Supernatural: Hello Antichrist

Six episodes deep into season five, Supernatural continues to beat strong and vibrant as the apocalyptic world that the Winchester brothers find themselves in, unfolds even more. I love that so far we’ve been given little tidbits of Bible prophecies that are slowly coming true. We’ve met the mafia-like angels, Lucifer, who really knows how to push the right buttons, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and this week we say hello to the Antichrist.

Other portrayals of the Antichrist have been that of handsome, suave, and manipulative men bent on power. I was totally not expecting a kid. Good one, you totally caught me off guard.

But before that let’s start at the beginning. The opening scene begins with a teenager sitting on the ground really just inches away from the television (didn’t your mother teach you not to sit too close to the TV?). They chose a dark filter that made you think oh something bad is right around the corner. But it turns out that she’s babysitting a little boy who tries to scare with a fake arrow through the head and ketchup. Next thing you know the parents get home and the father finds the babysitter dead on the couch with the side of her head bloody with deep gashes.

Sam and Dean arrive soon after at the coroner’s office to examine the body. The medical examiner ends up informing them that the babysitter scratched her own brains out. Creepy. The scene ends on the victim’s hand with one of her fake nails missing (it was found lodged in her head).

So like any good sleuths, they head back to the scene of the crime and interview the bewildered family. Dean finds out with some light threatening that the boy had put itching powder on his babysitter’s hairbrush (she was using it at the very beginning of the episode while entranced on whatever was playing on TV). It gets even weirder as they are called back into the coroner’s office where you get a close up of shoes looking burnt to a crisp inside a body bag. They meet an older man who tells them that it’s not supposed to work leaving the brothers confused. The body bag man was apparently killed by one of those toy zappers. They head back to their motel with zapper in hand and prepare to test it out with a nice piece of ham. Voila, instant snack for Dean to munch on throughout the rest of the episode!

The next victim is a father whose thirty-two teeth are pulled out by a large scruffy man wearing a pink tutu and fairy wings. Yes, it was the tooth fairy. There was a funny moment where the man’s daughter comments on how creepy it was for some stranger to enter her room to take a tooth from under her pillow. She was the smart one and crept into her dad’s room and put it under his pillow instead! The tooth fairy victim is checked into a hospital where Dean encounters a group of kids who ate pop rocks with soda and one had his face frozen into place (it was not very pretty…).

Sam armed with a blueprint realizes that all these strange events happened within a certain perimeter with a house right at the center of it. Here’s where it gets interesting, they meet young Jesse who they learn is the source of all the strange happenings. He believed in all these tall tales, but how was he making it all come true was the question.

Finally the pieces come together as we learn that Jesse was adopted and that his birth mother was living across the state. From her we learn that she was possessed by a demon and that she gave birth to him while a virgin. This is our first clue. When Sam and Dean get back to the motel, Cas shows up and informs them that Jesse is the Antichrist. Say what? Yes, but that the Antichrist didn’t have to be the devil’s spawn but just a spawn of a demon. Jesse as a half human half demon is incredibly powerful and able to make things happen just by thinking it. He also happens to be wanted by both demons and angels. The demons want him because he’s going to be a tool used by Lucifer during the apocalypse and the angels fear him because he’s supposed to destroy them.

The theme of the episode then comes to choice. Sam and Dean finally come clean and tell Jesse the truth after Jesse’s birth mom (who becomes possessed again by the same demon from years ago) tries to convince the boy to come with her. The brothers tell him the truth that he is half human and half demon, that he is a part of the apocalypse, but above all he had a choice to do what was right. The episode ends with Jesse reversing all the damage he did and disappearing presumably to Australia. Sam, in struggling with his own choices, hopes that Jesse will make the decision that he didn’t make. Dean in the meantime realizes why parents lie to their kids, because if it makes them safer so be it.

What I liked about this episode was the progression of the overall storyline as well as reminding us of another looming problem: Sam as Lucifer’s vessel and Dean as Michael’s vessel. There was a good amount of comic moments, including Dean’s outlet for boredom along with thoughts of a hot nurse, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Season 5, Episode 6: I Believe The Children Are Our Future (original air date October 15, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of The CW and Jack Rowland