First Blood

Season	Episode	Overall
12	9	250

Series

Supernatural

Airdate

January 26, 2017

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First Blood is the 9th episode of Season 12. It aired on January 26, 2017.

Summary

There was something about being there... It felt pure.

This episode summary is an official CW press release. It may contain errors.
DO NOT CHANGE!

After being arrested for the attempted assassination of the President of The United States, Sam and Dean must find a way out of an underground, government-run, detention facility in the middle of nowhere. Determined to find her sons, Mary (guest star Samantha Smith) and Castiel seek assistance from an unlikely source.

Plot

The episode begins with Castiel placing a call to Mary, telling her he needs to meet her at the Men of Letters bunker as soon as she can.

Rick Sanchez briefs Camp on Sam and Dean's supposed crimes

Meanwhile, Rick Sanchez, a government official briefs anti-terrorism Agent Camp on Sam and Dean Winchester's history and their attempted assassination of President Jefferson Rooney.^[1] He tells Camp that they are keeping the arrest quiet—only the agents who made the arrest and the President know about the Winchesters. Sanchez suggests they simply take Sam and Dean out back and shoot them, that that's what they deserve given their rap sheet.

Camp pays a visit to Dean, who sits silently in his cell as Camp talks. Camp asks Dean why they went after the president. Dean is silent, and Camp assures him he won't be using torture, believing it doesn't actually work. Instead, he tells Dean he and Sam will be locked away in isolation for as long as possible. He says that the extreme isolation will eventually cause them mentally snap and tell him everything before he leaves the cell.

Meanwhile, in a motel room, Mick Davies sits at a desk with a typewriter and begins reporting to his superiors on his attempts to get more hunters to join the British Men of Letters. In a flashback, Mick meets with a hunter named Wally at a diner, telling him of a world without monsters, demons, or any supernatural deaths, offering up any and all resources that the Men of Letters have at their disposal, under the agreement that Wally and other hunters would answer to the British Men of Letters. Wally is singularly uninterested. Mick relays in his report that "American hunters can be... difficult."

At the bunker, Mary is angry at Castiel for leaving Sam and Dean behind. When she calms down, she questions why, if they needed help, they didn't come to her.

At the government facility, six weeks pass for Sam and Dean in solitary. Castiel meets with Crowley to seek his aid in finding Sam and Dean. Crowley glibly tells Castiel he can't help him—while he does have spies in the government, where Dean and Sam were taken is above their pay grade. He tells Castiel he isn't worried about the Winchesters since they always come back, leaving a trail of bodies behind them.

Mary meets with Castiel at a bar and they lament not being able to find Sam and Dean, but Mary assures Castiel they will find them in time; until they do, they have to do their best. Castiel questions if they are, telling Mary about vampire murders in Missouri that he attempted to investigate; he never found the monster, and three more women died before he gave up and left. When Mary suggests they work together he simply tells her he would only get in her way.

In the facility, a guard comes with their daily food tray, but when he notices Sam lying on his bed, not responding, he opens the cell to find that both Sam and Dean are dead. At the facility's morgue, Sanchez blames Camp for Sam and Dean's death, and the fact that they can not be punished any longer. While alone in the room, the brothers rise from the dead. As the coroner enters the morgue, the two surprise him and question where they are. The coroner tells them he doesn't know, as he is taken to the facility while blindfolded each day.

Sam and Dean sneak out of the building and use the coroner's phone to call Castiel. A shocked Castiel questions what happened. Sam pinpoints that they are located in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, and they formulate a plan to meet up. Sam and Dean are soon found missing, and troops are sent into the woods to find them.

Dean taunts Rick Sanchez over a stolen walkie-talkie

Castiel and Mary meet with Mick Davies and Arthur Ketch

Castiel is picked up by Mary and takes her to meet with Mick Davies and Mr. Ketch. She is skeptical of the Brits, remarking how they almost killed her sons.^[2] Castiel assures her they can be trusted as they helped them with Lucifer.^[1] Ketch and Davies are surprised and impressed to find out they'd been fighting the Devil himself. They agree to help get Sam and Dean back. Mary continues to be skeptical until Mick pleads his case that they only want to help. When Mary and Castiel reveal the boys' location, Mr. Ketch quickly surmises that they were at Site 94—a government black site that does not officially exist. Mick tells them he will get their techs to move a satellite over the area in hopes of finding the Winchesters.

In the forest, as night falls, Sam and Dean find their way to a cabin and begin setting traps. The soldiers arrive at the cabin and are quickly ambushed. Dean gets the jump on Sanchez, who steps on a bear trap he had hidden and easily subdues him. Camp is able to sneak up behind Dean, but he is disarmed by Sam, who tells him the truth of the situation: the President was possessed by the Devil, and they saved him. Dean tells them they can believe them or not, but if they come after them, they can expect the same thing to happen again. They tell Camp that they are the guys that saved the world, and walk away.

Sam and Dean are soon reunited with Mary and Castiel, and are surprised to find out Mr. Ketch and Davies helped find them. Sam suggests they leave, expecting backup to be coming, and Mr. Ketch is surprised to hear that they left survivors. Mick assures him they will handle it.

As the Winchesters and Castiel are driving away, the car dies and they are greeted by Billie. Dean explains that they were truly trapped with no normal means of escape, so Dean summoned Billie to make a deal: Sam and Dean die and are resurrected one last time, and at midnight Billie can take one of them permanently. Mary questions why they would agree to that, Dean tells that her being locked up alone was worse than Hell and that it was the only option that would allow at least one of them to continue fighting. Castiel says that they don't have to do it but Billie tells him they are bound by blood, and to break that would come with cosmic consequences. When Billie asks who she is going to be reaping, Mary offers herself up, which she gladly accepts and subdues the brothers so they won't interfere.

Castiel kills Billie to save the Winchesters

As Mary is about to commit suicide, Castiel sneaks up behind Billie and stabs her with an angel blade, killing her. When Dean questions what Castiel has done, Castiel tells him the world needs every last Winchester, and he won't let any of them die, that they meant too much to him, and he will face the consequences for their deal.

Back at Mick's motel room, he finishes up his report to his superiors, revealing that Mr. Ketch has taken care of the loose ends, having killed Sanchez, Camp, and everyone at Site 94 that knew about the brothers. He finishes his report by saying he has made some inroads with American hunters. The episode ends with Mary at the diner speaking to Davies saying she was interested in what the British Men of Letters were offering.

Characters

Main Cast

Recurring Cast

Guest Stars

Samantha Smith as Mary Winchester
Lisa Berry as Billie

Featured Supernatural Beings

Continuity

Billie is killed in this episode. This marks the death of another recurring reaper since Tessa in Stairway to Heaven.
Sam briefly dies in this episode. This is his first death since his murder at the hands of Walt in Dark Side of the Moon.
- Dean previously died in Red Meat when he committed suicide so he could speak to Billie. Similarly, Dean had attempted to make a deal with her to revive Sam, whom he thought had died.
Dean mentions about him killing Hitler in The One You've Been Waiting For.
Rick mentions Sam and Dean making it to the list of the FBI's 'Most Wanted' in 2011. This is a reference to the two Leviathans who posed as Sam and Dean and committed several murders across different states. They appeared in Season 7's Slash Fiction.
- He also mentions that Sam and Dean were presumed dead following a shoot out in Ankeny, Iowa.

Trivia

Antagonists: Members of site 94.
This is the 250th episode.
This was watched by 1.72 million viewers and got a 0.6 rating.
"First Blood" is a reference to the 1982 film of the same name, where Vietnam veteran John Rambo (played by Sylvester Stallone) is also pursued by the authorities through the woods.
The typewriter Mick Davies uses to communicate is similar to concept of the Selectric 251, an inter-universe typewriter and communication device, from the television show Fringe.
- Selectric 251 itself based from now out-of-manufacture IBM Selectric II, which was produced in 1971.
The boys spent two months in a Maximum Security (Supermax) Facility in Colorado, in which ADX Florence is located. ADX Florence is a Supermax in which terrorists (Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, Theodore Kaczynski, etc.), spies (Robert Hanssen, Harold Nicholson, etc.), cartel leaders (Osiel Cardenas and Juan Garcia Obrego), and a FARC Leader (Simon Trinidad) are incarcerated, and spend 23-hours a day in solitary confinement, much like Dean and Sam spent in this episode.
Castiel has updated his voicemail: "This is my voice mail. Make your... voice... a mail."
Wally refers to Mick as a "limey paper pusher". Limey is a slang term for a British person. The word was previously used in The Devil in the Details and Devil May Care, both referring to Crowley.
Dean's line to Rick, "Well, what we've got here, is a failure to communicate. We're not trapped out here with you. You're trapped out here with us," is a reference to two movies: The first part is the start of the Captain's Speech in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke (this speech is also the intro of the song "Civil War" by Guns 'n' Roses). The latter part is a reference to Rorschach's line from DC's Watchmen: "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me".
When given a prison meal a juice box is given. The box is clearly "Western Family," the store brand of Save-On-Foods, a chain of grocery stores in Western Canada, where Supernatural is filmed.

Continuity errors

Even though the guard who finds Sam dead in his cell states that he tried CPR to no avail, Sam is still lying on his side, in the same position as before. To actually perform CPR the guard would have had to turn Sam on his back.

Quotes

Rick Sanchez: Six hours ago, Sam and Dean Winchester attempted to kill the President of the United States.^[1]
Camp: Huh. Do we know why?
Rick: They haven’t said a word since we picked them up.
Camp: Quiet types. Okay. What do we know about ‘em?
Rick: A lot. Brothers. Born in Lawrence, Kansas to Mary Winchester, deceased, and John Winchester, also deceased. FBI started investigating them back in 2007.^[3]
Camp: For what?
Rick: Assault, murder, multiple counts of desecrating a corpse.
Camp: The same corpse?
Rick: [pauses] No. Different corpses. They made the FBI’s most wanted in 2011, then died in a shootout with police in Ankeny, Iowa.^[4] At least, that’s what their file said; but apparently not.

Mary: [to Castiel] Seat belt on. I drive fast.

Sam: We're the guys who saved the world.

Castiel: [to Winchester Family] You know, this world, this sad, doomed little world, it needs you. It needs every last Winchester it can get, and I will not let you die. I won't let any of you die. And I won't let you sacrifice yourselves. You mean too much to me, to everything.