10 Supernatural Episodes Which Totally Broke The Mold
5. “Swan Song” (Season 5, Episode 22)
Early fans of the show will reasonably conclude that it was originally intended to last five seasons. After all, the season five finale, “Swan Song,” ends fairly conclusively as the brothers circumvent both the will of the angels in Heaven as well as the machinations of primary antagonist, Lucifer. At the moment when the prophesied battle between Michael and Lucifer is to commence, Dean brings it to a halt and calls the soul of a Lucifer-possessed Sam back to the surface. This lasts just long enough for them to open a portal to an interdimensional cage into which Sam leaps, dragging in the archangel Michael for good measure. Following this, the just-murdered Castiel and Bobby Singer show that they’ve been resurrected by an unknown force, subtly suggesting that this sequence of events was God’s true plan all along.
What one may find especially creative, however, is that the most critical moment of the episode – where Sam wrests control of his body away from the devilish archangel – features no dramatic music. Instead, we’re treated to a silence in which there is only the sound of rushing wind punctuating a series of images from the brothers’ lives.
For Christian viewers, this could be seen as a reference to the presence of God, whose power is sometimes identified as a “rushing wind.” But to everyone, this is a jarring sequence which surprisingly works, showing that no dramatic backdrop was needed to elevate this moment into something intensely powerful.