'Supernatural' 'The Great Escapist' recap: The third trial revealed

"Supernatural" season 8 continued Wednesday, May 1, with episode 21, "The Great Escapist," which perfectly set up what's to come leading up to the finale.

Remember how Castiel just ran off with the angel tablet a couple of "Supernatural" episodes ago? Well, he was going from Biggerson's to Biggerson's because their sameness made it difficult for the angels to find him. So to make him stop, Naomi slaughtered an entire Biggerson's—and she and Castiel chatted a bit, bringing up memories, you know, Egypt and slaughtering first-borns, "just PR" and all that. However, Crowley, the "daringest devil" he is, decided to join the party with his angel-blade bullets and with the help of the angel on his payroll, he took over. He was much smarter than Naomi as, in an awesome monologue about a conversation with himself, he revealed the location of the angel tablet: inside Castiel. He pulled it out, but after he left to deal with Kevin, Castiel took care of traitor angel by sticking the angel-blade bullet Crowley had shot him with into his eye.

Meanwhile, Kevin was still alive—and armed with that water gun of his when Sam and Dean didn't do The Knock. They brought him the other half of the tablet, left him to it and…rejoined Director Crowley, who was directing a nice little charade with his demons. Sure, he had had to scrub Kevin's short-term memory before, but he thought he was doing a pretty good job. "I was born to direct," he declared. But it turned out his demons screwed up—by being too polite. (Maybe Crowley should have played Dean.) "Well, I'll be a son of a whore," Crowley said upon finding out where his plan went wrong. It didn't matter though. Kevin wasn't worried. They were already up to the third trial. And even as Crowley began choking him, he wasn't worried. Instead, his eyes began to glow, and Crowley was thrown back, left burning a bit on the floor.

Meanwhile, Dean was trying to take care of his brother, and that included trying to feed him, take his temperature, and the works, but Sam was having nothing of it because he knew the trials were changing him and the only thing to do was to keep moving. After a depressing video message from Kevin in which he stated Crowley must've gotten to him and he was dead, all they could do was go through all his notes, and that was when Sam's time in college came in handy. He recognized a symbol that stood for Metatron's editor's notes for a humanities course he took at Stanford ("They taught Word of God at Stanford?"); it was a territorial marker for the messenger of God in Colorado, which put them on track to find Metatron.

First, they had to get a hotel room, and in the lobby, Sam heard something his brother couldn't. Then upstairs, he began acting a bit crazy and actually a bit flu-ish as he brought up a trip they took to the Grand Canyon—when Sam was four—that Dean barely remembered. "You rode a farty donkey," Sam laughed, and Dean told him to get some rest instead of talking to "Dr. Scowly Scowl—he's like a villain from Scooby Doo," a.k.a. the hotel manager. Dean did get a lead on Metatron, but it was Sam who actually found him in his feverish state as he watched the manager leave boxes of books outside a room down the hall. However, he proved that Dean was right and he needed rest when he promptly collapsed upon returning to their room, coming to in the tub filled with ice water Dean had put him in when he found him with a temperature of 107. Instead of going to a hospital, Sam insisted on visiting Metatron, and on the walk down the hall, Sam revealed another moment from their childhood that he remembered: Dean reading to him when he was really young (aww!) and how he never thought he could go on a quest like the Knights of the Round Table because he never felt clean (poor Sam!). But that changed, as he felt like the trials were purifying him.

Metatron was waiting with his shotgun when they entered his room, which was filled with piles of books, and he had absolutely no idea what was actually going on, which led to what may be one of the best lines ever from Sam, considering everything that has happened on the show: "You really haven't heard of us? What kind of angels are you? We're the friggin' Winchesters." Seriously, Metatron, where have you been? So they caught him up on what happened to Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, all of them, and he at least revealed what was going on with Sam's hearing: he was resonating with the Word, or rather, it source on this material plane—Metatron. Metatron had spent all these years just holed up, reading stories and completely ignorant of everything going on. So they got in his face and told him off, arguing that he should have been looking out for his prophet, for Kevin.

So what did happen to Kevin during that encounter with Crowley? Well, Metatron brought him to his room, and while they waited for him to come around, Metatron asked Dean if they really planned to close the gates, warning him he'd have to weigh the choice, ask himself what it was going to take to do it and what the world would be like when it was done. When Kevin came to, he revealed he knew the third trial, but Metatron stole his thunder: "To cure a demon." (Crowley maybe?!) With that, they were headed "somewhere, the end," as Sam put it later before Dean almost ran Castiel over in the middle of the road. "A little help here?" The angel asked.

"Supernatural" season 8 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on the CW. What did you think of episode 21 "The Great Escapist"?

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