his own situation is just so mind-blowing that he doesn't have any brain left to spare for Sam.

You know, as much as I'm loving the action-packed start to the season, I would also really, really love an episode that was purely domestic – like a missing scenes story that fills in the gaps of these dramatic early episodes. Brothers hanging out, and collecting Dean's things from storage, and deciding what to do next, and saying goodbye to Bobby, Sam being evasive and Dean noticing and reaching the conclusion that his brother is finding everything a bit overwhelming and deciding not to push too hard just yet…

Dean stirs as the door opens and closes, but doesn't wake.



Motel forecourt

A car pulls up alongside Sam, Ruby at the wheel. So, her fear of Dean's angel hasn't kept her away from Sam for long, then. Clearly her need for Sam outweighs that fear. It's interesting that Ruby is providing the wheels now. Maybe the longer Dean is back, the less comfortable Sam feels about taking the Impala. It is no longer his, and as such would be a reminder of how much Dean would disapprove of his actions if he knew.

"Ready?" Ruby asks as Sam gets into the car.

Sam looks grimly satisfied with his plans for the night, utter determination the only emotion visible in his face. "Definitely."



Since this little outing was so clearly pre-arranged, you have to wonder just how Sam and Ruby are communicating with one another. Cellphone would be too risky, as Dean could easily overhear and become curious. It is possible that Sam has developed something like the ability that Andy Gallagher had and is able to transmit his thoughts right into her head, but we aren't told.

Sam looks and sounds so very satisfied to be heading out with his demon ally, as if this is what he really wants to be doing with his time, whatever the reason he and Dean are actually in town. It is very worrying – Sam is a big source of concern so far this season. I'm very apprehensive for him, and for Dean by association. And I'm expecting big payoff later in the season.

This is the last we see of Sam in this episode – just these two tiny scenes. Jared Padalecki was otherwise engaged: finishing off the film he made over the summer. The show willingly released him for this work, and it has to be said – as sad as it is to not have him around, the concept of this episode works better without Sam in it. And although he might not be physically present, his presence is nonetheless felt throughout, because this is the origin story. This is where we get to find out why – why so many things.

Motel room

Left alone, Dean's sleep becomes fitful as flashes of memory assail his unconscious mind. Memories of hell. Flash! Flash! Flash!



Dean gasps awake, disturbed by the nightmare. But it isn't clear yet if he realises what is happening, that he is starting to remember his time in hell. He has only had the one very brief waking flashback that we've seen, shortly after his return. This is the first time we have seen him dreaming of the experience, and it is still coming in very vague flashes of blood and screaming rather than anything more specific. But who knows how often this has happened since his return – could be every time he sleeps, for all we know. That could explain why he isn't tucking himself up more comfortably; we all remember how hard Sam fought sleep when he was suffering from nightmares in season one.

Makes you wonder if Sam has noticed that anything is wrong – noticed that his brother is not sleeping well.

Presumably, these flashes of memory will continue to increase and become clearer as time goes by. But of course, if Sam is never in the room when they happen, it will be easier for Dean to conceal what is happening, at least until the memories overwhelm him.



"Hello, Dean," a voice behind him solemnly intones.

Dean startles up to find Castiel sitting on the other side of the bed, watching him. Castiel has absolutely no concept of personal space, a nifty little character touch that really reinforces the concept of him as a being largely unfamiliar with the niceties of human interaction.

Castiel is still rocking his holy tax accountant look, the devout man who 'prayed for this', although it is doubtful the poor schmuck really knew what he was getting himself into. But whatever else he might be doing with the body in between visits to Dean, it seems a spot of angelic dry cleaning has been on the cards, as there is no longer any trace of blood from the gunshots and stab wound of his first appearance, in Lazarus Rising, despite the fact that he is wearing the same clothes. The man should have been fatally wounded, but I wonder if his body really is dead, or if the angel will restore him to health when he finishes with him, as a reward for his service? Any other issues that arise from his time as a vessel being his own problem, of course. Or will his body be discarded as collateral damage, with his devout spirit moving on to wherever and considering it a reward?

"What were you dreaming about?" Castiel asks, rather creepily. Taking a wee bit too much satisfaction in the notion of Dean remembering his time in hell, methinks. I daresay, the more Dean remembers, the tighter Castiel's hold over him, bearing in mind his threat at the end of the last episode. There is nothing benign about this creature.



Dean is disgruntled. "You get your freak on by watching other people sleep? What do you want?"

"Listen to me. You have to stop it," Castiel rather unhelpfully vagues.

Dean, not unreasonably, and still not fully awake, asks what he has to stop. By way of answer, Castiel reaches out and presses two fingers to Dean's forehead…



…and Dean wakes up on a bench in the middle of a sunny street, with a police officer telling him to move along. Can't sleep here. Dean wonders where 'here' is, since he was just in a dingy little motel a second ago and is now surrounded by light and colour. Seriously, the contrast between the drabness of that motel and the vivacity of his surroundings is brilliantly done. It is also a Clue.

Dean sits up, and stares around in confusion. He still has his leather jacket draped over him, and fumbles in the inner pocket. First, he pulls out John's journal, and my heart kind of breaks – not for the last time in this episode – because John has been dead for two years now, but Dean is still carrying that journal around with him. It's like his bible. And yeah, it is necessary for the episode plot that Dean have the journal with him, but still. Also in that pocket is Dean's cellphone, but when he opens it up, there is no signal. Wherever he is, and whatever this is all about, he's on his own.

And the lack of cellphone signal? That's also a Clue. But Dean shows no sign of recognising the clues for what they are, the colours and fashions and cars all around making no impact on him. He just woke up from a nightmare and got accosted by an angel; his brain hasn't caught up with him yet.



Across the street, Dean spots a diner and blearily stumbles on over. He doesn't see that the bench he just vacated carries an advertisement for Tab Cola, the production of which was largely discontinued years ago, and which is certainly no longer advertised. Not in the year 2008, anyway…

Jay Bird's Diner

Dean takes a seat at the counter, alongside a dark-haired young man sat reading a newspaper, and rather groggily asks where the hell he is. Jay Bird's Diner, the young man replies. Since that's what it says right over the door, Dean already knew that. What he was looking for was city and state.

Young Man is, understandably, a little perplexed by the question, but answers it willingly enough. Dean is in Lawrence, Kansas. Back where it all began. This comes as a rather unpleasant surprise to him, not least since wherever the hell he was before Castiel touched him, he certainly wasn't in Lawrence.

Seeing that Dean seems more than a little spaced out, Young Man asks if he is okay. Dean sighs and allows that it was a tough night, and Young Man calls for waiter Reg to bring him a coffee. So, the conversation thus far has already established Young Man as a generous and decent kind of man – the straight-up, clean-cut, all-American good guy.



Dean pulls his cellphone out again. "Can you, uh, tell me where I can get reception on this thing?" He wants to call Sam, of course. It's always been standard operating practice for the brothers, when separated – first order of business, re-establish contact.

Young Man snorts. "The USS Enterprise?" Heh. And the Star Trek joke is even funnier once you know who just cracked it.

Bemused, Dean is grateful to receive his coffee from waiter Reg, snarking at the man's outfit because Dean tends to get a little abrasive and obnoxious when he is unsettled, and he is very unsettled right now. "Nice threads. You know Sonny and Cher broke up, right?"

Young Man is shocked. "Sonny and Cher broke up?" Aww. He's so young and so normal, and, well, naïve. It's adorable – and also heart wrenching, once you know who he is.

Dean is getting more confused by the minute, and is confusing the people around him into the bargain. He turns and looks around the diner once more, finally beginning to put the clues together: the fashion and colour scheme and décor. Then he turns his attention to Young Man's newspaper. The headline is Nixon's resignation – and the date is 30 April 1973!

1973. Dean mouths the date, trying to comprehend how this is possible.

"Hey, Winchester," calls a voice. Dean and Young Man look up in unison, the one startled and the other nonchalant. Shades of Back to the Future – the episode takes great delight in referencing that film wherever possible.



It is Young Man that the newcomer greets, however, leaving Dean to stare wide-eyed at the conversation, which establishes Young Man as a corporal, fresh back from the war. And the older man greets him as John. John Winchester.

"Dad?" Dean whispers, shocked to his core.



Conversation over, John turns to see Dean staring at him. "Do we know each other?" he demands.

It takes a moment or two for Dean to pull himself together enough to answer. "I guess not," he mumbles. Not yet, they don't. It is 1973. John was born in 1954 – he's just 19 years old right now. He won't become Dean's father for another six years.



"Take it easy, pal," John suggests, rising to leave. Dean watches him go, still too shocked to even begin to process. At the door, John feels the eyes on his back and turns back, so Dean quickly returns his attention to his coffee. But then as John leaves, Dean's eyes are irresistibly drawn back to him once more: his dad as he was before: young and innocent and utterly normal. Mind-blowing.

Titles

Street

John saunters his way down the street, pulling the full-on hands-in-pockets Sammy slouch. Dean follows, stalking him unashamedly. Since John was a corporal in the Marines and has not long been back from the war, you'd sort of expect him to notice that he has picked up a tail, especially since Dean kind of weirded him out in the diner. But he seems well and truly re-adjusted to civilian life and doesn't notice a thing.

If John is only 19, and already back from the war, he couldn't have been in the Marines all that long – maybe as little as a one-year tour. From what we see of him in this episode, his military training has been left far behind him, 100% civilian once more. And yet we know that his Marine training, however brief his tour of duty, was nonetheless deeply enough ingrained that he was able to fall back on it when Mary died and adapt those skills for use as a hunter of the supernatural. Nothing like a bit of motivation, eh.

John rounds a corner. Dean follows – but is pulled up short when Castiel pops up right in front of him. He looks rather stern, which is a bit of a cheek, really, since he's the one who plunged Dean into this situation with neither warning nor explanation or even so much as a by-your-leave.



Dean wants to know what this is, severely rattled. One way or another, Castiel has had that effect on him every time they've met so far – the angel has a very definite upper hand, and is very successfully keeping Dean off balance. He might be an angel, but there is nothing benevolent about him – and his full agenda remains a closely guarded secret, not necessarily to be trusted.

Castiel smoothly asks what it looks like. Meeting a question with a question is just another way to avoid giving a straight answer. Dean demands to know if it is real. "Very," says Castiel. But although it sounds fairly decisive, that still isn't as definitive an answer as it could be – still open to interpretation. I mean, he could mean that Dean really is back in time. Or he could just mean that Dean is experiencing a very real (and interactive) re-creation of past events.

"Okay, so angels got their hands on some Delorians?" Dean flails. "How did I get here?"

"Time is fluid, Dean," says Castiel, rather airily glancing around rather than looking him in the eye. "It's not easy, but we can bend it on occasion."

"So bend it back!" Dean immediately demands. He so does not want to be here, does not want to have to deal with meeting and getting to know his father as he was before tragedy struck. He's had a hard enough time coming to terms with his past and his relationship with John as it was, without stirring up old wounds now. "Or tell me what the hell I'm doing here," he adds.



"I told you," Castiel gravely intones. "You have to stop it."

So very unhelpful. Dean again asks what he is supposed to stop. "What, is there something nasty after my Dad?"

Since John is the only person he's met so far that he knows, and he arrived here so close to him, that seems a reasonable assumption, based on available evidence. It is also a very Dean assumption. He so rarely looks further than his immediate family. For all that Castiel has stressed how much greater his concerns are, Dean still can't see further than his own.

A car horn blares somewhere behind Dean, signalling a near accident. Dean automatically turns to see what's causing the commotion, almost jumping out of his skin he's so tense…and when he turns back, Castiel has vanished.

Probably just as well no passers by spotted that little trick.



Dean is frustrated, as he should be. "Come on. What, are you allergic to straight answers, you son of a bitch?" he fumes at the patch of thin air Castiel just vacated.

Rainbow Motors

A used car salesman works his best patter on John, and then heads into his office for the paperwork. John is sold, apparently…on a VW minivan. Sheesh.

"That's not the one you want," Dean calls from nearby. John turns to see him leaning against the hood of the Impala.



Oh, man. Jeremy Carver, and the rest of the writing team in the design stages, must have had an absolute blast with this one, pulling together as many continuity details as they could think of. To have Dean be the one that convinces John to buy the Impala? It's mind-bending stuff. Dean wants John to buy that car because he knows that's the car his dad drove, the car he and Sam grew up in – the car John gave him, still his beloved pride and joy. That car is a fact of history, from Dean's point of view. But then if the reason John drove that car (and the boys grew up in it and John gave it to Dean) was because Dean talked him into buying it in the first place, because Dean knew that's how it was…man. Talk about the paradoxical infinite loop! Time travel breaks my brain.

"You following me?" John immediately accuses.

And, um – yes, Dean is following him. Seems to have picked his trail up again pretty easily, too, after Castiel's interruption. He is hardly going to admit it, though, so casually spins a story about how he was just passing by and wanted to say thanks for the coffee earlier. "I was a little out of it."

"More than a little," John agrees.

"Let me repay the favour. This is the car you want," Dean repeats. John sceptically asks if he knows anything about cars, and Dean smiles a nostalgic little smile. "Yeah. Yeah, my Dad taught me everything I know."

There's a little pause as they both think about that, weighing the words up. John's father is also a mechanic, we learn later. Presumably, he also taught his son everything he knows about cars. So it creates a bond, of a kind, an experience they both share. We can imagine John – the later John – and the young Dean spending many hours along the road, bonding under the hood of that car. Just another thing they shared that Sam was excluded from, if only by his own lack of interest.



Dean pushes aside his wistfulness to continue selling the Impala. "And this, this is a great car," he enthuses. He pops the hood and spouts all the technical mumbo jumbo that always seems to mean something to boys. "Three-twenty-seven four barrel, two hundred and seventy-five horses. Some TLC, this thing is cherry." Okay. If you say so.

John certainly looks and sounds impressed. Dean wonders why, in that case, he is even considering the VW. Because he promised someone he would, John says.

"Over a '67 Chevy?" Dean disbelieves. "Come on, this is the car of a lifetime. Trust me: this thing is still going to be badass when it's forty." Aww. He really, really loves that car.



And, yeah, it's corny as heck to have Dean be the one to convince John to buy the Impala…but it's still all kinds of heart-warming to see them bonding over the car. Young John has been really well cast, both in terms of appearance and mannerisms. He's a little shorter than he should be – shorter here than Dean, when his older self was taller than Dean – but it is very easy to believe that this is John Winchester before tragedy scarred him.

John reaches a decision and introduces himself. John Winchester. Dean can hardly reciprocate with honesty, so reaches for the first alias that comes to mind. "Dean van Halen." Mwah.



As John continues to admire the Impala, clearly sold on the idea of it, Dean observes that he was in pretty rough shape that morning. John can only agree. "I've been hung over before," Dean remarks, keeping it casual as he carefully tests the water, fishing for information. "But man, I was getting chills in that diner. You didn't feel any of those cold spots, did you?"

Yeah. He is assuming that something is after John, and Castiel didn't disabuse him of that notion. Information gathering is, therefore, the first logical step – find out if John has noticed anything unusual, figure out what it is, and then deal with it. That's how Dean always operates, a tried and tested technique.

But John just shrugs that no, he didn't notice anything like that, and wow – he pulls the most awesomely Sam nonplussed expression. Hee.



Dean tries again. "I swear I smelled something weird, too, like rotten eggs. You didn't happen to smell any sulphur, by chance?" Another no, and John is back to thinking there is something strange about his new acquaintance. Dean is getting desperate for clues now. "There been any cattle mutilations in town?"

John has had enough, and snaps at him to stop. Dean sighs. "Yeah. If only I knew when to stop." Bless. Dean is troubled, and John really doesn't know what to make of him. "Listen, uh, watch out for yourself, okay?" Dean offers as his closing gambit, seeing that he would do more harm than good by hanging around any longer right now.



Dean heads off, and the car salesman returns. John turns to him and announces that he'll take the Impala. And so, history is made. Not for the last time in this episode.

Of course, if Dean hadn't been inserted in the timeline, John could easily have ended up with the car anyway. He's a mechanic – he knows cars. He doesn't take much persuading. And the salesman left him alone in the lot. His attention could very easily have wandered away from the van and landed on the Impala, and changed his mind.

Street

John and the Impala pull up outside a random suburban house. Dean is still stalking his father-to-be, having managed to fix himself up with a set of wheels into the bargain. How did he manage that? Any cash he has on him would be useless in 1973, and this seems like the kind of neighbourhood where car theft would be harder to get away with, at least if you plan on driving your stolen car around said neighbourhood. Whatever. The car he has acquired is tidgy. Sam would never fit in it.

Dean pulls up a little further back down the street and watches. It is good to see that his covert surveillance skills have not improved – he always stays too close and too obvious, and doesn't get caught out nearly as often as he should. But John – for all his unease with the stranger – still doesn't notice the tail. Honing those senses of his must have been one of the first orders of business, when he began to make his transition from civilian to hunter!

A girl comes running out of the house to greet John and marvels over the car, wonders what happened to the van. She is young and blonde and vibrant. Three guesses who this could be!



"Mary, this is better than the van," John enthuses. "It's got a three-twenty-seven and four barrel carburettor!" Aww, and he's parroting back the same details that Dean used to convince him.

Across the street, Dean is stunned, once again, and stares at the young couple. "Mom," he realises, awed. Like John, Mary was born in 1954, is also no more than 19 years old here. His whole life, Dean has worshipped the memory of his mother, and now here she is: young and healthy and happy, her whole life in front of her. And it hits him like a ton of bricks, knowing as he does what lies ahead.



Diner – outside

John and Mary sit with their milkshakes at a window table, while Dean lurks outside and watches them. "Sammy, wherever you are – Mom is a babe," he marvels. Beat. "I'm going to hell. Again." Hee.



And aww – I always loved Dean's habit of talking to himself or to inanimate objects. Here, it is the thin air representing his non-present brother that he addresses. And again we feel it: Sam might only appear in two very small scenes at the start of this episode, but his presence permeates it nonetheless, defined by his absence.

Diner – inside

John and Mary are engrossed in a pretty intense debate, which reveals that Mary's father is not what you'd call happy about their relationship. "I should just talk to him," John suggests. Mary deflects that idea, soothing that her dad is just being her dad, and it isn't about John. "How is it not me?" John protests. "He's been like this for how many years?"

Mary laughs that her dad is just being protective, and that's all. "He doesn't want me to –"

"Hook up with the mechanic from a family of mechanics," John sighs. We already knew he was a mechanic, of course, but here we learn that so was the rest of his family. That's where Dean gets it from. Sam, on the other hand, really is the odd man out where cars are concerned.



Mary sharply insists that that's not it. "I love you," she firmly tells her boyfriend. "For exactly what you are."

John has no idea just how seriously she means that – maybe never did, his whole life. And neither do viewers, at this stage.

Having calmed John down, Mary smiles that she will be right back, and slides out of the booth. Left alone, John pulls a small box out of his pocket and contemplates the engagement ring inside.

Diner – outside

Dean stands and watches, pensive…but the camera pulls back to reveal that Mary has snuck right up behind him! She noticed the stalker right away, while John remained ignorant. That tells us something about her immediately.



"Why are you following us?" she demands. Then, before Dean can even react to her presence, never mind answer the question, she lays in with the punching and kicking! Buffy, eat your heart out!

Beyond shocked at this turn of events, Dean barely even manages to defend himself, much less fight back in any way – she's his mother, after all. He's not going to hit back. He feigns ignorance when Mary accuses him of trailing her and John since they left her house, takes a few more blows, and then finally manages to get her pinned.

It is at this point that Dean notices the silver charm bracelet Mary is wearing on her wrist, and realises it is no mere decoration but rather is adorned with genuine protection charms. Stunned, he releases her and staggers back, trying to absorb the implication. "Are you a hunter?" he gasps, worldview rocked to its core yet again.



Whoa. Didn't see that one coming. Talk about a plot twist!

Street. Campbell house

John drops Mary off after their date with a tender kiss goodbye. With John, Mary is sweetness and innocence personified – he knows absolutely nothing about the family she comes from and what they do, the other side of who she is kept carefully concealed.

As John drives away, Dean emerges from behind a tree, where he has been waiting. "I'm not sure you should come in," Mary tells him. She obviously also told him to meet her here, though, whatever doubts she might be having now.

Dean assures her that she can trust him. "I mean, come on – we're all hunters, right? I mean, we're…we're practically family." Oh, bless.

Mary shakes her head. "The thing is, my Dad – he's a little…"

"Oh, I got to meet him," Dean immediately says, utterly sincere. Finding out that the grandfather he never knew was also a hunter? Mind-blowing.



Mary is surprised. "You've heard of him?"

"Clearly not enough," Dean admits. Heh.

Inside Campbell house

Mr Campbell, Mary's father, is awesomely played by Mitch Pileggi: managing to perfectly combine grouchy, protective father and husband with curmudgeonly, isolationist hunter.

Robert Campbell was one of the names investigated by Sam in The Kids Are Alright, we remember; he died in July 2001. An Ed Campbell was also mentioned, and had also died sometime prior to that episode. One of these, presumably, was Mary's uncle, the man who organised the headstone for her grave. And the other must have been another relative of some kind, maybe a grandfather or cousin.

Campbell is not terribly impressed by Dean. "So, you're a hunter. Tell me something, Mr Hunter, you kill vampires with wooden stakes or silver?" He casually tosses the question at Dean without even looking at him.

Pop quiz, huh. Dean, staring at his grandfather with something like awe, does not fall for the trick question. "Neither. You cut their heads off. So, I pass your test?"



Mary smirks with delight that this strange young hunter she brought home is holding his own against her father. Campbell tosses his book aside, grumps that yes, Dean has passed his test, and then curtly instructs him to get out of the house. Mary is dismayed. Clearly, whatever Dean said to her in that alley after realising that she was a fellow hunter has more than won her over. Or maybe it's as simple as feeling that a fellow hunter closer to her own age than her parents – Dean's about ten years older than she is – is an automatic ally.

"I don't trust other hunters, Dean," says Campbell. His future son-in-law came to hold a similar point of view, we remember, keeping his sons away from other hunters as far as possible. "Don't want their help. Don't want them around my family."



Dean is clearly disappointed, but just as clearly can appreciate this point of view. Then Mrs Campbell, Mary's mother, interrupts to chide her husband for being so rude. Campbell argues that Dean is a hunter, but Mrs Campbell shrugs that Dean passed his little pop quiz and now she is inviting him to dinner. "You hungry?"

Aww. Mary's mother is great. She introduces herself to Dean as Deanna, and Dean is stunned all over again. And her husband is Samuel. Samuel and Deanna. Oh, Show. So very cheesy – fanficky, even – to have Mary's sons named after her parents. And yet also kind of cute. Especially that Dean is the one named after a girl…



And you know, Deanna doesn't have that many scenes in this episode, but she clearly fills much the same role within the Campbell family that her namesake Dean does for the Winchesters. She is the glue that holds them all together, the homemaker, the mediator to smooth over rough edges and ruffled feathers – the heart of the family. Nicely done, Show.

Taken as a whole, and hunting aside, the Campbells come across so much as just a nice, normal family living in a nice, normal house in a nice, normal town. Over and over again on this show we meet hunters operating from similarly stable home bases. Bobby, as we know so well, tends toward organised clutter, every inch the middle-aged bachelor. We've seen others, such as the short-lived Olivia in last week's episode, who tend towards the utilitarian. Still more, such as the Campbells here, or Steve Wandell, the hunter Sam killed in Born Under A Bad Sign, appear to be comfortably off, although this is a little more suburban than any other hunter we've ever seen. We've Pastor Jim, and the Harvelles with their saloon….

Overall, and taking all these variations into account, it does seem clear that the extreme itinerancy, and, let's face it, deprivation, in which John Winchester raised his sons was very definitely the exception, rather than the rule – it was a choice that he made, rather than necessity, and his sons suffered for it.

Later

Dean enjoys a cosy family dinner with the Campbells, and it is sad to think that in another life both he and Sam might have sat around this very table every week, visiting their grandparents.



Deanna asks if this is Dean's first time in Lawrence, which is rather an awkward question, really. Dean prevaricates that it's been a while. "Things sure have changed. I think."

Samuel, still eyeing Dean with mistrust, asks if he is working a job. Dean evades that he might be, and Samuel wonders what that is supposed to mean. "It means I don't trust other hunters either, Samuel," Dean smoothly replies. Samuel blinks at him. Deanna and Mary smirk. Point to Dean, and Samuel grudgingly concedes it. Mary asks why Dean was following her and John.

"I thought something was after your…um…your boyfriend," Dean explains, with absolute honesty. "But, uh. I don't think that any more."

No, instead he has a massive amount of new information about his family background to chew over in search for the reason he was sent here.

"John Winchester mixing it up with spirits," Deanna laughs. "Can you imagine?"

Oh, man. The very idea is a joke to the Campbells, John is so utterly normal – if only they knew.



Samuel rolls his eyes, and Mary calls him on it, sensitive to any implied criticism of her boyfriend. Samuel gives her wide eyes and "what?" and it is such a Dean reaction, it's awesome. Mary busts on him for his 'sour lemon look', and Samuel curmudgeonly sighs that John is a really nice, naïve civilian.

Oh, Dean's face, hearing his father described like that, knowing what he became and how he spent his life.

"So, what?" Mary snorts, and gestures at Dean. "You'd rather me be with a guy like this?"

"What?" Dean blinks, processes, and backs off at a rate of knots, shaking his head at the laughability of the notion. "No. No. No."



Samuel starts to grumblingly explain his opinion of John, to Mary's irritation, but Deanna cuts across to remind both her husband and daughter that they have company.

"So, what about you, Sam? You working a job?" Dean changes the subject.

Samuel shrugs that he might be, every bit as brattish about it as either Sam or Dean could ever be, and Mary rolls her eyes. "He's working a job on the Wiltshire farm," she tells Dean.

Wiltshire. Dean puzzles over why the name is familiar. Samuel imagines it is because the case has been all over the papers lately – Tom Wiltshire was a farmer a few towns over who got tangled up in his own combine. Dean points out that this kind of thing happens, but Samuel adds that there was no reason for Wiltshire to be on the combine in the first place since his crops were all dead.

Demonic omens, Dean realises. I love how he always pronounces it dee-monic. Samuel nods that that's what he has to find out. Dean asks about the rest of the town. "You find anything on the Web?" Samuel frowns, and Dean immediately realises his misstep and backpeddles. "…Of information that you have assembled," he adds. Heh.

Deanna says that they think there may have been electrical storms, and that the weather service graph should arrive on Friday.



"By mail?" Dean is surprised, having never considered the difficulties of hunting before the days of the information super-highway.

"No, we hired a jet liner to fly them to us overnight," Samuel snarks. Heh. And that's Sam junior, right there. Oh yeah, this is where our boys came from, all right.

Hunting, 1973-style, back in the days when information was considerably harder and slower to get a hold of. This is one of the reasons it took John so many years to gather evidence on the Yellow-Eyed Demon, of course, his information painstakingly pulled together in fragments, as and when he was able to find them.

I would imagine that this is another reason for the Campbells comfortable family home – with research possibilities so limited, compared to modern times, hunters in general probably travelled a great deal less in the '70s than their 21st century counterparts. They each, most likely, worked on a strictly local level, tackling any supernatural threat to raise its head within their own area, rather than actively seeking them out far and wide. The caseload for each individual would likely be considerably lighter as a result, allowing more time to lead a normal life and build a profitable career in between hunting gigs.

"You know, it sounds to me like we might be hunting the same thing," Dean suggests, still fishing for clues as to why Castiel sent him back here – this is the best lead he's encountered yet. "You know, if we go in there in numbers, we'll take care of this real quick."

Samuel shuts that one down, quick smart. "What part of 'we work alone' do you not understand, son?"



Dean gives up the argument.

Wiltshire farm. Morning

If yesterday was 30 April 1973, then today must be 1 May. Keep track of the passing days in this episode – the date is significant.

Samuel and Mary arrive at the Wiltshire farm, Samuel dressed up as a priest. Oh, man – that's where Sam gets his penchant for dressing up! Mary petulantly wonders why she was included in this trip. "Family business, Mary," Samuel reminds her. "Family. What, you'd rather be waving pompoms at a bunch of dumb jocks?" he scoffs at her sullen expression as he gets out of the car.

I'd love some backstory on the Campbells. I doubt we'll ever get it, but I'd love to know how Samuel and Deanna got started, how they really feel about raising Mary in this life – has it ever been a source of conflict between them, for example, or an issue on which they have always been unanimous? Is it bad that part of me wants to forget all the mytharc and tragedy and just see some kind of alternate universe spin off all about The Family Business, wherein the entire family balances hunting with trying to lead a covert normal life and rub along with one another…?



Mary sees a young man, about her own age, leaning unhappily against a tree in the yard, and starts toward him rather than follow her father to the house. Samuel asks where she's going. "To do the job, Dad," she drawls, sounding remarkably like her future youngest son.

Samuel gives up and lets her go, and heads to the house. The door opens before he can knock, as the grief-stricken Mrs Wiltshire is showing someone else to the door. It's Dean – also dressed as a priest. Awesome.

As with the car, though, I wonder where he got the costume. And where he spent the night. I think I shall assume that he found himself a bar and hustled pool or poker until he'd made enough cash to keep him going.

Dean and Samuel are a little taken aback to see one another, but each manages to play along with the other's disguise rather than tip Mrs Wiltshire off to the fact that there is anything wrong. Heh, and they are both so snippy with it, each attempting to score subtle points off the other. Brilliant. "Senior, senior Father Cheney," Dean introduces his 'colleague'. Snerk!



Dean has the advantage, having got there first, and doesn't hesitate to rub it in. "Mrs Wiltshire was just telling me about Tom," he explains. "And how normal and ordinary things were in the days before his death." And that stress on 'normal' and 'ordinary' is reminiscent of Nightmare, way back in season one, when Max Miller's over-emphasis on the same was a clue as to the secrets his family were hiding.

"So you didn't notice anything unusual, ma'am?" Samuel asks.

"You mean like my husband's guts fertilising the back forty?" is Mrs Wiltshire bitter rejoinder.

Ouch. But hee – Dean's ill-concealed delight at seeing someone else put his foot in it for once is brilliant. Apparently, he inherited a fair few mannerisms from his paternal grandfather, the tendency toward less-than-tactful bluntness being one of them.

Leaving a rather dismayed Samuel to it, Dean heads on out of the house.

Yard

Dean sees Mary talking to the Wiltshire lad and approaches them. Without any prompting, Mary gently suggests that the boy, Charlie, tell 'the Father, here' what he just told her.



If Dean inherited tactlessness from his grandfather, it is clear that Sam inherited his sympathetic manner from Mary. No wonder Samuel wanted to bring Mary with him – he must rely on her to smooth the way through interviews in much the same way that Dean relies on Sam. It would be interesting to know how involved Deanna is in the field work, as I suspect she would have the same light touch with witnesses but comes across as more of the stay-at-home type.

One of my favourite aspects of the show is that the more we get to know the various members of the Winchester (and now Campbell) family, the more clearly it is possible to see how many of the various different characteristics of Dean and Sam are drawn from different members of that family. So that Sam's sympathetic manner comes from Mary, but his sarcasm is inherited from Samuel Senior, while his stubborn pride and vengeful temper are all John. And Dean's blunt insensitivity comes from Samuel, it seems, but his cockiness is just as much John, and it is from the grandmother for whom he was named that he seems to have inherited the qualities that make him the peacemaker of the family, the glue that held John and Sam together for so many years.

Dean turns a reassuring smile upon young Charlie, who admits that his father was something of a drinker and had a bad habit of knocking his family around when he was drunk. "And that's when the stranger came?" Mary prompts.

Charlie nods that he just thought it was some Bible-thumper. The man turned up about a week ago, he explains. Dean asks what this man had to say for himself. He asked if Charlie wanted the beatings to stop, Charlie explains, adding that he just thought the man was crazy. "Then the next thing I know, Dad's dead." Frantic, he asks if he is going to jail, but Mary soothingly assures him that he didn't do this.

Dean asks if the stranger wanted something in return. At first Charlie denies it, but Dean presses, certain that this stranger wasn't just handing out freebies. "He did say something about coming to call in ten years from now," Charlie remembers. "Maybe he'd want something then."



Dean, of course, instantly puts two and two together and comes up with Crossroads Demon. He already knows that they don't necessarily have to be summoned, but occasionally trawl in search of victims off their own bat. Mary pulls him aside to quietly asks what he thinks – her father might not have taken a shine to Dean, but she clearly respects his opinion as a hunter and is willing to both work with him and defer to his experience and judgement.

"I think he just pimped his soul to a demon, and he doesn't even know it," Dean sombrely sighs.

Mary turns back to Charlie to ask what the stranger looked like. The man Charlie describes sounds average in every way – except for his eyes, which caught the light in a weird way. Dean automatically assumes that they looked black, or maybe red. But no, Charlie says – they were yellow.

Yet another nasty shock for Dean. This little trip through the past is absolutely rocking his world – a real eye-opener.

Campbell house – kitchen/dining room

So much for not working together. Dean is back at the house of his forebears, furiously rifling through maps and the like, while Samuel tries to persuade him to slow down for a minute and talk this thing through.

I really like and respect that about Samuel. He wasn't happy about having another hunter show up in town and did not want to work with him, bickered with him childishly when Dean managed to get one up on him…but he knows when to back off and take things seriously and stop working at cross-purposes. Dean is here and working this job, whether Samuel likes it or not, and is clearly distressed – this isn't just another job; it is personal to him. And Samuel's paternal instinct is surging to the forefront, prompting him to help rather than hinder, to reason rather than argue. I like him. I think that if he and Dean were given the opportunity to really get to know one another, they might develop the same kind of strong, trusting and mutually respectful relationship Dean has with Bobby.



The fact that they will never have that opportunity is only one of the tragedies of this episode and this family.

Dean is absolutely frantic, and does not see that there is anything to talk about. Samuel tries to reason with him, arguing that none of them have ever heard of a demon with yellow eyes.

"Well, I have," says Dean, looking his grandfather in the face, wide-eyed and distressed and desperate. "This thing killed my family." Samuel tries to get him to calm down, but Dean is having none of it. "You don't get it, do you? You are in danger – we are all in danger. In fact, you need to get yourself someplace safe."



Samuel insists that he isn't going anywhere until they know what they are dealing with, and Deanna steps out of the kitchen, carrying the large bowl of fruit salad she's been making, to placatingly suggest that they don't know what this thing is – could be a demon, could be a shapeshifter, could be any number of things.

Dean sharply repeats that he knows what it is. "And I'm going to kill it. And that's all the talking I need to do."

Tunnel vision with a target in sight is a very Winchester trait. Dean is not thinking for a moment about the 35 years of history he would be re-writing if he succeeded in this. All he sees is a chance to prevent all the pain and suffering his family has endured in those years. And, to be fair, Castiel's only instruction was that he had to 'stop it', so Dean can hardly be blamed for assuming that Yellow-Eyes is what he is supposed to stop, now that he knows he is here.

Samuel scoffs at the idea of killing a demon and asks how. Dean has his answer all ready, brain working overtime to connect all the dots and form a plan. "There's a hunter named Daniel Elkins. He lives in Colorado. He has Colt's gun. The Colt."



He doesn't have to explain what Colt's gun is. Samuel and Deanna have already heard of it – but they don't believe in it, Samuel dismissing it as a bedtime story he used to tell Mary. Dean assures him that it is real. Samuel still doesn't see how it would help. "You got some kind of crystal ball telling you where this demon is going to be?"

Dean has an answer for that, as well, grimly nodding that maybe he does. While Samuel and Deanna exchange concerned and sceptical glances, Dean pulls out John's journal and starts flipping through the pages.

"It's a list. […] My Dad wrote down anyone he thought ever came into contact with the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Who, where and when." Samuel asks why. "The more he could learn about the son of a bitch, the more he could figure out why he killed my Mom," Dean tells him, raw and open and honest. He never uses the demon's name, Azazel, even though he knows it. To Dean, that thing will always be Yellow-Eyes.

Dean skims past an entry that reads: Liddy Walsh, Haneyville, Kansas, 2 May 1973: found gutted in her home. Some believe she inflicted the wounds to herself due to her husband's terminal cancer. And another entry mentions a possible Bigfoot sighting on 19 August 1983. Heh.

Samuel and Deanna keep exchanging worried glances. Dean finds the entry he was looking for. Tom Wiltshire, 1973, Lawrence – death by threshing machine. "Told you that name sounded familiar."

It is worth wondering how – or if – John knew for sure that these incidents were anything to do with the Yellow-Eyed Demon. None bear what you'd call his hallmark – nursery fires and murdered mothers, and there is no mention in the journal of any demonic omens attached to the incidents. We must remember that John started out in 1983 from a baseline of knowing absolutely nothing, in an age when information was not freely available to anyone with a computer – it would have taken a lot of time and effort to pull together this research.

From what we can see as Dean leafs through, the various items on the list were indeed written at different times, in different pens, on different pages, as John pulled his information together in drips and drabs, one fragment at a time, during the months and years that followed Mary's death. So does John's listing of incidents near Lawrence in 1973 imply that he knew or suspected something of what we will see come to pass? Did he ever know for sure that these really were Yellow-Eyed Demon incidents? Or did he just make a note of any past event where a supernatural connection was even remotely possible in or around his hometown, simply because that was where it all started?



Samuel points out that the Wiltshire farm incident was just two days ago, so how the hell could it be on a list written by Dean's father? Dean takes a moment to ponder that one and come up with an explanation they might believe. "My Dad could see the future." Heh. Nice one.

Dean turns back to the Liddy Walsh entry, noting that it looks like that is where the Yellow-Eyed Demon will hit next, tomorrow night, and looks close. That incident was dated May 2, we remember – ten years to the day before Sam was born. Samuel agrees that it is only about three miles away, but is clearly very uncomfortable with the speed at which Dean is working, lacking the background information to make the same kinds of logical leaps and still not sure what to believe. He looks helplessly at his wife for support, but Deanna has none to offer – she doesn't know what to think either.

Dean sees their doubt, and nods. "I know you guys think I'm crazy." Yeah, he gets that a lot. But he knows what he knows, whether anyone believes him or not, and he has learned to trust his instincts.

"You seem like a really nice kid, but yeah – you're crazy, Dean," Samuel agrees.

"Maybe," Dean allows. "But I know where this bastard's going to be, and I'm going to stop it. Once and for all." He gathers up his belongings and heads out.

Campbell house – lounge

One his way out of the house, Dean passes Mary, who has opted out of the entire conversation – a clear sign of how she feels about the family business – and is sorting through a pile of albums. He pauses in the doorway and struggles with himself for a moment; seeing her like this, so young and full of life, is really hard for him, even harder than it was talking to John earlier.

"I'm shoving off. Just wanted to say goodbye," he says at last. Man. The way his eyes light up when he talks to her is heartbreaking. Every time, he's four years old all over again and she is the biggest miracle he has ever known.



Mary is surprised that he is going so soon, but he evades that he has a job to do, and clears his throat and steels his nerve. "Hey, I wanted to tell you, for what it's worth – doesn't matter what your dad thinks. I like that John kid. […] I think you two are meant to be."

Aww. The way Mary's face lights up at the mention of John is as adorable as Dean's awkwardness in saying all that out loud. Mary beams, and Dean mutters to himself, "Hell, I'm depending on it." Mary is bemused, but Dean brushes it off and asks if he can ask her something. "What's he like? John?" He can't resist asking – the John he met yesterday was like the polar opposite of the father he knew, growing up.

Mary wonders why he asks, and Dean brushes it off as mere curiosity, and because she is young and in love, she can't resist answering. "He's sweet," she says, which is probably the last thing Dean would have expected anyone to ever say about his father. "Kind. Even after the war, after everything, he still believes in happily ever after, you know?"

And isn't that just heartbreaking? To think of John so young and full of hope for the future, and to know it was Mary's death that destroyed him. To hear those words and remember the John we met on the show, worn down by years of grief and despair and the hunt. Dean is clearly thinking much the same thing, especially as Mary adds, "He's everything a hunter isn't." Then she realises who she is talking to, and adds a hasty "no offence." Dean assures her that none has been taken.



Mary fidgets, and then asks if she can tell Dean something. "He's going to ask me to marry him – tomorrow, I think!" Awww, she's so excited, so young and in love. It's got to be torture for Dean to see it.

She's also very willing to confide in Dean, like an instant best friend. Could be that it's just who she is: warm-hearted and open, friendly as a puppy. Maybe she's feeling the familial bond, despite not knowing about it. Or maybe it's that she has never before met a hunter so close to her own age, has never had anyone she could talk to so openly about her life before. She is clearly absolutely bursting to talk to someone about all this. How many really close friends does she have, you have to wonder? She later mentions Liddy Walsh as a friend, but we have seen from Dean and Sam's experience – and seen hinted at in Jo Harvelle's backstory – that it is not easy to balance close friendships with the kinds of secrecy this life necessitates.



"Dad's going to explode," Mary continues, becoming serious. "But I don't care. I'll run away if I have to, I just…I love John. And…."

She trails off and Dean, concerned, asks what's wrong.

"I want to get out," Mary admits, and Dean stares at her, quietly falling apart. "This job, this life – I hate it. I want a family. I want to be safe. You know the worst thing I can think of? The very worst thing? It's for my children to be raised into this like I was. I won't let it happen."

God, Dean can't even speak. "You think Mom would have wanted this for us?" Sam spat at Dean in the Pilot. And now we know – now we know how desperately she did not want this for her children. Dean is devastated, hearing those words and knowing what he knows, knowing how her life will end, how his and Sam's and their father's lives will spiral ever downward thereafter – the utter, utter tragedy of it all. Heartbreaking.



And the parallels between Mary and her youngest son are striking. Sam, too, hated the life in which he was raised and desperately wanted out, was willing to run away to achieve it. Sam, too, kept the truth about his past and his life and who he really was carefully hidden from his lover, preferring to lie than risk losing her. We have grown accustomed to the close resemblance Sam bears to his father, his stubborn nature and vengeful temper have come to dominate his personality so much – but here we learn just how much he also takes after his mother.

Dean can't hide the fact that Mary's words have hit him hard, struggles for composure, and Mary grows concerned in her turn, asks if he is okay. He manages to regain control of his voice to gruffly tell her that he is fine, and then can't take any more. He has to warn her, somehow, has to at least try. "Hey, Mary. Can I tell you something? Even if this sounds really weird, will you promise me that you'll remember?"

Confused, Mary agrees.

Dean regards her for a long moment, trying to find the right words, and he's fighting back tears when he finally says it. "On November 2nd 1983 – don't get out of bed. No matter what you hear, or what you see, promise me you won't get out of bed."



A tear escapes and runs down his cheek. Mary stares at him, taken aback and a little confused, but taking him completely seriously, because he is completely serious. She doesn't understand, but she makes the promise.

Completely broken, Dean wipes away the tears, manages to muster up a half-smile by way of farewell, and then leaves, hoping that if he can only succeed in what he is setting out to do, the warning he just gave will never be needed.

Road. Night

Dean drives along in the car he has acquired for use in 1973.

All of a sudden, between breaths, Castiel is sitting in the passenger seat, looking solemn and thoughtful – as if this is the first time he has ever ridden in a car, which it probably is, and he's finding it a curious experience.

Dean just about jumps out of his skin. "So, what – God's my co-pilot, is that it?" he grumbles. Castiel does not reply, possibly because he finds it a struggle to work out what Dean is talking about half the time. Dean rolls his eyes. "Oh, you're a regular Chatty Cathy. Tell me something – Sam would have wanted in on this. Why not bring him back?"

Because Jared Padalecki was unavailable, is the obvious answer. And because Castiel seems to be going out of his way to avoid interacting with Sam, focusing intently on Dean instead. This is Dean's journey, and it is a journey he has to make on his own. There is a reason Sam could not be included in the trip, although the angel has no interest in explaining this just at present. "You had to do this alone, Dean," Castiel says, tone as even and neutral as ever.



Dean nods, looking a little annoyed. "And you don't care that he's tearing up the future looking for me right now?"

"Sam's not looking for you," says Castiel, not looking at Dean. Man, it sounds harsh, to hear him say it like that. I mean, he could explain that Sam isn't looking for Dean because he hasn't been gone long enough for Sam to notice his absence – because he has been taken out of time and can be returned to the same moment, rather than returning at a point concurrent with the time that has elapsed during his experience, or whatever – rather than making it sound as if Sam simply doesn't care if his brother disappears. But maybe this impression, too, is deliberately conveyed.

Dean keeps his eyes on the road, very carefully does not react. "All right, if I do this," he says. "Then the family curse breaks, right? Mom and Dad live happily ever after, and Sam and I grow up…playing Little League and chasing tail?"

Long ago, in Nightmare, Dean fiercely denied that his family was cursed. He has changed his tune since then – but then again, his circumstances have spiralled steadily downward since then. This episode is where we learn, however, that this 'curse' came from the Campbell side of the family, rather than the Winchesters. John was the true innocent in all this.

Also? Dean had to cast about a bit there, trying to come up with examples of what might have been a normal life for him and Sam growing up. He has no experience of any such thing to draw on!

Castiel still doesn't look at him. "You realise, if you do alter the future," he conversationally remarks. "Your father, you, Sam – you'll never become hunters. And all those people you saved, they'll die."

Dean maintains his stony gaze at the road ahead. "I realise."

"You don't care?" Castiel presses. His attitude is curious. He knows from the start that the past can't be changed, that nothing Dean does can have any impact on the sequence of events because they have already played out. But still he places him in the position of believing that he can change it, and then asks this question – it's as if he is testing Dean, trying to understand how he thinks, where his priorities lie. He has never interacted with mortals before, and finds Dean intriguing.

"Oh, I care. I care a lot." Dean turns furious eyes upon the angel. In What Is And What Should Never Be, we remember, Dean was prepared to sacrifice the lives and happiness of his family for the sake of those hundreds of others who would die if they had never become hunters.

But that was then and this is now. Then, those lives and deaths were history that had been re-written; here, they are a future yet to play out, a future that Castiel has told him is fluid. There has been a lot of water gone under the bridge since that day, a lot more pain and suffering for both himself and Sam. And he believes that this is his one shining chance to prevent it all – believes that this is the reason he was sent back here in the first place.

"But these are my parents," he firmly insists. "I'm not going to let them die again. I can't. Not if I can stop it." He glances back at Castiel…but the angel has vanished once more.

Colorado. Daniel Elkins' cabin

Dean rifles through Daniel Elkins' safe. It's probably just as well the man never moved from this place in three and a half decades! And that he already had the Colt all those years – without, apparently, ever using it – rather than acquiring it at some point in the interim.

There in the safe is the Colt, lying loose, rather than in the case Elkins kept it in when we met him in Dead Man's Blood. Dean checks the barrel, finds it fully loaded, and is satisfied.



A gun is cocked behind him. Elkins. Young Elkins, before age and hard grind and cynicism have worn him down. He calls for Dean to hold it right there, drop the gun and be on his way – rather a generous offer, really, considering what he is and the fact that he just caught a thief red-handed with something so priceless and irreplaceable.



Dean tenses, makes shift to put the gun down…and spins, drawing a bead on the other man before his finger can tighten on the trigger.

Standoff.

"Can't do it, Daniel," Dean grimly tells the man, who wonders who the hell he is. "A hunter, just like yourself," he introduces himself.



"Thief's more like it," Elkins snorts. Dean says that he just needs the gun for a few days. "Not happening, Mister," Elkins insists.

"I have a chance to save my family's lives," Dean tells him, voice dripping with raw desperation. My family. But I need this gun to do it. So if you want to stop me, kill me."

He means it, and Elkins can see that he means it. Dean lowers the gun and walks past the other hunter, who keeps his own gun aimed steadily at the intruder, but allows him to pass. And, damn, you know, I think I'd have liked Elkins, as well, if we had the chance to get to know him.

At the door, Dean turns back, a question mark in his eyes, and Elkins' mouth twists wryly as he lowers his gun, conceding defeat – he's letting Dean go, and letting him take the gun.



"There's some hunters in Lawrence, the Campbells," says Dean. Elkins has never heard of them. "That's where she'll be," Dean tells him. Heh. Does he use the feminine pronoun for all inanimate objects of value to him, I wonder? Elkins nods his agreement to this plan, one hunter to another, understanding the stakes, and Dean leaves, taking the Colt.

Lawrence. Campbell house

Samuel and Mary sit cleaning their weapons collection together. It is May 2nd 1973. Ten years to the day before Sam's birth.



Mary asks if Dean said where he was going, curious about this mysterious new hunter in town. "Said he was going to kill a demon," Samuel shrugs, and Mary laughs, knowing that to be impossible, and asks where Dean thought he was going to kill this demon. Samuel tries to remember. "I don't know – Haneyville? Walshes, maybe."

Mary freezes, alarmed. "Wait – not Liddy Walsh?" Samuel thinks so, but he isn't really thinking at all, because if he was he'd have predicted Mary's reaction to this news. "Dad, she's a friend of mine! We gotta help her!"

Deanna wanders in from the kitchen to see what's wrong, just as Mary grabs her coat and hurries out to the car. Deanna definitely comes across as more of an Ellen than a Tamara, if we compare the Campbells to the other hunting couples we have met. Where Tamara and Isaac, in The Magnificent Seven, travelled and hunted together, very much a partnership, everything we have ever heard about Bill and Ellen Harvelle tells us that for all that Ellen is as capable as any other hunter, she has always supported on the home front rather than out in the field.

Then again, maybe Deanna and Ellen both played more of an active role as hunters before the births of their daughters turned their attention more toward homemaking, stability and security, whereas it was the loss of their child that propelled Tamara and Isaac onto the open road.

Samuel is confused by Mary's attitude, every inch the clueless dad. "She wants to hunt, she doesn't want to hunt – is this some female time of month thing?"

Heh, such a Dean remark – this is totally where he gets it from. Deanna's face is a picture. She turns in disgust and heads back to the kitchen without a word, leaving Samuel to wonder what he said wrong this time.



Haneyville. Liddy Walsh's house

The doctor has come to talk to Liddy about her husband's condition, explaining that his cancer has metastasised to his liver and lungs and it is time they talked about arrangements. Fearful and horrified, Liddy shakes her head in mute denial, pleads with him to do something.

His name is Doctor Brown. Seriously. Doc Brown. Oh, Show.

Doc Brown allows that there is one way – a cure actually, but he needs her help. Liddy is instantly hooked, asks what she has to do. "Nothing," he tells her. "Just in ten years I'm going to come to you and ask for something. […] Nothing you'll miss."

His eyes shine yellow – Azazel, of course.

But before Liddy can agree – or not agree – to anything, the door flies open and Samuel Campbell bursts in. Man, he's totally the shoot first ask questions later type, he just takes one look at the doctor and blows him away with the shotgun.



But Doc Brown is possessed, of course, and demons are not so easily killed. Covered with blood, he nonetheless opens his yellow eyes right back up and whips the gun out of Samuel's hand with one lazy flick of the wrist. Another flick, and Samuel is pinned to the wall.

This does not look good. Sleazing at Liddy to 'hold that thought', Yellow-Eyes rises and slimes his way over to Samuel, who grates out a "you son of a bitch," a la Dean. Yellow-Eyes leans in close…then whips around to grab Mary by the throat before she can plunge a knife into him.

Of course, neither a shotgun nor a knife are ever going to be the slightest bit of good against a demon. But Samuel and Mary already know that demons can't be killed. They know that, but believed Mary's friend was in danger, are risking their lives for her sake. It's who they are. And I like that this episode subtly reinforces the fact that demonic possession was a pretty rare occurrence before season one, so that not many hunters would have a great deal of experience with it.

It does raise the question of how and why the demons started clawing their way out of the Pit in greater numbers at around the time season one began. I mean…in line with Azazel's plans, clearly, but if it is so easy for them to escape in numbers, why did he need the devil's gate to be opened?

Show, you do love to twist my brain!

Yellow-Eyes is very, very impressed by Mary's feisty fighting spirit, which is all kinds of ominous. "Where the hell have they been hiding you?" he wonders. Mary slashes at him with the knife, but he avoids the blade with ease and disarms her. She retaliates with a hefty punch to the face. "I like you," Yellow-Eyes decides. "You've got a lot of spunk." He catches hold of her and slams her into the wall, and her father is greatly alarmed.

If Dean had not mentioned Liddy Walsh to Samuel, would the Yellow-Eyed Demon have ever picked up Mary's scent, we wonder? It is a troubling thought, that he could have inadvertently led her right to it and thus created his own tragic past. I tend to suspect, however, that the demon would have found his way to her anyway. It is a fact of history, whether Dean has always been a part of this timeline or not. Samuel was already hunting the demon, albeit without knowing it, picking out clues and omens to the best of the 1973 resources at his disposal, and might have stumbled onto its trail without Dean's information. Liddy is a friend of Mary's whose husband is seriously ill; Mary could very easily have come visiting and encountered the demon accidentally. Yellow-Eyes seems to be scoping out quite a selection of young people in the neighbourhood, which means he is hanging around, watching and planning. One way or another, Mary was going to find her way to his attention, and being who she is – the daughter of a hunter, and a reluctant hunter herself – he was always going to be intrigued by her.

Dean races into the room and levels the Colt at the demon, who pulls around to face him with Mary held close, a human shield. Dean yells at him to let her go. The demon wants to know where he got that gun, eyes glued to it. That gun is important to Azazel's plans, we remember, and Daniel Elkins kept it safely hidden away for years. Must be intriguing for him to see it now, so tantalisingly close.



Stalemate. Dean can't risk the shot, not with Mary's body shielding the demon. Then the demon drops her, and exits the body in a rush of black smoke, and Dean is beyond dismayed – more like distraught. This was his one chance to kill that demon now, before it can destroy his family, and the chance has been lost.



Tthe demon smoke vanishes into a vent near the ceiling, and that's a more important detail than it first looks – the demon hasn't left the building, just the room. He isn't retreating; he's regrouping.

Outside

Waiting outside for Samuel, who is presumably checking on Liddy and her husband, Dean anxiously – furiously, even – questions Mary on just what Yellow-Eyes said to her. Mary is deeply shaken by the encounter; repeats that all he said was that he liked her, and is filled with dread. "What did he mean by that?"

She's better off not knowing. How much did all this play on her mind over the years, we wonder? Did she worry about it, perhaps, all that time – or did she repress the memory rather than face up to it?

Samuel strides out of the house and announces that Liddy is a strong kid and will be fine, asks if Mary is okay. Mary snaps that no, she is actually pretty far from okay, and just wants to go. What happened here tonight is exactly why she wants out. She fumes away to the car to await her lift home.



Samuel quietly tells Dean he did a nice job in there. Validation from a father figure: it's not for nothing, except that Samuel is already possessed, we will later realise, and this isn't the first time Yellow-Eyes has used praise and paternal warmth to deflect attention from that fact. This time, though, doesn't strike the same chord in Dean as the first, since he barely knows Samuel.

Dean is in no mood to hear it, however, and points out that he missed the shot, furious with himself. His one chance, but he couldn't save Mary without endangering her, and then the chance was gone. And he still believes that that's what this was all about, the whole point of his little walk through time.

"Take the compliment, son," Samuel advises him. "I'm saying that I was wrong about you."

Dean absorbs these words, glancing from Samuel to Mary and back again. Samuel is saying that he accepts Dean as fellow hunter and equal – and that means maybe they can start to work together on this, from a position of trust. John and Sam each tend to operate on a need-to-know basis much of the time, whereas Dean prefers full disclosure where possible. He makes a decision. "We need to talk alone."

Now, John's journal entry stated that Liddy was killed on this day, gutted in her home, and that the wounds were believed to be self-inflicted because of her husband's terminal diagnosis. There was no mention of any doctor being found shot dead in her house at the time, and as far as we know Liddy's fate has been changed, as we did not see her die.

So has history been changed? It does seem so. It is possible, of course, that Yellow-Eyes took over Samuel's body and used it to kill Liddy after Dean and Mary left the house, while we weren't looking, not wanting to leave any witnesses and maybe deciding that Liddy wasn't what he was looking for as a parent of his psychic kids. But even if that were so, history has still been changed, surely, because if the doctor had also been found dead in Liddy's house, as he will be in this timeline, John would have noted that fact in his journal – it is too relevant to the sequence of events not to.

If this wasn't how the sequence of events originally played out, you'd have to wonder how Liddy came to be killed in the first place, since Azazel came here intending to strike a deal with her – a markedly similar deal to that he ends up making with Mary. Did she refuse the deal, and he lashed out and killed her in anger? Or did the Campbells maybe always interrupt the deal, even without Dean's involvement?

So many questions – so many paradoxes. Any show involving time travel is always going to be a real brainteaser!

Campbell house – dining room

"We have to kill this thing, now," Dean insists, pacing and peering anxiously out of the window, and generally being fretful, while Samuel sits placidly at the table and listens. "Before Mary dies."

Well, those words startle Samuel out of his calm, and he addresses Dean with a sharp "what? How do you know that?" Dean evades that he just does, pulling John's journal out once more. Samuel asks when.



"Maybe today – probably years from now – but it's happening. Trust me." Dean leafs furiously through the journal in search of answers.

Deeply sceptical of this madman, Samuel asks if Dean is meant to be some kind of psychic, too.

Dean stops, stares at the bewildered face of his grandfather for a long moment, and makes another decision. "No. All right, listen to me. Now, this is going to sound a little…actually it's going to sound massively, massively crazy." Samuel nods and braces himself for the insanity. Dean takes a breath. "Mary is my mother."

Well, whatever Samuel was expecting to hear, that wasn't it! "Excuse me?"



Dean barrels on. "And I am your grandson. And I know what the hell I'm talking about." Samuel is too confused to react. Dean presses on. "My real name is Dean Winchester. I was born January 24th 1979. My parents are Mary and John Winchester." Samuel doesn't want to listen to any more of this, but Dean keeps talking. "Mary gets killed by a yellow eyed demon in 1983, and I think that this, what happened tonight – I think this is the moment that he caught her scent. Now if we don't catch this thing now and kill it, and it gets away? Then Mary dies. So I'm asking you – please."

Samuel stares at him, processing.



You can almost feel the chill of destiny enfolding this family as the sequence of events plays out. Dean believes that he was sent back here to stop it – Castiel has deliberately manipulated him to believe that he was sent back here to stop it from ever happening. And he can feel his chances of success slipping away from him now as he watches events unfold around him. He's getting desperate.

Outside Campbell house

Mary runs to where John is waiting for her, presumably having called him to come. Or maybe it is a pre-arranged date – she told Dean yesterday that she thought he was going to propose to her tonight, after all. Distressed, she throws her arms around him and he hugs her, not knowing what is wrong, asks if she is okay.

He's so innocent and trusting. God, that's heartbreaking, knowing what he will become. All he knows is that he loves her and would do anything for her. John is Jessica to Mary's Sam, the innocent damned by association.



"You promised you'd take me away," Mary sobs, and John agrees that of course he did. Tearful, Mary looks up at him. "Do it now."

Confused, John gazes into her eyes for a moment, and then opens the car door to let her in. He'll do anything for her.

Campbell house – dining room

Dean continues trying to convince Samuel that he is for real. "How did I know about the Colt? Huh? How did I know about the Yellow-Eyed Demon? Or where it would be? I'm not making this up, Samuel."



Samuel struggles to accept what he is being told. "Every bone in my body is aching to put you six feet under," he admits. "But…there's something about you, I can't shake it. I may be crazier than you, son, but I believe you."

Dean thanks him, deeply relieved. And oh, how I wish this conversation was for real – I wish it really were his grandfather Samuel expressing that faith in him. I would love to see them bonding as family.

Samuel asks how they find the demon. Dean pulls John's journal out again, referring back to that list of people John thought might have come into contact with the demon. Samuel asks about the Colt, and Dean pulls it out of his jacket, lays it down on the table beside him.

Samuel's eyes fasten on the gun, and then flick back to Dean. He asks to see the gun.

Dean glances up at him, automatically reaching out for the gun to hand it over…but then he pauses, thinks twice – and pushes it a little further away. "Sorry, I don't let anybody hold it."

Shades of Devil's Trap. Dean must have some kind of internal radar that warns him about the demonic possession of father figures. Shame it didn't work so well on Sam, that time.

Samuel pulls the 'I'm your grandfather' line, and, you know, I really appreciate about Azazel that he understands human relationships enough to try to use them against his victims. Here, he is working the gruff but supportive grandfather angle. In Devil's Trap he employed the proud father line. But it didn't quite fit then, and it doesn't quite fit now – he understands generic human relationships and how they should work, but the complexities of genuine, individual family dynamics largely escape him when he tries to mimic them.

Dean says that it is nothing personal, not quite meeting Samuel's eyes. Maybe he can't bear to see the disappointment there if he is wrong. Or maybe he can't bear to see that he is right.



"Sure it is. Especially when it's me you're trying to kill." Foiled, Azazel gives up and shows his hand, Samuel's eyes glowing yellow. Dean doesn't even get time to react. Azazel waves a hand and shoves the chair Dean is sitting in backward to slam against the wall. The Colt, meanwhile, tumbles off the table to lie forgotten on the floor.

Pinned to the wall yet again by this demon, this thing that destroyed his whole family, Dean seethes and simmers, incandescent with rage and hatred.



Azazel sits and regards him evenly for a moment. "Future Boy, huh?" He stands and approaches. "I only know one thing that's got the juice to swing something like that. You must have friends in high places."

Interesting. In Lazarus Rising, the lower-level demons encountered did not seem to recognise that an angel was behind Dean's resurrection, knowing only that it had to be something tremendously powerful and terrified of that great unknown. Here, though, higher-level demon Azazel immediately recognises Dean's little walk through time as something only an angel could swing.



Also – I'd forgotten how much I miss the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Say what you like about him, he's got personality and charisma in spades, whatever body he happens to be wearing. He's also extremely pro-active, never afraid to do his own legwork, which makes him a far more effective antagonist than Lilith, who prefers to hide off-stage and send nameless minions to do her dirty work.

"So, I kill your mommy?" Azazel comes to stand right over Dean. "That's why you came all this way to see little old me?"

"Oh, I came here to kill you," Dean assures him, voice trembling with rage, eyes glinting with fury.

Azazel realises something, and leans in close. "Hey, wait a minute. If […] Mary is your mommy, are you…? Are you one of my psychic kids?"

He sounds delighted at the prospect – confirmation that his plans will pay off sooner rather than later, and as such a cause for celebration. I love the warped affection Yellow-Eyes has for 'his' kids. He leans in closer still, practically draping himself over Dean so as to sniff at his neck. Apparently, that's how you tell if someone is psychic or not! This demon has no more concept of personal space than Castiel; he got all up in Dean and Sam's faces when wearing John's meat suit, as well. It is, of course, a very effective means of unsettling and intimidating his prisoner, who is unable to escape the close attention.



"No. Not you," Azazel realises. "Maybe you've got a sis?" Dean says nothing: keeps his face turned away from the demon, doesn't want to give anything more away. It makes no difference – the demon can pulls thoughts out of peoples' heads, after all, and has no trouble reading his prisoner's desperate face. "Or a bro," he exults. "That's terrific. Means it all worked out. After all – it's why I'm here."

"So that's what this is about?" Dean tries pumping the demon for information, since they're already having this conversation and all. "These deals you're making. You don't want these peoples' souls…"

"No," Azazel agrees. "I just want their children. I'm here to choose the perfect parents, like your mommy."

"Why her?" Dean grates out, filled with horror. "Why any of them?"

"Because they're strong," Azazel gloats. He always did enjoy talking at his victims at length, boasting about his own cleverness, instead of going for the quick kill.

Behind his back, Deanna pokes her head around the corner from the kitchen, where she has clearly been listening to everything and is as horrified as Dean.

"They're pure," Azazel taunts. "They eat their wheaties. My own little master race. […] Oh, get your mind out of the gutter – no one's breeding with me. Though, Mary? Man, I'd like to make an exception. And so far, she's my favourite."



Yellow-Eyes always did like to twist the verbal knife. Sam was his favourite, too, he claimed, and this was where it started. Dean seethes and struggles, brimming with impotent fury, completely powerless to even escape, never mind fight. He sees Deanna hovering in the kitchen doorway and hastens to keep the demon talking, keep its attention on himself. More shades of Devil's Trap. "So why make the deals," he asks.

Azazel shrugs. "I need permission. I need to be invited, into their houses. I know, I know, the red tape'll drive you nuts, but in ten short years? It'll all be worth it. 'Cause you know what I'm going to do? To your sibling? I'm going to stand over their crib and I'm going to bleed into their mouth. Demon blood is better than Ovaltine vitamins and minerals – makes you big and strong."

Well, the big and strong thing certainly worked for Sam! Not so much for Andy Gallagher, though…

The permission aspect is curious, as he seems to have no trouble entering peoples' houses while wearing the body of whatever host he is possessing at any given time. But when we saw him in baby Rosie's nursery, in Salvation, when Sam shot at him with the Colt, his figure seemed to dissolve – so maybe it was an actual physical manifestation of the demon, rather than a possessed host? Maybe the rules are different where the dripping of demon blood (rather than host blood) is concerned? Who knows? Maybe one day we will find out.

Deanna, meanwhile, has crept into the room and is cowering in a corner, trying to figure out what to do.

Eyes blazing with defiance, Dean furiously demands to know what the demon wants these children for. "So they can lead your discount demon army? Is that your big plan?"

Man, Jensen Ackles manages to channel so much unbridled rage and fury in scenes like this: it's awesome.



Azazel scoffs. "Please. My endgame's a hell of a lot bigger than that, kid." Dean immediately asks what this endgame is, but for all that the demon likes to talk, he's not falling for that one. "Like I'm going to tell you. Or those angels, sitting on your shoulder. No. I'm going to cover my tracks good."

Dean holds the demon's eyes. "You can cover whatever the hell you want. I'm still going to kill you." Oh, and the satisfaction he takes in being able to say that, because however big and bad this demon is, it is true. Dean killed him.

Not that Azazel takes the threat even a tiny bit seriously. "Right," he mocks. "Now that I'd like to see." Heh. Yeah, he wasn't so amused when he did see it!

Dean smirks a mirthless smirk. "Maybe not today. But you look into my eyes, you son of a bitch. 'Cause I'm the one that kills you."

The demon actually looks a little shaken, just for a second, recognising his fervour, but laughs it off. He doesn't believe any mere mortal could ever get close to him. He never saw Dean as a threat, ever – willingly made that deal with John to exchange his life for Dean's because he believed John was more dangerous to him. And here we learn that Dean even warned him, all these years earlier, and he still never took the threat seriously – just as he felt perfectly comfortable handing Jake the loaded Colt, never questioning his own superiority for a moment. His arrogance was his downfall.



Behind the demon's back, Deanna sees the Colt, lying disregarded on the floor across the room, and starts to creep toward it.

"So, you're going to save everybody, is that right?" the demon laughs at Dean. "Is that it? Well, I'll tell you one person that you're not going to save. Your grandpappy." He pulls a knife from Samuel's belt – and plunges it into his own chest.

Dean cries out in horror – man, that's two Sam's he has seen stabbed to death now! And Deanna screams her denial – thus bringing herself to the demon's attention. She lunges for the Colt, but the demon is faster, sending her spinning through the air into the kitchen with a lazy flick of the wrist. It's rather an impressive stunt.

Azazel abandons Dean without so much as a word or backward glance, attention focused on this new victim. Mary's parents are his route to Mary. And, you know – he could and should have killed Dean half a dozen times over by now; he has no reason to keep him alive. He always seems to prefer wasting time tormenting Dean, though, by twisting that emotional knife, rather than just killing him when he's got the chance. Even when he actually had a go at killing him, in Devil's Trap, he still went for slow torment over the quick kill. Something about Dean's defiance and insolence really gets under his skin, makes him want to savour the moment instead of just getting on with it.

Azazel advances on Deanna, who desperately tries to crawl away into the kitchen. Dean struggles against the invisible bonds holding him in place, forced to watch, unable to intervene.

In the kitchen, Azazel catches Deanna and snaps her neck, just like that. No talking, no gloating, no time wasting. He just kills her, means to an end.

In the other room, Dean is released at last and just about hurls himself out of his chair, snatching up the Colt and sprinting into the kitchen. But the demon is gone. And his grandmother is dead – yet another family member lost to that thing. Dean is taking quite the emotional hammering in this episode. He allows himself only a moment to react, however, and then re-focuses. Mary is still unaccounted for.



River

John and the Impala have brought Mary to a quiet, secluded spot near the river. It's a fairly typical make-out spot, in fact.

The Impala's licence plate is wrong. It is C-45P4 – it should be KAZ 2Y5. Now, when the licence plate was wrong in What Is And What Should Never Be, that was just one of a number of tiny clues that Dean's experience in that episode was a dream, rather than reality. In this instance, I wonder if there is some other reason it would have been changed in the 35 years that elapse between the events of this episode and the Pilot. Did John, perhaps, change the plates when he went on the run with the boys, after Mary's death? Or did US vehicle registration go through some kind of overhaul between 1973 and 2005?

"I guess it's no secret why I brought you way out here," John stammers. And I'm tempted to mention that 'typical make-out spot' thing again, except that it is 1973 and John is a decent young man who clearly has other things on his mind. Mary looks troubled and tries to interrupt, but John is too nervous to allow any sidetracking. "Just let me get through this, okay?"

"Wait." Right here at the crunch, about to be given what she wants so much, after the day she has just had, Mary is filled with uncertainty. "There's things you don't know about me, John," she tremulously begins.

But John doesn't care, pulls out the engagement ring to show her. "I will always love you for exactly who you are," he promises. But did he ever find out exactly who she was, we wonder?



Before the young couple can lean in for a kiss, a loud thumping on the car window interrupts them. It is Samuel – Azazel – his coat tightly buttoned to hide the bloodstained shirt beneath, playing furious father for all he is worth. He hauls Mary out of the car, ignoring the protests of both youngsters, yelling at John to stay away as he drags Mary along. Mary squeals that he is hurting her, and John instantly flies to her defence, trying to pull the older man off her.

Azazel lets go of Mary, grabs John, and snaps his neck!

Whoa. Didn't see that one coming!

Mary moans her denial and cradles the corpse of her lover, and Azazel is grimly satisfied, allows her to see his yellow eyes. Mary whimpers that he killed John, whereupon Azazel contentedly tells her just how much worse than she thinks things really are. He has killed her parents, too, he tells her, opening his coat to show the stab wound beneath. They're all dead, and Mary's entire world is shattered. She has nothing left. Nothing left to lose. It is a very dangerous position to be in, especially when there is a demon around that wants something from you.

Azazel taunts her, and Mary lashes back. "You son of a bitch!" Hee, yeah, she's Dean and Sam's mother all right. Azazel is not impressed by the bravado, points out that words are not going to bring her family back. "I'll kill you. I swear to God," she grates out.

The threat doesn't sound that much different than Dean's, earlier – the empty bluster of a desperate human. Maybe one reason the demon never took Dean seriously until it was too late.



Azazel chirpily suggests that they not let things get nasty, sitting himself down on the ground alongside Mary and John's corpse. "Now, look – we've both said some things that we regret," he perks. "Let's, um – kiss and make up." Ick. Mary just sobs. "I'll tell you what," the demon offers. "I'll arrange to have lover boy here brought back breathing."

Mary freezes, weighs up the offer, and asks about her parents. But the demon says no – that's not on the table. All he's offering is John, and John represents Mary's future: the safe, normal future she craves so strongly. Her parents represent the past, the life she grew up in. However much she loves them, for as long as they lived she would always be torn between two worlds. By removing that option, the demon is cleverly herding her toward the path he wants her to take, that of setting up home and providing him with one of the psychic kids he has such big plans for. It is the exact opposite of his motivation for killing Jessica, as in that instance he did not want Sam, who was likewise torn between two worlds, to settle down to any kind of normal life.

"Think about it," he cajoles. "You could be done with hunting, forever. The white picket fence, station wagon, couple of kids – no more monsters or fear. I'll make sure of it."

"What, and all it costs is my soul?" Mary bitterly throws at him, remembering Dean's words back at the Wiltshire farm.

"Oh, no, you can keep your soul," Azazel casually assures her. "I just need permission." There is a long pause – she is considering the offer now. 'Permission' sounds so harmless compared to the sale of her soul. Permission for what, she asks. "Ten years, I need to swing by your house for a little something, that's all," the demon shrugs, nonchalant.

"For what?" Mary demands.

"Relax," Azazel snips. "As long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt. I promise."

He did express somewhat indifferent regret over Mary's fate in All Hell Breaks Loose, we recall – told Sam that it was merely bad luck that she walked in on them. Wrong place, wrong time. Killing the mothers is not part of his plan, although he does not hesitate to do it if they disturb him.

Mary looks from the demon to John's dead face, torn, trying to decide what to do for the best. Azazel has made his plans sound so harmless, and she loves John so much, desperately wants the kind of life he could give her.



"Or you can spend the rest of your life desperate and alone," Yellow-Eyes goads. He wants her to make the deal; obviously he isn't going to remind her that it is possible to recover from even such a shattering loss as this, possible to grieve and move on, construct a new life. Right now, she doesn't see any such possibility – and that is a very Winchester trait. And she isn't even a Winchester yet. But this is where it all began. "Mary, it's a good deal," Azazel presses. "So what do you say?"

Moments later

Dean and his purloined 1973 car come screeching to a halt behind the Impala. Just how he worked out where Mary and John had gone is another matter entirely. He leaps out of the car – to see Mary kissing Azazel, right on the lips, sealing the deal.



Ick! He's wearing her father's meat suit! We haven't seen the conclusion of any of his other deals, of course, so don't know if he always seals them with a kiss, like the Crossroads Demon. Makes you wonder about the deal he made with John, though – no? But I'm inclined to think the kiss isn't strictly necessary, and is just another example of Azazel's twisted sense of humour, twisting the knife in this particular situation. It also makes it very clear to Dean that a deal has been made, no room for misunderstanding.

Dean is horrified and rushes over, drawing the Colt and taking aim. If he can kill Azazel now he can still stop his past from happening… But Azazel instantly abandons his meat suit, before Dean can fire, leaving Samuel to crumple to the ground, dead.

Too late. Dean stands and stares at the scene before him, horror and despair written all over his face as he puts the pieces together and realises what just happened – what Mary has done and what it means. Realises that his entire life has stemmed from this moment.



It is May 2nd 1973. Exactly ten years from this day, Sam will be born. For the sake of John's life, Mary has sold her unborn son to a demon, condemned her entire future family to their tragic destiny, and she doesn't even know it – doesn't know that by trying to ensure her own safe, normal future and happiness, she has created the very life for her sons that she least wanted them to ever know. All she knows is that she can't lose John – just as John, many years in the future, knew that he couldn't lose Dean, just as Dean knew that he couldn't lose Sam. Just as losing Dean has sent Sam spiralling down a dark path. Somehow, for this family, sacrifice has become the staple reaction to personal loss, and this is where it all started.

Tearful, Mary gazes back at Dean, seeing the despair in his face and mourning over the choice she was forced to make – until John startles awake in her arms, drawing her attention.



In In My Time Of Dying, Azazel had to possess a reaper in order to exchange Dean's life for John's. Here, however, he appears able to bring John back to life purely on the strength of the deal Mary just made with him, no reaper intervention necessary. It is a curious paradox, the one point in the episode where continuity appears to fall down. But on the whole, this episode – and the show as a whole – has done a marvellous job of pulling together many disparate strands of ongoing continuity and neatly tying them up. And it is possible that Azazel did have to possess a reaper once more in order to bring John back – there would have been at least one in the vicinity, with both John and Samuel dead – but we just didn't get to see it, because reapers can only be seen by people who are at death's door.

Waking up in Mary's arms, John is confused, and rightly so. The last thing he knew, he was trying to protect her from her over-protective father, who was behaving in an aggressive and potentially abusive manner toward her. And now he wakes up to find Samuel lying dead alongside him with a stab wound in his chest. You have to wonder just what Mary is going to tell him about what happened here. I mean, he's automatically going to assume that Samuel attacked him, and that Mary killed her father in his defence, which is a terrible thing for them both to have to live with and still doesn't even come close to the truth. But how would her mother's death be explained? And…it makes you wonder how she would explain wanting to name their son after her father.



And you also have to wonder if John ever figured it out, if he ever put the pieces together and remembered this moment and recognised that this was when it all started, realised what Mary had done. "I will always love you for exactly who you are," he promised her, and he did – he always loved her. More than twenty years after her death he was still wearing his wedding ring. But did he ever really know who she truly was?

How well known were the Campbells to other hunters, I wonder? Elkins had never heard of them, but that doesn't mean they didn't have contacts out there, that John could easily have stumbled across over the years. Did he really manage to get through his entire life without ever learning about Mary's secret past? If John did never know – is that better or worse, to know that he was so tantalisingly close, without ever stumbling on the truth? But if he did learn the truth, how the hell must he have felt about it?

The boys never knew anything about their family – Dean was surprised to learn his grandparents' names, even – which indicates clearly that John never spoke of them to his sons, ever. Well, it was hardly the only point on which he maintained strict silence. But was that silence because he believed Mary had killed her father and did not want her children to know? Or because he had learned the truth, that they were hunters, had realised what Mary had done, and likewise did not want his children to know, wanted them protected from that knowledge?

Dean watches in despair as Mary cradles John, and then a hand falls on his shoulder. It is Castiel – and he actually looks sympathetic, which is something of a turn up for the books, a tacit acknowledgement of what he has put Dean through with all this.



When Mary turns around once more, Dean has vanished.

Hang on. Dean had the Colt in his hand. It must have been left behind somehow, when Castiel returned him to the future, or Elkins wouldn't have been able to reclaim it from Mary and wouldn't have been able to hide it away all those years, wouldn't have had it in his cabin for those vampires to steal. And also…did Elkins remember the name of the Campbell family? Did he remember Mary, who he must have met when he came to find the gun? Because John told the boys in Dead Man's Blood that Elkins taught him a lot when he first started out, before their falling out. That means they must have got to know one another fairly well, must have talked, to some degree, at least. And…well, Elkins might not have connected Mary Winchester with Mary Campbell, but the Lawrence connection could very well have rung bells. So did he ever realise it was the same person? Curious!

Then again, if this were merely a 'real' and interactive dream experience, an alternate reality constructed for Dean's elucidation, rather than an actual walk through time, it wouldn't matter that Dean was holding the Colt when he was pulled out of it…

There are so many paradoxes woven throughout this story. It is mind-bending.

Consider Mary, and the secrets she must have kept over the ten years that followed, before her death. She was given what she wanted most – a safe, normal life – at the highest possible cost. And clearly she did turn her back completely on the hunting life she had always known, just as she wanted, focused on building a normal, happy family with John, compensating for the loss of her parents by making the most of what remained to her – and pretending, all those years, that she did not know what she knew.

But how much did these events weigh on her mind over the years, we must wonder? Did she remember Dean's warning, and connect the date he gave her with the ten years mentioned in Azazel's deal? Or did she repress the memory, trying to convince herself that it never happened? Remember her actions in the Pilot – how swiftly she realised that something was wrong, how she sprinted up to the baby's room to handle it herself, without calling to wake John. That makes more sense now that we know she had been a hunter, and considered John an innocent. Did she remember then, we wonder – did she realise, too late, that this was the day she had been warned about?



So much mystery, and so many secrets, kept for so many years. Secrets and evasion – as much the hallmark of the Winchesters as self-sacrifice!

Willow Tree Motel. 2008

Dean startles awake to find himself back on his bed in the motel room he shares with Sam, leather jacket draped over him once more, as if he never left.



So did he really leave? Did he really travel back in time? Has Dean always been an integral part of his own family history, caught in some kind of infinite loop wherein he helps to create his own future? Is that why Castiel sent him back, knowing that Dean had to be there because he always had been?

Or was it all just a dream – an incredibly vivid, interactive alternate reality created for Dean by the angel for the purpose of aiding his understanding?

Also – Dean spent three days in the past, and yet woke up back in the exact same place at what seems to be more or less the exact same time. No time has passed while he was taking his little trip through time. "Sam's not looking for you," Castiel told him, and he made it sound fairly ominous – but of course Sam wouldn't be looking for Dean if he never actually went anywhere but to sleep, or if he returned within moments of leaving, before Sam came home and noticed his absence.

Severely rattled by what he just experienced – and again, Castiel always manages to have that effect on him – Dean sits up to find Castiel standing alongside the bed, staring off into space looking troubled.

"I couldn't stop any of it. She still made the deal," Dean breathes, crushed by this failure. He believes that was why Castiel sent him on his little trip – to stop it. That's what the angel told him, after all, what it led him to believe. "She still died in the nursery, didn't she?"

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Castiel smoothly intones. "You couldn't have stopped it."

So there the other shoe falls. Dean is astounded, can't believe what he is hearing.

"Destiny can't be changed, Dean," Castiel tells him, still staring off into space looking troubled. Then he turns to face the human he pulled out of hell. "All roads lead to the same destination."

But…for three seasons now, Show has plugged the line that everyone is responsible for their own actions and for the choices that they make, that nothing is inevitable! That everyone is in control of their own fate, and that destiny doesn't have to be written in stone. So how does Castiel's statement here tie in with that? Or does he mean that the past cannot be changed because it has already happened, so that any attempt to change the past will inevitably end up in the same place, whereas the future remains in flux?

Dean takes it like a blow to the stomach. "Then why'd you send me back?" It was cruel, to make him believe he could change what happened.



"For the truth. Now you know everything we do," says Castiel. He needed Dean to experience the sequence of events as they happened in order to believe. But allowing Dean to observe rather than interact would have been just as effective and a lot less cruel – surely there was no need for Castiel to make him believe he stood a chance of changing things. So maybe he needed Dean to be an active participant – maybe because his presence was a fact of history, Castiel needing the timeline to play out that way because it already had. Or maybe because he wants Dean to believe in predestination, that some things can't be changed, for reasons of his own? This being might be an angel, but he is bloody manipulative, and isn't necessarily to be trusted.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean can barely even speak, his head is spinning so much with what he just experienced and what he just learned, with the intensity of the emotion, and with the sheer confusion engendered by the angel's methods and inability to give a straight answer. Off balance and reeling – Castiel seems to like to keep him that way.

By way of answer, Castiel inclines his head toward the other bed in the room. Sam's bed. Dean was looking right at it when he woke up, but didn't take it in. The bed has not been slept in; Sam is not in the room. Dean is alarmed. "Where's Sam?"

"We know what Azazel did to your brother, what we don't know is why, what his endgame is," Castiel says, once again not answering the question he was asked. "He went to great lengths to cover that up."



Dean repeats his question more forcefully. "Where's Sam?" Some things never change. When he woke up believing that he had failed in his mission, his fear and devastation were dominant, warring with his confusion over what the angel wants from him. But now that he has concern for his brother to distract him, his confidence returns.

"Four-twenty-five Waterman," says Castiel, for once giving a straight answer to a straight question – but still for reasons of his own. Dean glares at the angel, grabs his coat, and heads for the door. "Your brother is headed down a dangerous road, Dean," Castiel calls after him. "And we're not sure where it leads. So stop it. Or we will."

Now there's a threat and a half – one that will motivate Dean far more than the threat to return him to hell ever could. He turns shocked and furious eyes upon the angel as he absorbs the implications.



To Be Continued….

Whew!

So, now we know. All those years, it was all about Mary, her loss the driving force behind everything John did. And now we learn that what set the whole course of events in motion was that for Mary it was all about John. Talk about the tragic love affair!

The Yellow-Eyed Demon killed both of Mary's parents, as well as Mary herself. He killed John (twice) and was responsible for Sam's death, which indirectly led to Dean's… That's an impressive toll to take on one family! Then again, he also made deals to return both John and Dean to life. Wow, but the twistiness eats my brain!

Azazel's endgame remains the huge mystery it has been all along, and it feels good to be returning to it. All we know so far is that he needed a human with special powers to lead his army, which would be Sam, and that the demons he held such tyranny over have splintered since his demise. And that Ruby has expressed a desire to find out what the plan was – maybe if she makes progress with that we'll learn more, although hopefully not at the expense of Sam's soul!

Overall – well, the writing of this episode is unashamedly manipulative, with many details clearly thrown in deliberately to tug on the heartstrings of hardcore fans. And it is cheesy in places. But do we care? Not a bit. I'm really, really loving season four. The writing has so much energy about it, from the plotting to the dialogue – it all just snap, crackles and pops, and it's fantastic. I really hope they can continue like this all season!



October 2008

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