Supernatural Saturdays: Season Three Recap

A week following the opening of the Devil’s Gates in Wyoming, Bobby directs Sam and Dean to one of seventeen cities where large, dark clouds (black smoke being the demon’s form outside of their hosts) had been reported on the same night. None of the other cities had reported any strange activity except for a place just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. The boys meet up with Bobby at a farmhouse in this area, where they find the entire family has starved to do death in front of their television. They also meet up with a couple of hunters, Isaac and Tamara who blame the Winchesters for opening the gates and have no desire to help them.

Another strange death, this time a woman killed over a pair of shoes, occurs in the town and a man is seen talking to the

The little fallen angel on Sam's shoulder

assailant in the security footage just before the murder. Sam is being stalked by a blonde woman who disappears before he can get a look at her. Bobby, Sam and Dean discover the identity of the possessed man, Walter and follow him to a bar. Tamara and Isaac arrive and head straight into the bar, which is full of patrons all possessed by the Seven Deadly Sins and quickly realize they’re in over their heads. One of the demons convinces Isaac to drink a container of drain cleaner while his wife watches, and dies just before the Impala crashes through the front of the bar. Bobby and the boys fight off the rest of the demons and rescue Tamara, bringing Walter back to Tamara’s house to interrogate him before sending the demon (Envy) back to Hell.

The rest of the demons, including one wearing Isaac’s “meat suit” (the lovely term used for a human host), descend upon the house. Tamara goes out and kills this particular demon alone but breaks the salt line around the door in the process, allowing the rest of the demons to get in. Sam, Dean and Bobby handle the rest and Sam is confronted by Pride, who catches him off guard by bringing up Sam’s role as the Boy King of Hell and his connection with the Yellow Eyed Demon. The blonde appears out of nowhere, killing Pride and another demon with a special knife (previously thought impossible by hunters) and then helps Sam with a third demon before disappearing again. The group spends the rest of the night exorcising the remaining demons. Once they’re finished with the demons, Dean reveals to Sam that if he tries to get out of his deal, Sam will die. Instead of trying to find a way out of it, Dean wants to spend his last year doing what he does best – killing some evil sons of bitches and raising a little hell.

Bela Talbot

The Winchester boys continue tracking down other demons who escaped the Devil’s Gates, ghosts and other creatures, like a changeling which takes the form of children so it can feed from their parents. One of the children is the son of one of Dean’s former flings, Lisa and acts just a little too much like Dean. Later, Sam and Dean have a run in with a thief named Bela and a streak of ridiculously good and bad luck when they investigate a cursed item that went missing from John’s storage locker in New York. She shows up throughout the rest of the season, equally being a help and a hinderance to the boys, and ends up succumbing to her own deal that had been made ten years before she met the Winchesters. They find out that Sam’s blonde stalker is actually a demon who wants to help Sam and offers to help by giving him information and finding a way to get Dean out of his deal. Gordon Walker, the hunter who the boys met last season and who has been holding a grudge against them since they got him arrested, escapes from prison and tracks them down through Bela. He is caught by the vampire that Sam and Dean are hunting and is turned into one himself, becoming the one thing he’s hated since he was a kid. Sam ends up killing him after Gordon traps he and Dean in separate rooms of warehouse.

There’s even a Christmas special, appropriately titled “A Very Supernatural Christmas”, where Sam and Dean encounter a pair of pagan gods in the guise of an Ozzie and Harriet-style couple who are only trying to take in a couple human sacrifices (what’s a few dead humans here and there, right?) The episode also features the origin of Dean’s amulet, a Christmas present from Sam when they were kids and a nice, quiet moment between the boys as they enjoy their last Christmas together. In “Mystery Spot” (one of my favorite episodes of the entire series) Sam and Dean meet up again with The Trickster (first seen in “Tall Tales”) who proves to Sam that his biggest weakness is Dean by forcing Sam to watch Dean die over and over on the same day in some very hilarious ways – including poisoned tacos and mauling by a sweet looking Golden Retriever. This episode will also make you love or hate the Asia song “Heat of the Moment”. Fans of shows like Ghost Hunters might enjoy the reappearance of Ed Zeddmore and Harry Spangler, who have started their own investigation group, the Ghostfacers in the episode of the same name.

Liltih, the demon who takes the form of adorable little girls and who is out for Sam’s head, is found in New Harmony, Indiana where she has taken a suburban family hostage by inhabiting the body of their daughter. Ruby convinces Sam that he can defeat Lilith while she has her guard down, he only has to improve his psychic abilities instead of using her handy dandy demon killing knife, but Dean shoots down the idea and they take the knife, leaving Ruby trapped. Along with Bobby, Sam and Dean drive to New Harmony to face Lilith, and as they find out, an entire neighborhood full of demons. Ruby catches up with them after somehow escaping her Devil’s Trap and Dean, because he is so close to going to Hell, can see her “true” face, which disgusts him. They enter the house of the family which Lilith is holding hostage, Dean takes the father to safety and Sam and Ruby head

Sam crying over Dean's body

upstairs, splitting up. Sam finds the mother who is terrified and holding her sleeping “daughter” while she sleeps; he pulls out the knife to kill Lilith once and for all, but the girl wakes up and reveals that she is no longer possessed. They make sure the family is safely out of the way and realize that Dean only has a few more moments left before the Hellhounds come.
Sam and Ruby do their best to hold the Hellhounds off by barricading the doors and windows with a special powder. Ruby suddenly demands her knife back from Sam, pinning him against a wall and Dean against a desk when Dean realizes that she really isn’t Ruby, but Lilith (indicated by her white eyes; most demons have black ones and Crossroad demons have red). She refuses to deal with either of them and lets the Hellhounds in through the door. Sam watches in horror as Dean is mauled by the invisible dogs. Lilith’s attempt to kill Sam with a powerful white light is defeated by Sam’s own powers and she leaves Ruby’s body when she realizes that she can’t kill Sam. Alone with his brother, Sam holds Dean as he sobs over his dead body.

The very last shot of the episode is of Dean, who is caught up in various hooks piercing his flesh among clouds of black smoke and lightning, and crying out for Sam.

This season was cut short by the 2007-08 Writers Guild Strike, only having sixteen episodes instead of the usual twenty-two. Look out for my Season Four recap next Saturday!

Still interested in the show? Amazon has a special deal if you buy the first three seasons together, so check it out:  Supernatural: The Complete Third Season