Season 1: Spoilers Ahead

 The start of the Winchester brothers' story may sound basic, with two monster hunter brothers traveling the country, killing anything that goes bump in the night, but their journey started long before this… While the show began on September 13, 2005, Sam and Deans's journey as hunters began on November 2nd, 1983. Dean is four years old, Sam is six months old, and we see a dark figure crouching over Sams's crib. Their mother, Mary, suddenly wakes, feeling that something is wrong; Deans is in his room, and her husband, John, is downstairs asleep in front of the tv. She looks around the house but sees nothing until she walks by Sam's room, where the door is open. She looks in to see the dark figure standing over Sam; she asks, “John?” Thinking it’s her husband but is suddenly whipped against the wall by an invisible force. She gets pinned to the ceiling and stabbed in the abdomen as the ceiling is set ablaze with fire. John rushes upstairs, hearing the commotion, he stares in agony as his wife dies in front of him, but he manages to get Dean to carry Sam outside while he tries to save Mary. All three of the boys make it out except for Mary, and the house burns down. 

After this incident, John is so enraged with grief that he vows revenge against the creature that took Mary and goes on a mission to kill it. The three of them, from then on live on the road in their 67 Impala. Going from town to town, John works on other cases while collecting clues to find the whereabouts of the creature. Alongside this, John teaches both Sam and Dean everything they need to know about being a hunter, from fighting to lore to exorcisms.

Skip ahead to the present day in the first episode; Sam is 22, Dean 26, and they haven’t talked in a few years. Dean has been traveling with his dad on the road while Sam has been off at college studying law. Their pathways intertwine again when Dean shows up at Sam's home needing his help. Their father had gone on a hunting trip and hadn’t been back in a couple days nor checked in. They work together to find him, work a case along the way, and separate once the job is done. Dean has a lead on his father, but before he leaves, he has a peculiar feeling and goes to check on Sam. As it turned out, Sam came home to find that his girlfriend Jess had met the same death as his mother, killed on the ceiling, and the house burned. Dean gets Sam out of the house just in time before the fire kills them both.

This event meant one thing, the thing (demon) that killed their mother? Still alive, their dad is MIA, and nobody was safe. So the boys set off on the road to find their father and join forces to kill the creature once and for all.

Season one of this show, in my opinion, is on my short list of the most interesting and creepy of the 15 total seasons that this show ran. It gives a realistic look at how dangerous monster hunting is and the toll it takes on everyone that gets dragged into the trade. It’s clear early on that no hunter chose that kind of life, but once you’re in, it's near impossible to escape alive. While Sam and Dean's relationship as brothers runs deep, there are a lot of unaddressed issues and dynamics that they face when left alone on the road together. The two of them never chose the hunter's life, but their father raised them as hunters so they would always be protected. Sam is the rebellious younger brother who defies his father when he tries to get out of the family business, while Dean is the dutiful soldier of his fathers who never knew anything else but to hunt and protect his brother. The two personalities very much clash as they unpack their issues, especially when they find their father. They work out their differences and find a new triad as three grown men with one goal, kill the monster. 

We find out later that the monster is a yellow-eyed demon named Azazel; while his intent behind killing their mother and visiting Sam is unclear, the three men don’t let that stop them from making the kill when they finally face off. Though, PLOT TWIST! Azazel processes John's body and faces the boys, daring them to kill him with their special gun (the colt, a gun built by a hunter rumored to be able to kill anything). Sam shoots him in the leg, but the bullet doesn’t do it; John regains control of his body long enough to beg Sam to kill him while the demon is still inside him (to kill the demon, the host has to die too). Sam can’t do it, and Azazel escapes; they drive away in the Impala when a large truck hits them, it's revealed the driver was possessed by a demon, and season 1 ends. 

This cliffhanger killed me because they had the demon right in front of them, and he slipped right through their fingers again. Goes to show even though they were ready for him, he was 3 steps ahead. 

Would you have been able to take the shot?