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 | http://imdb.com/title/tt1032129/ |
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 - embodying the seven deadly sins |
Timeline | 1 week after 2.22 |
Location(s) | Oak Park, Illinois; just west of Chicago Just outside 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 have been 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, Sam and Dean 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. As one by one the eyes of the bystanders turn black, they 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 Walter collapses, a car bursts through the door, and 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 Tamara’s 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 Issac’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, and the other demons rush in.
Bobby traps Gluttony 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 the others, led by Pride. He knows who Sam is, and 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, who we will later know as Ruby, 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 of, telling them to look out for omens, as he will. Sam suggests they travel to Louisiana to visit a voodoo priestess to see if she can help with Dean’s deal.
Dean 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 says that he actually 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
Definitions
- Binsfeld's Classification of Demons
- Seven Deadly Sins
- Palo Santo
- Faust
- Devil's Gate in Wyoming
- Devil's trap
Music
- Hell's Bells - AC/DC
- You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman-Turner Overdrive
- I Shall Not be Moved - J.B.Burnett
- Mean Little Town - Howling Diablos
Quotes
Dean: Sold my soul, got a year to live. I ain’t sweating the cholesterol.
Sam: It’s hellfire, Dean.
Trivia & References
- Sam:Seventeen.
- Dean: Seventeen. You’d think it’d be Apocalypse Now. It’s been five days and bupkis.
- Apocalypse Now 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.
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.- Scooby Doo was a long running cartoon series about four friends and a dog called Scooby Doo who hunt down ghosts and the supernatural.
- A shout-out at the Shoe Rage crime scene to the character Gil Grisson from the TV show CSI:Crime Scene Investigation
- Se7en directed by Fight Club’s David Fincher, it is dark movie about serial killer who bases each murder on a gruesome interpretation of the seven deadly sins. His final kill is based on his envy of detective (Brad Pitt) and his wife. And no. I am not going to tell you what’s in the box!
- From the Christian 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."
- The quote is from Animal House by Dean Wormer to John Belushi’s character Bluto.
- The Three Stooges were an early 20th century comedy trio famous for slapstick comedy with witty one-liners. The Four Tops are a US band formed in the 1960s.
- 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 long running radio and TV series which featured a masked Texas Ranger.
Minutiae
Sides, Scripts & Transcripts
Promotion
- This episode was first made available a day before it was aired on network television, for free download on iTunes.
- Episode Stills
- Plot and casting info from Spoilerfix
- Link to character spoilers
- Link to casting photo spoilers
- Link to casting spoiler video interview
- The Director's Cuts at CWTV featured the scene with Sam and Dean in the car at the beginning, and the scene where Bobby talks about the Seven Deadly Sins and Peter Binsfeld.