March 2025 Viewing Diary, Supernatural Season 9

So excited to start one of my favorite seasons: the unfairly maligned Season 9.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 1 “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” (2013; d. John F. Showalter)
Moving backwards shows a symmetry between this ep – and Dean doing whatever it takes to save Sam – and the finale of Season 10 – with Sam doing whatever it takes to save Dean. I know they take turns but seeing them back to back drives it home. Nicely planned.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 2 “Devil May Care” (2013; d. Guy Norman Bee)
This was when Crowley had some bite, when he said wildly sexual inappropriate things, when he had manipulations and moves … by season 10, he was put into the back seat and Rowena took the wheel and the show suffered. Here’s poor Kevin: I forgot how mean Dean was to Kevin, how short and irritable he was … it’s really awful. I love it. Dean is NOT his best this WHOLE season and I am so here for it. Kind of a nothing episode, really, but the scene between Dean and Abaddon (Jeez, remember her?) is deliciously well-written and really leans into the whole possession/consent/sex thing which used to make the show so twisted, all of these people letting other people inside them, or being possessed against their will – the sexual implications of all of it – this all went away when the show got so scared of sex. And finally: because Dean is lying to Sam, and also … is basically allowing an angel to penetrate (sorry, but that’s what’s going on) his brother without his brother’s consent … so Sam doesn’t know, and Dean does, and so Dean is just LYING, in every line, LYING. This is one of the reasons why some fans just didn’t like Season 9 – it was so uncomfortable to see the brothers so unconnected. But for me, this is where the good stuff is. If their relationship seems different in season 10 – and it does – then it’s because they went through Season 9. Also, not for nothin’ but it gives both Jensen and Jared GREAT and LAYERED stuff to play. Angels falling? Demon war? Abaddon on the loose? That’s fine but the season is ABOUT Sam and Dean’s enmeshed relationship. This kind of thing is what is totally lost in later seasons.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 3 “I’m No Angel” (2013; d. Kevin Hooks)
I am annoyed all over again that Dean doesn’t know what It’s a Wonderful Life is. He knows movies. Stop making him a doofus. Granted, my track record with keeping track of Heaven’s shenanigans in Supernatural is not the best, because it doesn’t interest me and therefore it doesn’t stick in my brain. This feels like the start of the real corporate Amway vibe, which was DEATH to any sense of strangeness or “other’-ness – remember Castiel in Season 4? He was so STRANGE and EERIE. None of the new angels are. This is a very long piece – but it was this episode, or … first it was the screams of outrage from Destiel fans in response, which somehow reached me, outside of the fandom – so I decided to at least watch the episode to see what they all were so mad about. The rest is history.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 4 “Slumber Party” (2013; d. Robert Singer)
Watching this episode made me realize – again – the damage Rowena did to the show. Here: Sam was dying and so needed to be possessed by an angel. Castiel is now human. Crowley is locked in the basement of the bunker. All of these circumstances show that there is a limit to “magic”: in other words, there is no “magic wand”, no “abracadabra”. You have to make tough choices and deeply problematic compromises, for which you will have to pay later on. Even though all of this is totally fantastical, the way it’s handled – and how they’re all basically STUCK in this one spot, where they don’t want to be – makes it feel REAL. Rowena, with her powerful “magic”, ruined that. It removed some of the “we will pay for this later” tension. “I like to read books. The ones without pictures.” I don’t like it when the show thinks Dean is a dummy. Of note: Charlie notices that Sam hasn’t really moved into his room, whereas Dean’s room is immaculate. This type of psychological subtlety (Dean craves comfort, Sam doesn’t since he has no memory of it) – completely disappeared in later seasons, when they went with the cliche: Dean’s a slob, Sam’s a neatnik, yawn.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 5 “Dog Dean Afternoon” (2013; d. Tim Andrew)
Brothers in a motel room! Diamond Tim’s. Gosh, how could they just STOP doing this essential part of the show? Not a great episode but Dean playing fetch – and not being able to help himself – is wonderful. “Why are you arguing with a dog? About Styx?” Again, watching this is amazing to see how well-constructed it is: they’re just working cases, even as all the angel/demon stuff is happening – but they allow these side plots to subside to focus on the main thing which is: Dean is lying to Sam. Repeatedly and badly.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 6 “Heaven Can’t Wait” (2013; d. Rob Spera)
I do not blame Castiel for thinking this woman was asking him out. I didn’t hear one word along the lines of “I have a date, would you watch my kid?” Meanwhile though: what matters to me is Dean’s lying is spinning him out of control – it’s so subtle, the way it builds. Like, it’s not sustainable and it’s affecting everything. I can’t stand how he treats Kevin. And he can’t even be around Sam anymore because of THE LIE. God, I love Season 9. “I’ve been politely asking for reading material for weeks, and this is what you bring me?”

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 7 “Bad Boys” (2013; d. Kevin Parks)
I know I said this about “Baby” but I feel the same way here: We are 9 years in, we think we know everything about the brothers and their backstory. But … there are still gaps, pleasing gaps, gaps that inspired libraries of fanfic. Here, one of those gaps is not just used for its plot point. We actually got some new insight into Dean. This late in the game there is still stuff to learn about the brothers. I remember being so excited by how this one played out.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 8 “Rock and a Hard Place” (2013; d. John MacCarthy)
Why cast two women with long red hair of an identical shade if you’re not going to make a point of it? It’s confusing! Dean’s “monologue” in the chastity group is so fun, but my favorite moment is:
Sam: “Every woman I’ve had relations with, it doesn’t end well.”
Dean: “He ain’t lying.”
Why is this endlessly funny to me.
And only Jensen could make the praise of the porn star into something tender and sweet. “You’re the good dreams.”

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 9 “Holy Terror” (2013; d. Thomas J. Wright)
Dean lying is becoming unsupportable. His behavior indefensible. Now he’s lying constantly and it’s tearing him up. He’s not able to do it anymore. Sam is getting angry. And now we’re moving past the point of no return: Sam is not going to be thankful Dean did what he did. He is going to be furious. Dean lies to Sam every minute of every day. For months. Imagine the betrayal. We can see it coming. We can’t stop it. The ending of this episode is still legitimately upsetting.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 10 “Road Trip” (2014; d. Robert Singer)
Look at the opening sequence. The care given to where Dean is at in the aftermath. It’s traumatizing. He goes through it all: grief, rage, and then that lost confusion thing Jensen does so well. He’s lost. And he has no one but himself to blame. That’s the worst part of it. And he knows it. The journey of Season 9 is of Dean finally admitting not just what he did, but why. He’s sorry for what he did, but he’s also sorry about why. This will take episodes for him to come to. He grows a beard he’s so sad. I think this season was triggering for a lot of people because the brothers were separated for so much of it, even when they were in the same room. I love it for that reason. Not that I don’t love them together. But what’s going on here is about growth and growth is painful. Season 8 had a similar quality, although it was more nondescript (and way too orange). Season 8 was about how both Sam and Dean had to break up with their significant others in order to re-commit to each other. I mean … tell me I’m wrong.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 11 “First Born” (2013; d. John Badham)
Dean, Crowley, and hunter-with-biceps do a “location spell” to find the first blade (here we go) and I just prefer this kind of gritty ad hoc hand-made spell – with ingredients and little gross jars and etc. – to Rowena’s literal screaming of Latin terms as purple lightning bolts come out of her fingers. What a difference a season makes. Cain’s wife was named Colette. Clown College Colette?

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 12 “Sharp Teeth (2014; d. John F. Showalter)
Dean has a beard. Things are bad. One of the reasons I love this season is the emotions are so operatic: the self-loathing and shame on both sides – Sam and Dean – is unrelenting. They can barely look at each other. Sam is mostly angry. Dean can’t even BE with the feelings. The acting on both sides is so good. And the final scene between them: the unresolved nature of it, that they let the episode end without giving us what we wanted, that Sam was actually saying, “No. Things are different now. Just stop.” And Jensen, who looks like shit – and that’s not an easy thing to do – has to accept it, but he hates it. He’s so shattered inside. And this feels, to me in my memory anyway, like it goes on forever.

Next up? The Purge, which I love.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 13 “The Purge” (2014; d. Phil Sgriccia)
Dean is so depressed. His whole demeanor is different. He is barely holding it together. And it’s a very intelligent portrayal of depression: it’s so filled with shame and self-loathing. Or, not even filled with it: Shame and self-loathing is the motor. He can’t even really look at Sam. Sam being basically okay with this new “reign” is almost more shattering than the argument. We call this in my neck of the woods “changing the dance step”. Both partners have to agree to move from a waltz to a tango. If one suddenly changes it up, you have to go with it. Sam changed the dance step. Dean is SUFFERING. He feels so abandoned. He looks emptied out, anguished. That final scene is almost shocking. Sam’s refusal to play along. Asserting a boundary. Which he has every right to do. To Dean, that boundary is a betrayal. (By the way, re-watching this another element is so clear: the “breakup” with Sam leaves Dean bereft and vulnerable: and predators like Crowley sniff out vulnerability like Dean’s. It’s like he’s been waiting for his chance at Dean for years). The look that comes over Jensen’s face in the very final moment of the episode … reader, I gasped at first watch and I gasp now.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 14 “Captives” (2014; d. Jerry Wanek)
The heaven of Bartholomew is so unimaginative. It’s an office. Really? Some snippets of interesting stuff with Sam and Dean, the fallout of the conversation at the end of The Purge. Dean is HURTING. But there’s just way too many angels. It all pays off with the last moments. Kevin Tran gives them, frankly, bad advice. “Get over it. You have each other.” That’s the PROBLEM. It’s like the look on Sam’s face when Jody says, “You and Dean have something special”, like they’re a couple. It makes Sam uneasy. And so we end – AGAIN – with the brothers separated, alone, not communicating, Sam is being strong in their “breakup” – Kevin’s advice won’t work for him anymore. Dean, of course, wants nothing more than to make up – but Sam doesn’t want to. So we have now had SEVEN episodes since their “breakup”. SEVEN. Later seasons wrapped up issues and conflict in an episode after a good talk. It’s like the new team really believed Kevin Tran’s advice was workable and solid. Essentially, they didn’t get it, the subtlety of the critique, and the LENGTHS they went in Season 9 to explore this enmeshment issue (I prefer that term to “codependent”). This relationship needs to change. Dean is fighting it every step of the way. I think some fans disliked Season 9 because of this whole conflict. Like I said, it’s one of my favorites because of this conflict, and the show’s commitment to what is a very painful and uncomfortable viewing experience. Final note: Dean’s pink iPod launched a thousand ships. (Pink = girl: really? Haven’t feminists been fighting such prescriptive limited thinking for over 100 years? It’s so dismaying seeing it come back up in progressive spaces, because you know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like fundamentalist Christian wackos who won’t let their daughters wear pants. I say this as someone who wore three piece suits as a teenage girl. Stop buying into and thus reinforcing the binary. So what that his iPod is pink? What you are saying is “Girls like pink, pink is a girl color, therefore the pink iPod says something about Dean’s sexual fluidity.” You are not going to have an argument from me that Dean is sexually fluid. I don’t think “fluid” even covers it. I’ve said it before: he flirts with everything in sight including inanimate objects. He’s open for business, across the board. But saying he is that because he has a pink iPod is gross. Colors aren’t girlie or macho: it’s just society that says they are. So if he had a macho-colored iPod, or an iPod with a camo covering … you’d say it was performative, or fake? What would happen if a girl had an iPod with a camo-case? Does that mean she’s a lesbian? I mean, maybe. But not necessarily. Some of the femme-iest femmes I know are lesbians. Reinforcing surface things as identity markers is limiting as fuck – and damaging. I know it’s stupid to get lost in the weeds of this kind of silly thing, but “I KNEW he was bi, he has a pink iPod” is the really stupid thing. It reinforces the gender binary deeming pink is a girl’s color and my feminist ancestors would be rolling in their graves. I want to kill it with fire in the public square.)

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 15 “#thinman” (2014; d. Jeannot Szwarc)
“This all sounds like Sad Times at Bitchmont High.” And here’s the EIGHTH episode that ends with awkward silent non-resolution: the air thick with conflict, unbridgeable. The show’s commitment to their mutual misery is admirable. I’m actually friends (in an Instagram way) with one of the Ghost Facers: he reached out after reading something I’d written about one of my Actors Studio teachers at grad school: turns out he went there too, although years after I was there. We studied with the same people though.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 16 “Blade Runners” (2014; d. Serge Ladouceur)
The show made a huge mistake sidelining Crowley. Fascinating arc for him. And, have to say, more interesting than Castiel’s bumbling Frosties attempts to be human. What Jensen does when he holds the blade – for the first and second time – is mesmerizing and I could probably write 5,000 words on masculinity – as a concept, as an identity – and impotence – the kind of impotence that makes men flock to Andrew Tate. There’s a LOT going on there. He holds the blade and has this cosmic orgasm. Listen, I’m just describing what I’m seeing. Blame Jensen.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 17 “Mother’s Little Helper” (2014; d. Misha Collins)
I’m noticing in this binge watch how the Crowley-Dean thing really does start subtly – so much so that I didn’t really pick up on it the first time. There’s definitely an End Game in sight (black eyes) but it’s still kind of hidden, cloaked. This is what it means to groom someone and that’s what Crowley is doing. By this point, Dean is basically cheating on Sam with Crowley. Sam and Dean STILL haven’t “hugged it out”. And they won’t. Which is fascinating.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 18 “Meta Fiction ” (2014; d. Thomas J. Wright)
How many times can Castiel say “I am not a leader.” They’re forcing this narrative. And oh shit Castiel now understands pop culture. So here – where Metatron writes their story, and we see it unfold as he types … this is then repeated later, to catastrophic offensive results, when Chuck becomes the Author. It’s just so much more effective – if meta is the way they want to go – to have it be Metatron doing this. At least Metatron seems to have motive, unlike Rob Benedict’s semi-bored noncommittal “why not?” shrug.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 19 “Alex Annie Alexis Ann” (2014; d. Stefan Pleszczynski)
Such a strong episode, and – for me – its true implications are so deeply buried nobody is even aware of it. Nobody’s making the connection. But the fans did. Or at least the fans who think Dean might have had a similar experience as a teen, being used as bait, maybe even working truck stops. Jensen himself said something suggesting he had thought about what Dean might have done as a teenager to make money. The episode is also explicit on toxic family relationships, abuse, enmeshment, no boundaries, etc. The vamps all dress like Sam and Dean. Exactly. This episode is even stronger because nobody makes the connection: this is how deep Sam and Dean are “in it”, meaning their own “story”. To my mind, if you feel you must have a teenage girl on the show, Alex is 1,000 times more intriguing than Claire.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 20 “Bloodlines” (2014; d. Robert Singer)
No.

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 21 “King of the Damned” (2014; d. P.J. Pesce)
I have a vague memory of some fans being really offended at this episode because of the hostility expressed towards the Metatron “fan”. It seems a stretch to me (and besides, who cares if they DO express hostility towards fandon? I’m obsessed. I’m a fan. I can own it. I don’t need to be personally validated about this. You can’t make me feel bad about what I’m into. Believe me, people have tried. It doesn’t work.)

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 22 “Stairway to Heaven” (2014; d. Guy Norman Bee)
I haven’t even mentioned that now Castiel is a cult leader after saying “I’m no leader” for the entire season. Tessa returns. I might be confused. Are reapers angels? Did I skip a step?

Supernatural, Season 9, episode 23 “Do You Believe in Miracles” (2014; d. Thomas J. Wright)
“I Can’t Find My Way Back Home”. Ouch. They used this in the Cassie episode, way back when. I forgot how hard this one hit. Dean gets the first blade and can’t do anything with it. It’s same ol’ same ol’: Metatron blows him back, the blade falls out of his hand, blah blah. So all that cosmic orgasm and turning into a virile manifestation of the divine came to nothing. But a couple things I noticed in this backwards-rewatch: The conflict in Season 9 between Sam and Dean is not resolved. Or, at least, it’s not resolved by talking it out, coming to an understanding, crying and hugging it out. It is literally not resolved. BOLD. In the middle of the Sam-Dean “breakup”, Dean starts cheating on Sam with Crowley, which leads him to take on the mark. From that point forward, Dean is bolstered up supernaturally – beleiving he is the One, the Only One who can do what is necessary. Crowley whispers in his ear this is the case. And Dean’s radar is so shot – beCAUSE he and Sam are no longer communicating – that he believes Crowley. Dean is weak. The blade gives him artificial strength. The mark is the toxic side of things: where masculinity goes off the rails. The show explores all of this – without saying “this is what we’re exploring”. Once it becomes clear that Dean is changing because of the Mark, Sam starts to change too: his rage at Dean starts to dissolve, and his brother instinct kicks in. He “lets it go” – to the point where he works with Gadreel. That’s how dire the situation is. Dean punching Sam before going off to find Metatron is devastating, especially if you know what’s coming. Shame/self-loathing has been Dean’s cuppa for the entire season, and he can’t escape it. He thinks he can via the Mark, but in order to escape he needs to get Sam out of the way. It’s so twisted. Sam is right to be concerned about Dean doing this on his own, and nobody is quite aware of how deep Crowley has buried into Dean’s psyche, just how much damage he’s done. Even the audience isn’t quite aware of it. Until the final scene. Which still shocks me. Crowley standing at the door in shadow – looking in at Dean’s prone lifeless body is the stuff of child-predator nightmares. Suddenly we see what’s been happening. Dean couldn’t see it. Crowley offers Dean release, not escape, but a real full release. Let’s go howl at that moon. The final scene is shot brilliantly. Until the last second you might not even know what Crowley is calling Dean to do.