No Rest for the Wicked

No Rest for the Wicked is the 16th episode of Season 3. It premiered on May 15th, 2008.

Summary
It's thirty hours before Dean's deal with the crossroads demon is up and Dean, Sam and Bobby are searching for Lilith, who holds the contract. They discover her location and Sam summons Ruby for help despite Dean's protests. Ruby warns them they aren't ready to fight Lilith yet but they steal her knife and depart for New Harmony, Indiana.

In a battle to the death, Sam, Dean and Bobby take on Lilith and all her demons in a last ditch effort to save Dean's life.

Synopsis
The show opens with a great season three montage to “Carry On My Wayward Son”, the tradition of season finales. Next, Dean is running from something in the woods, but the growling creature catches up with him and he falls down, yelling and screaming as his blood spurts on his face. He wakes up, his head resting on a page he was reading about Hellhounds. Sam comes in with a smile and reveals that Bobby has found a way to find Lilith. Dean isn’t convinced that the plan is going to work with only 30 hours to go and wants to live it up in a Mexican way. Sam jokes they should never do that, and sits down to reassure Dean that he won’t let him go to Hell, but Dean isn’t comforted when he hallucinates Sam as a ghoulish figure.

Bobby performs a tracking spell by pulling out a device, and after reciting some Latin finds that Lilith is in New Harmony, Indiana. Dean doesn’t like the idea of taking on Lilith unprepared. Sam wants to summon Ruby, but Dean refuses to let him and tells Bobby and Sam to find something else. Sam summons Ruby anyway, and she tells him he can defeat Lilith using his psychic and other abilities instead of her knife. Lilith is on “shore leave” and has her guard down. She didn’t tell Sam this before because he would have never considered the idea unless he was desperate. Sam takes in what she says but Dean arrives, refusing to let her help Sam tap into his abilities. He fights her and after taking a beating steals her knife while trapping her under a Devil’s Trap.

Sam tries to get Dean to listen to Ruby, but Dean tells him they need to stop making the same mistakes all over again and stop allowing themselves to be martyrs for each other. They should go after Lilith their way and if they fail they will go down swinging. Dean asks, “What the hell does a demon do for fun?” We find out that Lilith has taken over the body of the young daughter of the Fremont family and is terrorizing them. She is holding dad, mom and grandpa hostage and has killed her babysitter and her pet, Freckles.

Sam and Dean try to leave, but the Impala won’t start. Bobby shows up with the distributor cap in his hand and tells them he’s going with them because “family don’t end with blood.” He also gets Dean to admit he’s seeing hallucinations. On the car ride there, Sam wants to have a talk, but Dean puts on “Wanted Dead or Alive” instead, creating one last brotherly bonding moment by both yelling the song obnoxiously out of tune. Dean turns sad at the end, realizing how bittersweet the last moment is.

They get pulled over by a cop because the Impala has a busted tail light. Dean attacks the officer and stabs him with Ruby’s knife, revealing he’s really a demon. Dean confesses he saw his real face under the human face. While hiding the cop car, Bobby says that what Dean is seeing is normal for someone facing Hell soon, and that it will come in handy during their attack on Lilith. Sure enough, they arrive and Dean points out the little girl is Lilith, and the neighborhood is loaded with demons.

They take out a couple of the demons with Ruby’s knife, while Bobby blesses a well with a rosary. Ruby catches up with them, and Dean is disgusted by her “real” face. They are surrounded by demons and run for the house just in time for Bobby to turn on the sprinklers, which spray out holy water, stopping the demons at the edge of the lawn. They enter the house and Dean takes the father to safety (grandpa was killed earlier for asking help from the neighbour), while Ruby and Sam go after Lilith. Ruby goes into one room, while Sam finds the girl and her mother in the bedroom. The mom begs Sam to kill the girl but he hesitates over the idea at first. Just before he tries to stab her, Dean stops him and tells him Lilith isn’t in her anymore.

Dean sends the family off to safety in the basement, while Sam tells Ruby he’s ready to try it her way. She tells him it’s too late, and Dean stops him, telling him he will let him go to Hell. Sam tearfully asks what he’s supposed to do, and Dean tells him to “keep fighting, take care of my wheels, remember what Dad taught you, and remember what I taught you.” The clock strikes midnight and Dean awaits his fate while tears run from Sam’s eyes. Dean hears the hellhounds, and the three of them run into the office. Sam and Ruby barricade the doors while Dean puts down goofer dust along the doorway and windows.

Ruby demands the knife from Sam, and Dean realizes it isn’t Ruby. She pins Sam against the wall and Dean against the desk, and her white eyes show she’s really Lilith. Sam asks where Ruby is, and Lilith says she sent her far away. She goes over to Sam and kisses him, while he tries to give himself up for Dean. Lilith won’t agree since Sam can’t offer her anything she wants. Dean asks her if her plan is to drag him to Hell, kill Sam and become “Queen Bitch,” but she won’t answer to “puppy chow” and opens the door, letting the hellhound in. Dean is dragged from the table and mauled to death in horrific fashion, which Sam watches in horror screaming at Lilith to stop it. After Dean dies Lilith with delight sends her white light of doom in Sam’s direction, ready to kill him next.

The white light dissipates, and slowly terror washes over Lilith. Sam in crouched down in the corner unharmed, and realizes that she no longer has a hold on him. He grabs the knife and goes to stab her, but she exits Ruby’s body in a cloud of black smoke. Sam looks down to see the bodies of Ruby and Dean, and begins weeping. He kneels down and cradles Dean’s head in his hand, crying inconsolably over his dead brother.

The camera pans through Dean’s eye to show dark clouds, lightning, cables strung everywhere, and in the middle of it Dean hanging from chains with meathooks through his shoulders and side. He’s screaming for Sam as the scene fades to black. He is tethered by multiple black chains. At the end of each chain is a large hook, stuck in his body, suspending him up in the air. As Dean looks around, panicked, he yells “Help! Somebody help me! Sam! SAM!”

Featured Supernatural Beings

 * Demons
 * Hellhounds

Featured Music

 * "Carry On Wayward Son" - Kansas
 * "Wanted Dead or Alive" - Bon Jovi

Continuity

 * Dean's deal, made in All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 2, comes due in this episode.
 * While arguing on whether they should summon Ruby to help, Dean said, "For all we know, she works for Lilith." This later would prove to be true in the season 4 finale

Trivia

 * According to the book "Supernatural the Official Companion Season 3", the original vision for the final scene would have placed Dean in a "really nasty, bloody slaughterhouse, hanging from meat hooks". Here, Dean would start screaming as shadows fall over him. Discussions between Eric Kripke, Kim Manners, and Ivan Hayden led to the decision to present "one epic glimpse" of Hell. Though the scene matched with the many versions of "chains and people being ripped apart", art director John Marcynuk felt they should have made it "a little more mysterious and dark". He commented, "My opinion is, the vaguer the better, because you let the imagination take over. People have different fears, and Hell's such a personal torment.
 * The police car that gets covered up after Dean kills the demon posing as a cop is numbered 54. This may be a reference to the television series "Car 54 Where Are You".
 * At one point in the episode Dean says, "...hell, she probably wants you to become her little Antichrist Superstar". Antichrist Superstar is an album by American rock band Marilyn Manson.

Quotes
Bobby: "Do I look like a ditchable prom date to you?"

Dean: "Because if this is my last day on Earth, I do not want it to be socially awkward."

Bobby: "Tell me how many hallucinations have you had so far?"

Dean: "How did you know?"

Bobby: "Because that's what happens when you've got hellhounds on your butt... And because I'm smart."

Bobby: (hands the distibuter cap) "I'll follow." (while going towards his car) "Don't be stopping to pee every ten minutes either."