10 Best Supernatural Episodes

4. Lazarus Rising

Supernatural's fourth season was essentially a new beginning for the show. Even though it was still continuing the story started in the Pilot, the Season 4 premiere, Lazarus Rising, super-charged the mythology, taking it from being about a family of hunters battling monsters and dealing with their personal issues, to them being intertwined in a grander conflict between Heaven and Hell.

Introducing angels was never going to be easy - after all, the concept of there being a Heaven or a God at all had always been brought into question in this universe - but this first episode executed it perfectly.

After being mysteriously resurrected, Dean spends most of the first episode trying to escape the entity who pulled him out of Hell, encountering demons whose eyes have burned out at the mere sight of it. However, it turns out that trail of destruction was actually carried out by an angel, Castiel.

Even though the previous season ended with Dean literally being ripped apart, Lazarus Rising somehow made the tone of the show even darker. The introduction of Heaven only made things feels even more oppressive and hopeless, as now it wasn't only Sam and Dean's relationship hanging in the balance, but the fate of the whole world.