Supernatural: Season 8, Episode 21: 'The Great Escapist' Recap

“Supernatural”, Season 8, Episode 21, “The Great Escapist”

Kevin Tran comes to on Garth’s boat, and he feverishly goes back to work on the Demon Tablet. He hears a knock at the door, and goes to check. Dean and Sam are on the other side and ask to be let in. Kevin tells him he’s supposed to use the secret knock, because that’s the whole point of a secret knock. He lets them in anyway. They enter, bearing a gift. They tell Kevin they managed to get the other half of the Demon Tablet from Crowley, so now he can finish translating it. He digs in, and Sam and Dean leave.

As they walk away, they pass through a barrier and it’s revealed they were two demons in disguise. Kevin is actually in a studio of sorts, and the boat and Sam and Dean were all illusions caused by Crowley, who is watching several monitors eagerly, waiting for the Demon Tablet to be translated.

In their Batcave, Dean tries to help Sam get better, but try as he may, Sam continues to get worse. Sam tries to explain that the trials are making him sick as well as changing him. They are interrupted by a new email alert. They have an email from Kevin. It’s a video message that Kevin recorded a few weeks prior, stating that it would automatically send itself if he failed to log in to a server and input a password. And since he hasn’t logged in, Sam and Dean should assume that he’s been kidnapped and most likely killed. He reassures them that he would never reveal what he knows to Crowley no matter what, even as he curses their names for letting him get killed. Attached to the email are all of his notes on the Demon Tablet.

While scouring through the notes, Sam notices a recurring symbol throughout most of them. He remembers it from one of his classes at Stanford on Native American art. The notes say it’s the signature of Metatron, but the Native American legends said it was petroglyph indicating the Messenger of God, who they viewed as a protector. The tribe is The Two Rivers in Colorado, and Sam and Dean believe that they are somehow connected to Metatron.

Meanwhile, Castiel is still on the run with the Angel Tablet from Naomi. He realized that since most Biggerson’s Restaurants in the US are identical, any of the angels pursuing him would be unable to pinpoint his exact location if he kept randomly shifting restaurants. This method works until Naomi tells the angels to play dirty.

Castiel appears in one of the restaurants and sees that the angels had been there and killed everyone, save for a waitress. Her eyes were burned out, and she was only capable of repeating one message over and over, a message telling Castiel to stop running. He stops, and the angels find him, along with Naomi.

Castiel informs them that he doesn’t have the Angel Tablet, so Naomi has the angels search every restaurant, but when they turn up empty handed, so does Crowley. Crowley shoots Castiel in the stomach, and dispatches the other angels. He tries to shoot Naomi, but she vanishes before he’s able to. One of the angels recovers and reveals himself to be a double agent, working as an informant to Crowley.

Crowley begins to wonder how Castiel is able to resist Naomi’s mind control and disobey her orders when he realizes that it means Castiel is within close proximity to the Angel Tablet. Crowley realizes that Castiel has the Angel Tablet inside of him. He digs his hand into Castiel’s stomach wound, and produces the Angel Tablet.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dean make it to Colorado and check into a hotel on the Reservation. Sam continues to degrade in health, so Dean tells him to stay in the room, and his fever quickly reaches a boiling point. Dean goes to a local museum to investigate. He is told the story of the tribe, and how the tribe’s leader was a man who rewarded them for their stories. As he hears the story, he notices a photograph featuring the hotel clerk in it, still at the same age, despite being hundreds of years old.

Sam stumbles about the hallway of the hotel, delusional. He finds the hotel clerk leaving boxes of books outside of a specific hotel room. However, he’s not able to do anything with the information, succumbing to his fever.

Dean wakes Sam up by plunging him into a bathtub full of ice. When he comes to, he tells Dean that he found Metatron, and he’s staying in the hotel. The two of them go to the room, and find it filled with thousands upon thousands of books. As they snoop, a man draws a shotgun on them.

They realize that he’s Metatron, and they introduce themselves as the Winchesters, expecting him to know all about them, but he explains that he’s been hiding from Heaven for millennia and is unaware of anything that’s been happening. He’s been invested in mankind’s works of fiction.

Metatron realizes that Sam has completed two of the Trials already, and is surprised that they’re trying to close the gates of hell. Sam and Dean aren’t too happy with Metatron, since he’s been hiding in solitude while the world has been suffering, and now Kevin Tran, his prophet, was dead because of him.

Metatron realizes the mistakes he’s made, and tries to remedy it. He immediately locates Kevin Tran in Crowley’s keep, and teleports him back to the hotel in safety, nearly destroying Crowley in the process. With Kevin back in safety, Metatron asks what they hope to achieve by closing the gates of Hell, and says it’s not a good idea, and tells him to think what’s going to happen when the gates are closed.

Kevin wakes up, interrupting their heated discussion. He reveals that he’s finally translated the last trial, but Metatron cuts him off by saying what it is. They must cure a demon. Kevin wonders who the man is.

As Sam and Dean drive back to their Batcave, Castiel appears before them in the road. Dean pulls over and rushes to his aid.