History Recap / SupernaturalS05E21TwoMinutesToMidnight

* CosmicEntity: Death. He makes it clear that there are countless other planets and galaxies that he could concern himself with. The main reason he agrees to help Dean is because, in this incarnation(a Horseman), he's partially under Lucifer's control and ''considers that an insult''.

Dean gets a call from Castiel, who has finally lost enough of his angel mojo that he can't teleport from the hospital he's in. Sam and Dean go after Pestilence and, with Cas's help, manage to take his ring. Crowley shows up; turns out Bobby took him up on the offer and traded his soul for Death's location. While Sam, Bobby, and Cas stop the shipment of the vaccines full of Croatoan, Dean and Crowley go to Chicago to take on Death. They find him in a pizza parlor. Dean quickly realizes that there's no way he could ever kill this guy. Lucky that Death has no intention of fighting. Tired of being Lucifer's prisoner, he gives Dean his ring on one condition: that he allow Sam to go forward with his plan to say yes to Lucifer and step into the Cage.

* BadassInANiceSuit[=/=]BadassLongcoat: Death is wearing a black suit and longcoat.
* BigBad: Pestilence, who is spreading sickness throughout the country and intends on unleashing the Croatoan virus in guise of a vaccine. He's defeated halfway through, leaving a bunch of Croatoan zombies as the antagonists for the rest of the episode.

* CallBack: Crowley refers to himself as King of the Crossroads, establishing that he was not just Lilith's NumberTwo but is actually the highest-ranking crossroads demon. While attention isn't called to it, this actually makes the normal crossroad demon's remarks in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E05BedtimeStories Bedtime Stories]]" about her "boss" having Dean's contract instead of her finally make sense. Lilith was claimed in the third season to have held all contracts including Dean's, but as she was female, she couldn't have been the boss that demon specifically referred to as male. As King of the Crossroads, Crowley would have been that demon's "boss" and as "[[Recap/SupernaturalS05E10AbandonAllHope Abandon All Hope]]" showed, he is both controlling enough to want to deal personally with "the big fishes" (so he would want to hold onto Dean Winchester's soul himself, especially after that particular demon had [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E08CrossroadBlues already broken a contract because of Dean]]) and has the self preservation to not put himself in danger (by not responding to Dean's summons personally to make the deal or appearing when the Winchesters were trying to break Dean's deal). It's unclear if means Lilith claimed Dean's and the other contracts from Crowley after Crowley joined her campaign, or if the Winchesters' attack on Lilith in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E16NoRestForTheWicked No Rest for the Wicked]]" was a ShootTheShaggyDogStory based off Lilith lying to Bela and Ruby lying to Sam about who had the contracts that ultimately just guaranteed Dean dying and going to Hell.

** The {{title|dAfterTheSong}} is possibly a reference to the song [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Minutes_to_Midnight "2 Minutes to Midnight"]] by Music/IronMaiden from the album ''Powerslave''.

* CoolCar: Death drives a 1959 Cadillac El Dorado with plates reading "BUH*BYE" As a GeniusBonus, a [[http://asavage.dyndns.org/Cadillac/59DeathCar.html white 1959 Cadillac El Dorado]] is known as the Death Car. That's right: Death drives a Death Car.

* CallBack: Crowley refers to himself as King of the Crossroads, establishing that he was not just Lilith's NumberTwo but is actually the highest-ranking crossroads demon. While attention isn't called to it, this actually makes the normal crossroad demon's remarks in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E05BedtimeStories Bedtime Stories]]" about her "boss" having Dean's contract instead of her finally make sense. Lilith was claimed in the third season to have held all contracts including Dean's, but as she was female, she couldn't have been the male boss that demon was referring to. As King of the Crossroads, Crowley would have been that demon's "boss" and as "[[Recap/SupernaturalS05E10AbandonAllHope Abandon All Hope]]" showed, he is both controlling enough to want to deal personally with "the big fishes" (so he would want to hold onto Dean Winchester's soul himself, especially after that particular demon had [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E08CrossroadBlues already broken a contract because of Dean]]) and has the self preservation to not put himself in danger (by responding to Dean's summons personally to make the deal or appear when the Winchesters were trying to break Dean's deal). It's unclear if means Lilith claimed Dean's and the other contracts from Crowley after becoming his new leader, or the Winchesters' attack on Lilith in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E16NoRestForTheWicked No Rest for the Wicked]]" was a ShootTheShaggyDogStory based off Lilith's lies to Bela and Ruby's lies to Sam that only sealed Dean's fate.

* CallBack: Crowley refers to himself as King of the Crossroads, establishing that he was not just Lilith's NumberTwo but is actually the highest-ranking crossroads demon. While attention isn't called to it, this actually finally makes the normal crossroad demon's remarks in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E05BedtimeStories Bedtime Stories]]" about her "boss" having Dean's contract instead of her make sense. Lilith was claimed in the third season to have held all contracts including Dean's, but as she was female, she couldn't have been the male boss that demon was referring to. As King of the Crossroads, Crowley would have been that demon's "boss" and as "[[Recap/SupernaturalS05E10AbandonAllHope Abandon All Hope]]" showed, he is both controlling enough to want to deal personally with "the big fishes" (so he would want to hold onto Dean Winchester's soul himself, especially after that particular demon had [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E08CrossroadBlues already broken a contract because of Dean]]) and has the self preservation to not put himself in danger (by responding to Dean's summons personally to make the deal or appear when the Winchesters were trying to break Dean's deal). It's unclear if means Lilith claimed Dean's and the other contracts from Crowley after becoming his new leader, or the Winchesters' attack on Lilith in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E16NoRestForTheWicked No Rest for the Wicked]]" was a ShootTheShaggyDogStory based off Lilith's lies to Bela and Ruby's lies to Sam that only sealed Dean's fate.

* AffablyEvil: While he isn't really "evil" (TrueNeutral would be a better alignment for him), Death kills a guy for bumping into him and kills an entire restaurant of people so he can eat his pizza in peace, but he's fairly polite to Dean after making it clear that he won't stand for being insulted. He even ends up offering to ''give'' Dean his ring.

* AffablyEvil: Death kills a guy for bumping into him and kills an entire restaurant of people so he can eat his pizza in peace, but he's fairly polite to Dean after making it clear that he won't stand for being insulted. He even ends up offering to ''give'' Dean his ring.

[[caption-width-right:350:Dean has a discussion with Death.]]

* YouAreTooLate: Pestilence eerily tells the boys they're too later before [[VillainTeleportation vanishing]]. This prompts them to worry, but fortunately for them, Crowley figures out what he meant.

-->'''Bobby:''' Why'd you have to show 'em that?!

* CoveredInGunge: Pestilence gets splattered with... ''[[{{Squick}} something]]'' when the woman he's experimenting with dies. He wipes it off, but doesn't really seem to mind at all.

* BloodFromTheMouth

* CoveredInGunge

* NoOntologicalInertia: When Pestilence loses his ring, all of Sam and Dean's diseases vanish instantly.

* WeaponStomp

* YouAreTooLate

For the series so far = At least 388 humans (of which 6 were witches), at least 131 demons, 29 ghosts, 19 zombies, 13 gods, 11 vampires, 9 angels, at least 9 hellhounds, 6 changelings, 3 shapeshifters, 2 ghouls, 2 werewolves, 1 archangel, 1 cat, 1 crocotta, 1 djinn, 1 dog, 1 rakshasa, 1 rawhead, 1 reaper, 1 rugaru, 1 shtriga, 1 siren, 1 wendigo, the whore of Babylon, and 1 wraith.

* ZombieApocalypse: This is revealed to be Pestilence's plan, using the cover of a swine flu vaccine to spread the Croatoan virus everywhere.