Supernatural is back, baby! After leaving us with the minor cliffhanger "Sam's been re-souled: will he survive?" at the mid-season finale, we're finally back to our regularly scheduled programming. If you recall, Dean had made a deal with the Horseman Death, who restored Sam's soul to him even after Dean lost their wager. Replicant Sam, not wanting to risk insanity and/or death, tried to sever all ties with his soul by killing his surrogate father, Bobby. Fortunately, Dean was able to stop him and Death was able to shove Sam's soul back into his chest, which is when the last episode ended. So what happens now? Please follow me to my recap of last night's episode, "Like a Virgin."
SPOILERS!
After a really long recap montage - so long that it almost made us wonder if the show's creators were acknowledging the fact that things have been kind of jumbled this season, plot-wise - the episode begins with a random scene of a woman and her boyfriend flying in a small airplane in the middle of a storm. Things don't look good, and the woman sees something huge fly past the window. Then her boyfriend is sucked out of the pilot's seat, and she screams as the plane starts going down.
Cas comes out of Bobby's panic room, rolling up his sleeve (this made us extremely happy - we didn't know Cas would be in this episode). Dean had called him to verify that Death was successful in re-souling Sam, but Sam is still unconscious. Dean demands to know when his brother will wake up, and Cas snaps that he doesn't know, he's not a doctor, and if Dean had wanted to kill his brother, he should have done it outright. He tells Dean that Sam's soul felt like it was "skinned alive", and he wasn't happy that Dean ignored the dangers that they'd discussed during their attempt to break into Crowley's monster prison. With that, Cas leaves, and Dean trudges upstairs to talk to Bobby.
Dean and Bobby start discussing a possible job - the incident with the airplane that we saw in the beginning has made the papers, and it's strange because the woman vanished without a trace, and her boyfriend was found seventeen miles away from the wreckage, burned to a crisp. Their conversation is interrupted by Sam, who's standing in the doorway. And what is the first thing that Sam does? He hugs Dean, his eyes filled to the brim with tears (WE KNEW IT!). He's full of questions as he moves on to hug Bobby, astonished to see him alive. Sam had felt Lucifer snap Bobby's neck at the end of season five. Dean explains that Cas brought Bobby back to life - "Cas is alive?!" - and that everyone is relatively fine. Dean then proceeds to ask Sam what he remembers after jumping into the hole with Lucifer, Michael, and Adam (which is exactly what Death told him not to do, correct?). Sam says that he remembers nothing, and discovers that a year and a half has passed since they stopped the Apocalypse. Sam immediately asks how it was that Dean got him back - he's worried that Dean made another deal (remember how that turned out?). He's concerned when Dean tells him that Death "brought him back", but Dean tries to reassure him that that deal is over and done with (more or less). Dean and Bobby don't mention that Sam has been walking around without a soul for a year and a half, which of course is the right way to do this. Things always work out when the Winchesters keep secrets from each other.
Dean and Bobby prepare to drive to Oregon to investigate the disappearance of the woman in the airplane, intending to let Sam rest, but Sam is raring to go. Bobby, still uncomfortable with Sam because the soul-less version tried to kill him, bows out of the job and stays behind. They speak to the woman's sister about her disappearance - she only talks to them after Sam makes his "I feel your pain" puppy face, which is so Sam. Dean swipes the missing woman's diary, for which Sam chides him, and they make a connection between this woman and a few others who have gone missing: they're all virgins. Cue the "asshole" Dean - anything to do with sex always has this effect on him. They visit a woman in the hospital after she's attacked by a "giant bat" - she was walking home alone, and something large and airborne scratched her and stole her gold ring. The woman tells them that it was a purity ring, and Dean gets all smirky and asks her if she really should have been wearing it. The woman gets angry and tells them "that time in the barn didn't count!"
Sam reaches what he thinks is a dead end in his research, because all of the clues they have (fire, virgins, gold, flight) keep taking him to the same place: dragons. And we all know that there's no such thing as dragons, right? Dean calls Bobby to see if he can be of any help, and Bobby refers him to a local professor of Medieval Studies. Dean goes to see her, making Sam stay behind in the hotel room and continue the research. As soon as Dean is gone, Sam calls Bobby, but Bobby is evasive and quick to get off the phone. Then Sam calls Cas, and the angel pops down right away, glad to see him alive and well. He almost gives Sam a hug (awww!), but stops himself before things get awkward. Sam gets Cas to tell him everything, because Cas is (A) a terrible liar and (B) Dean hasn't filled him in on the "let's hide the fact that Soul-less Sam has been around for eighteen months" plan.
Dean meets up with Bobby's professor friend, who indicates that she and Bobby have some kind of history together, and she tells him that dragons did indeed exist, but they haven't been around for about 700 years. They can only be killed with a blade that was forged in dragons' blood (like Excalibur, apparently), and then the professor casually mentions that she happens to have one of those swords in the basement. It's set in stone, and she invites Dean to try to remove it. He gingerly approaches the sword, grasps it reverentially by the hilt, and fails to pull it out. He comes back with some plastic explosive. The professor isn't nuts about this plan, but she lets Dean set the charges and then detonate them. It was half successful - Dean managed to break the sword, which means he has the hilt and about a foot of jagged blade to work with.
Meanwhile, Sam figures out that the dragon is probably hiding in the sewer system, since there are no caves around. He and Dean take their half-sword and go dragon hunting. After wandering around beneath the city streets, they finally stumble upon the dragon's hoard - there's a pile of gold sitting right next to what looks like some kind of shrine. Sam grabs the book sitting on the shrine, and then they hear the cries of the virginal women the dragon has captured. They're locked in a cage, which has been welded shut by the dragon's fire. As the brothers try to release them, the dragon shows up (in human form, because of budget reasons, though we think that there were probably some design concerns as well). Dean goes after him with the broken sword as Sam tries to free the women. The standard struggle ensues, and things get dicey when another dragon joins in, but Sam kills one of them, though the other one gets away.
Back at Bobby's place, Dean cackles to himself as he goes through the dragon's hoard. Sam walks up and apologizes (with tears in his eyes, of course). Dean realizes that Sam knows the truth about the whole Replicant Sam business. Sam admits that Cas told him, and tells Dean that he has to find out about what his soul-less self did while it was topside. Dean is completely against this course of action because he's worried that the "wall" in Sam's mind will come down, but Sam's determined. The brothers go in to talk to Bobby about the strange book they found in the dragon's "cave", which turns out to be made of human skin (we totally called this). Bobby isn't able to translate everything because it's written in a very strange Latin dialect, but he keeps coming across the phrase "Mother of All". And the last page - the one that's missing, of course - holds the instructions to bring her into this world.
Meanwhile, the dragon that got away meets up with another dragon pal. Fortunately, this dragon has plenty of virgins. They take one of the women into a cave and perform the ritual, and toss her into an abyss. She rises in fire, obviously possessed by something. Apparently, Mommy is home now.
Questions that still need answers:
Okay, Sam is back! We're absolutely delighted that we have our weepy, emotional, Gigantor Sam back. And of course, we cannot wait until that "wall" comes crumbling down, because we all know that it's going to happen eventually - probably at the worst possible moment. So the only remaining questions are "How?" and "When?" We should probably start a pool.
Dragons? Really? In human form? We're actually surprisingly okay with this, but a little wary as to where it will go from here. Will the dragons stick around? Will we ever get to see them as actual dragons?
We're guessing that the "Mother of All" is some version of Echidna, who was the mother of all monsters in Greek mythology. That being said, we're wondering how her appearance has anything to do with the cryptic mission Death gave to Dean, which is all about souls. Are we talking human souls? Monster souls? What the hell is going on, and how exactly do Heaven and Hell fit into this anyway? Because I'm really tired of all of the epsiodes in which Cas appears for exactly five minutes and then is never heard from again. We need lots more of Cas.
Apparently virgins are only female, and only wear dresses - and white-ish ones, at that! Maybe that's how you can tell they're virgins. We were a little miffed about Dean's line that was something like, "Just goes to show you, there's no downside to being 'easy'." Just because a woman has a sex life does not mean she's 'easy', and just because a woman is a virgin does not make her stupid. It's kind of a personal choice. Now, Supernatural is the last place we would look for any kind of attitude toward women in general that was ever so slightly enlightened, but it bothered us all the same. But we're still going to watch next week.
Next Week:
Sam learns a little about what Replicant Sam was up to while his soul was still stuck in the Cage. We're guessing that it's not going to be flattering.
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