Supernatural Review: No Pestilence Here

Sam gets some closure this week as he reunites with former college friend and undercover demon Brady. The unfortunate thing about this episode was that we didn’t see Matt Frewer as Pestilence at all and I was really looking forward to that. On the bright side we did get plenty of Crowley who pushed the plot forward.

The episode began with a demon janitor injecting one lab scientist with the Croatoan virus and then watching him kill his co-worker. The virus is a demonic one that makes humans murderously violent and was first introduced in season two episode nine. Meanwhile the Winchesters were trailing Pestilence from town to town by following a string of sudden flu epidemics. They never catch up to him though and were left wondering why the horseman has only been infecting people with a mild version of swine flu instead of unleashing the Croatoan virus.

As they drove east in hopes of catching Pestilence, the demon Crowley appears and offers them a proposition. He wants to lead them to another demon that would know where the horseman would be. Sam and Dean find out that Crowley has been keeping tabs on them by a magical coin and has kept up with all the things the brothers have gone through. He knows about the rings and the plan of getting Lucifer back inside his cage. The brothers are faced with the dilemma of trusting the demon or not after the last time they had had gotten Ellen and Jo killed. Crowley protested that he didn’t know that the Colt wouldn’t kill Lucifer and that he wasn’t responsible for Sam and Dean bringing along other people with them on the hunt.

The brothers end up going along with Crowley’s plan including leaving Sam behind. It all finally makes sense as we learn that Brady had been the younger Winchester’s college friend and had even introduced him to Jess. Dean and Crowley kidnap the demon, take him back to the old house and we find out that he had been the one to kill Jess under Azazel’s order to keep Sam from becoming soft.

Brady though was unwilling to talk and so Crowley is forced to make it look like the other demon had joined forces with them. Now that he was also on Lucifer’s hit list, the horsemen’s lackey begrudgingly gives up Pestilence’s location. Sam gets his revenge in the end and kills Brady using Ruby’s knife. Crowley shows up at Bobby’s claiming that he has a way to find Death (the final horseman) but he was going to need a soul. The episode ends with the demon saying he was going to give it (the soul) right back.

I wasn’t terribly excited over this episode mainly because Matt Frewer was missing. It was nice that the Croatoan virus made a cameo and we get an idea of how it potentially spreads into the world (the future that Dean experienced during “The End,” season 5 episode 4). What I did enjoy was seeing Brady communicate to Pestilence via goblet of blood because the last time we saw it was in the same episode as the Croatoan virus’s first appearance. Was it a demon-to-demon communication device and if so then were the Four Horsemen counted as demons? We know that Lucifer created demons but we aren’t sure what the origins of the horsemen are. Since their rings are powerful enough to cage the devil maybe they are something else entirely. Either way I’m not sure we’ll ever find out what they are exactly. The episode did set up the next adventure nicely.  Will Bobby loan his soul?

Season 5, Episode 20: The Devil You Know (Originally aired April 29, 2010)

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Photograph courtesy of The CW and Michael Courtney.