Prophet and Loss
Written by: Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming
Directed by: Thomas J. Wright
Air date: January 31, 2019
On their way to confine Dean to the Ma'lak box, he and Sam take a side trip to Fort Dodge, Iowa to investigate a case. Ritual killings are being committed, and the culprit appears to be a prophet.
Tropes
- Anger Born of Worry: A big factor in Sam's climactic drunken confrontation with Dean.
- The Bus Came Back: Sarah makes her first non-archive footage appearance since "Sympathy for the Devil", over nine years ago. She is portrayed by a different actress, though.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Tony Alvarez murders people in Biblical ways. One example is a woman who has her wrist slit before getting drowned in saltwater tank, turning the water red (the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea).
- Driven to Suicide: Tony Alvarez shoots himself in the head after his latest attempt at inflicting "divine retribution" fails.
- Healing Hands: Castiel restores Donatello to health and restores his old personality, although Donatello still doesn't have a soul.
- Mind Rape: Donatello's predicament inadvertently messes up his successor's mind, causing Tony to start killing people in the name of God. Since it will just happen again with the next one if his immediate successor dies, the guys realize that Donatello himself has to die. Fortunately they are able to heal his mind instead and effectively bring him back to life.
- Poetic Serial Killer: Tony Alvarez at least seems to think in these terms, due to having Donatello's fragmented thoughts in his head. In reality he's just murdering innocents in not particularly apt ways.
- Pun-Based Title: On "profit and loss".
- Redemption Rejection: In case there was any doubt that Nick is now Beyond Redemption he refuses to part ways with Lucifer even though he knows that Lucifer was responsible for killing his family and his wife Sarah begging him to do so since she's effectively trapped in their house until he does even though avenging his family is ostensibly the reason he started his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the first place.
- Retcon: Castiel's mind probe on Donatello is revealed to have only left him in persistent vegetative state, despite Castiel clearly stating in the previous season that it caused brain death.
- The Reveal: Sarah is haunting her house as a ghost, unable to move on because Nick still accepts Lucifer as part of his life.
- Self-Disposing Villain: Alvarez shoots himself when the Winchesters tell him he's not really a prophet. It's ambiguous whether this is from guilt, fear, or something else.
- Unfinished Business: Said word-for-word by Sarah. She cannot move on as long as Nick still chooses Lucifer over her.
