Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans is the 16th episode of Season 8. It aired on February 27th, 2013.

Summary
The guys aid an amnesiac loner who dies and revives himself daily. He's the cursed titan Prometheus, which means their newest opponent is the mighty Zeus.

Plot
 Late one night on a forest road, a man falls asleep at the wheel and plows into a bearded stranger walking by the roadside, killing him. The driver speeds off, and the next morning a state trooper finds the stranger's body frozen, and with an eagle gnawing at his insides. The officer turns away to report the scene, but we soon see the stranger has healed and gotten up, disappearing into the woods before the officer notices.

 Back at the Men of Letters base, Sam finds himself spitting up more blood, and having to keep it from a suspicious Dean. With no word from Kevin or Castiel, they decide to investigate a tabloid case of what the state trooper reported to be a zombie, heading to the officer's station. The trooper insists the man must have been a zombie, but when the same John Doe pops up in a Montana town morgue dead of a bear attack, Sam and Dean suspect they have something more sinister on their hands. Sam and Dean examine the shredded body, finding nothing particularly unusual about it, but before they know it the man has once again come back to life and attempted to flee the scene. Dean holds him down as the man identifies himself as Shane, and explains he has no idea what causes him to die and resurrect once a day. Sam and Dean take him back to the hotel, learning he first woke up seven years ago near a mountain in Europe, and has been traveling ever since.

That night, a mysterious woman clad in black leather sits by his bedside, though when Shane wakes he professes not to know who she is. Sam and Dean burst in, the woman easily overpowers them, while Shane displays some major prowess in taking her down. Defeated, the woman vanishes from sight, before the excitement causes Shane to have a heart attack, and promptly die once more. The next morning, another woman shows up outside the hotel with her young son in tow, having followed the "zombie" reports looking for Shane. Identifying herself as Hayley, and the young boy as their son Oliver, Hayley explains how she met Shane years prior in an avalanche on the mountain, when Shane rescued her. The pair ended up sleeping together, giving Shane another heart attack, the resurrection from which caused her to flee in terror. Shane resuscitates again, greeting Hayley and meeting his young son, as Sam reasons to Dean that they might have happened upon the Greek Titan Prometheus. The attacker from the previous night was likely Artemis, daughter of Zeus. The brothers bring the incredulous man up to speed.

Minutes later, Hayley bursts into the motel room with a bloodied Oliver, who endured a nasty fall and has apparently become subject to the same curse as his father, dying every day. Returning to the Men of Letters stronghold, Sam and Dean explain the supernatural to an incredulous Hayley, reasoning their best bet is to confront Zeus himself. After extensive research, Dean finds a journal from an historical figure that details a method of trapping and potentially killing Zeus, which involves the bone of his followers, and a stake made from a tree struck by lightning. Sam and Shane retrieve the bone. As Dean and Hayley prepare for the coming confrontation, a resuscitated Oliver comes with them.

Setting up the trap in an abandoned warehouse, the group summons Zeus into a sigil on the floor, appearing as a bearded man in a suit. Zeus wryly agrees to break the curse on the boy if he's set free from the trap, but Shane, Sam and Dean call his bluff. Hayley breaks, severing the trap and allowing Zeus to escape, and he incapacitates the men with his lightning. Zeus expresses his delight that young Oliver's curse has caused Prometheus to suffer even more, as Artemis appears to restrain the Winchesters. While Zeus continues torturing Prometheus, Artemis leads Sam and Dean away to be killed, until Sam distracts her by revealing Prometheus declared his love for her. Sam reasons that the two were involved, as it wouldn't have taken seven years to find Prometheus, and that she was the one to release him from the mountain of his eternal torment in the first place.

As Zeus prepares to kill Oliver, Artemis intervenes and threatens her father at arrow-point. Zeus grows angry and blames Prometheus for their fall from dominance over mankind, but when Artemis lets loose an arrow, Zeus pulls Prometheus into its path. Still conscious, Prometheus pushes the arrow through himself into Zeus as well, killing them both. Mournfully, Artemis removes the arrow and teleports away with her father's body, leaving Prometheus/Shane behind. After Dean and Hayley burn the body, and Sam bonds with Oliver, Sam wonders aloud to Dean if he was naive in thinking he could face the tablet's trials. Dean cheerfully holds his brother to the agreement that he would die of old age rather than anything supernatural, but when they return to base, Dean prays to Castiel for Sam's safety.

Characters

 * Dean Winchester
 * Sam Winchester
 * Hayley
 * Oliver
 * Prometheus
 * Zeus
 * Artemis

Quotes

 * Dean: What are you, a real life Kenny?


 * Sam: Who do we know that has Jason Bourne fighting skills, dies a lot and has a history with violent women?
 * Dean: I don't know. You?


 * Dean: Cas, you got your ears on? Listen, you know I'm not one for praying 'cause in my book it's the sa– it's the same as begging. But this is about Sam, so I need you to hear me. We are going into this deal blind, and I don't know what's ahead or what it's going to bring for Sam. Now he's covering pretty good, but I know that he is hurting. And this one was supposed to be on me. So for what we've been through... I'm asking you, you keep a lookout for my little brother, okay? Where the hell are you, man?


 * Sam: (to Artemis) Oh, yeah? Then how did I know? What, have you spilled it to anyone? Homer? Hesiod? Herodotus?


 * Dean: Yeah, and if things go all "Dawn of the Dead" on us, you'll be our first call.


 * Zeus: (to Prometheus)' I never get tired of watching you die!

Trivia

 * When Prometheus tells Sam and Dean that all he does is die, Dean asks him if he is a real life Kenny. Kenny McCormick is a character from South Park that frequently dies only to come back to life in a later episode.
 * The name of the episode is a reference to the 2000 American sports film of the same name.

Continuity

 * Although Dean claims to have never faced a "god curse" before, the Winchesters in fact referred to Veritas' influence as a curse.
 * The Winchesters breaking the curse on Oliver and Prometheus conflicts with what Dean said in "Bugs", when he claimed that curses can't be broken, saying that you can only just get out of their way.