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Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x08 Crossroad Blues

Spoilers up to 15x18

Supernatural’s 30th episode is an important one in the lore of the show, introducing the ideas of hellhounds, demonic deals, and humans being dragged to hell. Moreover it reveals where John ended up after his own deal with Azazel in 2x01 In My Time of Dying: on a torturer’s rack in hell. Or rather, a crossroads demon tells Dean where it wants him to believe John is. The veracity of the demon’s claim is never substantiated, but more on that later.

After a handful of frankly pretty dull episodes, 2x08 Crossroad Blues stands out for a number of reasons. Other than the new story elements mentioned above, it tells a solid story which progresses the plot of series two, reveals more of the depths of Dean’s despair than the ‘Dark Dean Arc’ from 2x02 to 2x04, and it is based on American folklore rather than European myths and legends. Not only is it American folklore, but it is black Americans’ folklore. As discussed in 1x08 Bugs and 1x19 Provenance for example, there is nothing whatsoever inherently wrong, prejudiced, or discriminatory about a story focusing on characters from one demographic, but given the show is supposed to be American horror taking place in America in the early 21st century and based on American folklore, one often wonders why there is so little from First Nations peoples’ myths and legends, and why black American folklore is in absentia.

A lot of people would cite racism as the reason, but rather than active hateful racism, ignorance and an aversion to risk-taking seem satisfactory explanations to me. European fairy tales, folklore, legends, and myths are embedded in Anglophone cultures in a way that other ones simply are not. Executives do not like taking risks, and the writers did not have all the time in the world to research monsters and creatures from cultures foreign to them well enough to write about them in a way which would not offend people. They could not even research European lore properly: Loki is not Odin’s son, but rather his blood-brother: ‘samhain’ is pronounced ‘sowen’ and is a festival, not a demonic entity, and ‘vanir’ describes a Norse deity about as well as calling me European describes me. The cultural imperialism and Abrahamic chauvinism is on full display in 5x20 Hammer of the Gods, and this applies to European deities as well as African and Indian. The few occasions they ventured out into African, Indian, or Asian deities and creatures, they butchered them, and more often than not they butchered European ones, too.

Enough rambling: this episode includes actual American folklore from a marginalised demographic. Or rather, about a marginalised demographic: whether or not the real Robert Johnson performed a hoodoo ritual or what, the Mephisto-like deal could well be apocryphal additions from a European tradition. The real Robert Johnson made no claim to having made any deal or having performed a ritual to summon a devil and exchange his soul for musical talent:

"If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself...A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."

From 'Tommy Johnson' by David Evans (London: Studio Vista, 1971) . Quote from Luckymojo.com

People from a mainstream western Christian background will probably find practices such as hoodoo and voodoo ominous and sinister, but as an atheist with friends who are buddhist, ásatru, chaos witch, and whatever else, I can attest that most of it is no weirder than rituals practised in a church.

Think about it: believers convene in a sacred place before a deity’s altar, listen to a wise man recite some meaningful words, invoke the deity’s help, protection, guidance, and wisdom through formulaic chants (perhaps whilst holding the deity’s symbol or fetish), then partake of ritual food and drink. If one among them is ailing in body or spirit, the other believers will invoke divine forces through ritual to aid their fellow believer.

Anyway, the tale is that Robert Johnson suddenly gained extraordinary guitar-playing skills overnight after ‘selling his soul’ to a ‘devil’ at a crossroads in 1930. Eight years later, he dropped dead of unknown causes (explanations include Marfan syndrome and syphilis), whence come the stories of having sold his soul to Satan. Supernatural ran with this idea, and it became a cornerstone of the show’s own mythology for the next 14 years. According to the show, he made a deal with a crossroads demon in 1930 to become a talented musician in exchange for his soul, and the deal came due in 1938, whereupon he died muttering about ‘black dogs’.

People who have already watched the show will notice a few things strange about the cold open where Robert is supposedly killed by hellhounds: his deal came due in eight years, not the usual ten, and there was no apparent physical harm done to his body by canine claws and teeth. In fact, his death looks more like poisoning or a horrific seizure morphing into something else: even in this episode, hellhounds are shown to inflict physical violence on their prey. This raises the question of whether or not Robert in the show actually did make any kind of deal at all, whether the standard deal was for eight years in the 1930s, or whether the hellhounds worked differently back then. Curious also is the focus on the woman’s gold crucifix before Robert dies.

Whatever the case, similar deaths grab Dean and Sam’s attention whilst they are looking for more work in a café. As if to prove my earlier statement about butchering European lore, Sam uses Fenrir as an example of a hellhound or a ‘spectral spirit’, whereupon my palm collided with my brow in a gesture of exasperation: Fenris is more like a direwolf of divine proportions, and he is one of Loki’s children with Angrbodha. The coin-shith (Dogs of the Otherworld) from Scots Gaelic folklore, the Cŵn Annwn (Dogs of Antumnos/the Otherworld), or Kerberos/Cerberus would be a better example of hellhounds. Regardless, Dean’s comment that ‘[Fenrir] could hump the crap outta your left’ is hilarious because it is true, and definitely deserved a laugh.

What did not deserve a laugh was Dean not knowing what MySpace was, because that was clearly Sera Gamble insisting Dean is computer illiterate. The same man who at this point is a 27 year old in 2006 who has been researching demons on the internet for YEARS. My eyes hurt from rolling. Dean has no friends so has no real use for social media like Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, or whatever, but not knowing? I know what TikTok is and I have no interest in using the damn platform.

Speaking of laughs, Sam is in his usual Dean-is-a-stupid-embarrassment mode right at the beginning of the episode as he chastises Dean’s blasé attitude towards his own criminal record. You know, the criminal record Sam is responsible for after he had the shapeshifter’s murders pinned on Dean in 1x06 Skin, which Sam smirked at him for. That criminal record. If his ‘criminal record’ was ‘not funny’ because it ‘makes our job harder’, perhaps Sam could have prevented his friend scapegoating Dean in that episode. And as for Sam’s comment about ‘demonic pitbulls’: why pitbulls, Sam? What did pitbulls ever do to you? Bad dogs do not exist, just bad owners.

The report of an architect who apparently died by suicide after making comments about ‘black dogs’ leads Dean and the Hairy One to said engineer’s work partner, played by the same actor who played Dean’s childhood hero Gunnar (the Scandiwegian version of Günther) the wrestler about ten years later. Their discussion reveals that the dead architect (named Seán Boyd) suddenly became a master in his field ten years earlier, which leads Dean to enquire at the vets about reports of black dogs over the last few months. This in turn leads them to somebody named Silvia (or rather her neighbour) who claims to have reported black dogs before going missing. Like Seán, Silvia had become a master in her field a decade earlier and risen to become the youngest chief surgeon at her hospital. This happened shortly after she visited a place called Lloyd’s Bar, which really is more of a shack than a pub.

Outside the shack is a crossroads, and here Dean reveals that his passive knowledge of magic, witchcraft, and the otherworld is extensive: he recognises the yarrow plant (presumably unusual in Mississippi but hardly noteworthy in Finland) which is used in summoning, he knows the significance of crossroads, and knows without hesitating exactly where the box would be buried: right in the centre. Given John’s recent expiration, it is possible to conclude Dean may well have undergone recent research of his own into demonic deals to help him understand what happened, or even to try to summon a demon himself, as he wastes no time in doing later in the episode. As has been well-established at this point, Dean suffers both survivor’s guilt and suicidal ideations, first made clear in 1x12 Faith. Add to that the bereavement of his (abusive) father, and you have a perfect storm for Dean wanting to trade his soul for somebody else.

Dean’s willingness to do just this is made explicit at the end of the episode: Dean’s refusal to answer Sam’s question about whether or not Dean considered making a deal to save John was answer enough, and turning the music up confirmed it. I have seen more than one person call Dean a hypocrite for his attitudes to demonic deals and trading one’s life to save another, when he is so ‘willing’ to do it himself, and indeed does do so in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Pat 2. However, criticism like this gives me flashbacks to that whole ‘Dean never wipes his arse’ and ‘Dean is a paedophile’ nonsense which apparently passes as analysis.

As with people wondering ‘how can John know about demons etc in The Winchesters when in Supernatural we’re told John didn’t know about that stuff until after Mary’s death’, I am stupified by the apparent lack of cognitive capabilities of some people. The slightest bit of understanding of the human condition mixed with a little empathy is all you need to know why Dean thinks and does what he does.

After John’s death, he is the one left behind to deal with the loss and knowledge of John’s sacrifice. After Sam’s death, Dean is the one bereaved by untimely death: his conditioning to be his brother’s keeper, to sacrifice himself for Sam’s well-being, and his suicidal ideations and survivor’s guilt make his decision in 2x22 completely understandable. It was the natural end result of his being groomed for almost three decades to look out for Sammy.

But Dean’s anger at others for making demonic deals – especially to resurrect or save loved ones – is not applied to himself in the same way because Dean does not classify himself in the same manner he does other people. Since 1x12 Faith, Dean has believed he deserves to be dead and that his being alive is a problem which needs redress. The gay teacher (whose heart Dean still has) and Layla died while Dean lived. Dean sees himself as the person who has been resurrected and left to live with the loss of other people (whom be believes to be inherently better than him): his life is worthless, so it means nothing to him to throw it away to save others. It is not even his to begin with. Paula R Stiles wrote something similar:

Others in the show get angry with Dean and call him a hypocrite for saying deal-making is bad, but Dean doesn’t see it that way. For one thing, he feels his deal was a very bad idea (even if he doesn’t regret the result). For another, he doesn’t count himself as highly as others, so he doesn’t see his trading his soul as such a terrible thing as it would be for a “normal” human. He feels that he would be dead, were it not for John’s deal, so he is only balancing the scales (an idea the Crossroad Demon fosters in “Crossroad Blues”).

Even as late as season six, Death’s assertion that he only created further chaos with his deal is puzzling to Dean. Why would his deal be so bad? How is he different from the little girl in “Appointment in Samarra“? Shouldn’t he be dead, too? Shouldn’t he be in Hell? How is that not rebalancing the scales? The fact that it’s not remains an issue that the show continues to dance around rather than address head-on. It is a central issue for Dean – what about him requires that he live while others die, go to Heaven while others are damned, prevail while others fall? That quality remains obscure to him and partly to us.

This is also not the last time Dean will have to lose somebody because of a demon deal. Pay attention to what Dean says while talking to Evan, and then think of Dean on the floor after Cas’s death in 15x18 The Truth.

This scene at the crossroads is intercut with Silvia (the doctor) hiding in a motel room and acting like somebody having serious withdrawal symptoms, and the scene ends with a hellhound breaking in through the window and presumably killing her. Given what happens to Dean in 3x16 No Rest for the Wicked, we can assume her death was savage and brutal. The same is presumably true of every person who makes a demonic deal, though it is never explicitly stated.

The fate of these people is also to be tortured ad infinitum unless they agree to become the torturer, and thereby become demons themselves. Ruby will reveal this to Dean in 3x09 Malleus Maleficarum. This is a significant departure from Abrahamic lore wherein demons have nothing to do with human souls being tortured. That said, the beliefs of many modern Christians and even the general public conception of what Christians believe has been profoundly influenced by John Milton’s Paradise Lost to such a degree that most people do not seem to know which is which. People know the story of Lucifer’s rebellion and fall from grace (which Supernatural will adopt into its lore), but how many people actually know that is not a biblical story? That is taken from Paradise Lost, but it has almost become an accepted part of many Christians’ cosmology.

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Discovering the box of sinister-sounding spell components in the middle of the crossroads leads Dean and Sam to investigate the bar, and takes them to a middle-aged black man named George. The scene introduces the idea of goofer dust to keep hellhounds at bay, an idea which will be completely abandoned until episode 8x14 Trial and Error, after which it will vanish completely from Supernatural. The goofer dust might have been useful some time during series three, but whatever, Show. You do you.

George is exhausted and waiting to die. He summoned the crossroads demon a decade earlier outside Lloyd’s Bar to make a trade for artistic talent, but he neglected to ask for fame (like the figure in Greek mythology who gained eternal life but not eternal youth, and was doomed to age and wither away forever). As such, George is poor, lonely, and unknown. He is about to go to Hell and has only himself to blame. A rational but unfair assessment, but he seems to believe he deserves nothing less, blaming himself as he does for the others in Lloyd’s Bar making deals of their own and damning themselves to Hell in the process. This being the case, he is tired of the guilt and wants to die.

One would almost think the writers planned this in advance, so much does George sound like Dean. Dean himself will utter similar sentiments in 2x09 Croatoan, but coming from Dean’s mouth they sound more suicidal than fatalistic. Dean’s callous attitude towards him at the start of their encounter ( [You’re in trouble] that you got yourself into.) is indeed harsh and insensitive to a man about to die, but even more so when considering how Dean almost definitely tells himself similar things: you deserve to die because you couldn’t save John, or Layla, or the gay teacher. They all died for you, but you don’t deserve it. Bear that in mind in series three.

Bear in mind also that George and Evan are John mirrors in this episode, especially Evan, and Dean’s anger at them is also anger at John. His judgementalism and aversion to helping them perhaps says a lot about his feelings towards John. Dean’s anger is little alleviated by learning Evan traded his soul to save his wife who was dying of terminal cancer, though Jensen’s facial expressions suggest understanding and empathy for Evan’s plight. He ‘I think you [saved her] for yourself so you wouldn’t have to live without her. Well guess what? She has to live without you, now.’

The episode also makes it clear that Dean would have seriously considered trading his soul for John, but I do not see any real conflict here: both of those things can exist in one person at the same time. We will just hurry past the fact the show has paralleled Dean and John with a romantic couple once again and skip to the scene with the crossroads demon.

But before that, note that Sam is reactive and rather passive in this episode. The demon in 1x04 Phantom Traveler said that Jess was in Hell, and here Sam is presented with an opportunity to bring her back, but if the notion even crossed his mind, he made no mention of it whatsoever. Given the chance, I cannot say I would reject the opportunity to switch places with a friend who died almost six years ago, but Sam’s possibly-pregnant-almost-fiancé died little over a year ago and he has apparently forgotten her.

In her discussion of this episode, Paula R. Stiles called Sam predictable and Dean the opposite. Her reasoning is that Sam follows a moral code placed on him by other people, whereas Dean mostly follows his own unpredictable moral code. Sam will do what other peoples’ moral code tell s him is the right thing to do, and if he has to bend or break the code, he will justify it by referring to the moral code, e.g. doing something for the greater good. Somebody in his position would predictably reject selling his soul to bring back the dead because ‘it’s wrong’, but Dean has his own sense of right and wrong. Of course at the beginning of the show he often followed John’s orders and codes, but John himself subjected Dean to two conflicting directives: ‘kill Sam if he goes dark’, and ‘look out for Sammy’. He has to work things out for himself here and has no outward code of conduct to guide him. Consequently, one can never tell what Dean is going to do, but one can tell that Dean is unpredictable. ...Or at least he was until the writers kept making him repeat storylines, but that is a discussion for another time.

The scene with the crossroads demon is a fitting example of how Dean does not do the predictable thing. He goes to trap the crossroads demon (or so he says) to get it to call the hounds off Evan, but whether or not this is all a means to an end is left to the viewer to decide. I do not believe Dean would have callously let Evan die regardless of how much he thought he deserved it, but as angry as Dean is at John, John is still one of the people Dean has been groomed into sacrificing himself for. After Dean’s first attempt at ensnaring the demon in a devil’s trap fails, it almost instantly switches from discussing Evan to discussing John.

Demons in the Superverse are generally stupid, including Crowley who started off intelligent, but the more besotted with Dean he became the longer he spent on the show, the dumber he got until eventually he was barely distinguishable from any other demon. However, they do talk and know things as the crossroads demon itself reveals when it first appears to Dean and recognises him and his name. Whether it guessed the ‘real’ reason for Dean’s summoning it, or was gifted with especial perception, it hit very close to the mark in offering Dean ten years with John in exchange for Dean’s soul.

As for the desperation to win Dean’s soul, he is one of the seals on Lucifer’s prison. ‘A righteous man shedding blood in Hell’ or something to that effect if the first in a series of events which must occur, and Lilith wants Dean to be that righteous man.

Why precisely it need be a Winchester rather than any other righteous man (remember ‘man’ used to mean exclusively ‘adult human’ or ‘human in general’, so it could have been a righteous woman or child) is a twofold issue: Lucifer and Michael need to have their apocalyptic showdown, and Dean and Sam are the vessels they need in order to have their battle. Angels have been manipulating the Winchesters’ and Campbells’ bloodlines for generations in order to bring Dean and Sam into being for their purposes. The angels know what has to happen, and are perfectly content to let the demons do what they are doing as long as it serves Michael’s purpose of bringing about Armageddon.

Perhaps the demon deals are Team Lucifer’s way of trying to find the righteous man to spill blood in Hell. This does of course swell the demons’ ranks, but the senior angels want the final battle between Heaven and Hell to apocalyptic: apocalypse means ‘the revelation’, as in the revelation of God, and they want God to come back. The more demons there are to kill, the more destruction the angels get to wreak.

The other issue is that God is writing this story to try to work through his own issues with his ‘sister’ Amara. God is driving these events, and the story is not about Dean and Sam at all, nor even Michael and Lucifer. It is about God and Amara, or Creation and Destruction, Order and Chaos, Light and Dark. Supernatural is not ‘about the brothers’, and it never was. It was therapy for a God. All Dean and Sam were was tools, ‘vessels’ for God to relive his past trauma to try to make them have a better ending. The entirety of series fifteen is the characters dealing with this truth and trying to break free of God’s control.

Apropos Lucifer, only Supernatural could take such a character as the source of all evil and strip him of all presence and threat to the point where he is a mere nuisance, irritation, and vexation. When one hears that Lucifer is going to be on a television show, one’s reaction should not be Not THAT guy again!

Returning to the crossroads demon in question, it is indeed stupid and allows itself to get caught instead of being extra cautious. ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ does not apply to demons in this show: they all have to be snarky bad-asses whose barks are bigger than their bites. After Dean had almost tricked it into being trapped in the car, it should have thought twice before following him under the water tower, but whatever. It was smart of Dean to feint the demon as he did.

It is never made clear whether or not the demon was telling the truth about John’s torture. He almost definitely was tortured, but was he still being tortured when the demon spoke to Dean? Later in the show, the viewer will find out that Dean was tortured for thirty years in Hell, after which his strength broke and he became the torturer for ten years. If the four Earth months Dean was dead equated to four decades in Hell, John has been in Hell for a similar length of time at this point in the show. Sure we are told that John held out for a century of torture, whereas weak little Dean broke after thirty years. We are told that, but we are never shown any evidence that this is the truth.

Unless I am mistaken, it was Alistair who told Dean this in 4x16 On the Head of a Pin, and he did so to hurt Dean. Either John did hold out for a century (unlikely), or he picked up the torturer’s blade the same as Dean and all the demons did. In fact, the demons’ attempts to trade Dean’s soul for John’s (presumably with Lilith’s approval) suggests John might indeed have been snapped early and revealed himself to not be the righteous man. Surely a man who withstood torture in Hell for a century would seem like a righteous man indeed, at which point Lilith et al should have doubled down on their efforts to get him to snap.

Alas, this is all speculation, and the show will never give us clarity on this. Dean, however, seems to completely believe the crossroad demon’s tale that John is still being tortured. During the scene itself we can be forgiven for believing he is pretending in order to lure her into a trap, but even after having watched it several times I am unsure as to how to interpret dean’s behaviour in the scene. Maybe that was the point of Jensen’s acting choices.

The demon eventually agrees to release Evan from his contract in exchange for its own freedom, and seals the deal by noisily pressing the opening of its vessel’s gastric tract against Dean’s without his consent. ‘I like to be warned before I’m violated with demon tongue’ is Dean’s response afterwards, which induces shudders when remembering all the other times Dean has made references to being ‘violated’, or indeed shown being violated as in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood.

But as stated above, Dean’s refusal to answer Sam’s question about whether or not Dean seriously considered the trade is all the answer I need. The ‘Dark Dean Arc’ might be over, but ‘Dark Dean’ is just getting started.

#edvard's supernatural guide #spn 2x08 #s02e08 #spn meta #2x08 crossroad blues #crossroads demon #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #dark dean #spn rewatch #spn #jensen ackles #castiel #team free will

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