8.01 We Need to Talk About Kevin
Title | We Need to Talk About Kevin |
Episode # | Season 8, Episode 1 |
First aired | October 3, 2012 |
Directed by | Robert Singer |
Written by | Jeremy Carver |
On IMDB | We Need to Talk About Kevin |
Outline | Dean escapes Purgatory after a year, but his reunion with a "retired" Sam is strained. Together they look for Kevin, who has managed to escape Crowley with a startling secret. |
Monster | Demons Crowley |
Timeline | One year after the events of 7.23 Survival of the Fittest |
Location(s) | 100-mile Wilderness, Maine Clayton, Louisiana |
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Synopsis
A year has passed since Dean and Castiel killed Dick Roman, the head of the Leviathans, and then disappeared in a cloud of black goo, leaving Sam alone. Somewhere in Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness, there is a flash of light and Dean emerges, covered in grime with a crude weapon in hand. He frightens two sleeping campers and demands to know where he is and the way to the nearest road. They point him in the right direction, and he takes one of their backpacks before fleeing.
Four days later, Dean has hitched a ride to Clayton, Louisiana, where he finds an old windmill. His left arm is bothering him, but he measures his steps from the windmill and starts to dig. When he uncovers a skeleton, he rolls up his left sleeve, telling someone to "hang on." His left arm is glowing red and bulging strangely, and he cuts across the bulge. He then drips glowing liquid from the wound into the grave, chanting in Latin. Once his arm is drained, a man appears behind him. He asks Dean what took him so long and Dean ignores him, asking if he's okay. The man answers in the affirmative and reveals vampiric fangs for a moment before asking Dean what they should do next. His name is Benny, and apparently he and Dean made it out of Purgatory together and are friends of a sort. They decide to go separate ways for now, though, and Dean tells Benny to keep his nose clean before hugging him.
Meanwhile, in Kermit, Texas, Sam is in a nice house packing a bag in the middle of the night. A woman and dog lay asleep on a bed nearby, and he pats the dog once before leaving quietly. The woman wakes and watches him go without saying anything. As Sam drives away from the house in the Impala, someone watches him from the shadows.
Later, Sam arrives in Whitefish, Montana, at Rufus's cabin. The moment he steps inside, he's tackled to the ground by Dean, who splashes him with holy water and borax, then cuts his arm with a silver knife. Sam resists, telling him that he isn't a demon, Leviathan, or shapeshifter and that he knows Dean isn't either. Dean performs the tests on himself anyways before pulling Sam into a hug. They talk, and Dean tells Sam that he's been in Purgatory for the last year. Sam asks how he escaped and what happened to Castiel, but Dean is evasive. He tells Sam that Castiel didn't make it and then asks Sam where he's been. He tried to call and left him messages, but Sam was unreachable.
Sam reveals that he's not hunting anymore. After he was left alone, he fixed the Impala and drifted. Dean asks if he looked for him and is hurt when he realizes that Sam gave him up for dead. He storms out and gets one of the phones that Sam left behind to play through the messages. On it he finds a number of messages from Kevin Tran, the prophet Crowley kidnapped a year ago. Kevin escaped the demons and called Sam, desperate for help. His messages span six months, and in the last one he tells Sam that he assumes he's dead and won't call again. Dean plays them back for Sam and tells him that Kevin was their responsibility. Chastened, Sam uses his computer to process Kevin's last message. In the background is a bus depot announcement for Centreville, Michigan. Sam also finds Kevin's girlfriend, Channing, online as a student at Centreville State College. They decide to look for Kevin there. Before they go, Dean checks over the Impala and is happy with what he sees, but not with what he smells: dog. Sam doesn't admit to anything, though.
On the way to Centreville they stop at a motel, and Dean has a flashback to his time in Purgatory. He is running through the woods hunting a vampire, and when he has him trapped against a tree he asks him where "the angel" is. The vampire doesn't know, and Dean cuts off his head. He's then tackled to the ground by another vampire and loses his weapon. He's struggling when someone else knocks the vampire down and beheads him: the vampire Benny. Dean is shaken up by his flashback and tells Sam that he wants to leave the motel, but Sam thinks Dean should get some rest. They start arguing and Dean asks Sam how he rationalized his year off. Sam defends himself, but Dean can't believe that Sam looked the other way when people were dying. He also intuits that a woman was involved, but Sam doesn't say anything except that there was a woman, and now there's not.
Later that night, Sam tells Dean that he didn't just stop hunting — he found something that he'd never had before. The woman's name was Amelia, and he met her when he hit a dog. Dean acts pissed that Sam had a dog in the Impala, but when Sam changes the subject and asks about Purgatory, he answers him. Although it was bloody and terrible, Dean says that there was something about being there: it felt pure. After his admission, Dean remembers what happened after Benny saved him from another vampire: Benny revealed that he knew a way for a human to escape Purgatory. He promised to show Dean the way out as long as he let him hitch a ride. Dean agreed to work with him if they looked for Castiel first.
When Dean and Sam arrive in Centreville, they go to question Channing. She denies seeing Kevin and tells them that they're over. The boys leave, deciding to split up to look for Kevin. Once they're gone, Channing's eyes turn black and she cuts her roommate's throat. She uses the blood to call her superiors, telling them that although Kevin still hasn't shown up, Dean Winchester is back.
Meanwhile, Sam is waiting for Dean when he sees a woman walking a dog. He has a brief flashback to the night he brought a dog into an animal hospital after hitting it with the Impala. He remembers being frantic until the doctor, a young woman, arrived and made him leave the exam room. He's jarred out of his memories when Dean arrives, telling him that he didn't find anything on campus. Sam reveals what he's discovered in the campus security archives: Kevin was on campus two months ago and he used a computer. Sam was able to hack his username and get his IP address, which leads to a coffee shop in Fairfield, Iowa.
When they arrive in Fairfield, a barista at the coffee shop leads them to an abandoned church in town where Kevin has been seen coming and going. Nobody answers when they knock so they go inside, where Kevin immediately sprays them with cleaning solution from a large water gun. They confirm that they are not Leviathans and Kevin asks them where they've been before inviting them inside.
Kevin tells Sam and Dean that after being kidnapped, Crowley took him to a warehouse where he had another tablet. He demanded that Kevin translate the tablet, and Kevin told Crowley that it contained a spell to open the gates of Hell. Crowley went to Wisconsin, where the Hell Gate was supposed to appear, while Kevin performed the spell that would open the gate. However, it was a trick and the spell Kevin cast killed the two demons guarding him so that he could escape.
Kevin then reveals what was really on the tablet: information about demons, including how to kill them and how to close the gates of Hell forever. He hid it before going into hiding himself. Dean wants to find the tablet and translate it right away, and is surprised when Sam is not immediately on board with the plan. Sam later apologizes to Kevin for abandoning him.
Crowley and a possessed Channing show up at the abandoned church, and Crowley offers to trade Channing for Kevin, proving that she is still alive by letting Channing talk. Kevin pretends to agree, but lures the demons into a back room where he drops holy water on them, allowing him, Sam, and Dean to escape. In revenge, as the group leaves in the Impala, Crowley kills Channing while a horrified Kevin watches.
Later, Sam, Dean, and Kevin stop at a gas station where Kevin reveals he is not taking things well, overwhelmed by everything he has been through and the murder of his girlfriend. As they're talking, Benny calls Dean, but he pretends it's a wrong number and hangs up. Dean then gets out of the car and, once he's out of sight, calls him back. Benny is watching a funeral, and Dean suggests that they stay away from each other until they adjust, but tells Benny he can call him if he gets into trouble. Benny says that he agrees with Dean that Purgatory is "pure" and that he wishes he had appreciated it more, like Dean.
Characters
Definitions
- Alcohol
- Aliases
- Borax
- Cameras
- Dean's Leather Jacket
- Deleted Scenes
- Demonology
- Demon Bomb
- Demon-Killing Knife
- Demon Smoke
- Devil's Trap
- Drugs
- Flashbacks
- Goblet of Blood
- Hell Gates
- Hello Boys
- Holy Water
- Holy Water in the Face
- Hugs
- Impala
- Moose
- Possession
- Prophet
- Purgatory
- Purgatory Weapons
- Rufus's Cabin
- Sam's Sideburns
- Sammy
- Silver
- Son of a Bitch
- Souls
- Spells
- Tablet
- Title Card
- Undead
- Vampires
- Warding Sigils
Music
- "Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull
- (plays during "The Road So Far" recap of events)
- "Man in the Wilderness" by Styx
- (plays over the montage of Dean post-Purgatory)
Quotes
Sam: I don't know whether to give you a hug or take a shower.
[Sam and Dean hug]
Sam: Dude, you're freakin' alive! I mean, what the hell happened?
Dean: Well, I guess standing too close to exploding Dick sends your ass straight to Purgatory.
Sam: You were in Purgatory? For the whole year?
Dean: I saw enough.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, I – you were gone... Dean. Cas was gone, Bobby was dead. I mean, Crowley even shipped off Kevin and Meg to parts unknown.
Dean: So you just turned tail on the family business?
Sam: Nothing says family quite like the whole family being dead.
Dean: I wasn't dead. In fact, I was knee-deep in God's armpit, killing monsters. Which, I thought, is what we actually do.
Sam: Yes, Dean, and as far as I knew, what we do is the thing that got every single member of my family killed. I had no one. No one. And for the first time in my life I was completely alone, and honestly I didn't exactly have a road map. So, yeah, I fixed up the Impala and I just drove.
Dean: After you looked for me. Did you look for me, Sam?
Sam: ...
Dean: Good. That's good. No, we always told each other not to look for each other. That's smart, good for you. Of course we always ignored that because of our deep abiding love for each other. But not this time, right Sammy?
Sam: I'm still the same guy.
Dean: Cliff notes? I went to Purgatory, Sam hit a dog.
Kevin: Only the stuff about closing the Gates of Hell. Forever.
Dean: ...Come again?
Kevin: Banish all demons off the face of the Earth. Lock them away forever. That could be important, right?
Sam: Look, I-I would. He's... not mine.
Amelia: He's not anybody's.
Sam: I-I spend a lot of the time on the road.
Amelia: Don't you think you're responsible?
Sam: Why do you think I brought him here?
Amelia: Roberta, could you hand this man his trophy on his way out, please? Maybe if you were such an upstanding guy you wouldn't have hit him in the first place?
Sam: Fine. I'll take him.
Dean: Spanky the demon, yeah I heard about you. You're the one that uses too much teeth, right?
Dean: Ask your mother.
Crowley: There's that grade-school zip. Missed it, I really did.
Dean: This ain't over by a long shot, Crowley.
Kevin: There is a demon in you and you're going to your safety school.
Kevin: Awesome. The king of Hell just snapped my girlfriend's neck. How about you?
Dean: What's that?
Trivia & References
Dean: Yeah, and Sasha Grey's gone legit.
Sam: Huh?
Dean: What?
Sam: Nothing... she did a Soderbergh film...
- Sasha Grey is famous hardcore porn star. Her first non-porn feature was The Girlfriend Experience by renowned director Steven Soderbergh in 2009.
- A reference to the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials of the '70s and '80s.
Dean: Cliff notes? I went to Purgatory, Sam hit a dog.
- Cliff notes is a series of study guides presenting information in bitesize chunks.
Kevin: You know I'm not gay, right?
- This is a reference to the campaign in support of LGBT Youth "It Gets Better." The campaign was created in response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school in September 2010.
Minutiae
- The first is a short clip of Sam watching Amelia operate on Riot through a window in the veterinary hospital. Read the transcript here.
- The second takes place outside the abandoned church that the Winchesters and Kevin are inside of. Crowley, two demons, and Channing (also possessed), discuss their plan to extract Kevin and the tablet from inside the church. The demons turn to head inside, but Crowley refuses to go inside with them, allowing them to do the dirty work. Read the transcript here.
Sides, Scripts & Transcripts
Promotion
- Title and character spoiler by Spoiler TV
- Character spoiler by TVLine
- Episode Synopsis
- Set of promo pics by TVOvermind
- Season 8 teaser promo
- Full Season 8 promo
- CHCH promo
- Sneak peek
- Winchester Radio's podcast episode for this episode with Exec Producer Jim Michaels