Some of the best episodes of Supernatural are the Halloween ones … in a similar vein to the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer they absolutely roll out all the stops on these episodes … after all they are quite appropriate to the holiday and this one is no exception.
By the way, in case you don’t get the reference in the title … it’s from Charlie Brown and that’s probably more an indicator of my age than anything else! 🙂
Overall a really good episode that expands greatly on the mythology of the show and introduces a key new character – namely the angel Uriel. Uriel is a “specialist” angel … one that has a significant amount of power and isn’t afraid to use it to great if somewhat discriminate effect. When the brothers investigate some mysterious deaths in a small town – Castiel informs them that they are actually the work of a witch that is endeavoring to summon the demon Samhain. If they are unable to stop the witch or Samhain, Uriel will cleanse (smite) the town.
While Uriel is a true believer and wants to cleanse the town immediately, the brothers manage to persuade him to hold off in an effort to save the innocent from execution. Unfortunately they are unable to stop the witch in time & the demon is summoned, breaking another seal on Lucifer’s prison. Ruby’s knife while potent is only useful if it is actually used on demons, but Samhain is able to knock it out of Sam’s hands forcing Sam to use his power to subdue him. Unfortunately the seal is still broken and while Sam has been successful this time, Uriel warns him against continued use of his power stating that he will kill Sam as soon as he ceases to be useful to the angels.
Still annoyed by Dean stopping him from smiting the town, Uriel tells Sam to ask Dean what he remembers from Hell, implying that Dean does, in fact, remember what happened to him there. We also learn from Castiel that while they boy’s thought they’d persuaded the angels to hold off on attacking, in reality the angels are under orders to follow Dean’s lead as he is the battlefield leader of Heaven’s forces. However, Castiel admits that he doesn’t know if they passed this test or did the right thing in not smiting the whole town and he’s as confused as the brothers in regards to what the best actions in this situation would have been.