3.01 The Magnificent Seven
Title | The Magnificent Seven |
Episode # | Season 3, Episode 1 |
First aired | October 4, 2007 |
Directed by | Kim Manners |
Written by | Eric Kripke |
On IMDB | The Magnificent Seven |
Outline | Opening the Devil's Gate has let out hundreds of demons. Sam, Dean, and Bobby hunt seven of them in Illinois, meeting up with some other hunters on the way. |
Monster | Demons Seven Deadly Sins |
Timeline | One week after 2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two |
Location(s) | Oak Park, Illinois Lincoln, Nebraska |
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Contents
Synopsis
In Oak Park, Illinois, Walter Rosen is putting out his garbage when the street lights flicker and dark clouds roil. From the sky a stream of black substance overtakes Walter. He opens his eyes and they are black – he has been possessed by a demon.
Meanwhile, Sam studies the legend of Faust in order to find a way to help undo the deal Dean made with the crossroads demon, as Dean has a sexual romp. Bobby calls with news on a cicada swarm and crop failure in Nebraska. It is the first possible sign of demon activity they've had. When the Devil's Gate in Wyoming opened, strange storm clouds appeared over seventeen cities, but there have been no reports of demonic activity so far.
The boys rendezvous with Bobby at a farmhouse where they find a family who have starved to death in front of a television, despite the kitchen being full of food. While searching the house, Dean is jumped by Isaac, who along with his wife Tamara, are hunters. Back at Isaac and Tamara's house, they make it clear they don’t want to work with the Winchesters, as they blame them for all the demons that were let loose when the Devil's Gate was opened. Outside, in the shadows, a woman watches them.
Bobby and the boys investigate the death of a woman outside a shoe store. Examination of the security video shows Walter Rosen interacting with the woman responsible for the murder just before the crime. While at the crime scene, the woman who earlier had watched the house follows Sam. Even though Sam senses that somebody is following him, she disappears into thin air before Sam can see her. Using a photo of the man, Bobby and the brothers trail him to a bar, where Bobby urges cautious surveillance. However, Tamara and Isaac arrive and enter the bar. They have also spotted the possessed Walter Rosen, but when Isaac prepares to use holy water to see if he is a demon, they are detected. One by one the eyes of the bystanders turn black as the bar’s patrons are all revealed to be demons. Tamara and Isaac are restrained, and Tamara is forced to look on while a man hands Isaac a container of drain cleaner. He is overcome by some force, and drinks the poison.
As Isaac collapses, a car bursts through the door. Sam, Dean, and Bobby fight the demons, rescuing Tamara and throwing Walter into the trunk where he is held by a devil's trap. Back at the house, Bobby has deduced that they are dealing with the "Seven Deadly Sins" -– demons, as documented in Binsfeld's Classification of Demons in medieval times. They interrogate Envy, who is possessing Walter. He taunts them that humans possess all the vices they represent, and warns that the other demons will track them down. He taunts Dean about his lust and gluttony, and Tamara about her wrath. Tamara then exorcises Envy, and Walter dies in the process.
Dean offers to battle the demons while the others escape – a suicide mission – but Sam and Bobby agree they need to face the demons together. One of the demons possesses Isaac’s corpse and calls in agony to Tamara to help him, but she is aware of the ruse and stabs him with a stake of Palo Santo. However, she has broken the salt line at the door, allowing the other demons to rush in.
Bobby traps Sloth under a Devil's trap while Lust tracks down Dean and tries to seduce him, until he manages to push her into a tub of Holy Water. Sam is confronted by three others, led by Pride. Pride knows who Sam is, and knows of his connection to the Yellow-Eyed Demon, calling Sam a prodigy and the boy king. As Sam is attacked, the mysterious woman who had followed him earlier appears and attacks the demons with a knife, which kills two of them, while Sam helps her kill the third. The woman disappears after revealing she knows who Sam is. Bobby spends the night exorcising the demons – only two of the humans survive and in the morning Tamara leaves. Bobby confirms that he hasn’t heard of a blade that could kill demons and then heads off, telling them to look out for omens, as he will.
Sam suggests they travel to Louisiana to visit a hoodoo priestess to see if she can help with Dean’s deal. Dean says no to the hoodoo priestess and confesses to Sam that part of the deal was that if he tried to get out of it, Sam would die. Sam charges that Dean is selfish and is putting him through the same thing Dean felt after John gave his life for Dean. Dean admits to being selfish and says he thinks he's entitled – and that moreover, he feels great for the first time in a long while, and that he wants to enjoy this last year by killing some evil and having fun.
Characters
- Sam Winchester
- Dean Winchester
- Ruby
- Bobby Singer
- Tamara
- Isaac
- Walter Rosen
- Envy
- Lust
- Greed
- Pride
- Gluttony
- Sloth
- Wrath
Definitions
- Binsfeld's Classification of Demons
- Bobby's Car
- Bobby's Hats
- Costumes & Disguises
- Dean's Amulet
- Demon-Killing Knife
- Demon Smoke
- Demonology
- Devil's Gate in Wyoming
- Devil's Trap
- Faust
- Get this
- Holy Water
- Hunters
- Hunter's Funeral Pyre
- Impala
- Palo Santo
- Possession
- Salt
- Seven Deadly Sins
- Sexual Encounters
- Star Wars
- The Shining
- The Simpsons
- Table of Death
- Title Card
Music
- "Hells Bells" by AC/DC
- (plays during recap of previous events)
- "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive
- (plays as Sam walks in on Dean and the twins)
- "Mean Little Town" by Howling Diablos
- (plays at the bar occupied by demons)
- "I Shall Not be Moved" by J.B. Burnett
- (played on radio as Sam and Dean are preparing for the Seven Deadly Sins to arrive at the house)
Quotes
Dean: What for?
Sam: So I can gouge my eyes out.
Dean: It was a beautiful, natural act, Sam.
Sam: I don't know, man. Be careful what you wish for.
Dean: Well, I sold my soul. Got a year to live. I ain't sweating the cholesterol.
Dean: No offense?
Tamara: Isaac. Like you've never made a mistake.
Dean: I'm comforting the bereaved. What are you doing?
Sam: Workin'. Dead body, possible demon attack – that kind of stuff.
Bobby: Yeah, we do. There's seven. Do you have any idea who we're up against?
Dean: No. Who?
Dean: Maybe. But they're not gonna find you... 'cause you'll be in Hell. Someone send this clown packing.
Lust: Baby, I'm whatever you want me to be.
Dean: Yeah, all right, just stay back.
Lust: Or what?
Dean: Good point.
Ruby: I'm the girl that just saved your ass.
Dean: Whatever. You're alive, I feel good – for the first time in a long time. I got a year to live, Sam. I'd like to make the most of it. So what do you say we kill some evil sons of bitches and we raise a little hell, huh?
Sam: You're unbelievable.
Trivia & References
Sam: Polling the electorate.
- On The Simpsons, the local cops joke that Mayor "Diamond Joe" Quimby is "polling the electorate" whenever he meets an attractive young woman for a motel-room tryst.
- "Doublemint Twins" was a part of an old advertising campaign for Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum. The company used identical twins for their advertising for many years.
Sam: Seventeen.
Dean: Seventeen. You’d think it’d be Apocalypse Now. It’s been five days and bupkis. What are the demons waiting for?
- Apocalypse Now is an iconic France Ford Coppola movie set in the Vietnam War and based on Joseph Conrad’s book Heart of Darkness
- "Bupkis" is a yiddish word used to mean "nothing" or "nothing of value." It is derived from a Slavic word for goat poo.
- A candygram is a box of candy delivered with a greeting or other prepared message, often used for birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine's Day.
- Scooby-Doo was a long running cartoon series about four friends and a dog called Scooby-Doo who hunt down ghosts and the supernatural.
- "G-man" is short for "government-man", AKA an FBI agent.
- A shout-out at the Shoe Rage crime scene to the character Gil Grissom from the TV show CSI:Crime Scene Investigation.
Isaac: I know.
- This is a reference to the famous scene in Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back of Han Solo's last conversation with Princess Leia prior to being frozen in carbonite.
- Se7en directed by Fight Club’s David Fincher. It is a dark psychological thriller about serial killer who bases each murder on a gruesome interpretation of the Seven Deadly Sins. "What's in the box?" is a reference to his final kill. And no, I'm not going to tell you what’s in the box!
- The Three Stooges were an early 20th century comedy trio famous for slapstick comedy with witty one-liners. The Four Tops are a U.S. band that formed in the 1960s.
- From the Bible, Mark 5:9. When a possessed man approaches Jesus, he asks for the demon's name and the reply is "My name is Legion; for we are many."
- A reference to the Bible, John 8:7, which tells the famous story of Jesus defending a woman accused of adultery from being stoned to death by asking her accusers, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." This quote is more widely known in popular jargon and pop culture as "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
- The quote is from Animal House by Dean Wormer to Stephen Furst’s character Kent Dorfman.
- Famous Jack Nicholson quote from The Shining, in a mocking interpretation of the introduction of late night show host Johnny Carson.
- A reworking of the line "Who was that masked man?" from The Lone Ranger, a long running radio and TV series which featured a masked Texas Ranger.
Minutiae
There are Seven Deadly Sins, but only six are shown killed or exorcised on camera during the episode:
- Envy (captured at the bar and exorcised by Tamara; human did not make it)
- Sloth (not explicitly stated, but implied by Bobby's "fat, drunk and stupid" comment. Captured by a devil's trap and exorcised by Bobby; human made it)
- Lust (immobilized by Dean in the holy water bathtub; exorcised by Bobby later)
- Gluttony (killed by Ruby with her knife)
- Greed (killed by Ruby with the demon-killing knife)
- Pride (killed by Ruby and Sam using the demon-killing knife)
- Wrath (possibly Wrath is the demon that possessed Isaac's body; it was immobilized and perhaps killed by Tamara - and/or Wrath is the bouncer/bar owner who tells Isaac and Tamara that he doesn't like hunters coming into his bar)
Sides, Scripts & Transcripts
Promotion
Episode Meta
- SPN Heavy Meta Season Three Meta Index
- 3.01 The Magnificent Seven: The Family That Slays Together by bardicvoice (October 2007); archive link
- Bond, Silvia. 2007. The Magnificent Winchesters: "The Magnificent Seven" Season 3, Episode 1. Pink Raygun, October 5; archive link
- Camerawork, Blocking, and Nonverbal Cues: How a Scene From "TM7" Establishes The Dynamic For S3 by bowtrunckle (October 2007); archive link, spnematography