Supernatural just keeps outdoing itself this season: each episode is better than the last. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment, considering how strong it started. I hope it keeps it up.

It’s apparent right from the opening recap that this is going to be a strong main story-arc episode. The bits shown in the recap show foundational scenes going as far back as the pilot episode: Dean and Sam’s mother Mary’s death, the Colt, and the demon Azazel himself: old Yellow Eyes. As well, we’re shown a reminder that the Angel Castiel is now on scene. If this show successfully ties all these major plot points together in a meaningful and entertaining way, it will be an impressive accomplishment indeed.

The episode starts with Sam leaving a sleeping Dean in order to meet up with Ruby. Sam’s only gone a minute when Castiel apperates into the room and cryptically tells Dean that “he has to stop it.” Castiel, with a touch of his finger to Dean’s brow, then sends Dean back in time. Dean awakes on a bench in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s April 30, 1973. Sonny and Cher are still an item, TAB is still the cola of choice, and Nixon is still making news. Dean makes his way into a nearby diner and seats himself down right next to a young man soon revealed to be none other than his own dad, John Winchester.

Leaving the Diner, Dean runs into Castiel and asks Castiel whether angels have gotten their hands on some Deloreans. That’s part of what makes Supernatural so great. Just as you start to think the show is cribbing a bit too much from another source, a character makes a comment like Dean, with the Deloreans, and all is forgiven. Castiel again reminds Dean that he “has to stop it,” but vanishes before saying what “it” is.

There’s a bit of fan service in the next scene, with Dean convincing John to buy the Metallicar from a car lot, in lieu of a VW bus. (If John had bought the VW bus, rather than the Metallicar, Dean and Sam might be tooling around in a VW bus, dealing with strange phenomena – they’d be one talking dog short of being the Scooby Gang). Luckily, Dean convinces John to go for the Metallicar, and the timeline is preserved.

Evening having fallen, Dean continues stalking his own father. He sees John and Mary, his mother, at a diner. He watches them from the outside, looking in, and is taken unawares by Mary, who has excused herself from the table and crept up behind Dean. Mary confronts Dean and holds her own in a struggle with him. Turns out she’s a hunter! It further turns out that she’s from a family of hunters. Her mom and Dad, Samuel and Deanna (Sam and Dean’s namesakes), are both hunters. Well, at least Samuel is – Deanna may just be a dutiful Hunter’s Wife. In a glorious bit of fan service, the part of Samuel is ably played by none other than Mitch Pileggi, of the X-Files. The X-Files is the grandfather of Supernatural, so it makes perfect sense for Mitch Pileggi to be the grandfather of Sam and Dean. Dean is quickly, if a bit begrudgingly, accepted into the family’s confidence after demonstrating that he is a hunter as well. Sitting around the dinner table, the conversation turns to talk of John and how John is a “naive civilian,” not the hunter we the audience know he eventually became. Samuel explains that he is working a job at the Witshire Farm.

Mary and Samuel head to the farm, with Samuel dressed as a priest, only to find that Dean has beat them to the punch and has already interviewed the Widow Witshire. He too is dressed as a priest, and he introduces Samuel to the widow as his “senior senior associate, Father Cheney.” The widow doesn’t really have any useful intel to share, but Mary gleans from her son, Charley, that Charley unwittingly bargained with Yellow Eyes for an end to Charley’s father’s abuse. Dean assumes that the bargain involved the selling of Charley’s soul, but as it turns out Yellow Eyes has other plans.

Now aware that Yellow Eyes is in the picture, Dean jumps to the conclusion that it is his mission to change fate and put an end to Yellow Eyes in the past, before Yellow Eyes can kill Dean’s mother in 1983. Dean decides the best way to accomplish this is with the Colt, the demon-slaying super-gun that featured very prominently in a number of episodes a season or two back. Using his father’s journal, Dean determines that the next victim will be a woman by the name of Liddy Walsh, just a few miles up the road and in just a few days’ time. Dean decides to intercept Yellow eyes at the Walsh residence, and with the Colt he figures he has a good chance of success. On his way to get the Colt he asks Mary about John. He learns that John is a sweet and kind, an anti-hunter that believes in happy endings. Mary explains that she hates her life as a hunter and wants to be safe and to raise a family. She confides in Dean, telling him that the worst possible thing, for her, would be to see her children raised as hunters. This cuts Dean to the core, and in an effort to change the future Dean tells Mary to avoid getting out of bed on November 2, 1983, the night she walks in on Yellow Eyes near Sam’s crib and is killed. She is scared and confused by what Dean is telling her, but she consents.

Dean then heads to get the Colt. Along the way he talks to Castiel about changing the future. Castiel points out that if Dean is successful and changes the future so that he, Sam, and his father are not hunters, then all of the victims they saved as hunters will die because the Winchesters weren’t there to save them. Dean realizes, and cares, but decides that family comes first. He’s going to try to change the future.

Dean gets the Colt and heads to Liddy Walsh’s residence. Mary and Samuel arrive first. Samuel shoots Yellow Eyes just as he is brokering a deal with Liddy, but Samuel is quickly overpowered. Mary then attacks, taking Yellow Eyes by surprise. He seems taken by Mary, surprised and interested at her existence. They scuffle, and Dean saves the day by appearing with the Colt. Yellow Eyes recognizes it for what it is, and he skedaddles so as not to be dispatched by it.

Dean, speaking privately with Samuel, decides to level with him and to tell him the truth – that he’s traveled back in time and that Mary is his mother. That’s one of the things I like so much about this show – the characters actually talk with each other and share meaningful information at useful times. Unlike some other shows which shall remain nameless. (I’m looking at you, LOST). The only problem with Dean and Samuel’s conversation is that Samuel is not Samuel. Samuel has been possessed by Yellow Eyes. Dean and the possessed Samuel duke it out for the Colt and possessed Samuel soon gets the upper hand. During a break in the fighting, Darth Yellow Eyes is struck with the thought that Dean may be one of his force-embued kids. Not so, but there is another…. brother. Carefully observing the dictates of Evil Monologing 101, Yellow Eyes patiently explains to Dean that it is not has plan to make deals to get souls; rather he’s after something greater. He’s making deals with ideal parents-to-be, so he can come back and coopt their children into his Evil Army in ten year’s time. It’s a 10-year plan to build a master race, but Yellow Eyes won’t say to what end. But… does that then mean that Mary made a deal with Yellow Eyes, and when he visited the Winchester household in 1983 he was collecting his due? What could possibly cause her to want to make a deal? While he is soliloquizing, Deanna creeps up from behind and makes her move for the Colt, but not before Yellow Eyes fatally and intentionally stabs himself (Samuel). In a scene that could easily be taken from a Stephen King playbook, Deanna – about to save the day – is summarily dispatched, her neck snapped. Just like that, both of Dean and Sam’s grandparents have been killed. Good thing everything looks on track for John and Mary, who have run off to elope; otherwise Dean and Sam would be facing a serious Grandfather Paradox here. (The Grandfather Paradox: if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, how can you later be born to go back in time and kill off your grandfather?)

Elsewhere, John and Mary are in their car. John begins proposing to Mary, but Yellow Eyes (fatally stabbed Samuel) interrupts. He manhandles John and snaps his neck. Uh oh. What was that about the grandfather paradox? John Winchester is dead? How can this be? The answer quickly becomes apparent: Yellow Eyes now has something Mary desperately wants – the ability to restore John to life. He’s got the bargaining leverage he needs to bring Mary on board as one of his Psychic Kid Army parents. She makes the deal, demonstrating that dealing with demons to restore a family member back to life is something that runs strong in the Winchester family.

Dean arrives in time to witness the goings-on. Castiel appears and sends Dean back to the present, explaining to Dean that destiny cannot be changed. Yellow Eyes was destined to kill his parents. Yellow Eyes was destined to make his deal with Mary. Mary is destined to die in 1983, when she interrupts Yellow Eyes near Sam’s crib feeding Sam demon blood. Why, then, did Castiel send Dean back in time to “stop it?” Castiel explains that he did so that Dean would see the truth. So that he would see what the Angels know. So that he would stop the path that Sam is on. Yellow Eyes ominously warns Dean that if he doesn’t stop Sam, the Angels will. Why, I wonder, do the angels need Dean as their intermediary? If Sam/Yellow Eyes/etc need to be stopped, why don’t THEY just stop him? Why make Dean do it? Hopefully this will become clear. So far, we’ve just got Castiel’s “God works in mysterious ways” nonanswer to that question.

What, exactly, did Dean learn on his little jaunt through time? He learned that Mary was a hunter, and that John only became one later. That’s certainly interesting family lore to have, but why did he need to know that? He learned that Sam’s abilities are the product of Mary’s deal with Yellow Eyes. But didn’t the boys already know how Sam was visited, and by whom? And didn’t they already know that Yellow Eyes is building an army? What “truth” was it, exactly, that Castiel was showing Dean? 

One of Supernatural’s great strengths is the rapport between Sam and Dean. It’s enjoyable to see them relate to each other. For a largely Samless episode, this was surprisingly enjoyable and solid. It gets an easy five out of five Metallicars from me.