Supernatural Episode 3.01 Recap “Magnificent Seven”
AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” starts. The opening is the usual CW/WB/UPN “previously on…” that we’ve known and loved since Buffy. Shows loads of previous seasons’ scenes. It was weighted heavily toward the scenes from the end of Season Two, ending with the Devil’s Gate opening up, and Bobby’s proclamation that the war is coming.
Now…
Episode opens with pan in to a residential street in Oak Brook, Illinois. The camera settles on a house, then a man exits the front door. He’s unsettled by random, creepy sounds. Trash cans begin rattling, and the street lights flicker rapidly. Black, ominous clouds approach in the quarter moon lit evening sky,
What looks like a black contrail comes out of the black cloud. It corkscrews quickly, looking as if a missile were coming at the man. He turns and runs toward his house. The cloud knocks him to the ground, then narrows to enter the man’s mouth. The man opens his eyes to reveal that they’re entirely black. He rises, while the lights still flicker rapidly. He watches other black contrails race toward the Chicago skyline, eventually filling the screen, becoming the transition to…
One Week Later…

Sam, flashlight in hand is sitting in the Impala, earnestly studying “The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus.” He looks up, and sees Dean looking out a window. [BTO's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" quickly fades in.] Dean gives two thumbs up to Sammy, then draws the sheer-as-heck curtains. He is quickly met by a womans’ figure. Sam (along with the audience) sees, in silhouette, Dean begin to disrobe the woman.
Sam’s phone rings. It’s Bobby. Bobby knows that Sam is reading the Marlowe (… Faust…) book, and tells him that no book is going to help him save Dean from his deal with the demon. He tells Sam that he thinks he finally found something. Sam enters the house slowly, cautiously. Undergarments are strewn about and hanging on furniture and the door handle. Sam retreats, repulsed by what he saw.
Dean is driving very fast and acting loopy. Sam seems a bit overwhelmed and impatient with Dean’s silliness, and expresses his disgust at seeing his sex act.
Sam tells him that Bobby found a crop failure and a suspicious cicada swarm outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. [Since the pilot, those demons have been fond of Big 12 college towns]. Dean is unconvinced that it is supernatural sounding. Dean acts a bit perturbed, talking about the black clouds that have descended upon 17 cities on the night of the opening of the Gate. Now, it’s five days later, and nothing demonic, much less the big Apocalypse they expected, seems to be happening yet. What are the demons waiting for. Dean wishes that if it’s a way, that it would just get started already. Sam gives the “be careful what you wish for.”
[Though near Lincoln, they forgo the usual Fishbowl at Duffy's Pub.
] The boys park in the drive of a farmhouse. Getting out of the Impala, Sam points out the cicadas. Bobby is leaning against his Nova, waiting for them.
Dean knocks on the door, then picks the lock. Entering the house, they choke from a terrible odor. They search the house, handguns drawn. They hear a woman screaming in the next room. They find three bodies sitting on the sofa, the sound of flies, facing a small TV, “watching” Dallas. They can’t tell what happened, so they check for sulfur. Dean sees something through the window, and motions to Bobby and Sam. Dean carefully exits the front door. While searching the porch, a man attacks Dean. He knocks him to the floor, and points a shotgun at him. Bobby’s voice calls out, “Isaac?” It’s a demon hunting couple, Isaac and Tamara.

Back at what must be Tamara and Isaac’s hideout, another old farmhouse, Sam, Dean, and Bobby are watching the couple assemble demon-hunting implements. Isaac asks if Tamara knows where the palo santo is. They explain to the boys that it’s a wood that is toxic to demons, like holy water. She produces a palo santo stake. She explains that you can use it to hold demons down while you exorcise them.
Sam asks how long they’ve been married. “Eight years. The family that slays together…” Sam then asks how they got started hunting demons. Their expressions betray that something they don’t like to speak of happened. Sam fumbles through an apology.
Dean is walking about, flirting with “Jenny” on his mobile phone, smiling. He hangs up, and tells the rest that the coroner’s tech said the cause of death for that family was dehydration and starvation. They question why the three just sat there, without eating or drinking, while a stocked kitchen sat a few yards away. Sam asks if it’s a demon attack. Bobby says it’s not like any that he’s ever seen.
Dean asks what they should do now. Isaac jumps in, “We’re not going to do anything.” Isaac says they don’t play well with others. Sam argues that they could cover more ground if they work together. Isaac counters that they don’t really want to work with the “damn fools who let the Devil’s Gate get opened in the first place.” Tamara argues to Isaac, “Like you’ve never made a mistake.”
Isaac continues that they’re are a couple hundred other demons out there, and that there aren’t enough hunters in the world to fight them. He complains that they’ve brought a war down on them. Tamara stops him, and drags him out of the room. Sam, Dean, and Bobby look around silently. Looks of shame?
Eerie music plays as the camera catches the outside of the house. In a front window, Bobby draws the curtains. The music builds as the camera looks out into the foggy dark, finally stopping on Ruby (Katie Cassidy), who gazes mysteriously at the house.
Back in Oak Brook, Illinois, the man possessed of the dark cloud from the opening scene enters a clothing boutique. He looks around, then looks like he found what he was looking for. He approches a woman browsing a sale rack. [Woo-Hoo! Sixty Percent Off!] He touches her shoulder, looks past her slightly, and tells her, “Those are nice shoes.” The woman turns to see another woman looking at a pair of bright green leather heels. [No. I'm not gay! Ask Krysta. No, don't ask her.] She agrees that they ARE nice. She approaches the woman, and tells here they’re nice shoes. “I want them.” “Sorry. Last pair.”
The second woman buys the shoes, and exits the store. The first woman follows, and demands the shoes. When she refuses, the now crazed woman grabs the other by the hair and slams her face into a car windshield a couple times. The woman with the shoes falls to the sidewalk, dead, her hand twitching. The first woman stands over the body, picks up the shopping bag containing the shoes, glares at the corpse, then walks off.
[Back from commercial...]
Investigators are taking evidence at the scene of the “Green Shoe Envy Murder”. Sam walks up, mouth open with shock. A crowd is chattering and looking on.
Sam heads into the boutique, as we hear, then see, Dean flirting with a woman inside, using the murder as a justification to “make every second count.” Sam approaches, and clears his throat. Dean asks the woman to excuse him for a moment,and she walks away. Sam asks Dean what he’s doing. With some bravado, “Comforting the bereaved. What are you doing?” Sam replies that he’s working, emphasizing the demon attack and dead body. Dean coughs pathetically, and talks of how he’s dying and has to make every second count. Sam apologizes with a slight look of guilt on his face. Dean perks up and accepts his apology.
A man, hair slicked back, dressed in a suit and tie, walk up behind Dean to straighten his tie in a mirror. Dean comments that Bobby looks spiffy. “What were you, a G-man?” “Attorney for the DA’s office.” [Clinton and Stacy would have gone for the suit, but Nick Arrojo would have done something more with Bobby's hair.]
Bobby had just spoken with the suspect. She had no signs of possession, she just really wanted the shoes. “Spilled a glass of holy water on her, just to be sure. Nothin’.” Bobby says that he doesn’t believe this scene and the family in Lincoln are just coincidences. He asks if the boys had found anything inside. Dean motions to a security camera. “I’m working.”
Sam, Dean, and Bobby watch the store’s surveillance video, and see the encounter between the man (demon), the woman who wanted the shoes, and the woman who bought the shoes. They can tell that the man must have somehow instigated the incident.
Sam exits the boutique, and heads down the street. Ruby, who is across the street, acting non-chalant, tails Sam. Sam, not really having seen her, gets a suspicious look in his eyes and turns around to see who’s behind him. Of course, she’s nowhere to be seen.
Dean and Bobby are sitting in Bobby’s car –at seven past midnight- staking out a bar. Bobby asks if he’s sure it’s the right place. Dean tells him about his canvassing the “stupid” town, with this guy’s “stupid” mug (holds print of surveillance camera frame showing the possessed man.) Sam sneaks up and surprises them by pounding his hand suddenly on the roof of the car above Dean’s head. “So, John Doe’s name is Walter Rosen. He’s from Oak Park, just west of Chicago. Went missing about a week ago.” Dean, “The night that the Devil’s Gate opened.” They talk about his apparent ability to make someone go psycho just by touching them. Bobby says that those demons that got out are going to have all kinds of abilities that they’ve never seen before. Sam, “The demons we let out.” Dean alerts them that their guy has arrived. Rosen is getting out of his car, and heads to the bar. Dean, “Showtime!” Bobby says they can’t go in there. They have no idea what they’re up against. Dean is anxious to do something, but Bobby counters, “We’re no good dead! We don’t make a move until we know what the score is.” Sam, looking at an angle out the side window says that’s not an option. They see Isaac and Tamara heading into the bar.
Inside, a woman starts the jukebox, and Rosen gets a beer at the bar. Isaac and Tamara are at a table, watching Rosen. Isaac draws out a flask of holy water.
When Rosen heads to the men’s room, Isaac tells Tamara to pull the car round back, and gets up to follow him. A man grabs Isaac’s arm and asks what he’s doing. He says he’s going to the “head”. The man grabs the holy water and pitches it away. “No. I mean, what are you doing here?” His eyes turn all black, “I don’t like hunters in my bar.” Isaac and Tamara lean away with looks of fear. Suddenly, everyone is coming to them, including Rosen, with his eyes blacking over. They’re all smiling. The front doors begin to shake. Dean, Sam, and Bobby are trying to break them down from the outside. The demons look, then dismiss it. Rosen, “Man, you really walked into the wrong place.” The demons are all looking them up and down. The woman at the jukebox says she “likes the girl.” Rosen says he wishes he had a girl like that. One man walks up, puts his arm on Isaac’s shoulder and offers him “a drink” of drain cleaner.
Isaac, seemingly under the demon’s control, “gladly” downs the bottle of drain cleaner. [It was very disturbing, and so abrupt. I hate these Away Party quick murder devices.] He drops to the floor, blood and drain cleaner flowing out of his mouth.
As the demons turn to Tamara, Bobby’s Nova bursts through the front wall. Sam, Dean, and Bobby douse the demons with holy water. Sam helps the screaming, and unwilling to go, Tamara into the back of the car. Dean and Bobby continue to douse them with holy water and fight the demons off. Dean confronts Rosen, pounds on him a couple of times, then throws him into the trunk. They drive off quickly, as the embattled looking, and winded demons watch them leave.
Rosen is sitting in a chair, below a decorated pentagram. Tamara’s agitated voice is apparently coming from above. She’s angry that she had to leave Isaac dead in that bar. Sam, “Well, we can’t go back!” Tamara, “Fine, then you stay!” The camera takes us to the room where Tamara is arguing with the boys, insisting that they go back and fight the demons. Dean says he’ll go with her. Sam says it’s suicide. “How are you going to kill them?” “We don’t even know how many there are!” Bobby, looking in a book, says they they do. “There’s seven.” They’re the Seven Deadly Sins. Dean gets a goofy look on his face, and swaggering, says, “What’s in the b-o-o-o-ox?” They’re not amused by his Seven quote. It was Sloth that attacked the Nebraska family. Bobby says it’s Envy they have in the other room. Isaac was touched by a terrible gluttony.
Tamara says she wants to slaughter every last one of them. Bobby says they’d already tried their way, that they’d gone off half-cocked. He says these demons have been trapped below for half a millenium. He shouts that they’re going to sit tight and figure out what to do. She backs down, and Bobby apologizes for her loss.
Bobby, then Tamara, then the boys exit. They appear in the room with Envy. He chuckles, “So, you know who I am, huh?” Sam asks what he/they want. “We already have what we want… we’re out. We’re free. Thanks to you, our kind is everywhere.” “I’m just celebrating.” Tamara threatens him. Envy taunts them with their own vices –Dean’s gluttony and lust, Tamara’s wrath. He says it’s the reason they became hunters in the first place. She pounds on him. “My point exactly. You call us sins.” He says they’re just animals, and they’ll be slaughtered like animals, too. He says they others are coming for him. Dean says they won’t find him, because he’ll be in Hell. He screams in pain as Tamara begins to exorcise him.
Bobby tells the boys that this guy might be right. They won’t have to find the demons; the demons will find them. Tamara comes in. “Demon’s gone.” The guy didn’t make it, though.

Sam and Dean are sitting pensively and quiet in a room full of candles. A radio lights up and begins playing a bluesy/Old Time/slide guitar version of “I shall not be moved”. Dean rises and declares, “Here we go.” They go to the window.
Isaac’s voice is shouting, “Tamara!” Isaac’s possessed body is pleading with her. She’s overcome with grief, and very irrational. [Don't let her run out there or let him in! Ahhh!]
[back from commercial...] Isaac is still pleading with Tamara to let him in. [I guess the Fred Claus trailer didn't make him feel any better.] She looks very tempted. The boys caution her that it’s just his body, possessed by one of the demons. The demon is recalling things that only Isaac would know, getting to her. He tells of how the demons came to their house, and killed their daughter. “You just let her die, too.” Tamara bursts through the door –breaking the seal of rock salt, of course- attacking him. The thrusts herself into him, sending them both tumbling down the stairs. She straddles his torso, saying, “Your now Isaac!” She thrusts the palo santo (holy wood) into his chest. Meanwhile, all the other demons are filing through the door. Sloth has Bobby cornered in a room… but, Bobby is just leading him under the pentagram. Sloth is trapped. Lust trades blows with Dean in the hallway. She “flirts” with Dean. They appear to be getting ready to… um… work her vice, before she kills him.
Demons come into a room toward Sam. “Here’s Johnny!”, says the lead demon, in a nod to Jack Nicholson. Sam backs away, and the lead holds up his hand to stop the ones following [Krysta: his backup dancers]. He looks up at the pentagram that Sam was probably luring them under. He asks, “You really think something like that is going to fool someone like me.” “Let me guess. You’re Pride.” Pride motions and cracks the ceiling, apparently breaking the power of the pentagram. Pride knows Sam by name, and by reputation. “The Boy King.” [Is this a hint at more than we already know of why Sam's special?] He’s unimpressed, now that he’s met him. “You think I’m going to bow to a cut-rate, piss-poor human like you? I have my Pride. Now, with your yellow-eyes friend gone, I don’t have to do a goddamn thing.”
Dean is kissing Lust. Suddenly, he grabs her hair and thrusts her head into a bath of holy water. Pride is roughing up Sam, and gets him in a headlock. Sam struggles, as Prides “minions” look on with glee. Through the open door in the background, Buffy, I mean, Ruby enters quickly, draws a bad-ass looking knife from sheath on her thigh, and swiftly slashes one of the minions in the throat. With a flashing light from his slashes throat, the demon “dies”. Another minion of Pride, in a woman’s body, turns to Ruby and says, “You!” She swings, hitting Ruby in the jaw, sending her back. Buffy, I mean, Ruby quickly recovers and jams the knife into the woman’s throat. Pride grabs Buffy, I mean, Ruby from behind. Sam grabs him, so he releases B… Ruby, who then jams Pride’s throat with Mr. Pointy… er, the knife.
Sam, winded, asks, “Who the Hell are you?” “I’m the girl that just saved your ass.” “I just saved yours, too.” “See you around, Sam.” Ruby brisks off, leaving Sam wondering. [Cue Nerf Herder theme music. Grrr... Arrrgh.]
[Actually, when Sam asks who she is, I want Ruby to reach up and pull off a latex mask and wig. "I'm Wesley Windham Price: Rogue Demon Hunter."]
[Back from the Saw IV advert marathon...]
A pile of dirt. A shallow pit, freshly dug. The bodies of a couple of the recently Seven-possessed. Sam and Dean are laying the bodies in the pit, then they douse them with gasoline. Bobby walks up, as they look at Tamara, who is watching Isaac’s body burning on a “pyre”. Bobby has been up all night, exorcising. “Any survivors?” “Well, the pretty girl, and the heavy guy, they’ll make it. Lifetime of therapy…” Sam asks Bobby about the knife that could kill a demon. He’s never seen one like that. Dean is interested in “that masked chick.” Sam asks what else they’ve let out. Dean lights the bodies.
Tamara is leaving. Bobby tells her to be careful, since the world “just got a lot scarier.” They look at each other, unsure of whether they can handle the war. Bobby drives off.
Sam tells Dean of a hooded priest outside Shreveport –that Tamara told him about- who might be able to help Dean with his demon deal. Dean tells him that they can’t try to break the deal, or Sam dies. They argue lightly about Dean sacrificing himself for Sam. Dean expresses that he’s tired, ready for it all to be over. They hop into the Impala and drive off.
Thanks to Jensen Ackles Fans.com for the screen shots.







![Supernatural 3.01 “Magnificent Seven” Ruby [Buffy] and her big knife](http://b5media_b4.s3.amazonaws.com/58/files/2007/10/3-01-x15-ruby-knife-supernatural.jpg)

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