Supernatural: Season 7 Premiere

Supernatural started off as a somewhat spooky show about folk tales and ghost stories. We followed Sam and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki) as they hunted the things that no one else believed in so that those things would stop going boomp in the night.

It’s a great concept—a duo of unappreciated Samaritans defends an unsuspecting world from things out of the darkest imaginings of the mind. It was only a matter of time before the writers of the show had to up the ante and go biblical. And they did, starting slowly at first, suggesting hints of demons and such. But eventually they went full tilt, and it was glorious. There were renegade angels, God on hiatus, the Apocalypse—and here come Sam and Dean, a couple of gruff Abbot and Costellos trying to wind their way through this metaphysical maze of crap in order to bring peace and justice to an insane world.

But one has to ask, if the writers upped the ante somewhere between seasons 2 and 3, how the hell are they going to have anything interesting to say in season 7? Hasn’t it all been said? And how do you out-climax the climax of dealing with the freaking Apocalypse? Well, they’re managing to do it still, five seasons later. I guess they just break down the vast amounts of information into season-sized chunks. There is so much lore, I suppose there are endless sources available to dissect and reevaluate in order to find out how this show’s characters would deal.

Last season we found out that all those creatures who go boomp in the night were actually created by Eve, The Mother of All (Julia Maxwell). And when they die, their souls go to purgatory since there is no place for them in Heaven or Hell as they aren’t human (So I suppose poor fluffy the cat is stuck with the shapeshifters and the vampires once her 10^th life kicks in. And apparently, all dogs go to Purgatory so that they can get the marrow sucked from their bones by the soul of a once-rabid loup garou).

So after all of that, what’s going on in this season?

Well, buckle your seat belt, because before I can tell you, I’ve got to give you this disorienting orientation to where we are now. Here it goes…

In the season 7 Finale, the renegade angel Castiel (Misha Collins) made a deal with Crowley (Mark Sheppard), an ambitious crossroads demon who is now the new King of Hell, in order to stop the Angel Raphael (Demore Barnes/Lanette Ware) from reversing Sam and Dean’s reversal of the Apocalypse. Raphael wanted to take over Heaven because God had been absent for too long, and he thought it was unfair that humans had free will and he wanted to even the playing field, clear the slate, etc. Castiel argued that free will was a virtue and that God’s absence was a message indicating that the angels should follow suit.

But, after millennia of following orders, most angels found the free will concept baffling. This, coupled with the fact that Raphael was stronger than Castiel, led Castiel to make that deal with the King of Hell—who actually isn’t Lucifer (Mark Pelleggrino) at the moment because Lucifer and Michael (Matt Cohen/Jake Abel) were trapped in a cage and sent to hell by Sam and Dean the first time the Apocalypse was reverted, but that’s a whole other ball of wax).

Anyway, Castiel and Crowley agree to torture creatures into giving up the location of purgatory so that they can unlock it and take the souls into themselves to gain ultimate power. Throughout all of this there were power struggles and deceits, and it was all very suspenseful and full of nail-biting close calls, but eventually Castiel got all of the souls from Purgatory.

One would think that this would’ve been a good thing, but the bottom dropped out when the “new Castiel” demands that Sam, Dean, the King of Hell, and anyone else in the general vicinity bow down before him—their all-powerful new God. And then, the freaking season ended, leaving us hanging for months. And now we’re back to this. What’s going to happen?

In this season 7 premiere episode, Sam and Dean wrestle with the fact that they are powerless to act against the new god Castiel, but they try their best to come up with some sort of plan to stop him because he is a false god. Meanwhile, Castiel is busy killing prophets and hypocrites who falsely act in his name—i.e. homosexual preachers who condemn the gay community, and political leaders who push their agenda under the pretense of fighting against a godless society. Sam and Dean decide that the only way they can make a dent against Castiel and his new powers is to cast a spell that binds Death (Julian Richings).

That’s right, Death, with a capital D.

If Death’s hands are tied, he cannot cause the death of anyone, and thus Catiel’s power over souls is meaningless because the souls won’t go anywhere, because no one will be able to die, because… yes, Sam and Dean bound Death.

This crazy action, though daring, doesn’t work. But through it they learn that Castiel isn’t a god; he is a mutated angel who not only swallowed all of the souls in Purgatory, but also all of the freaking Leviathans who were locked away there by the true God because they were too dangerous.

And so, here is this season’s theme. Will the Leviathans consume the once good Castiel and wreak havoc on earth? Can Sam and Dean save him before it’s too late? Where is God, is he going to intervene? What’s that crafty King of Hell going to do what all of this is going on? All of this and the fact that Sam is suffering from possible hallucinations-turned-real due to his time spent being tortured in Hell, will be addressed this season (I hope…fingers crossed!).

Watching this show is a crazy hop-scotch game down “What If It Happened Lane.” It’s a fun mental exercise that I look forward to weekly. Sure, sometimes the show can get a bit unbelievable, overly-dramatic, and predicable; but it’s still fascinating, labyrinthine, and rooted in the emotional “die for you” type of family bond between the brothers. And that makes it real, despite the fact that reality doesn’t live here. This premiere episode is a great kick off to what appears to be one hell of an upcoming season.  Grab your popcorn, and get ready.

UPDATE: Correction was made that hallucinations were attributed to Sam instead of Dean.