Recap: Supernatural, Episode 9.11 – First Born
Crowley pops in next to Dean at Gadreel’s bar. Gadreel’s gone and the girl Dean’s eyeing has got the STDs. So he should drop all of that and instead help Crowley look for the First Blade, a weapon used by the archangels to kill a Knight of Hell, namely Abbadon. Crowley says Papa Winchester had captured one of Abbadon’s minions who may have been on to the location of the said blade.
Dean checks Papa Winchester’s journal and it’s in there along with the location of a storage locker that could have more info. They head off, but a demon is close behind.
Meanwhile, at the batcave, Sam returns from a food run to find Castiel not enjoying his PB&J. He says he loved food when he was human, but now all food tastes disgusting. Anyway, Castiel has another healing session for Sam, but when he starts, he feels something “angelic” resonating inside Sam and maybe they should call Dean.
Sam says no and that they’ll handle this themselves. They find info on how an angel leaves some grace inside its vessel, like a fingerprint. The Men of Letters believed they could do an angel tracking spell by using said grace remnants. But they need to extract it.
Dean and Crowley get to the storage locker and they find that Papa Winchester had worked with Tara, another hunter, in capturing Abbadon’s goon. So they go to her.
She gets a pain in her bum knee when a demon’s around so she is very suspicious of seeing John Winchester’s son being best buds with one. She confirms Dean is not possessed, but is still weary. They ask her about the First Blade and she says they never found it. She’s been searching all over the world since and the only thing she found was a location spell. But she was missing one ingredient, one that Crowley says he has plenty off.
Tara reluctantly breaks the seal under the carpet to allow Crowley to pop out to grab some. They do the spell and find the location is Missouri. Dean thanks her and they head to the location given.
Crowley senses something dark and sees a beekeeper walking nearby. We need to leave NOW, Crowley says, terrified. “That’s the father of murder. It’s Cain.”
But it’s too late. Cain takes them inside. While waiting in the living room, Crowley says after Cain killed Abel, he became a demon, the worst one to walk the Earth. He killed thousands until he just disappeared without a trace.
Cain comes in with some tea for them and asks why they are here. He silences Crowley and Dean tells him exactly why they’re here. Anyone else know they’re here?
Tara gets ready for lunch when the demon following Dean and Crowley walks in. Her knee signals the guy’s presence. With the seal broken, she grabs her shotgun and shoots.
Cain says he’s retired. He admires their bravery, but they can let themselves out. He won’t help them. Dean is persistent, but Cain fills him in on some details. It was him that trained and put together the Knights of Hell, Abbadon included. And not only that, but it was him, not the archangels that slaughtered them. He has errands to run, so good day.
Walking back to the Impala, Crowley wants to get outta here as fast as possible. But Dean says they aren’t leaving until they get what’s theirs. They’ll wait for Cain to go into town for his errands and break in.
At the batcave, Castiel tries to reason with Sam over what and why Dean did what he did. But Sam says this is now on his shoulders. If he can find Gadreel, he can fix this.
Castiel begins the extraction of the grace inside Sam. He has to stick the needle deep into Sam’s neck, but suddenly a flood of memories come rushing into Sam’s head along with the pain. Castiel says his body is regressing to the state it was in before Gadreel. But Sam says to keep going since they don’t have enough grace for the spell.
Dean and Crowley head back inside Cain’s home. Dean finds Cain had married a nice human lady named Colette.
Cain gets back from town, but outside is the demon with some backup. He says he’s peeled Tara’s skin off after she told him where they were. Dean tells Crowley and Cain to get ready for a fight, but Cain wants no part of it. He will cook them a meal, if they can survive before he leaves his home for another safe place.
“Why must the Winchesters run toward death?”
Castiel tries to plead with Sam to stop, saying when he was human, he realized how precious life was. But Sam says his life is no more important than anyone else’s and begs Castiel to at least let him do this one good thing right.
Cain lets a few of the demons in to see what the great Dean Winchester can do. Cain watches as Dean takes care of three demons. Crowley faces one of his own from the front door and uses an angel blade to gank that one.
“You’re good, but I’m Crowley.”
You and I are very much alike, Cain says. Except I didn’t kill my brother, Dean replies.
Cain asks why Dean saved his and he says it’s because you never give up on family. Cain finally admits he doesn’t have the blade.
At the batcave, Castiel decides to pull the syringe out and heal the rest of Sam’s wounds. He tells Sam that becoming human made him relate to them, to the guilt they feel when they screw things up. And he knows what it means to feel sorry.
He learned angels can change, maybe Winchesters can too.
Cain says the spell brought them to the source of the blade’s power. He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a mark. Crowley does the sign of the cross. It’s the “bloody mark of Cain!” he says. Cain says it’s from Lucy himself.
The blade and mark work together. Cain explains the blade is the jawbone he used to kill Abel. And Abel wasn’t talking to God, he was talking to Lucy. Lucy was trying to make Abel his pet, but Cain couldn’t bare that so he offered Lucy a deal instead: Abel’s soul in heaven and Cain’s in hell. Lucy accepted, but only if Cain killed Abel himself.
That’s when Cain became a Knight and Lucy ordered him to make more. When he met Colette, he was willing to leave it all behind for her. When the Knights found out, they were ready to seek retribution. Cain instead slaughtered them, all but one. Abbadon was inside Colette and tortured Cain by threatening to kill his wife. But just before Cain could stick the First Blade into Colette to kill Abbadon, Abbadon flies out.
Cain swore to find Abbadon and kill her, but Colette said not to and to be better than all the others. No more killing. That’s when he walked away.
Cain still refuses to hand over the blade and disappears. He goes to his wife’s grave and says as much as he tried to see himself as she did, he always knew what he was. He knows she watches over him, but he asks for her to look away now at this moment.
A horde of demons are outside the home banging on the doors and windows to get in. Cain returns and tells Dean he can transfer the mark onto him so he can use the First Blade, but it will come with a great burden. Dean must promise one thing: Dean must come when Cain will call so he can use the blade to kill him, Cain.
Cain transfers the mark and says the blade is somewhere deep in the ocean. He zaps Dean and Crowley outside while letting the demon army into the sealed off home. Dean and Crowley watch the home fill with red light as Cain slaughters the demons. They hurry into the Impala and drive off.
Meanwhile, Castiel and Sam are trying the tracking spell, but it turns out there wasn’t enough grace to use it. Sam says it’s okay and he hugs Castiel saying he was right about what he said earlier.
Castiel says Metatron is the key to everything, so he will try and find him too. But they could use all the help they can get… meaning Dean. Sam says they can handle this.
Elsehwere, Dean and Crowley are safely away from Cain’s. Crowley says he’ll be the one to go dive into the ocean to look for the blade. But Dean wants to clear something up first. He realized Crowley was playing him this entire time. He knew Cain’s whole story, was never afraid and let Dean believe everything just so he’d prove himself worthy to carry the mark to Cain.
Dean punches Crowley and vows to kill him right after Abbadon.
Crowley says that’s not going to happen, but they will still need all the help they can get to finish Abbadon… meaning Sam. Dean just tells him to get the blade.
Episode Thoughts
Lots of stuff in this episode.
First off, a great example of how Supernatural takes a well-known story, whether religious or not, and twists it around or creatively folds it into the show’s mythology. Introducing a new angle to the Cain and Abel story (or at least, one I’ve never heard of before) was great.
Second, there is at least one good thing about the Bros breaking up again. It’s been fun seeing more Sam and Castiel interactions, just them as well as seeing Dean and Crowley buddy up too. It speaks to how much Castiel and Crowley’s characters have grown since they first came on the show and how much chemistry they all have together.
So now that Sam’s problem is all fixed, Dean gets the “burden.” Of course. Like Crowley said, “It’s always something with you boys, isn’t it?”
This was a great episode. Definitely moved things forward and I think it is setting up what should be an epic showdown. At least, I hope.
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