Azazel

Azazel is the main enemy for the first two seasons of the TV series Supernatural. He was the one that killed both the mother of Sam and Dean Winchester and Sam's fiancee Jessica Moore.

Azazel has several children of his own, notably his daughter, the demon who possessed Meg Masters, an antagonist in the first season who was exorcised and sent back to Hell by Sam Winchester. These "children" are demons that he loves very much as he asks Dean why he thinks it's ok for humans to have families but not for demons, and he tortures Dean for killing one of his "children" who was beating Sam bloody in a back alley after the Winchester brothers save their father in Devil's Trap. The only thing he seems to fear is the Colt, a special gun which can kill anything. He spent the first season trying to obtain this weapon. At the beginning of the second season, he procures it from John Winchester, along with John's life and soul, in exchange for saving the life of John's son, Dean.

Sam and Dean think, for a time, that Azazel's attacks follow a set pattern. The attack would occur on the "gifted" child's six-month birthday, would originate in the child's nursery, and the mother of the child would die by being pinned to the ceiling, bleeding from the stomach, where she would burst into flames. These deaths were result of him fulfilling deals made 10 years prior. Azazel stated he simply needed permission to do something. As long as he was not interrupted, no one would be hurt.

This was the case with Sam and his mother Mary Winchester, and with Max Miller and his mother. Mary had made the deal ten years prior to save John's life and end her career as a Hunter. The demon said she was his favorite. However, the pattern is broken when Sam's girlfriend Jessica is killed (Azazel claimed she was holding Sam back from honing his skills), and in "Simon Said" with the case of Andy Gallagher and his twin brother Ansem Weems, who were both adopted. Andy's adoptive mother was killed on his six-month birthday, but Ansem's was not. It is likely Ansem's adoptive mother did not interrupt Azazel during his visit.

The full scope of his powers is unknown. He mostly appears by possessing the bodies of others, and is only identifiable when he presents yellow eyes. He seems to possess telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers, which he uses elaborately to kill his primary victims. When not in possession of a body, he can exist as a black smoke, and at one point manages to dodge a bullet from Sam by teleporting. He holds considerable influence and power, he even at one point possesses a reaper and saves Dean's life. Unlike other demons on the show, he appears to be immune to exorcisms, holy water, and most other forms of defense against demons.

In "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1", Azazel appears to Sam in a dream. In this twisted dream, the demon informs Sam that he is in a contest against all the other "special children" like him. Azazel then notes that Sam is his favorite, so he shows Sam a vision of the night that he visited him. It is shown that Azazel bleeds into the child's mouth, as sort of a ritual. Azazel also shows that Sam's mother, Mary, recognizes him and was only killed because she was at the "wrong place at the wrong time". Series creator Eric Kripke has stated that her relation to Azazel was supposed to be addressed in the third season, but was pushed back to the fourth season due to the writer's strike.[1]

Azazel's last appearance chronologically is in "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2", where he approaches Jake in a dream to tell him what to do now that he is the last survivor. He threatens Jake's family, and the soldier listens. When Jake is asked by Azazel to do something for him, Jake is given the Colt and immediately points it at him. Feigning fear, Azazel shrugs off the Colt pointed at him and says that Jake would rather have health and wealth than to shoot him. He promises security for his family as well, causing Jake to lower the weapon. With Azazel's promises, Jake is coerced into entering the Devil's Trap and into using the Colt as a key to open a gate to hell. The rush of demons from the gate breaks open the Devil's Trap, allowing Azazel to enter. He then appears behind Dean, who attempts to shoot him with the Colt. However, Azazel telekinetically grabs it from him and forcefully throws Dean onto the ground, telling him how thankful he is to Dean that he revived Sam since he liked him better than Jake. He also informs Dean that whatever Dean brought back is possibly not "100% pure Sammy", which Dean thinks has some plausability as Sam had killed Jake in coldblood without a second thought, something Sam would have never done before. He then aims the Colt at Dean and prepares to kill him, but the spirit of John, who escaped through the gate, appears and grabs him from behind, pulling him out of his human host. Azazel escapes from John's grasp and returns to his body, but Dean already has the Colt by then and shoots him in the heart, killing him. Dean then triumphantly stands over the demon's "body", recognizing his and Sam's victory over the thing which has given their family so much death and heartache. However, with the release of hundreds of demons, the Winchester brothers accept the fact that they have more work to do and more demons to hunt down and kill, some possibly worse than Azazel.

Azazel's ultimate goal, what he called his "end game" was something more than just unleashing a demon army and finding one of his children to lead it. He, however, had managed to cover his tracks well enough to leave even angels guessing at the nature of that end game.[2]

His "end game" was revealed in Season's 4 'Lucifer's Rising'. Azazel found the location of the final seal to free Lucifer.He possesses a priest and murders the nuns in the convent. Lucifer speaks to him through the body of a nun and tells him how to set him free. That he must first free Lillith, whom at this point is locked away in hell, and then find a special child to kill Lilith for the final seal to be broken (this is implied to be the reason why Azazel had Jake open the gate to hell) He also reveals in this episode that he is completely loyal to Lucifer, refering to him as his father (Lucifer also refers to him as his son). Whether he was really Lucifer's child or just that he was a faithful follower is unknown

The full scope of his powers is unknown. He mostly appears by possessing the bodies of others, and is only identifiable when he presents yellow eyes. He seems to possess telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers, which he uses elaborately to kill his primary victims. When not in possession of a body, he can exist as a black smoke, and at one point manages to dodge a bullet from Sam by teleporting. He holds considerable influence and power, he even at one point possesses a reaper and saves Dean's life. Unlike other demons on the show, he appears to be immune to exorcisms, holy water, and most other forms of defense against demons.

End Game
During his long imprisonment within the confines of Hell, Lucifer was served by his many demons, one of the most prominent being the Yellow-Eyed Demon, Azazel. Azazel, who was not bound by the limiting effects of the 66 Seals and thus could retain his power and full strength outside Hell, eventually escaped to Earth in search of a way to free Lucifer from Hell. In 1972, after escaping from Hell and into the world, Azazel possessed the body of the chief priest of a prominent church, St. Mary’s Cathedral, and pretended to carry out the priest’s current mass, with an audience of nuns in attendance. Eventually, the priest’s words began to speak of a different father, Lucifer, and the priest was then revealed to be Azazel, who then proceeded to slaughter the nuns who screamed in terror as they were horrifically massacred. After they were dead and the church was left a bloody mess, Azazel (still possessing the priest’s body) spoke directly to Lucifer himself (who spoke through the body of a nun), calling him his “father” and Lucifer in turn calling Azazel his “son” (though it remains unknown if they were speaking literally or in merely symbolic terms). Azazel requested knowledge of what was binding Lucifer in Hell and how he can help Lucifer break free. Lucifer revealed that the final Seal that was keeping him within the confines of Hell is the death of Lilith, one of the first demons he crafted after his fall from Heaven and transformation into his present state. Revealing that Lililth would have to be freed from Hell and then sacrificed by a special child with psychic powers strong enough to perform the deed, Lucifer entreated Azazel to devise a way to break this Seal and set him free. It is here that Azazel is revealed to be ultimately loyal to Lucifer and that his end game all along throughout the series has been the release of Lucifer from Hell, though his end game was kept well hidden enough by the release of a demon army many years later that even the angels of Heaven were left guessing what his ultimate goal had been after his death.

Armed with knowledge of the 66 Seals and the final Seal of all, Azazel crafted a plan to break the final Seal by finding the prophesized “special child” that would be strong enough to kill Lilith when the time came. He also devised a plot to break Lilith out of Hell so the deed could be performed when the time was right. In search of the special child spoken of by Lucifer himself, Azazel began to search far and wide for parents sure to bear children with certain psychic abilities if properly activated. To this end, Azazel would typically blackmail the parents of the child in question by means of quid pro quo into allowing him to visit the child in question upon the night of their six-month birthday (as he was unable to enter without their permission). What Azazel did not reveal to the parents however was that he would bleed into the mouth of the child in question, feeding them demon blood and activating their psychic powers within. He did this with many children, knowing that one day he would have to determine which would be powerful enough in the end to kill Lilith and fulfill the release of Lucifer from Hell. Under the guise of searching for the leader of a demon army he would release from Hell as a secret cover for his true goal, Azazel covered his tracks well so as to not be discovered by the angels of Heaven and have his plan exposed. Azazel also finally learned of a way to release Lilith from Hell, by means of a portal connecting the Earth to the realm of Hell called the Devil’s Gate. After discovering the Devil’s Gate to be protected by numerous protections set in place by the legendary Samuel Colt and that the key to the Gate itself was a gun created by Colt himself, Azazel began to also search for this key and found another use for the special child he sought: to pass through the barriers Samuel Colt had set in place around the Gate and open the Gate itself once the key had been located.

This plan came to fruition many years later, beginning in 2007 after Azazel pitted many of the now grown-up special children against one another in a battle to the death to see which would ultimately prove strongest, as a means to see which would be best suited to perform the task of killing Lilith. After Jake Talley came out on top after stabbing Sam Winchester in the back, Azazel entrusted the Colt (acquired from John Winchester) to Jake and instructed him to use it to open a crypt in an old cowboy graveyard in Wyoming (in truth the Devil’s Gate itself). Although Sam was resurrected by means of a bargain his brother Dean Winchester made with the Crossroads Demon and he and his allies headed Jake off at the graveyard, Jake was able to insert the Colt into the lock on the crypt and turn it like a key, causing the lock to begin to come open before he was shot mercilessly by Sam. With this, the Devil’s Gate was blasted open, releasing a demon army into the world to serve as a distraction while Lilith was also secretly released from Hell through the Gate as well through Azazel’s cunning. Although Azazel was killed by Dean using the Colt, Azazel’s plan was now set into motion and his plan remained shrouded in mystery to even the highest authority of Heaven. With Lilith now released from Hell and one special child remaining, tested and tried, the elements were now set in place for the final Seal binding Lucifer to be broken when the time was right. It would now take only a guiding hand to nurture the special child, Sam Winchester, to fulfill the task to which Azazel had truly planned for him: the killing of Lilith. In 2009, this also come to frution through the efforts of a demon named Ruby, who helped nurture Sam's darker persona and guided him toward his final confrontation with Lilith, goading him to kill her at the very place Azazel had spoken to Lucifer at so many years before, the now abandoned St. Mary's Cathedral. After Sam had killed Lilith, Ruby laughed in delight and revealed that Lucifer himself had predicted that Sam was the only one capable of killing Lilith and that now the deed was done, before being killed by Dean. With this, Azazel's plan of many long years had at last succeeded in its goal: releasing Lucifer from the constraints of Hell.

Names
Names this character is known by both in fandom and canon:
 * Azazel - Casey reveals his true name of the "Yellow-Eyed Demon" in "Sin City", the name is also mentioned in "In The Beginning"
 * The Demon (all Winchesters refer to it thus in Season 1)
 * The Yellow-Eyed Demon (Dean refers to it thus in Season 2)
 * Celine Demon (a nickname used by some fans)
 * In a draft script for "Everybody Loves a Clown", Dean refers to it as the Big Bad.

Powers and Abilities
As a demon, Azazel is incorporeal and has the ability to possess living and other incorporeal creatures. Beginning with the second season, he takes on one primary host, possessing others when the need arises. While possessing his host, the body exhibits demonic abilities quite normal for a possessed person. These include, but are not limited to, inhuman durability and enhanced strength. He is more powerful than the average demon, as he is invulnerable to the average defense used against demons. He has displayed supreme psychic ability as well, such as the time he pinned the Winchesters to a wall via telekinesis, or the time he entered Sam’s dreams. He also appears to have pyrokinetic abilities, unlike most other demons. Like all demons, conventional weapons can't kill him.

Appearances

 * "Pilot" appears as figure next to Sam's crib
 * "Scarecrow" Meg Masters communicates with him through the goblet of blood
 * "Shadow" Meg Masters communicates with him through the goblet of blood
 * "Salvation" appears as figure next to Rosie's crib
 * "Devil's Trap" possesses John Winchester
 * "In My Time of Dying" appears to John Winchester as a janitor in the hospital basement. Possesses Tessa in order to revive Dean''
 * "Croatoan" Duane Tanner communicates with him through the goblet of blood
 * "All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 1" appears in a dream to Sam
 * "All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 2" uses Jake Talley to enter the Devil's trap built by Samuel Colt. He is killed by Dean with the Colt, with some help from John Winchester
 * "In The Beginning" possesses Samuel Campbell (Sam and Dean's grandfather) in 1973
 * "Lucifer Rising" possesses a priest in 1972 to speak with Lucifer

Trivia

 * It is implied (though not confirmed) that Lucifer is the true father of Azazel due to the numerous times Azazel refers to Lucifer by such names as "Father," "Daddy," "Padre," etc in Lucifer Rising.