From MadCap's Couch - Supernatural: "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester"

Let's show these ghost bitches how we do it downtown!

Last time, Dean returned from Hell under mysterious circumstances! While Sam had clearly teamed up with Ruby to hunt demons in his absence, Dean and Bobby summoned up the creature responsible for Dean's resurrection - an angel named Castiel. Season 4 was definitely set off with a bang... so what happens next?

We get a "Then" montage that goes over a few previous episodes, largely focusing on the people that Dean and Sam couldn't save in their careers as hunters - such as Meg's original host, conspiracy nut Ronald, and Agent Henriksen and those people in the police station who were nuked by Lilith. Also, of course, we go over the previous Season arc that ended with Sam and Dean trying to figure out a way to get Dean out of his deal and ultimately failing... and then coming back.

This interspersed with action shots and a hard rock song, because it's Supernatural, damn it!

It ends with Castiel reiterating - God commanded Dean's resurrection, because the angels have work for him.

After the opening title card, a woman is asleep on her couch when the lights begin to flicker and she has visible breath as seen when ghosts are near. Opening a cabinet and checking out an EMF detector, we learn that this woman is a hunter, further punctuated by Bobby popping up on her answering machine to leave a message. Armed for trouble, the woman sees a ghost that she very clearly recognizes and blasts him with salt rounds before working on a salt barrier. Alas, the ghost has reformed and is joined by the ghost of a blonde woman, who rams her hand into the hunter's chest.

At Bobby's, he looks over the books and Dean is skeptical of Castiel's status as an angel. Sam, on the other hand, is far more ready to believe (as we've seen before). While the boys argue, Bobby has pulled up the lore that he has on angels and they are the only things that can pull something out of Hell. Dean, champion of "I don't really matter", isn't buying it because he does not believe that God would actually care about him. It's actually kind of a sad moment, but then any bit where Dean has to get philosophical and/or contemplates his own existence generally is.

Sam heads out for a supply run, running into Ruby. She is scared shitless at the prospect of an angel running around and warns Sam to watch himself - the angels are not good news. When Sam returns to Bobby's Scrapyard, he finds Bobby and Dean prepping for a trip out to the home of the hunter from the pre-title sequence (and Sam forgot the pie, much to Dean's chagrin). After some travel time, the three arrive to find the home of the hunter - Olivia - in a state with a clear salt line having been broken and Olivia herself very, very dead as you might expect from having her chest impaled through.

They work out that it's a spirit, though Dean says he's never seen a spirit get this intense on a person. Bobby, in the meantime, has tried to contact other hunters and has likewise heard nothing from them.

We cut to another hunter's house, which is in disarray and with the body of said hunter bloodied on the floor with Dean's voice on his answering machine. Later on, they find that two more hunters that Bobby knows have died. Something is going on... but what? At a gas station, Sam gets a bit of an answer when he goes to the restroom and comes face to face with none other than Agent Henriksen. Henriksen makes it very clear that he's not only dead, but very dead and it was not a quick process. Needless to say, he's more than a little pissed about being left to die... and he begins throwing Sam around like a ragdoll. Dean pops in with salt rounds to save Sam at the last minute.

Back at Bobby's, his lights flicker and his breath goes cold. He hears the laughter of children all around him, the distortion on the radio at the desk, and wanders through the house for a very intense scene that ends at the foot of the stairs with a ball being dropped down at his feet. Turning around, a set of twin girls stare menacingly at him.

Next time, Bobby decided, he would have that after dinner mint...

With Henriksen out and about, Sam believes the ghosts are out for revenge against the hunters who couldn't save them. Getting back to Bobby's, the boys fan out and search for him. Sam passes by him in the junkyard, hidden in the burnt out shell of a car by the two little girls. Dean, meanwhile, comes across the ghost of Meg Masters... as in the woman who the demon they knew as Meg possessed, the woman who died after the exorcism that they performed. Meg explains that - while possessed - she was awake and witnessed the demon Meg committing horrible atrocities. All the while, Dean and Sam did not help her. Dean tries to apologize, saying that they didn't know... and she doesn't take that very well at all, throwing him around and putting him down. As she grabs his collar, he notes a strange mark on her hand.

The little girls taunt Bobby, speaking of a monster that he could not save them from even though he was right there. Sam, meanwhile, figures out that Bobby is trapped in a car and starts trying to pry them open to find him.

Meg draws a parallel between her little sister and Dean's relationship with Sam, how her sister just got lost when Meg died.

...hmmmm...

However, said sister killed herself after seeing Meg's body in the morgue and Meg considers that blood, among others, is firmly on Dean's hands.

Outside, Sam finds Bobby and the two take out the ghost girls with an iron poker.

Inside, facing imminent death, Dean shoots and drops an iron chandelier on Meg, making her discorporate. Reunited, the boys and Bobby try to figure out what the connection is between all the things going on - Dean mentioning the marking on Sam and Sam saying he also saw it on Henriksen. Gathering the books, Bobby tells the boys to follow him to some place safe. Cue the demonic panic room, one of the more awesome Bobby Singer inventions and a place we'll be seeing a lot of this season. Learning of it, Dean rightly declares Bobby awesome.

Later, the boys are prepping salt rounds and Dean gets philosophical again with the "If God exists, then why does evil" argument. Like me, Bobby avoids the issue, but he has found the mark in his books: the Mark of the Witness, people who saw something supernatural in life and were killed by it and are now being forcibly resurrected in an event known as the Rising of the Witnesses. It's apparently in a prophecy that is in a book that Bobby mentions is widely distributed...

...and he incorrectly refers to it as the Book of Revelations.

RIP Nikki Aycox

But, yeah, it's a sign of the Apocalypse yet to come. Bobby has found a spell that should put the Witnesses back to rest, but he'll need to translate it properly and he'll need to retrieve some things from the house proper ("You thought our luck was gonna start now?"). The three head out, planning to perform the spell over the fire in Bobby's fireplace. Heading out, they find Ronald on the stairs waiting for them. He seems a bit more amicable at first, but that quickly fades as he's just as pissed as Henriksen and Meg were. Bobby sorts out that particular problem with a salt round and they head upstairs.

The fire is lit, the salt lines are made, and they get to work. The ghost girls pop in to be shot again, still appearing again to guilt Bobby time and again. Upstairs, Sam's retrieving a hex box and Meg appears to taunt him about his... extracurricular activities with Ruby, calling him a monster for allying with her. What exactly he's doing, however, is unrevealed as he blows Meg away.

Henriksen pops in to attack Dean, mentioning that the torture Lilith put them under was over forty-five minutes - which I feel is the writers making a meta joke about critics complaining about the show - and Henriksen puts his hand into Dean's chest, only for Sam to return the favor from earlier and save him with a salt round. Getting back to Bobby, the boys run defense as Ronald pops in again to taunt and guilt Dean. The ghosts tear the windows open and start blowing the salt lines away. Sam and Dean blast Meg, Heniksen, and Ronald again and again as they keep rematerializing while Bobby works on the incantation. However, soon enough, the boys are out of ammo and are down to using iron rods... well, Dean is. Sam gets pinned against a wall via a desk Meg flings at him.

Meg then impales Bobby through the back and, at the last second, Dean catches the bowl that Bobby has been working with and follows his direction to toss it into the fire. The flames turn blue, and the ghosts are gone.

Later, while they all have a well-deserved rest, Dean awakens and spies Castiel waiting in Bobby's kitchen. Going in to speak with him, Castiel congratulates him on defeating the Witnesses. Dean berates him for not helping them out, but Castiel explains that there are bigger battles going on out there that don't involve them. Dean gets some of his anguish out about whether or not God exists, but soon we get on topic - the Witnesses being a sign of the Apocalypse.

Castiel explains that the Rising is one of the sixty-six seals, which are being broken by Lilith. When Dean mentions that they put the Witnesses down, but Castiel says that the seal is broken regardless. When all of them are broken? Lucifer walks free. While Dean tries to pass it off as demon fairy tales, but Castiel rightly points out that Dean thought that angels weren't real a week ago.

Castiel makes it clear that there is a bigger picture to everything and reminds Dean that he took him out of Hell and he can throw him back in.

The next morning, Dean awakens and asks Sam about his belief in God. When Sam confirms that he's still a believer, Dean asks him if he believes in the Devil... and the episode ends.

"Hello, I am your exposition and fangirl magnet for the evening."

Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester is a pretty good episode that touches on the consequences of the lives of hunters, specifically the people that they couldn't save. The episode forces the boys to come to terms with how their lives leave destruction in their wake, even in unintentional ways as lives are ended horribly and not just because of the things they fight, but what they do to fight those things. As Meg points out, Sam and Dean gave little if any regard to her while she was possessed by Demon!Meg, even to the point of her being thrown out a window in a fall that by all rights made sure she'd die if not contributed heavily to her eventual death in Devil's Trap.

This applies at a lesser extent to both Henriksen and Ronald as well, though Meg's is clearly the one that not only hits with the most punch, but is meant to. Her aside with Sam is proof of that as well, contributing to the season's arc as well. Also, it was just cool to see Nicki Aycox again after so long off the show. It would be her last appearance on the show, which is doubly sad due to her unfortunate passing from leukemia in 2022.

It all also contributes to the conversation we started back in Bloodlust about hunters and morality. Maybe, just maybe, Sam and Dean will do their best to be a little wiser in the future concerning their job.

...stop laughing!

That's all there really is to say on the episode, though. It's a solid one and done that still contributes to the season arc.  In particular, the lore about the 66 Seals. Once one is broken, it's broken, even if the threat that it creates is dealt with. Heaven, and now the Winchesters, are potentially fighting a losing battle.

Lilith not being directly involved, but still being outed as the one responsible for the Rising is sort of putting her in that same constant menace that Azazel had in Season 1 and 2, although admittedly not as effective as that, but we'll get into that later on. Next time, Dean takes a trip back to the 1970s and learns that his relationship with hunting may not have started on that terrible night in 1983 like he always thought it had.

Next time, Dean will learn what happened In the Beginning!

Be there!