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spn rewatch | wendigo

I’m gonna be real upfront right now. This episode scared the piss out of me when I first saw it. I’m sorry but a crazy fast, perfect hunter who can move faster than you can blink and eats human flesh to survive and can mimic a person’s voice to lure you to them?! I WAS TERRIFIED! It didn’t help that I had just moved into our new house, which is on five acres of land with about four of those acres being nothing but woods. But, for real, I know some of the effects aren’t as good as they could be by today’s standards but I actually loved and was terrified of this episode the first time I saw it, which kind of amped up the scary factor from the pilot for me.

Okay, here we go.

So as if we needed to further cement that this is taking place in glorious 2005, you’ve got two guys playing games on their Nintendo DS’s (RIP pre-Glee Cory Monteith, the only person who could’ve competed with Jared vertically) and then Tommy recording a video on his Blackberry, somehow magically having it perfectly level with his face despite not being able to see the screen as he records. Like seriously that’s the supernatural activity they should be investigating.

Okay but so some of the wendio effects later in the episode are not so great but in this first scene, I think they made some pretty solid choices of just relying on the whole concept of “less is more” and giving mostly scary sounds and rustling trees and making you more afraid of what could be in the forest than creating a scary visual to throw at you right off the bat. Solid scary intro scene.

The cemetery scene. Totally classic shoutout to Carrie. I had just gotten into Stephen King when I started watching Supernatural (honestly I was delving into all kinds of horror themed things at the time) and I’d seen Carrie for the first time not too long before this. Which means not only was I super scared by the jump scare (because I’m still jumpy as fuck to this day), I was also SUPER proud of myself for knowing what they were trying to reference there. I definitely thought I was cool for getting that one. Now, not so much. But the scene still makes me jump.

I really do like the ways they’re kind of trying to establish how the brothers care for each other. Like you know right off the bat in the pilot that their relationship is rough at best and that there’s some pretty obvious toxic masculinity on Dean’s part at least but like you can still see that Dean’s concerned. He’s got his own way of showing it but he’s worried about his little brother.

Side note: just remember that they both had a seriously messed up childhood and the fact that either of them are as close to normal as they are is impressive. Like I think all things considered, they’re pretty well adjusted. Kind of.

This episode is kind of outside the norm compared to future episodes with how Sam and Dean both handle the case when they first get to town. The fact that Sam just wants to go straight to the coordinates John left them while Dean’s the one saying “maybe we should do a little research first” is bizarro. But it also kind of helps show just where Sam’s mind is at at this point. He’s not coming to this as a hunter taking on a case, he’s a man with a vendetta and the next step he needs to take is finding John. He’s fueled by anger and grief and guilt and that kind of reflects when he seems less concerned about what’s going on in the woods and more interested in just getting out there ASAP.

Okay, just like they couldn’t pass as US Marshals, the guys seriously do not look like park rangers at all. Like you guys aren’t even trying come on. And good on Haley for being suspicious even if she did seem to buy into their story for a bit.

BABY HAN SOLO!

I totally did not realize that was Alden Ehrenreich playing Ben until I saw his name on screen at the beginning of the episode. He looks so so so young in this ohmygod. Also think I’ll need to keep a list of like all the crazy celeb cameos of people who got famous after being on the show. Or were already famous but I totally forgot popped up.

For our next super underrated guest star scene of the series, Shaw - the old man who’s parents were taken by a “grizzly” back when he was a kiddo in 1959.

Like seriously, it’s one scene but Donnelly Rhodes (RIP) does an amazing job with the scene and like it kind of leaves me with chills whenever he says that whatever it was didn’t break down the door but unlocked it. Like that’s still hella spooky to me. Also, I still don’t totally understand why the wendigo left him behind. Like you’d think for a monster that is going to have a big ass meal before hibernation would want as much meat as possible. Like yeah a little kid wouldn’t much but he’d be something right?

Also that’s a gnarly scar like how did he survive that.

So Dean talks about it being possibly a skinwalker or a black dog but like looking into what those both actually are I honestly don’t understand why he would think that based on what they know about the attacks. Like black dogs are death omens and skinwalkers wouldn’t be able to do the kind of damage that’s being done considering everyone’s just like “oh it’s a grizzly”. So like I dunno, I guess this might’ve been the writers tossing out references to other creatures to make it sound like Dean knows a bunch but like neither of those would be my first guesses for this case.

Kind of just like “early installment weirdness” but whatever. It’s not a big deal, just me nitpicking.

Okay so Roy is kind of a jackass but like he knows what he’s doing for the most part and he totally doesn’t buy the guys story about beng park rangers for one minute. So like I can respect that. And like if it would’ve been an actual animal attacking people, he might’ve survived but oh well.

I do like that Haley just goes ahead and calls bullshit on the park rangers story before they even go on their adventure but Dean’s whole “it's probably the most honest I've ever been with a woman...ever.” is just kind of cringey.

So all the traipsing through the woods and the “I’m smarter than you” staredown between Roy and Sam is not super interesting but I do like that 1 - we get to see Sam being angry and being emotional in a more volatile way because that’s not often the case as the show goes on - and 2 - we get our iconic line of “saving people, hunting things, the family business” and the whole idea that they’re not supposed to meet up with John but do the jobs he doesn’t have time for while he’s hunting for the demon that killed Mary.

I don’t think I really realized why John would leave them coordinates and the journal when he didn’t plan on actually meeting up with them when I watched this as a kid. I just kind of shrugged it off as like a necessary plot device for the show to progress, didn’t really see it as anything with a deeper meaning. And I think it’s fair that you can’t read too much into after an episode and a half because there’s so much that we don’t know yet about the boys and John and their story and all of that. But like looking at it with the knowledge of their lives and everything, it’s a lot heavier moment to me. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it.

Okay so the rest of the episode is just encounter monster, piss off monster, get kidnapped by monster, track monster, kill monster. Kind of standard, not super exciting like there’s not a lot to talk about. Dean with his molotov cocktails is kind of fantastic.

The trail of M&Ms is fun and yes better than breadcrumbs. Sam immediately becoming invested in killing the monster once Dean’s been taken gives me all kinds of feels because I love when these two go into protective brother mode. And Dean all banged up with bruises and cuts and dirt is a look I probably shouldn’t like as much as I do but that’s a conversation for another day.

The wendigo does look a little cheesy when you get better glimpses of it because early 00s special effects so it’s definitely for the best they keep things pretty shadowy for the end of the episode. Not the worst looking monster of season one and still scary enough, to me at least.

So this is the episode that seems to start the trend that if there’s a girl involved and her life gets saved by the Winchesters, one of them is going to flirt with her and get some kind of physical affection before they leave town. It doesn’t happen every episode but it happens enough that 26 year old me is rolling my eyes. 14 year old me had no issues with Sam and Dean getting smooches because look at them. But now I’m kind of like this seems a little unnecessary but whatever. It’s not the worst instance and all in all, I actually really liked Haley. I liked the whole Collins family. They were some solid guest characters and I feel like the scenes where Sam and Dean are interacting with them individually does a good job of kind of fleshing out their characters a bit more. It gives a chance for some necessary exposition without feeling too forced.

All in all, solid episode. Scary monster, intensified my fear of the woods, gave some good scenes, iconic lines. Does it have some cheesy moments? Yes. Is it the best episode of the series? No. Does it still scare me when I watch it? 100%.

BODY COUNT: 3 humans (Brad, Gary, Roy); 1 wendigo (our first corporeal monster - also like I’m curious about who the wendigo was before it changed, like how long has it been in the wilderness, how did it wind up at Blackwater Ridge, how it wound up this far west)

RATING: 7.5/10 - yep, I’ll say it. I think this episode is better than the pilot. Not by much but the characters feel a little closer to who they become throughout season one and I feel like you get a better feel for them than we did in the pilot. Also the wendigo scares me more than Sarah Shahi in a sexy nightgown I’m just saying.

#supernatural #supernatural rewatch #dean winchester #sam winchester #watchingspn #so i don't know if anyone's going to read this #i'm literally just rambling into a google doc and then sharing it #also idk if it's better or worse having screencaps in there #i'm figuring this out #idk what i'm doing #i hope someone enjoys my rambling #season one #1x02

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