In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural

INTRODUCTION

When Supernatural first burst onto our screens in September 2005, no one could have imagined what an impact it would have on viewers. It was one of many similar genre shows to air that fall, and given the smaller WB network it aired on, it seemed doomed never to achieve a large audience.

And yet, despite its uphill battle, Supernatural was the only new genre show to survive when the following year’s network schedules were announced. It may not have huge ratings, but it has grown a loyal fan-base that will stop at nothing to protect it.

So what makes Supernatural so different?

What makes ordinary people like myself turn into obsessed, overly passionate fans who think nothing of rearranging vacations, work plans, and much more just to fit the show into our lives?

Some might say it’s the irresistible looks of Supernatural’s two main stars-and I will agree, Jensen and Jared are very appealing to the eye. But there’s so much more to it than that, so much more that we can learn about within the covers of this book.

Join me for a preview of what I know you will find some fascinating insights into the CW’s best kept secret.

I think he wants us to pick up where he left off, you know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.

-DEAN WINCHESTER, Wendigo (1-2)

To embrace Supernatural, you first have to understand that, while Supernatural’s a show about heroism, heroism isn’t always about fighting evil and saving the damsel in distress. While we all love to see Dean and Sam rock-salting a spirit or exorcizing a demon, those moments really only scrape the surface. Sometimes our hunters need saving too, and it’s this element that grips fans, often to the point where we actually don’t want to draw a line between fantasy and reality. When Jensen Ackles jokingly pleaded with viewers to write to Eric Kripke, the show’s creator, and ask to save Dean from his demonic deal, you just knew that the CW’s mailbox was going to be full for a few weeks to come.

We love to see the brothers’ inner turmoil play out.

We love to see Dean and Sam struggling with their inner demons.

Why?

Because heroism on this show is all about what the Winchester family will sacrifice for each other. It’s about the unshakable faith they have in one another-a faith that carries them through possessions, near-death experiences, and ultimately the threat of Hell itself. This is the kind of family bond most people can only ever dream of. Would your father or brother die for you? Would they go to Hell for you, facing unimaginable pain and suffering?

These are the kind of heroics that attract us fans, just as much as the Winchesters battling rabid Rakshasas or soul-hungry demons.

When someone says a place is haunted, don’t go in.

-DEAN WINCHESTER, Asylum (1-10)

We Supernatural fans like our heroes to be angsty, but we do still like them to be heroes. We like them to be fighting external demons, too. We still need our fix of all things freaky to get us through the night, after all.

And in this department, Supernatural excels, giving us a weekly mix of urban folklore and ancient legends played out in various backwater locations across the U.S. Usually, these myths have been tantalizingly re-imagined for our viewing delight by such talented writers as Sera Gamble and Jeremy Carver, to name but two. While some of these legends are eerily familiar to us, it’s easily apparent that a massive amount of research goes into bringing us the more unheard of stories-stories that give the audience a chance to not only sink into the macabre plots but actually have fun with folklore that otherwise would have remained sunken in obscurity.

Forget history 101 and anthropology. It’s much more fun to tag along with the Winchesters in the back seat of the Impala!

Hey, you better take care of that car, or I swear I’ll haunt your ass.

-DEAN WINCHESTER, Faith (1-12)

And of course, speaking of the raven metal behemoth, the boys riding in the Impala is something we love to see on Supernatural. For true fans, the classic Chevy has become more than just an aging motor. Over three seasons, she has become a character in her own right, one we can’t bear to see harmed any more than we can the Winchesters themselves. There was a time when most TV shows had a cool car, and Dean’s baby is right up there with the best of them. Forget KITT and the General Lee-the Impala is big, she’s black, and it appears she’s more indestructible than Superman . . . at least if In My Time of Dying (2-1) is to be believed.

The fans apparently aren’t the only ones who see the car as something more. In Dead Man’s Blood (1-20), John chided Dean for not taking care of the Impala, and every time Dean’s life hangs in the balance, she is his first thought after Sam. And in Fresh Blood (3-7), Sam even succumbed to his brother’s wishes and began to learn how to fix his four-wheeled sibling.

Supernatural is as much about family values as hunting the unknown, and the Impala is 100 percent Winchester all the way!

I choose to go down swinging.

-DEAN WINCHESTER, Jus in Bello (3-12)

Whatever attracts each fan to Supernatural, one thing is a constantwe’ll fight to the bitter end to keep the Winchesters on our screens. We’re in love with each and every part of the show, from its production crew, writing staff, and stars, right on up to Master Kripke, who created all things Winchester. There’s so much more depth to the show than I could ever bring to light in this introduction, but as fans, you don’t need to take my word for it. If you’re like me, you already live, breathe, and sometimes sleep Supernatural.

As Webmaster of one of the larger, if not largest, fan sites for the show, I’ve come to know firsthand the kind of people who tune in every week. Indeed, the chances are, I may even know you!

I’ve been the boss of other Web sites, and known many other fandoms in my many years, but one thing I have never seen before is the kind of devotion otherwise ordinary people give this show-and indeed, one another. We’re not just fans, we’re a community, a worldwide group of viewers who have also become friends because of one man’s dream. The essays within these pages bear wonderful testament to our enthusiasm and zeal.

Eric Kripke once likened his vision to the epic Star Wars, and maybe he was right in more ways than even he knew. Supernatural may not be a journey to a galaxy far, far away, but it does explore the depths of the human mind, pushing its characters to the brink and beyond, and we the obsessed viewers are right there along with them.

I suspect that, long after its demise, Supernatural will still be seen in countless countries via countless reruns, and may one day reach the same level of cult status as the likes of Star Trek and the U.K.’s Doctor Who.

Until then, may Supernatural stay in the hunt for many years to come!

Dawn (Kittsbud)

Webmaster, Supernatural.tv

One of Supernatural’s greatest enigmas-and most controversial discussion points-isn’t a demon or a monster, an urban legend or a twisted folktale, but John Winchester, the patriarch of the show and, arguably, the catalyst behind the Winchester boys’ story. Often described as controlling and strict, hard and obsessive, John is also repeatedly depicted as self-sacrificing and loving, devoted to his boys and desperate to protect them from the evil he knows is out there stalking his family-a hero in every sense of the word. It is this dichotomy that makes John Winchester so intriguing. Good father or bad father? Benevolent teacher or drill sergeant? Hero or villain? Success or failure? Tanya Huff investigates.

TANYA HUFF

WE’RE NOT EXACTLY THE BRADYS

Just to get one thing out of the way up front-I do not have kids. What’s more, there’s no chance of my ever having kids. Therefore, my discussing John Winchester’s parenting choices and the results of same could be considered marital advice from yet another unmarried marriage counselor. On the other hand, I never had a wife be eviscerated by a demon and pinned to the ceiling to burn, nor have I ever owned a ’67 Impala. It’s unlikely that the lack of either will weigh against me during any evaluation of my scholarship on the topic, so perhaps we can ignore the lack of kids thing as well.

It is therefore my opinion that John Winchester, for all his flaws as a father-and they were legion-was not, as it happens, a bad father. He was not, by any means, a good father (So, somewhere along the line, I stopped being your father. And I became your drill sergeant [Dead Man’s Blood, 1-20]), but he had to have done something right. He must have because his sons, for all their flaws-and those flaws are also legion-are good men.

Dean Winchester, tired of the fight and wanting nothing more than a chance to live happily ever after, is so much a good man that his subconscious refuses to let him rest. His mother was alive, Sam had Jess back, he had a beautiful woman who loved him, and yet he sacrificed happiness because strangers needed him, and there was a job that only he could do. He didn’t want to and he trembled on the edge of screaming that it wasn’t fair but he did it anyway-took the hard road because it was the right thing to do.

Sam Winchester, tainted by demon blood and intended to lead the armies of Hell, refused to hit his enemy when he was down. Refused to end it by killing a helpless man despite that man having done his best to kill him. It wasn’t the smart thing to do when you consider the way things turned out, but it was the right thing to do.

Good men don’t just happen, they’re made-and to see how we have to go back to the beginning.

John Winchester, an ex-Marine who saw combat in Vietnam, married to Mary, a woman he loves desperately, settles down in Lawrence, Kansas. There’s nothing in the evidence to suggest that the town was home to either of them-there’s a definite lack of family around when the shit hits the fan-but maybe they’re there because John had a chance to buy into a friend’s garage. He’s a good mechanic and this is the kind of chance a man can build a life on.

John and Mary buy a house and have two sons-Dean, and then when Dean is almost four and a half years old, Samuel. Sam. Sammy, although, later, only Dean gets to call him that. John’s a hands-on father. Not only does he put his four-year-old to bed, Mary expects him to answer when Sam is heard crying over the baby monitor. This is worth noting because twenty-odd years ago this was even less the default behavior for fathers than it is now.

He has a little trouble sleeping sometimes, but hey, that happens. Given what he chooses to watch on this particular night, he’s probably not suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of his time in combat. Guys with combat-induced PTSD don’t watch war movies-as a general rule, they can’t handle the sound of gunfire. Among other things.

It’s fairly safe then to say that on the night Mary is killed, John is about as happy and as emotionally stable as it’s possible to get.

And then his wife starts screaming, jerking him out of sleep. There’s a moment of calm when he reaches Sam’s nursery and sees the baby safe. But then he sees blood drip from the ceiling. When he looks up, Mary, pinned to the ceiling, belly cut open, bursts into flame. John is horrified and no one would blame him if he froze, unable to cope with what he sees. But he doesn’t freeze-his wife may be dying in a horrible and bizarre way but she’s not his only responsibility and before he attempts to save her, he grabs his younger son and runs from the room. Had Dean not met him in the hall, his next stop would probably have been Dean’s room, but the boy is right there. He places the baby in Dean’s arms and says, Take your brother outside as fast as you can. Don’t look back. Now, Dean, go! (Pilot, 1-1).

He trusts a four-year-old with a baby. He knows Dean will do exactly as he said. Why? Because his father asked him to. Four-year-olds who obey instantly, who have their entirely justifiable fears calmed by their father giving them a job and trusting them to do it, are rare. This indicates a level of trust already in place because that sort of thing doesn’t spontaneously appear in emergencies. John had to have already been giving Dean tasks, trusting him to complete them and making it worth his while to do so-children being selfish little beasts-and given what we’ve seen of them together so far, it’s a fair guess to say that John’s reward for this behavior was nothing more than his love and approval.

Only when the boys are on the way out of the house does John go back to help Mary, only to find that she’s beyond help. Even in his shock and terror and grief, he doesn’t stay, futilely (metaphorically) throwing himself onto the pyre with his wife-he races outside and grabs up both boys, carrying them to further safety as the house blows. Inarguably, John Winchester loved his wife but he lived for his sons.

The official explanation is that it was an electrical fire. In the first flush of grief, John’s allowed to be a little crazy, so probably no one takes his raving about what actually happened very seriously. But John knows what he saw. It would be so much easier to deny his memory, to believe the sight of Mary dying on the ceiling was a construct of his grief, but he’s not that kind of a man and he goes looking for answers.

In the unincorporated area of Stull, Kansas, which lies just west of Lawrence across Clinton Lake, there’s a cemetery that a popular local urban legend claims is a gateway to hell.¹ So it’s not entirely surprising that Missouri Mosely, the psychic John consults, is actually, well, psychic, and as she tells Sam and Dean later, I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say . . . I drew back the curtains for him (Home, 1-9). She didn’t know exactly what had killed Mary but she knew it was something evil.

Now as much as he may have wanted to, it seems John didn’t go off hunting this evil right away. Even if we assume the friend who’d owned the garage with him is a little dicey on dates (Matter of fact, it must be, uh . . . twenty years since John disappeared [Home]), later evidence makes it clear John isn’t the kind of man who just charges in. He researches first. Not only that but he has a six-month-old baby he has to learn to be the sole parent of-and if Sam was nursing, that’s going to be a steep learning curve-and a traumatized four-year-old. (See, when I was your age, I saw something real bad happen to my mom, and I was scared, too. I didn’t feel like talking, just like you [Dean to Lucas in Dead in the Water (1-3)]).

They clearly have some kind of a support system in place-Missouri knew the boys as children and she didn’t meet John until after the fire. So how do John and Sam and Dean end up on the road?

It happens when John sells his interest in the garage and buys guns-and his garage-owning friend calls Children’s Aid (deleted scene from Home).

John packs his whole life into a ’67 Impala rather than lose his sons. He’s not going to stop hunting for whatever it was that killed Mary and he’s not going to give up his boys-he’s not left with much of a choice.

And here’s where we need to pause for a moment because, seriously, what kind of a father thinks life on the road is a good choice? If he gave the boys up, he could keep hunting and they could have a life worth living-without him, granted, but safe and normal. Bit of a selfish bastard, wasn’t he? His need to keep his sons with him is more important than their well-being.

Except . . .

He knows his family has been touched by evil, knows it because he saw it with his own eyes. If he leaves his sons behind, how will people who don’t believe in this evil protect them? He has to take them with him; it’s the only way to keep them safe (After your mother passed, all I saw was evil, everywhere. And all I cared about was keeping you boys alive [Dead Man’s Blood 1-20]). Well, Missouri believes in the evil but, if asked, she’d probably say-given that she doesn’t seem willing to lie to him-that she couldn’t stop it.

He wants a normal, safe life for his boys but they can’t have that until this thing is dead. He couldn’t possibly have expected the hunt to last as long as it did.

The odds are good that during those first few years before he considered Dean old enough to leave in charge of Sam-and we know they were only a few years-John had to have wished he could go after this evil without the boys. Anyone who’s ever travelled for any distance with two young kids in the car has thought about leaving them with Child Protective Services. Or by the side of the road. Or in one of those charity drop boxes. Car companies put those DVD players in there for a reason. John couldn’t give up the hunt and he wouldn’t give up his boys, so he found a way to make it work.

What kind of life did they have? Evidence suggests they didn’t live in motels. To begin with, the boys were in school (Sam could actually be a genius, and given the number of times it seemed they moved he probably is, but you don’t get a full ride to Stanford being home-schooled by John Winchester), and schools require a home address. Living in a motel with kids is one of the fastest ways to have questions asked about how things are at home. Granted, most child welfare services are overworked but John wouldn’t risk that. They likely stayed in motels for specific hunts on weekends (It was the third night in this crap room. . . . [Something Wicked, 1-18]) and over holidays (A Very Supernatural Christmas, 3-8) and in the cheapest housing John could find otherwise. John and Dean seem to have kept what John was actually doing from Sam until Sam was nine, and that would have required at least a certain level of normal.

So you’re a father and you’re raising your sons on your own knowing that something out there is after them and the only person you have to turn to, the only person who knows what it is to lose what you’ve lost, is your oldest boy. The older sibling raising the younger and being the support to the surviving parent isn’t unusual in single parent households-in allowing Dean to become his support staff, John is doing nothing that’s unusual or horrible or abusive. The only thing different here than in a thousand other households is the degree. John doesn’t hide things from Dean. He can’t. Dean has to know about the dangers in order to protect himself and his younger brother. They are, after all, living in a war zone.

We only have a few actual glimpses of their lives growing up. We’re given only three pieces of primary source material, unfiltered by other characters’ perceptions, where we can come to our own conclusions about what’s going on.

There’s the photograph that Sam found in John’s hotel room of the three of them (Pilot). John had Sam on his lap, safe in the circle of his arms, and Dean was by his side (echoing their positions the night Mary died). All three of them looked happy. And the thing about kids is, if they’re unhappy it shows, so it’s safe to say that they were happy.

There’s the weekend they were left alone when John went to hunt the shtriga. John was quiet and calm while going over his instructions with Dean. He praised him (That’s my man [Something Wicked]), clearly expected him to succeed (and kids will rise or fall to meet expectation), and while they were a bit beyond hugging (not unusual for nine- /ten-year-old boys) there was the manly clasp of the shoulder that said touch was still a part of Dean’s life. When Dean actually acted like a nine-/ten-year-old and disobeyed, putting Sam in danger, John, in spite of his terror, didn’t lash out at Dean. He was angry, yes, but all he said was, I told you not to leave the room. I told you not to let him out of your sight (Something Wicked). There was a distinct lack of the sort of accusation that many fathers would have thrown. Accusations like, How could you be so stupid?! or Are you trying to get your brother killed?! Terror did not make John mean. Nor did a belief in his own machismo keep him from showing emotions; both his fear for Sammy and his relief that his younger son was safe were right there on his face.

There’s the Christmas he missed. . . . Okay, it’s hard to put a positive spin on that beyond the fact he’s not the only father who’s missed Christmas in the midst of fighting a war.

Everything else about the way John Winchester raised his sons we have to piece together, extrapolate from secondary sources.

We can assume that since he kept Sam’s soccer trophy and Dean’s first shotgun (Bad Day at Black Rock, 3-3) he was proud of them when they were young. And we know he was proud of them when they were adults-he told other people how proud he was of Sam and he showed his pride in Dean when he sent people to him for help (Phantom Traveler, 1-4). Granted, he didn’t seem to tell them as often as he should have, but you find me a dad who says exactly the right thing every damn time and we can have him cloned and make a fortune. He was willing to hug his adult sons, which is pretty solid evidence that hugs happened all their lives-maybe not frequently, but you don’t take that kind of comfort from physical contact if you’ve never had it. His reaction to Sam’s fear of the thing in the closet was peculiar by any other than Winchester standards (Yeah, when I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45 [Pilot]), but since we know John had to have checked the closet and found nothing there, he gets points for taking his son’s fear seriously and giving him a way to defeat it. We know he argued with other Hunters, and since he kept the boys away from what little community the Hunters had it’s not a huge stretch to assume the boys were at least one of the reasons why. Those few friends John had, had to be worried about both the kids and John-even the demons knew, He lets his guard down around his boys, lets his emotions cloud his judgment (Shadow, 1-16). But he was not compromising about his boys-they were all he had left of Mary and he was going to keep them safe. The physical evidence suggests neither boy grew up undernourished so John must’ve kept them fed. He drank but since he also excelled at a dangerous, physical . . . uh, obsession . . . he couldn’t have drunk to the extent Sam’s resentment suggests, and since even at his most pissy Sam never mentions any physical abuse when John was drunk, it’s a good bet it never happened.

Actually, there’s one more thing we know happened.

We know that when Sam told John he wanted to go to college, John lost his temper. We also know that Sam lost his temper back at him (the fact that Sam fought with John his whole life tells us that John did not maintain discipline through fear). Sam was having a fairly typical teenage rebellion (Sam would have seen John as the one who kept him from a normal life. Dean didn’t have that rebellion because he’d had normal and lost it the same time his father had). Sam wanted to live his own life, and he said some things. John, having realized from the night Sam was six months old that he was the only one who could keep his boys safe from the evil that had touched their lives and killed their mother, was experiencing the ramped-up Winchester version of not wanting to let his child go, and so he said some things.

Oh yeah, things were definitely said.

Among them, If you go, don’t come back.

John Winchester is not the first father to ever say this.

Sam Winchester is not the first son to ever throw his clothes and his big curved knives into a duffle bag and stomp out. Okay, maybe the knife thing is unique, but the rest, not so much.

Dean stood by his father, if only by his silence, because he’d been taught his whole life that was the best way to keep Sam safe. But Dean’s twists and turns are a whole different road trip and, here and now, we’re not going there.

A little less usual: John doesn’t see his younger son, except at a distance (But even when you two weren’t talkin’ . . . he used to swing by Stanford whenever [Bugs, 1-8]), for four and a half years.

Here’s where we pause again because if John was afraid of what would happen to Sam out on his own, away from the protection of his family, and since it’s clear he didn’t stay mad for that entire time, why didn’t he come up with a compromise? A way for Sam to still be a part of the family?

He could have sent Dean to be with his brother and keep an eye on him. John didn’t need Dean to be a part of finding the thing that killed Mary; they were already hunting separately and, what’s more, as soon as he got a good lead, he ditched Dean for Dean’s own safety.

Sam could have hunted during the holidays. He’d have had access to new research materials that could have helped with John’s primary hunt. Later, it certainly wouldn’t hurt, all things considered, to have a lawyer on the team.

John admitted he wanted more for his boys than the obsession that ruled his life. I think he saw college as Sam’s chance to get out. To have the kind of life his mother would have wanted for him. It’s the only logical reason why John kept his distance all those years.

Why didn’t Sam pick up the phone? Well, we’re not taking the road trip through Sam’s psyche right now either.

And when they finally got back together again? John knew what Sam was-or more accurately, could be. His younger son could be or become the kind of evil John had been hunting obsessively for twenty-three years and yet this knowledge, while it might have been breaking his heart, didn’t change his feelings toward Sam-the love, the pride, it was all still very evident.

And for Dean? John was not only willing to give up his life-and again, not the first father willing to do this-he was willing to give up the thing that had defined him since Mary’s death: the chance to destroy the thing that killed her. He’d always expected to die on this hunt; he’d long since come to terms with his own death. Given that he knew Hell existed, and given the things he’d done, he’d likely also come to terms with ending up somewhere that had turned out to be less metaphorical than most people think. But he had never even considered that he wouldn’t, someday, take out the thing that killed his wife . . .

. . . until he offered the Yellow-Eyed Demon the Colt in exchange for Dean’s life.

In the end, when it comes right down to the bottom line regarding both his boys, John Winchester is a