Things I Love About SPN Season 1: Wendigo
I’d like to thank everyone for all the positive feedback for my review of the Supernatural pilot. It’s encouraged me to continue with my ruminations on the early episodes, so this week I’ve been re-watching “Wendigo”.
Warning: image heavy post.
Apparently, Eric Kripke originally panned this episode because he didn’t think the monster was scary enough, but then he re-watched it 10 years later and decided it wasn’t so bad after all. Kripke is often his own worst critic and, imho, doesn’t give himself enough credit. Personally, I love this episode - not especially for the monster plot, I grant you, but because I think it is a wonderful study in character development. Plus, of course, it introduced the show’s original ethos, and gave us the immortal bumper sticker: “saving people, hunting things”.
To business, then . . .
Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 2, “Wendigo”
Teleplay by Eric Kripke
Story by Ron Milbauer and Terri Hughes Burton
Directed by David Nutter.
In Lost Creek, Colorado, something big, nasty and snarly is munching on young campers in Blackwater Ridge, and I’d like to thank that inexhaustible resource, Superwiki, for an observation that I’d missed:
“Tommy is seen reading a copy of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces before he's taken by the wendigo in the episode teaser.” http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo#Minutiae
After the teaser, one of my favourite Supernatural musical themes, Jay Gruska’s “Tears in Their Beers” is playing. It’s a bright sunny day in the cemetery, so this is a dream. We know this because bright sunny days don’t happen in horror unless something’s wonky. Especially not in cemeteries. Especially not in Supernatural.
Again, in our first shot of Sam, it’s as if we’re watching him through the bars of a cage, emphasizing that our poor boy is doomed already. The first traps have been set to ensure he is taking his early steps down the yellow brick road, and it ain’t leading to no Emerald City.
The neatly coiffured hair is gone now. Doesn’t look like it’s been
washed all that recently, either. Sam’s in a bad way.
Sam’s relationships
Jessica, we will discover, shares the same birthday as Dean. Kripke has denied any significance to this, saying that he just used the date because it was his wife’s birthday. Fair enough, but that doesn’t explain why he gave it to both of these characters - arguably the two most significant relationships in Sam’s life. It’s hard not to assume that some parallel is being drawn between them. Personally, I see Jessica’s death as a prototype: in Sam’s response to this loss we are forewarned what to expect, in spades, in later seasons when he loses Dean.
It’s interesting that Sam makes this comment despite the roses all over the headstone. Who got it wrong, I wonder? Did Sam know Jessica better than her family did? Or did he know her as well as she knew him?
"I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth," says Sam. At this point we assume he is berating himself for hiding his hunting past from Jessica. The full significance of his words can only be appreciated on a re-watch, after we learn about his prophetic dreams three episodes later.
Now, since I know this is a dream sequence, I am totally unfased when
GAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!
OK, I confess. I wasn’t that familiar with horror tropes back when I first watched this episode, so I didn’t see that coming at all! Sure, the pop culture reference to the end of Carrie may be a cliché, but it’s still an effective jump scare.
Again, I wonder, why is SPN so full of pop culture clichés? Are they just there for laughs, or do they mean something? SPN makes a habit of drawing attention to its own status as a fictive construct. Perhaps this speaks to one of the interpretive possibilities I introduced in my last post: the level at which Sam’s story may be a work of fiction he began writing after skipping out of college and the law school interview. In later seasons, of course, the show took its fictionality in a whole new direction with the introduction of the Chuck character (and I’ll have more to say about that, eventually, too.)
I’m fine, says Sam.
But to return to “Wendigo”, and the post title credits scene . . .
The jump scare wakes Sam as well as us, and we get our first example of the “I’m fine (I don’t talk about my feelings),” Winchester mantra. And perhaps it’s a surprise to be reminded that it was originally Sam, not Dean, who patented it.
True to the Dean=Body/Sam=Mind dichotomy, we find Dean at the wheel of this journey and Sam giving directions. That will become a familiar scenario as the series progresses yet, in this scene, it is immediately undercut when Dean offers to let Sam drive. This episode will soon start challenging some traditional assumptions about the brawn vs brains trope. As we will discover, it isn’t quite so simple with Sam and Dean. If we may think of “Wendigo” as a kind of sequel to the pilot, I’m reminded of Randy’s comment in the Scream movies, that the first movie in a franchise makes the rules and the sequel breaks them. Incidentally, a comment by Dean later in the episode may be a reference to these same rules. In Scream 3, Randy outlines the rules for surviving a horror movie trilogy, warning Sid: "You've got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up." https://scream.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rules. This sounds suspiciously akin to Dean’s comment on the wendigo:
DEAN
Well, guns are useless, so are knives. Basically-
DEAN holds up the can of lighter fluid, the beer bottle, and the white cloth he'd picked up.
DEAN
We gotta torch the sucker.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
Another assumption that is possibly being challenged by Dean’s ready offer to let Sam drive, is the perception that Dean is the natural leader in the relationship. A large section of fandom likes to think of Dean as a natural alpha male, but I think Supernatural gives us reasons to question that perception. I’ll be returning to this point in later episodes.
Btw, those of you curious enough to have googled the coordinates 35-111 will know they don’t point to Colorado but to Two Guns, Arizona - a ghost town off route 66, on the eastern rim of the Canyon Diablo. Presumably Kripke originally planned a different follow up story to the pilot. I don’t know why he changed his mind. If anyone has any insider info, please share :) I know he’d originally hoped the series would be filmed in LA. Perhaps, once production moved to Canada, filming at Two Guns wasn’t practicable and a suitable alternative location couldn’t be found near Vancouver. That’s pure speculation on my part. But one of these days I plan to set an episode of my AU serial in Two Guns and write a casefic based on the story that never was :)
In the next scene the brothers rock up at Lost Creek Ranger Station looking for information about Blackwater Ridge, and they discover that a young woman is anxious about her missing brother. Sam, however, isn’t remotely interested in the fate of the missing campers:
This represents one of those yin/yang reversals of the dynamic in the brothers’ relationship. In the pilot, Dean was the one who was intent on finding John; pursuing the woman in white case was just a means to that end, and Sam was just along for the ride. But, since Jessica’s death the dynamic has changed, and Sam is the one who is wholly motivated to pursue the quest to find his father. We get an early indication of how Sam responds to his grief: consumed by anger and the desire for revenge, he is completely single-minded and goal-driven. Dean is now more focused on investigating a potential case and we later find that his motivation has also changed.
Their first meeting with Hayley Collins is interesting. “I’m Dean, this is Sam” he tells her, and they pretext as park rangers. When Hayley asks to see ID, he produces the requisite fake badge. Hayley responds with a quizzical look, as well she might since, although Dean’s picture is on the badge, the name on it is Samuel. Here is another of those cases where Sam and Dean together present a composite identity that may feed into the theme that they represent a single person with a divided psyche. This shot is especially interesting: Dean’s hand is foregrounded but Sam’s torso is shown in the background, and the two are framed in such a way that the one might belong to the other.
The image of the two brothers shown with Dean at the front and Sam covering his back will become a familiar tableau as the series progresses. We saw it already at the ranger station when Dean spoke to Ranger Wilkinson:
One way of interpreting this is that Dean represents the exterior, self-protective face that Sam presents to the outside world. But it can happen the other way round; later in the episode we see Dean taking a back seat while Sam questions Shaw about his childhood encounter with the monster. So maybe Sam has two personas: the more sensitive self he reveals to traumatized victims and witnesses, and the brash, truculent face he presents when he’s feeling more defensive.
Typically, the case of the week presents some parallel with the brothers’ relationship or situation. The Collins family represent both since the siblings have lost their parents and have all learned to look out for each other. Also, their anxiety to find their missing brother mirrors Sam and Dean’s need to find their father. When Hayley insists, “I can't sit around here anymore, so I hired a guide. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself,” Dean empathizes with her need to do something.
While Dean is starting to bond emotionally with the family, Sam is exercising his mental acuity. Having spotted a tiny detail in Tommy’s videos home, he quickly moves into research mode. At a local bar he outlines what he has discovered about previous disappearances and explains the significance of what he found on Tommy’s video. We see him utilizing the skills and tools of a typical college student for the purposes.
On the other hand, Sam’s notebook and folder bears a similarity to another research tool that will become prominent in the episode: John’s journal. Although his college training has prepared him for his, soon to be familiar, role of research nerd, it may be that he has inherited some of this aptitude from his father.
Notably, Dean has stopped competing with him for this role. Whereas, in the pilot, we saw the brothers squabbling for control of a computer keyboard. Dean now appears content to allow Sam to commandeer the role for which he seems eminently qualified. The reasons for this may be more complex than is immediately apparent. It certainly isn’t simply because Sam’s ‘the smart one’. When Sam isn’t around, Dean is perfectly capable of doing these tasks himself, a fact that was hinted at early in the pilot when he demonstrated his own technical expertise:
Later in the season, in “Scarecrow”, we will see him handling the research component of a case quite comfortably in Sam’s absence, and in this episode we are shown plenty of evidence that he is at least as familiar with the lore in John’s journal as Sam is. Perhaps the explanation is simply that, although capable of research when required, he doesn’t particularly enjoy it so he’s happy to delegate that task to Sam. However, I think the show gives us reasons to think the explanation may be more complex. Throughout the following seasons people, particularly demons, have a tendency to treat Dean as if he’s stupid. Dean himself tends to downplay his own intelligence and he occasionally surprises Sam by revealing knowledge of books Sam doesn’t expect him to have read. He acts as if he considers intellect to be an unmanly attribute, and often mocks Sam, implying he is effeminate for being interested in such matters. However, in time we discover that Dean has a sour grapes attitude to the things he is denied, dismissing them as not worth having. The truth may be that he has internalized an image of himself as ‘less than’ Sam intellectually and therefore considers it natural to cede cerebral tasks to Sam. But in the next scene we see a hint that he is actually intimidated by and jealous of Sam’s college education.
Next the boys interview Shaw, a man who witnessed an attack on his parents when he was a child. He describes how the creature let itself into their cabin and dragged his parents away.
(It wasn’t, of course, but it’s interesting in retrospect to see how often the show foreshadowed
the demon theme long before we learned how important it was going to become.)
Afterward Dean notes that demons and spirits don’t need to break into cabins, they just walk through the walls. So, Sam concludes it must have been something else, “something corporeal”, and Dean has a revealingly touchy response to his use of a long word:
But notice how Sam seeks Dean’s opinion, subtly acknowledging his older brother’s seniority in the area of supernatural lore; and Dean proceeds to demonstrate that he’s done his research in the field, whilst simultaneously exposing his insecurity by continuing to mock Sam’s erudition:
“The claws, the speed that it moves...could be a skin-walker, maybe a black dog. Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's corporeal. Which means we can kill it.”
I also find this scene visually interesting for the way Sam and Dean are shown framed between the walls of a corridor. It’s a claustrophobic scene, and the tensions that arise between the brothers as they have this conversation seem intensified by the confined space in which it takes place.
In our discussion about the bridge scene from the last episode, Dizzojay made an astute comment that seems relevant here: “bridges, being long and narrow give that sense of menace, almost like a tunnel in that, although you're not underground, you're trapped in a narrow, confined area.” Perhaps this says something about the brothers’ relationship, that they are trapped in certain patterns of behaviour, and recurring issues.
Tunnels and corridors are used in film to represent journeys. I mentioned earlier that the image of a cage in the earlier dream sequence suggested that Sam was trapped on the path he was taking. This scene seems to imply the same thing about both brothers. It also seems significant to me that there is a light at the end of this ‘tunnel’, but the brothers are shown with their backs to it, so every step they make is taking them away from the light. The scene also foreshadows the later events in the episode that will take them into actual underground tunnels.
The scene then moves outside, and the brothers continue their argument:
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
DEAN opens the trunk of the Impala, then the weapons box, and props it open with a shotgun. He puts some guns in a duffel bag. SAM leans in.
SAM
We cannot let that Haley girl go out there.
DEAN
Oh yeah? What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?
SAM
Yeah.
DEAN looks at SAM.
DEAN
Her brother's missing, Sam. She's not gonna just sit this out. Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend.
DEAN picks up the duffel.
SAM
Finding Dad's not enough?
SAM slams the weapons box shut, then the trunk.
SAM
Now we gotta babysit too?
DEAN stares at SAM.
SAM
What?
DEAN
Nothing.
He throws the duffel bag at SAM and walks off. SAM stares after him.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
There are a couple of notable things about this exchange. First, Sam’s implied belief that honesty is the best policy; when Dean ironically asks if they should tell Hayley about the monster in the woods, Sam dismissively insists “yeah”. Remember this conversation because we’ll see it mirrored and reversed by the end of the season. Secondly, note that Sam still has little interest in the case; it’s merely a stepping-stone to finding his father. We’ll see that attitude shift during the course of the season, too. And finally, Sam has neither interest in nor empathy for the Collins family. He is completely goal driven, and they are simply an unwanted responsibility and distraction.
More than once during the course of season one, Dean accuses Sam of selfishness. Whether or not that’s justified, it is in keeping with the hero myth. Typically, at the start of his journey, the protagonist is found isolated from society with only his own self-interest to serve. His quest is supposed to teach him the value of service to others and, having learned this lesson, he is granted his place in society. Hence, the traditional hero myth shows the protagonist moving through two journeys: from self-interest to self-sacrifice, and from isolation to acceptance into the community. However since, in Supernatural, the hero is split in two, I suggest those two movements are represented separately. At the beginning of the pilot, Sam is already part of a community; it is Dean who has been living in isolation from society. However, over the 5 seasons that follow, we see Sam abandon his own goals that he once insisted on pursuing until he finally makes the grand sacrifice that will enable Dean to have his ‘apple pie life’. Thus, the two paths of the hero myth are fulfilled respectively by the two protagonists. But what Supernatural ultimately does with this myth is, I think, very interesting, though it will take a full five seasons for its agenda to be fully realized, so I’ll be coming back to this point . . . repeatedly :)
I love the implications in this little throwaway. Clearly Dean draws a moral distinction
between killing ‘evil sons of bitches’ and hunting defenseless animals.
Dean showing his empathy again when Hayley challenges him for being improperly dressed and
not packing provisions, and he explains that he and Sam are searching for their father.
The question is, did he actually bring the M&Ms to eat, or was he showing boy scout preparedness by bringing something bright that could be used as ‘breadcrumbs’ in the event the party got lost or separated? o_O
Several scenes follow that demonstrate that, in his own way, Dean is just as smart as Sam. When they reach the co-ordinates John left them, he’s the first to remark on the silence.
When they come across the devastated camp, he reveals his tracking skills:
DEAN
Sam!
SAM goes over to DEAN, snapping a stick, and crouches next to him.
DEAN
The bodies were dragged from the campsite. But here, the tracks just vanish. That's weird.
DEAN and SAM stand up.
DEAN
I'll tell you what, that's no skinwalker or black dog.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
And when Sam suggests they may be hunting a Wendigo, Dean shows his knowledge of the lore,
And, also, his familiarity with Anasazi legends and the use of their protective symbols and warding:
Don’t get me wrong. Sam’s supernatural knowledge is also foregrounded throughout these scenes, but his ‘genius’ cred was already established upfront in the pilot with his exceptional LSAT scores and potential full ride to law school. In “Wendigo”, however, we are shown that Dean is equally smart and educated in his own way. Perhaps the intellectual difference between the brothers is mostly a matter of circumstance: Sam had the opportunity to go to college and Dean didn’t. The reasons for this become more evident as the season progresses, but we get a hint in the next scene.
Incidentally, the reference to the Anasazi is an example of the kind of arcane lore that I loved in the first season. Details like these set Sam and Dean apart as having specialist knowledge and made it more convincing that they were privy to a mysterious world beyond the experience of normal people. Presumably the PTBs in their wisdom deemed that sort of thing to be too cerebral and inaccessible to the average viewer but, imho, the greater reliance in later seasons on lore that had already been popularized in the common culture robbed the show of some of its individuality and authenticity. Besides, I think the PTBs underestimate the average viewer.
The Family Business.
Next follows my favourite scene in the episode, jam-packed with layered meaning, and containing one of the show’s most memorable lines of all time. It begins when Sam, Dean and the Collins party make camp for the night, and Dean asks Sam a question that, in retrospect, takes on historic significance:
So far as I recall, this is the first time the term ‘freaky’ is applied to Sam.
This is the scene where Dean articulates his famous credo: “saving people, hunting things; the family business,” firmly establishing family as the central theme of the show. I think it’s worth quoting the whole conversation since there’s a lot to unpack.
DEAN
You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?
SAM
Dean-
DEAN
No, you're not fine. You're like a powder keg, man, it's not like you. I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?
A pause.
SAM
Dad's not here. I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign, right?
DEAN
Yeah, you're probably right. Tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek.
SAM
Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road. Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?
DEAN
This is why.
DEAN comes around to SAM's front and holds up John's journal.
DEAN
This book. This is Dad's single most valuable possession-everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.
SAM shakes his head.
SAM
That makes no sense. Why doesn't he just-call us? Why doesn't he-tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?
DEAN
I dunno. But the way I see it, Dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it.
SAM
Dean...no. I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about.
DEAN
Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise. Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man.
SAM looks down, then up.
SAM
How do you do it? How does Dad do it?
DEAN looks over at HALEY and BEN.
DEAN
Well for one, them.
SAM looks over at HALEY and BEN.
DEAN
I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable.
A pause.
DEAN
I'll tell you what else helps.
SAM looks back at DEAN.
DEAN
Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
As I mentioned in my review of the pilot, on one level Sam and Dean’s problems represent the dynamic of a typical family writ large. Dean is in the position of an elder son in a blue-collar family, charged with the responsibility of carrying on the family business. Herein lies a clue to why he has missed out on the possibility of a college education. Sam as the younger son, on the other hand, appears to have escaped this responsibility and had the freedom to explore other possibilities.
On another level, however, where the brothers represent two aspects of the same person, Dean may express Sam’s guilt at having shirked his family obligations, and the inner voice that urges him to shoulder the responsibility once more. It’s also significant that Dean is the one who points to the Collins family and suggests to Sam that concern for their suffering, and helping them solve their problems, may be the means of mitigating his own pain and grief. This dramatizes the role of the Jungian shadow and how the hitherto rejected part of the self, once embraced, can be a positive resource. In this case, the dark and damaged part of Sam that Dean represents is here revealed to be the source of his compassion and empathy for others. Put more simply, Dean is Sam’s heart. (And, by extension, Sam is Dean’s soul. And I’ll be talking about the implications and consequences of that in later episodes.)
On yet another level, this whole scene can be seen as a religious allegory where the brothers’ quest to find John symbolizes the human search for the divine. What’s interesting about the symbolism, however, is that it reverses our usual perceptions of Sam as the man of faith and Dean as the materialist skeptic and, instead, casts Dean in the role of religious zealot and Sam as the doubting Thomas seeking after a sign:
I love this shot of Dean placing his hand on the journal in the manner of someone taking an oath:
The implication is very clear: this is Dean’s bible, John is his God, and he has been given a mission - saving people, hunting things. Sam, on the other hand, voices the question of every intellectual skeptic who has ever sought God:
As the season progresses, Sam continues to criticize Dean for his “blind faith” whilst priding himself on having a mind of his own. This scene emphasizes the point that Sam and Dean are on two different quests at this point: Sam’s mission is to find God; Dean’s is to do God’s will.
As contradictory as this allegory seems to be at first glance, it is actually very revealing of Dean’s true nature. Although he sees himself as a materialist who only believes in what he sees with his own eyes, and although he prides himself on being a rebel against “authority figures of any kind” (“Hell House”), in reality he a natural follower who has always sought an external authority. Castiel’s accusation in season 4, “Lazarus Rising”, that Dean has no faith, is deeply ironic since during the course of the series he has placed his faith in a succession of idols - first John, then Sam then, for a while in season 4, he gives himself over “wholly to the service of God and His angels” - and seen each in turn tumble from their pedestals. Perhaps the one person he’s never had faith in is himself, and maybe that’s the lesson he needs to learn.
It’s a nice touch that, soon after the ‘search for God’ scene, Sam is shown holding
the journal/bible and toying with some rosary beads that are attached to it.
Moving on, Roy (who has consistently dismissed and ridiculed the brothers’ occult knowledge and experience) shoots at the wendigo and pisses it off and subsequently gets himself killed and, in so doing, illustrates another unwritten rule of horror stories: if you mock the hero, you will probably die. And serve you right.
Just before he’s snatched by the wendigo, Roy calls out a line that might possibly be another pop culture reference. The phrase was spoken by a character from a classic British horror movie, Night of the Demon. During a séance, the spirit of a man who died in a mysterious ‘accident’ is heard to say “it’s in the trees” followed by “it’s coming: the demon. It’s coming!” [One minute into this clip]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDamb06ToOk I’m not dogmatic about this since, if it is an allusion, it’s very subtle, but the fact that it’s another demon reference lends some weight to the possibility. Also, it is quite a famous moment from the film, and made slightly more so for having been reproduced at the start of Kate Bush’s hit single “The Hounds of Love”.
And then we get some more of that “wackadoo exposition” that I love as Sam and Dean tag team an explanation of the nature and origin of the wendigo:
Entertaining and educational! :D
We learn that the wendigo is a kind of cannibal:
DEAN
They're hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian,
or other times a frontiersman or a miner or hunter.
HALEY
How's a man turn into one of those things?
DEAN picks a couple things up off the ground.
DEAN
Well, it's always the same. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off
from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp.
BEN
Like the Donner Party.
SAM
Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities.
Speed, strength, immortality.
DEAN
If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
It’s interesting that Dean lists hunters among the people who have become wendigos, and that Ben references the Donner party, a group of families who reputedly cannibalized members of their own community while snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846. The wendigo is the first of many kinds of cannibal to appear on the show - such as vampires, shtriga’s, rougarus and ghouls - and I’ll be exploring what Supernatural does with the theme in later episodes.
After Dean and Hayley are snatched by the wendigo, Sam and Ben follow Dean’s M&M breadcrumb trail to an abandoned mine where they find themselves in the actual tunnels that were foreshadowed by the earlier corridor scene. Tunnels in literature and film are associated with life journeys, rites of passage and rebirth:
Tunnels make frequent appearances in literature, serving as symbolic representations of journeys and passages . . . The ideas that a tunnel represents in one piece may be completely different than the meaning of tunnels in another’s work. However, one common association of a tunnel is a journey from one place to another, both physically and symbolically -- for example, from a place of darkness and doubt to a place of light and confidence . . . At the end of every tunnel is the other side, often bursting with light and hope . . . It is the contrast of the tunnel’s darkness that gives light its power and resonance. Light has long been a symbol of good, hope and God . . . While tunnels certainly represent journeys, they more often symbolize the passage from one phase of life to another. In its most primal meaning, the tunnel symbolizes the birth canal . . . director, Stephen Chbosky, said that “the tunnel scene is a symbolic rebirth, whether people look at it as a spiritual rebirth or a coming of age.”
https://penandthepad.com/symbolism-tunnels-literature-2346.html
So, we can expect the tunnel to represent a moment of transformation, but whether it is an unalloyed symbol of hope for the future is debatable. There are a number of disturbing images in the journey Sam takes through the passages. First, as Sam and Ben enter the mine, they are shown walking away from the light, as Sam and Dean were in the corridor scene. The fact they are walking on train tracks seems to emphasize the idea of a journey but when we are shown a clear image of “the light at the end of the tunnel” there seems to be a strong sense of the old warning that it may be an oncoming train:
And the light is soon obscured by the spectre of the wendigo.
Soon after this the ground gives out under their feet and the discovery of a pile of skulls reveals they have been delivered into a place of death. Later, while trying to escape toward the light, Sam and his companions will find themselves trapped in a dead end. Furthermore, we never see Sam leave the tunnel. We infer from the final scene of the episode that it must have happened, of course, but we don’t actually see the exit. Nevertheless, we do witness the moment when Sam may be said to have been ‘reborn’:
Eventually everybody is reunited again in the wendigo’s lair and, when the wendigo returns, the brothers decide that Dean will draw it off whilst Sam gets the Collins family to safety. The decision is made mostly non-verbally. It’s understood that these will be their roles; Dean is clearly used to offering himself up as bait in this fashion. (We will continue to see them both perform these assigned functions many times in later episodes.)
Btw, notice Dean’s use of the word ‘freaky’ again. That’s twice now in one episode:
once to refer to Sam, and once to address the monster. Is there a parallel being drawn?
But although the plan was for Dean to be bait while Sam and the Collins family escape, they find themselves trapped in a dead end with the wendigo bearing down on them. And that’s when Sam shows he has taken the lesson of self-sacrifice from Dean and applied it with interest. Having spent his flare cartridge and missed, he faces the monster unarmed and makes a human shield of himself to protect the family.
Thus, by following Dean’s example, Sam completes the heroic journey from self-absorption to self-sacrifice. This early episode foreshadows, in miniature, a pattern in the brothers’ relationship that will recur more than once in later episodes: Dean sacrifices himself first; Sam sacrifices himself more. It’s a pattern that will eventually seal Sam’s ultimate doom in Lucifer’s cage.
The episode ends with the usual BS stories for the authorities, the family delivered safely to the medics, a goodbye kiss from the fair damsel, and the first example of a quip that will become something of a running gag:
Then, finally, we get another one of those status reversals as Sam takes the wheel for the closing scene:
Incidentally, the first season was the only time we got the full version of Jay Gruska’s closing credits theme. It was always my favourite version.
So those are some of my thoughts on Wendigo. I hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting the episode with me and managed to make some sense of my ramblings. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
******
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Warning: image heavy post.
Apparently, Eric Kripke originally panned this episode because he didn’t think the monster was scary enough, but then he re-watched it 10 years later and decided it wasn’t so bad after all. Kripke is often his own worst critic and, imho, doesn’t give himself enough credit. Personally, I love this episode - not especially for the monster plot, I grant you, but because I think it is a wonderful study in character development. Plus, of course, it introduced the show’s original ethos, and gave us the immortal bumper sticker: “saving people, hunting things”.
To business, then . . .
Supernatural, Season 1
Episode 2, “Wendigo”
Teleplay by Eric Kripke
Story by Ron Milbauer and Terri Hughes Burton
Directed by David Nutter.
In Lost Creek, Colorado, something big, nasty and snarly is munching on young campers in Blackwater Ridge, and I’d like to thank that inexhaustible resource, Superwiki, for an observation that I’d missed:
“Tommy is seen reading a copy of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces before he's taken by the wendigo in the episode teaser.” http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo#Minutiae
After the teaser, one of my favourite Supernatural musical themes, Jay Gruska’s “Tears in Their Beers” is playing. It’s a bright sunny day in the cemetery, so this is a dream. We know this because bright sunny days don’t happen in horror unless something’s wonky. Especially not in cemeteries. Especially not in Supernatural.
Again, in our first shot of Sam, it’s as if we’re watching him through the bars of a cage, emphasizing that our poor boy is doomed already. The first traps have been set to ensure he is taking his early steps down the yellow brick road, and it ain’t leading to no Emerald City.
The neatly coiffured hair is gone now. Doesn’t look like it’s been
washed all that recently, either. Sam’s in a bad way.
Sam’s relationships
Jessica, we will discover, shares the same birthday as Dean. Kripke has denied any significance to this, saying that he just used the date because it was his wife’s birthday. Fair enough, but that doesn’t explain why he gave it to both of these characters - arguably the two most significant relationships in Sam’s life. It’s hard not to assume that some parallel is being drawn between them. Personally, I see Jessica’s death as a prototype: in Sam’s response to this loss we are forewarned what to expect, in spades, in later seasons when he loses Dean.
It’s interesting that Sam makes this comment despite the roses all over the headstone. Who got it wrong, I wonder? Did Sam know Jessica better than her family did? Or did he know her as well as she knew him?
"I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth," says Sam. At this point we assume he is berating himself for hiding his hunting past from Jessica. The full significance of his words can only be appreciated on a re-watch, after we learn about his prophetic dreams three episodes later.
Now, since I know this is a dream sequence, I am totally unfased when
GAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!
OK, I confess. I wasn’t that familiar with horror tropes back when I first watched this episode, so I didn’t see that coming at all! Sure, the pop culture reference to the end of Carrie may be a cliché, but it’s still an effective jump scare.
Again, I wonder, why is SPN so full of pop culture clichés? Are they just there for laughs, or do they mean something? SPN makes a habit of drawing attention to its own status as a fictive construct. Perhaps this speaks to one of the interpretive possibilities I introduced in my last post: the level at which Sam’s story may be a work of fiction he began writing after skipping out of college and the law school interview. In later seasons, of course, the show took its fictionality in a whole new direction with the introduction of the Chuck character (and I’ll have more to say about that, eventually, too.)
I’m fine, says Sam.
But to return to “Wendigo”, and the post title credits scene . . .
The jump scare wakes Sam as well as us, and we get our first example of the “I’m fine (I don’t talk about my feelings),” Winchester mantra. And perhaps it’s a surprise to be reminded that it was originally Sam, not Dean, who patented it.
True to the Dean=Body/Sam=Mind dichotomy, we find Dean at the wheel of this journey and Sam giving directions. That will become a familiar scenario as the series progresses yet, in this scene, it is immediately undercut when Dean offers to let Sam drive. This episode will soon start challenging some traditional assumptions about the brawn vs brains trope. As we will discover, it isn’t quite so simple with Sam and Dean. If we may think of “Wendigo” as a kind of sequel to the pilot, I’m reminded of Randy’s comment in the Scream movies, that the first movie in a franchise makes the rules and the sequel breaks them. Incidentally, a comment by Dean later in the episode may be a reference to these same rules. In Scream 3, Randy outlines the rules for surviving a horror movie trilogy, warning Sid: "You've got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up." https://scream.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rules. This sounds suspiciously akin to Dean’s comment on the wendigo:
DEAN
Well, guns are useless, so are knives. Basically-
DEAN holds up the can of lighter fluid, the beer bottle, and the white cloth he'd picked up.
DEAN
We gotta torch the sucker.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
Another assumption that is possibly being challenged by Dean’s ready offer to let Sam drive, is the perception that Dean is the natural leader in the relationship. A large section of fandom likes to think of Dean as a natural alpha male, but I think Supernatural gives us reasons to question that perception. I’ll be returning to this point in later episodes.
Btw, those of you curious enough to have googled the coordinates 35-111 will know they don’t point to Colorado but to Two Guns, Arizona - a ghost town off route 66, on the eastern rim of the Canyon Diablo. Presumably Kripke originally planned a different follow up story to the pilot. I don’t know why he changed his mind. If anyone has any insider info, please share :) I know he’d originally hoped the series would be filmed in LA. Perhaps, once production moved to Canada, filming at Two Guns wasn’t practicable and a suitable alternative location couldn’t be found near Vancouver. That’s pure speculation on my part. But one of these days I plan to set an episode of my AU serial in Two Guns and write a casefic based on the story that never was :)
In the next scene the brothers rock up at Lost Creek Ranger Station looking for information about Blackwater Ridge, and they discover that a young woman is anxious about her missing brother. Sam, however, isn’t remotely interested in the fate of the missing campers:
This represents one of those yin/yang reversals of the dynamic in the brothers’ relationship. In the pilot, Dean was the one who was intent on finding John; pursuing the woman in white case was just a means to that end, and Sam was just along for the ride. But, since Jessica’s death the dynamic has changed, and Sam is the one who is wholly motivated to pursue the quest to find his father. We get an early indication of how Sam responds to his grief: consumed by anger and the desire for revenge, he is completely single-minded and goal-driven. Dean is now more focused on investigating a potential case and we later find that his motivation has also changed.
Their first meeting with Hayley Collins is interesting. “I’m Dean, this is Sam” he tells her, and they pretext as park rangers. When Hayley asks to see ID, he produces the requisite fake badge. Hayley responds with a quizzical look, as well she might since, although Dean’s picture is on the badge, the name on it is Samuel. Here is another of those cases where Sam and Dean together present a composite identity that may feed into the theme that they represent a single person with a divided psyche. This shot is especially interesting: Dean’s hand is foregrounded but Sam’s torso is shown in the background, and the two are framed in such a way that the one might belong to the other.
The image of the two brothers shown with Dean at the front and Sam covering his back will become a familiar tableau as the series progresses. We saw it already at the ranger station when Dean spoke to Ranger Wilkinson:
One way of interpreting this is that Dean represents the exterior, self-protective face that Sam presents to the outside world. But it can happen the other way round; later in the episode we see Dean taking a back seat while Sam questions Shaw about his childhood encounter with the monster. So maybe Sam has two personas: the more sensitive self he reveals to traumatized victims and witnesses, and the brash, truculent face he presents when he’s feeling more defensive.
Typically, the case of the week presents some parallel with the brothers’ relationship or situation. The Collins family represent both since the siblings have lost their parents and have all learned to look out for each other. Also, their anxiety to find their missing brother mirrors Sam and Dean’s need to find their father. When Hayley insists, “I can't sit around here anymore, so I hired a guide. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself,” Dean empathizes with her need to do something.
While Dean is starting to bond emotionally with the family, Sam is exercising his mental acuity. Having spotted a tiny detail in Tommy’s videos home, he quickly moves into research mode. At a local bar he outlines what he has discovered about previous disappearances and explains the significance of what he found on Tommy’s video. We see him utilizing the skills and tools of a typical college student for the purposes.
On the other hand, Sam’s notebook and folder bears a similarity to another research tool that will become prominent in the episode: John’s journal. Although his college training has prepared him for his, soon to be familiar, role of research nerd, it may be that he has inherited some of this aptitude from his father.
Notably, Dean has stopped competing with him for this role. Whereas, in the pilot, we saw the brothers squabbling for control of a computer keyboard. Dean now appears content to allow Sam to commandeer the role for which he seems eminently qualified. The reasons for this may be more complex than is immediately apparent. It certainly isn’t simply because Sam’s ‘the smart one’. When Sam isn’t around, Dean is perfectly capable of doing these tasks himself, a fact that was hinted at early in the pilot when he demonstrated his own technical expertise:
Later in the season, in “Scarecrow”, we will see him handling the research component of a case quite comfortably in Sam’s absence, and in this episode we are shown plenty of evidence that he is at least as familiar with the lore in John’s journal as Sam is. Perhaps the explanation is simply that, although capable of research when required, he doesn’t particularly enjoy it so he’s happy to delegate that task to Sam. However, I think the show gives us reasons to think the explanation may be more complex. Throughout the following seasons people, particularly demons, have a tendency to treat Dean as if he’s stupid. Dean himself tends to downplay his own intelligence and he occasionally surprises Sam by revealing knowledge of books Sam doesn’t expect him to have read. He acts as if he considers intellect to be an unmanly attribute, and often mocks Sam, implying he is effeminate for being interested in such matters. However, in time we discover that Dean has a sour grapes attitude to the things he is denied, dismissing them as not worth having. The truth may be that he has internalized an image of himself as ‘less than’ Sam intellectually and therefore considers it natural to cede cerebral tasks to Sam. But in the next scene we see a hint that he is actually intimidated by and jealous of Sam’s college education.
Next the boys interview Shaw, a man who witnessed an attack on his parents when he was a child. He describes how the creature let itself into their cabin and dragged his parents away.
(It wasn’t, of course, but it’s interesting in retrospect to see how often the show foreshadowed
the demon theme long before we learned how important it was going to become.)
Afterward Dean notes that demons and spirits don’t need to break into cabins, they just walk through the walls. So, Sam concludes it must have been something else, “something corporeal”, and Dean has a revealingly touchy response to his use of a long word:
But notice how Sam seeks Dean’s opinion, subtly acknowledging his older brother’s seniority in the area of supernatural lore; and Dean proceeds to demonstrate that he’s done his research in the field, whilst simultaneously exposing his insecurity by continuing to mock Sam’s erudition:
“The claws, the speed that it moves...could be a skin-walker, maybe a black dog. Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's corporeal. Which means we can kill it.”
I also find this scene visually interesting for the way Sam and Dean are shown framed between the walls of a corridor. It’s a claustrophobic scene, and the tensions that arise between the brothers as they have this conversation seem intensified by the confined space in which it takes place.
In our discussion about the bridge scene from the last episode, Dizzojay made an astute comment that seems relevant here: “bridges, being long and narrow give that sense of menace, almost like a tunnel in that, although you're not underground, you're trapped in a narrow, confined area.” Perhaps this says something about the brothers’ relationship, that they are trapped in certain patterns of behaviour, and recurring issues.
Tunnels and corridors are used in film to represent journeys. I mentioned earlier that the image of a cage in the earlier dream sequence suggested that Sam was trapped on the path he was taking. This scene seems to imply the same thing about both brothers. It also seems significant to me that there is a light at the end of this ‘tunnel’, but the brothers are shown with their backs to it, so every step they make is taking them away from the light. The scene also foreshadows the later events in the episode that will take them into actual underground tunnels.
The scene then moves outside, and the brothers continue their argument:
EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT
DEAN opens the trunk of the Impala, then the weapons box, and props it open with a shotgun. He puts some guns in a duffel bag. SAM leans in.
SAM
We cannot let that Haley girl go out there.
DEAN
Oh yeah? What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?
SAM
Yeah.
DEAN looks at SAM.
DEAN
Her brother's missing, Sam. She's not gonna just sit this out. Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator friend.
DEAN picks up the duffel.
SAM
Finding Dad's not enough?
SAM slams the weapons box shut, then the trunk.
SAM
Now we gotta babysit too?
DEAN stares at SAM.
SAM
What?
DEAN
Nothing.
He throws the duffel bag at SAM and walks off. SAM stares after him.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
There are a couple of notable things about this exchange. First, Sam’s implied belief that honesty is the best policy; when Dean ironically asks if they should tell Hayley about the monster in the woods, Sam dismissively insists “yeah”. Remember this conversation because we’ll see it mirrored and reversed by the end of the season. Secondly, note that Sam still has little interest in the case; it’s merely a stepping-stone to finding his father. We’ll see that attitude shift during the course of the season, too. And finally, Sam has neither interest in nor empathy for the Collins family. He is completely goal driven, and they are simply an unwanted responsibility and distraction.
More than once during the course of season one, Dean accuses Sam of selfishness. Whether or not that’s justified, it is in keeping with the hero myth. Typically, at the start of his journey, the protagonist is found isolated from society with only his own self-interest to serve. His quest is supposed to teach him the value of service to others and, having learned this lesson, he is granted his place in society. Hence, the traditional hero myth shows the protagonist moving through two journeys: from self-interest to self-sacrifice, and from isolation to acceptance into the community. However since, in Supernatural, the hero is split in two, I suggest those two movements are represented separately. At the beginning of the pilot, Sam is already part of a community; it is Dean who has been living in isolation from society. However, over the 5 seasons that follow, we see Sam abandon his own goals that he once insisted on pursuing until he finally makes the grand sacrifice that will enable Dean to have his ‘apple pie life’. Thus, the two paths of the hero myth are fulfilled respectively by the two protagonists. But what Supernatural ultimately does with this myth is, I think, very interesting, though it will take a full five seasons for its agenda to be fully realized, so I’ll be coming back to this point . . . repeatedly :)
I love the implications in this little throwaway. Clearly Dean draws a moral distinction
between killing ‘evil sons of bitches’ and hunting defenseless animals.
Dean showing his empathy again when Hayley challenges him for being improperly dressed and
not packing provisions, and he explains that he and Sam are searching for their father.
The question is, did he actually bring the M&Ms to eat, or was he showing boy scout preparedness by bringing something bright that could be used as ‘breadcrumbs’ in the event the party got lost or separated? o_O
Several scenes follow that demonstrate that, in his own way, Dean is just as smart as Sam. When they reach the co-ordinates John left them, he’s the first to remark on the silence.
When they come across the devastated camp, he reveals his tracking skills:
DEAN
Sam!
SAM goes over to DEAN, snapping a stick, and crouches next to him.
DEAN
The bodies were dragged from the campsite. But here, the tracks just vanish. That's weird.
DEAN and SAM stand up.
DEAN
I'll tell you what, that's no skinwalker or black dog.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
And when Sam suggests they may be hunting a Wendigo, Dean shows his knowledge of the lore,
And, also, his familiarity with Anasazi legends and the use of their protective symbols and warding:
Don’t get me wrong. Sam’s supernatural knowledge is also foregrounded throughout these scenes, but his ‘genius’ cred was already established upfront in the pilot with his exceptional LSAT scores and potential full ride to law school. In “Wendigo”, however, we are shown that Dean is equally smart and educated in his own way. Perhaps the intellectual difference between the brothers is mostly a matter of circumstance: Sam had the opportunity to go to college and Dean didn’t. The reasons for this become more evident as the season progresses, but we get a hint in the next scene.
Incidentally, the reference to the Anasazi is an example of the kind of arcane lore that I loved in the first season. Details like these set Sam and Dean apart as having specialist knowledge and made it more convincing that they were privy to a mysterious world beyond the experience of normal people. Presumably the PTBs in their wisdom deemed that sort of thing to be too cerebral and inaccessible to the average viewer but, imho, the greater reliance in later seasons on lore that had already been popularized in the common culture robbed the show of some of its individuality and authenticity. Besides, I think the PTBs underestimate the average viewer.
The Family Business.
Next follows my favourite scene in the episode, jam-packed with layered meaning, and containing one of the show’s most memorable lines of all time. It begins when Sam, Dean and the Collins party make camp for the night, and Dean asks Sam a question that, in retrospect, takes on historic significance:
So far as I recall, this is the first time the term ‘freaky’ is applied to Sam.
This is the scene where Dean articulates his famous credo: “saving people, hunting things; the family business,” firmly establishing family as the central theme of the show. I think it’s worth quoting the whole conversation since there’s a lot to unpack.
DEAN
You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?
SAM
Dean-
DEAN
No, you're not fine. You're like a powder keg, man, it's not like you. I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?
A pause.
SAM
Dad's not here. I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would have left us a message, a sign, right?
DEAN
Yeah, you're probably right. Tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek.
SAM
Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road. Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?
DEAN
This is why.
DEAN comes around to SAM's front and holds up John's journal.
DEAN
This book. This is Dad's single most valuable possession-everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.
SAM shakes his head.
SAM
That makes no sense. Why doesn't he just-call us? Why doesn't he-tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?
DEAN
I dunno. But the way I see it, Dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it.
SAM
Dean...no. I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about.
DEAN
Okay, all right, Sam, we'll find them, I promise. Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man.
SAM looks down, then up.
SAM
How do you do it? How does Dad do it?
DEAN looks over at HALEY and BEN.
DEAN
Well for one, them.
SAM looks over at HALEY and BEN.
DEAN
I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable.
A pause.
DEAN
I'll tell you what else helps.
SAM looks back at DEAN.
DEAN
Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
As I mentioned in my review of the pilot, on one level Sam and Dean’s problems represent the dynamic of a typical family writ large. Dean is in the position of an elder son in a blue-collar family, charged with the responsibility of carrying on the family business. Herein lies a clue to why he has missed out on the possibility of a college education. Sam as the younger son, on the other hand, appears to have escaped this responsibility and had the freedom to explore other possibilities.
On another level, however, where the brothers represent two aspects of the same person, Dean may express Sam’s guilt at having shirked his family obligations, and the inner voice that urges him to shoulder the responsibility once more. It’s also significant that Dean is the one who points to the Collins family and suggests to Sam that concern for their suffering, and helping them solve their problems, may be the means of mitigating his own pain and grief. This dramatizes the role of the Jungian shadow and how the hitherto rejected part of the self, once embraced, can be a positive resource. In this case, the dark and damaged part of Sam that Dean represents is here revealed to be the source of his compassion and empathy for others. Put more simply, Dean is Sam’s heart. (And, by extension, Sam is Dean’s soul. And I’ll be talking about the implications and consequences of that in later episodes.)
On yet another level, this whole scene can be seen as a religious allegory where the brothers’ quest to find John symbolizes the human search for the divine. What’s interesting about the symbolism, however, is that it reverses our usual perceptions of Sam as the man of faith and Dean as the materialist skeptic and, instead, casts Dean in the role of religious zealot and Sam as the doubting Thomas seeking after a sign:
I love this shot of Dean placing his hand on the journal in the manner of someone taking an oath:
The implication is very clear: this is Dean’s bible, John is his God, and he has been given a mission - saving people, hunting things. Sam, on the other hand, voices the question of every intellectual skeptic who has ever sought God:
As the season progresses, Sam continues to criticize Dean for his “blind faith” whilst priding himself on having a mind of his own. This scene emphasizes the point that Sam and Dean are on two different quests at this point: Sam’s mission is to find God; Dean’s is to do God’s will.
As contradictory as this allegory seems to be at first glance, it is actually very revealing of Dean’s true nature. Although he sees himself as a materialist who only believes in what he sees with his own eyes, and although he prides himself on being a rebel against “authority figures of any kind” (“Hell House”), in reality he a natural follower who has always sought an external authority. Castiel’s accusation in season 4, “Lazarus Rising”, that Dean has no faith, is deeply ironic since during the course of the series he has placed his faith in a succession of idols - first John, then Sam then, for a while in season 4, he gives himself over “wholly to the service of God and His angels” - and seen each in turn tumble from their pedestals. Perhaps the one person he’s never had faith in is himself, and maybe that’s the lesson he needs to learn.
It’s a nice touch that, soon after the ‘search for God’ scene, Sam is shown holding
the journal/bible and toying with some rosary beads that are attached to it.
Moving on, Roy (who has consistently dismissed and ridiculed the brothers’ occult knowledge and experience) shoots at the wendigo and pisses it off and subsequently gets himself killed and, in so doing, illustrates another unwritten rule of horror stories: if you mock the hero, you will probably die. And serve you right.
Just before he’s snatched by the wendigo, Roy calls out a line that might possibly be another pop culture reference. The phrase was spoken by a character from a classic British horror movie, Night of the Demon. During a séance, the spirit of a man who died in a mysterious ‘accident’ is heard to say “it’s in the trees” followed by “it’s coming: the demon. It’s coming!” [One minute into this clip]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDamb06ToOk I’m not dogmatic about this since, if it is an allusion, it’s very subtle, but the fact that it’s another demon reference lends some weight to the possibility. Also, it is quite a famous moment from the film, and made slightly more so for having been reproduced at the start of Kate Bush’s hit single “The Hounds of Love”.
And then we get some more of that “wackadoo exposition” that I love as Sam and Dean tag team an explanation of the nature and origin of the wendigo:
Entertaining and educational! :D
We learn that the wendigo is a kind of cannibal:
DEAN
They're hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian,
or other times a frontiersman or a miner or hunter.
HALEY
How's a man turn into one of those things?
DEAN picks a couple things up off the ground.
DEAN
Well, it's always the same. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off
from supplies or help. Becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp.
BEN
Like the Donner Party.
SAM
Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities.
Speed, strength, immortality.
DEAN
If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing. You're always hungry.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/1.02_Wendigo_(transcript)
It’s interesting that Dean lists hunters among the people who have become wendigos, and that Ben references the Donner party, a group of families who reputedly cannibalized members of their own community while snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846. The wendigo is the first of many kinds of cannibal to appear on the show - such as vampires, shtriga’s, rougarus and ghouls - and I’ll be exploring what Supernatural does with the theme in later episodes.
After Dean and Hayley are snatched by the wendigo, Sam and Ben follow Dean’s M&M breadcrumb trail to an abandoned mine where they find themselves in the actual tunnels that were foreshadowed by the earlier corridor scene. Tunnels in literature and film are associated with life journeys, rites of passage and rebirth:
Tunnels make frequent appearances in literature, serving as symbolic representations of journeys and passages . . . The ideas that a tunnel represents in one piece may be completely different than the meaning of tunnels in another’s work. However, one common association of a tunnel is a journey from one place to another, both physically and symbolically -- for example, from a place of darkness and doubt to a place of light and confidence . . . At the end of every tunnel is the other side, often bursting with light and hope . . . It is the contrast of the tunnel’s darkness that gives light its power and resonance. Light has long been a symbol of good, hope and God . . . While tunnels certainly represent journeys, they more often symbolize the passage from one phase of life to another. In its most primal meaning, the tunnel symbolizes the birth canal . . . director, Stephen Chbosky, said that “the tunnel scene is a symbolic rebirth, whether people look at it as a spiritual rebirth or a coming of age.”
https://penandthepad.com/symbolism-tunnels-literature-2346.html
So, we can expect the tunnel to represent a moment of transformation, but whether it is an unalloyed symbol of hope for the future is debatable. There are a number of disturbing images in the journey Sam takes through the passages. First, as Sam and Ben enter the mine, they are shown walking away from the light, as Sam and Dean were in the corridor scene. The fact they are walking on train tracks seems to emphasize the idea of a journey but when we are shown a clear image of “the light at the end of the tunnel” there seems to be a strong sense of the old warning that it may be an oncoming train:
And the light is soon obscured by the spectre of the wendigo.
Soon after this the ground gives out under their feet and the discovery of a pile of skulls reveals they have been delivered into a place of death. Later, while trying to escape toward the light, Sam and his companions will find themselves trapped in a dead end. Furthermore, we never see Sam leave the tunnel. We infer from the final scene of the episode that it must have happened, of course, but we don’t actually see the exit. Nevertheless, we do witness the moment when Sam may be said to have been ‘reborn’:
Eventually everybody is reunited again in the wendigo’s lair and, when the wendigo returns, the brothers decide that Dean will draw it off whilst Sam gets the Collins family to safety. The decision is made mostly non-verbally. It’s understood that these will be their roles; Dean is clearly used to offering himself up as bait in this fashion. (We will continue to see them both perform these assigned functions many times in later episodes.)
Btw, notice Dean’s use of the word ‘freaky’ again. That’s twice now in one episode:
once to refer to Sam, and once to address the monster. Is there a parallel being drawn?
But although the plan was for Dean to be bait while Sam and the Collins family escape, they find themselves trapped in a dead end with the wendigo bearing down on them. And that’s when Sam shows he has taken the lesson of self-sacrifice from Dean and applied it with interest. Having spent his flare cartridge and missed, he faces the monster unarmed and makes a human shield of himself to protect the family.
Thus, by following Dean’s example, Sam completes the heroic journey from self-absorption to self-sacrifice. This early episode foreshadows, in miniature, a pattern in the brothers’ relationship that will recur more than once in later episodes: Dean sacrifices himself first; Sam sacrifices himself more. It’s a pattern that will eventually seal Sam’s ultimate doom in Lucifer’s cage.
The episode ends with the usual BS stories for the authorities, the family delivered safely to the medics, a goodbye kiss from the fair damsel, and the first example of a quip that will become something of a running gag:
Then, finally, we get another one of those status reversals as Sam takes the wheel for the closing scene:
Incidentally, the first season was the only time we got the full version of Jay Gruska’s closing credits theme. It was always my favourite version.
So those are some of my thoughts on Wendigo. I hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting the episode with me and managed to make some sense of my ramblings. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
******
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