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"Back and to the Future" – Supernatural S15E01 Review

And so we're back with another premiere of a returning CW favorite. To wit, Supernatural.

Alexander Calvert, Supernatural S15E01

"Back and to the Future" takes up where season 14 left off. Chuck is pissed, kills Jack, and releases all the souls from Hell. As the episode begins, Sam (Jared Padalecki), Dean (Jensen Ackles), and Castiel (Misha Collins) are fighting the corpses the escaping spirits have occupied. The trio grab Jack's body and take refuge in a crypt... and a demon, Balphegor, possesses Jack's (Alexander Calvert) body. Long live Jack, Jack.2 is back!

Balphegor finds a discarded pair of sunglasses to cover Jack's burned-out eye sockets, and casts a spell to blast all of the spirits out of the corpses. The team then heads into the nearby town of Harlan, KS, and finds an abandoned car with blood smeared on the inside. The Winchesters must have better memories than I do, because they remember the Woman in White killed people the same way, way back in season 1 in "Pilot". Presumably this is the same Woman in White, although according to legend any such ghost is called a "Woman in White".

Jared Padalecki, Supernatural S15E01

Realizing the souls of all the spirits they sent to Hell are back, the group continues to Harlan. Sam convinces the sheriff there's a benzene leak and the population has to be evacuated to a nearby high school. Dean and Balphegor get the components for a spirit-containing spell that will seal all of the ghosts in Harlan, while Sam and Castiel go searching for stragglers.

Sam and Castiel find a mother and daughter being stalked by a Clown Ghost. The monster hunters get the two out and head down the street, but the Clown Ghost, Bloody Mary, and two other ghosts attack them. Meanwhile, the Woman in White kills the sheriff and then attacks Dean and Balphegor.

Both groups manage to dissipate the ghosts long enough so Balphegor can cast his spell. Sam and Castiel get their charges past the containing line. The group takes mother and daughter to the high school, and Sam and Dean figure since God has abandoned their Earth, when they win it'll be on their own.

Jensen Ackles, Supernatural S15E01

Along the way, Balphegor says he's just a worker demon in Hell. And enjoys looking at the attractive humanity (when he was a human, they all worshipped a "penis-shaped rock"). And admires Dean for the torturing skill he displayed in Hell when working under Alistair.

Also, Sam has the gunshot wound from shooting Chuck in his shoulder and Castiel can't heal it. And Castiel can't stand the sight of Balphegor because the demon is "wearing" Jack's body. The Winchesters' Michael, the one trapped in the Cage, also had his cell door opened. According to Balphegor, Michael is just sitting in the Cage. We'll see.

"Back and to the Future" was an... okay episode. Supernatural varies so much across each season it's hard to judge much of anything by one episode. The stakes, for instance, are a bit confusing. We hear about how 2-3 billion souls escaped Hell. So… they're all contained in the town? We see hundreds of spirit-possessed corpses attacking the trio at the beginning: are they all in Harlan? And if there's only a relative handful of the three billion souls trapped in Harlan... so what? There's at least a couple of billion out there in the world: confining a few in Harlan doesn't seem like much of anything.

Also, there's a lot of talk about ghosts and spirits. And Supernatural has had its share of creepy ghosts in all of the seasons. But what about all the other monsters the Winchesters have killed? What can the ghosts of vampires and werewolves and shapeshifters do? Did they go to Hell? Some of them were either infected and transformed against their will, or living their lives based on their own sense of "good". Were they in Hell and escaped with the others?

Misha Collinsi, Supernatural S15E01

So the stakes are rather bit vague. There are plenty of old ghosts and new for the Winchesters and Castiel to fight. Alexander Calvert seems to be having fun playing the more freewheeling Balphegor, rather than the vaguely Spock-like Jack from the last few seasons, and that fun is infectious to some degree. Dean gets in some snark, but Sam and Castiel are their usual super-serious selves.

Finally, you have to wonder what the point is? Judging from the previews, it looks like Season 15 will be more than just "The Winchesters' Greatest Hits", as we get some of those three billion ghosts the Winchesters sent to Hell. So they have to fight all-new menaces. Which is good, because otherwise it's the Winchesters going up against ghosts... they've already beaten. There's nothing to indicate the ghosts got some kind of power-boost from Chuck, so if the Winchesters beat them once, presumably they can do it again. Like it or not, the Winchesters have moved beyond the point where run-of-the-mill ghosts pose much of a threat to them.

Granted, there are billions of ghosts now, so the brothers have to face multiple ghosts rather than one or two at a time. That makes the ghosts a bit more dangerous, but even with that it doesn't seem like the ghosts pose much of a threat to the boys. And this time around they have Castiel on their side, even though his powers still come and go. For instance, I've lost track: can he teleport or not?

Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, Supernatural S15E01

But I'm not sure if any of this matters. After 15 seasons, Supernatural is comfort food. It's pretty unlikely the creative team is going to surprise us with anything. The Winchesters will have to deal with a monster of the week, they'll have internal angst, there'll be a few other multi-episode threads, we'll get a comedy episode, they'll keep secrets from each other until they're revealed at the worst possible moments, they'll shed some manly tears, we'll get some blasts from the past, there'll be a mid-season mini-finale, they'll bring someone from the past back for a "very special" episode, and things will wrap up at the end of the season. The only difference will probably be since this is the last season, they'll wrap things up for good instead of set things for the next season.

And that's why we watch Supernatural. We know what's coming, Padalecki, Ackles & Collins will deliver the acting goods, Calvert has always been okay at worst as Jack and it looks like he'll get to cut loose as Balphegor. The CW has made various attempts at bringing serialized horror to the small screen, but Supernatural is still the king. Hail to the king, baby.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

Written by Gislef on Oct 11, 2019

Comments

Gislef posted 4 years ago

Which was kinda my point. Shouldn't at least some of them have gone to Hell? And some to Heaven? And can't God release whatever monsters are in Purgatory, as easily as he can release spirits from Hell? If God wants to set off the Apocalypse, or wipe out the Winchesters, or whatever, why stop at just ghosts?

And shouldn't some of the ghosts that the Winchesters have "killed" over the seasons have gone to Heaven? Not all of them deserved to go to Hell, and I recall at a least a few being released to their "just rewards". Ghosts exist because they didn't go with their Reaper to Heaven or Hell. Like Sam said in "Roadkill", "Well, they weren't evil people, you know. A lot of them were good, just something happened to them. Something they couldn't control." Did they all end up in Hell? Kevin Tran became a ghost: did he end up in Hell?

That's why the stakes are kind of vague. Are all the three billions ghosts "evil"? Or did all ghosts go automatically to Hell (which seems to contradict the show's theology)? Or are there a whole bunch of ghosts that either went to Heaven or are caught in The Veil, that aren't part of the three billion?

IMO, "monsters" are like ghosts. Some are good, some are evil. One Leviathan described Purgatory as a "worse neighborhood" than Hell.

Finally, from a story point of view, ghosts are boring. Like I noted, the Winchesters have fought and destroyed so many of them. Granted, they have the numbers now, both in possessing corpses and fighting in groups like the four that fought Sam and Castiel. But one hopes they'll expand the theology a bit: God could have released monsters from Purgatory, which is worse than Hell so seems ripe for Apocalypse picking. He could have released "good" ghosts. He's God: he could do pretty much anything he wants and lots of it.

And why the heck did the ghosts in the final fight go from teleporting and reflection-emerging, to running?

DamienKidd posted 4 years ago

"But what about all the other monsters the Winchesters have killed?" - Monsters go to purgatory when they die, not hell (or heaven).

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