| “ | Silly goose. You wanna bargain, you have to have something that I want. You don't. | ” |
— Lilith to Sam Winchester.
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Lilith was the first demon Lucifer created and thus the final seal that had to be broken for him to be freed from his cage. She was trapped in Hell until the second season finale, at which point she replaced the deceased Azazel as leader of his army. She broke the sixty-six seals to Lucifer's cage in Season 4, ending with her allowing Sam Winchester to kill her and freeing Lucifer in the finale.
History
Background
Lilith as she appears in the comics.
Lilith began life as a human who lived thousands of years before the time Supernatural is set. Jealous of God's love for humans, the angel Lucifer "twisted and tempted" her soul as an act of retaliation, turning her into the first demon--Lilith. Lucifer was cast into a cage as punishment. Lilith herself also got imprisoned deep in Hell.
In Supernatural: Rising Son, Lilith escaped Hell and masqueraded as an elementary school teacher named Susan Lyle in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She endeared herself to young student Sam Winchester, aware that Sam had a special destiny of some importance to the forces of Hell. Dean was the first to realize she was a demon. His and Sam's father, John, fought with her as well as a transmogrified construct near the railroad tracks.
Season 3
Lilith, seconds before she destroys the sheriff's office.
Lilith was among the demons who escaped Hell through the Wyoming Devil's Gate in "All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 2". With Azazel dead at Dean's hands, it fell to Lilith to carry on the duty of freeing Lucifer from his cage. She filled in the power vacuum he left by acting as Hell's de facto leader during this time. The King of the Crossroads, Crowley, became her right-hand man. She also had a lieutenant named Merrick, a chef who prepared human babies for Lilith to eat, and a group of subservant demons who surrounded her at all times.
Lilith secretly concocted a plan with Ruby: while feigning a desire to help humans and kill Lilith, Ruby protected and corrupted Lucifer's future vessel, Sam, while Lilith herself broke the 66 Seals. Lilith ordered her subordinates to kill Sam as a ruse to force him to rely more upon Ruby, though she claimed it was because she didn't want the "competition" (as Sam was believed to be Azazel's intended successor as Hell's leader).
Lilith contacted damned soul Bela Talbot and coerced her into stealing The Colt by promising to release her from her contract. Once Bela succeeded, Lilith had Crowley obtain the Colt and then change the terms of their deal by demanding Bela also kill Sam; this was evidently just to toy with Bela, as Lilith had no reason to want Sam dead at the time. When she learned that Bela had arranged for the Winchesters to be taken in by the police in "Jus In Bello", Lilith arrived at the police station and politely inquired as to the brothers' whereabouts from Nancy Fitzgerald (describing Sam as "really tall" and Dean as "really cute"), only to find that they had already escaped. She then revealed her demonic identity and tortured all the humans still inside the police station for forty-five minutes, including skinning the screaming Nancy alive and forcing everyone else to watch; she killed FBI Agent Victor Henricksen last. She then blew up the building and left. Bela later gave away information on Lilith to Dean to help him kill her in revenge and break his own deal, before her own implied death.
Lilith pretending to be the Freemont child
While waiting for Dean to die and break the first seal in Hell, Lilith entertained herself by tormenting the Freemont family of New Harmony, Indiana while possessing their young daughter. She held them hostage, forcing them to do whatever she wanted without cease or acting as though their daughter was acting any differently. Lilith randomly killed whomever she decided she no longer "liked", including the grandfather after he tried to beg their neighbors for help as well as a pet named Freckles and a babysitter who were both "mean" to her.
After Sam and Dean located her with Bobby Singer's help, they arrived to confront Lilith in "No Rest for the Wicked", but she abandoned her child host and met up with Ruby, who had accompanied the boys. She took control over Ruby's host and rejoined the hunters while pretending to be Ruby. Lilith told Sam it was too late to save Dean when he begged her for help. The hellhounds came to kill Dean and the group barricaded themselves in. When Lilith tried to manipulate Sam into giving her the Demon-killing knife, Dean realized a second before his brother gave in that it was Lilith and not Ruby.
Lilith in Ruby's Season 3 host
Lilith immobilized both hunters before they could attack her. Having wanted to meet Sam for "a long time", she forcibly kissed him and told him that his lips were soft. He tried to trade himself for Dean's life, but Lilith didn't take the offer because he didn't have anything she wanted. Dean then tried to goad her into revealing her plan, but she simply said, "I don't have to answer to puppy-chow," and opened the doors to let the hellhounds in, laughing at Dean's painful demise and Sam's anguish. She then tried to use her White Light on Sam, only for it to have no effect, much to her and Sam's surprise. She quickly fled when he picked up the demon-killing knife and advanced on her with intent to kill her.
Between Seasons 3 and 4
According to Ruby, Lilith returned to Hell and punished her heavily for her treachery. She agreed to give Ruby another chance by sending Ruby back to Earth to kill Sam. As Ruby was later revealed to be working for Lilith the whole time, however, it is likely that Ruby was lying about this to gain Sam's trust.
Dean unknowingly broke the first seal three months after his death, enabling Lilith to begin breaking the rest of the seals.
Season 4
Bobby, Sam, and a newly resurrected Dean first learned about the seals after Lilith broke another by raising the Witnesses in "Are You There God? It's Me, Dean Winchester". She chose those whom hunters had failed to save so that their ghosts would go after them in vengeance; one of these victims included Henricksen, who revealed the details about Lilith's slaughter in the police station to the Winchesters. Dean later hallucinated about Lilith in "Yellow Fever" while inflicted with ghost sickness that ramped up its victims' feelings of fear and anxiety until they literally scared themselves to death. She cheerfully hugged him, exclaiming that she'd missed him, before taunting him about returning to Hell. She reminded him of his time in Hell, and tried to make him suffer a heart attack, narrowly failing when Sam and Bobby vanquished the ghost that'd infected Dean.
Angels returned to Earth for the first time in two thousand years to stop Lilith from unleashing Lucifer, and they were aided by the Winchesters and their allies; however, as Anna Milton explained, there too many and no one knew which one she'd target. By "Criss Angel Is A Douchebag", Lilith had already broken thirty-four seals.
Lilith's Season 4 host
Lilith faltered when she learned that her death was needed as the final seal. In "The Monster at the End of This Book", she possessed a dental hygienist from Bloomington, Indiana, and went to negotiate a peace-offering to Sam, offering to stop breaking seals if Sam agreed to sacrifice himself and Dean as her "consolation prize". Sam hesitated but seemingly relented under Lilith's manipulations. She claimed that their deal had to be consummated by sex rather than a kiss (as typical with crossroad demons) and that the woman she was possessing "wanted it bad". Sam pretended to go along with it to get close enough to her to stab her with the demon-killing knife when she pulled him down on top of her. She overpowered him and seized the knife, but was forced to leave when the prophet Chuck Shurley's entrance into the room started to summon Raphael to kill her and protect Chuck.
Left with no other option, Lilith resumed breaking seals and by "Lucifer Rising", she was the last one remaining. She and her subordinates prepared for her upcoming death in St. Mary's Convent (where the door to Lucifer's cage opens). Shortly before Sam and Ruby arrived, Lilith reassured one of her minions by saying that they were going to "save the world".
Lilith's death.
Sam killed Lilith's subordinates before forcing his way into the room she had barricaded herself in, and pinned her to the altar. She challenged him to give her his best shot. Although he used his powers on her and she cried out in pain, she survived his initial attack. He then became distracted by the sound of his brother (sent by Castiel and warned about the consequences of Lilith's death) calling out to him through the doors Ruby had telekinetically locked. Lilith started laughing, drawing Sam's attention. She taunted him about how "adorable" it was that he hesitated now despite having already turned himself into a freakish monster, baiting him into using his full power on her. She eventually succumbed and died. With her death, the final seal broke and Lucifer manifested from a symbol formed by blood from her host's corpse.
Appearance
As a demon, Lilith manifested on Earth as a thick cloud of black smoke that possesses hosts. Ordinary humans could not perceive her true nature; however, Dean glimpsed it in "No Rest for the Wicked" and described her true face as "awful". He could not immediately tell her apart from Ruby despite his temporary ability to see the faces of demons, which suggests that she and Ruby look similar enough to pass for one another, at least to humans.
Lilith preferred to possess blonde females. She primarily possessed young girls in Season 3: a brunette child and the blonde-haired Freemont child. Dean later hallucinated her as the latter in "Yellow Fever". When she possessed Ruby's host, she noted that she liked being "all grown-up and pretty". She possessed another beautiful adult woman throughout Season 4. The hosts exhibited milky-white eyes when Lilith wanted to reveal her true nature.
Personality
| “ | The good old days. When it was all baby blood, all the time. | ” |
— Lilith to Sam Winchester.
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Lilith often feigned a childish, sweet disposition to hide how truly evil she was. As part of this act, she treated even her victims with friendliness. If provoked, however, she dropped this and became so cold she appeared almost emotionless. She switched between these two behaviors very quickly to unsettle those who witnessed it.
Lilith played on the expectations people had associated with her hosts' appearances, acting innocent in children hosts and seductively in adult hosts. She successfully impersonated Ruby for a short time before Dean caught on to the swap by noticing the difference in the two demons' "faces". She was also intelligent and cruel enough to choose to summon Witnesses whom hunters had tried and failed to save, correctly predicting that the hunters' guilt would likely make it more difficult for them to fight back and resulted in their deaths; Castiel described this as Lilith's sense of humor.
Even for a demon, Lilith was incredibly sadistic. She regarded it as "fun" to inflict both physical or psychological pain on others. For example, in "Jus In Bello" she hideously tortured everyone inside the police station to death one-by-one while forcing those still alive to watch as she did so. She also toyed with the family of a girl she was possessing such as by ordering the mother to reread the same story to her over twenty-six times in a row and cuddling up to her, while at the same time ruthlessly killing anyone she suspected "didn't love" her, to keep them in a constant state of terror. All of her subordinates seemed to either fear or revere her; at least two demons refused to give up any information on her to Sam and Dean even under torture because they feared how she'd punish them, believing that any torture Sam or Dean could devise would be "a flea bite" compared to Lilith's methods. Lilith detested angels and found dealing with them tedious and irritating rather than difficult; Alastair claimed she'd kill "a hundred, a thousand" of them if she could. Lilith also had a taste for infant blood and would regularly have her personal chef supply them to her.
Despite breaking the 66 Seals and eventually sacrificing herself to free Lucifer, Lilith did not have the same faith in him as Meg, Azazel, and Ruby did, and was willing to let him "rot" in his cage if Sam had agreed to her deal. She appeared to care more about the Apocalypse that Lucifer's rise would incite (specifically the destruction and suffering it would bring), lamenting that she'd be "killed off, right before the good part starts." Although she did not want to die and would have preferred to return to enjoying herself and torturing others as she had before breaking the seals, she resigned herself to her fate and even provoked Sam into killing her in the end by laughing at him.
Lilith was an exceptional strategist. She proved to be capable of manipulating demonic contracts to further her goals, as earlier mentioned with Bela and Dean. In addition, by being unpredictable in her tactics, she managed to outplay the angels in the battle over the seals to Lucifer's cage. At one point, she also managed to break three seals all in the same day. She also masterminded the actions and betrayal of Ruby to achieve their goal into goading Sam to use his powers. Lilith and Ruby's ploy was so effective it fooled practically everybody on the allegiance of the latter, such that even other high-tier demons such as Alastair, or even angels like Anna Milton were convinced of it.
Powers and Abilities
As Lucifer's First, Lilith was the oldest demon, and possibly even the most powerful. According to the creator of Supernatural, she out-ranked even fellow white-eyed demons and Azazel in the hierarchy of Hell (it's unknown if her powers are greater than his though), with only Lucifer himself as her superior. She seemed unafraid of normal angels but strongly recognised and feared the power of Archangels. Lilith was described by Lucifer to have the capability to break most of the numerous seals, which require various rituals and spells, to open the fallen archangel's cage. Both angels and demons alike mentioned such capability of hers.
- Immortality - She was thousands of years old and would probably live forever.
- Invulnerability - It was highly difficult to kill or even harm her. She did not require nourishment to survive nor was she vulnerable to things that would injure or kill humans. In addition, she was not vulnerable to Holy Water. She was also initially immune to Sam's powers, but he later developed an immunity to hers and ended up killing her (albeit with immense effort and with large amounts of demon blood) in their final confrontation. However she seemed wary of the Demon-killing knife.
- Teleportation - In Season 4, she appeared suddenly at the door to the brothers' motel room, and later surprised a guard at St. Mary's Convent by showing up out of nowhere from behind him. Unlike most high-ranking demons, she had to be released from Hell instead of leaving whenever she wanted, possibly due to how deep she was imprisoned. It is unknown if this restriction held true after her initial escape at the end of Season 2.
- Demonic Possession - She took over the bodies of human beings against their will. She claimed she forcibly possessed Ruby's occupied vessel but as Ruby was working for her it is unlikely. However, she may have done this for credibility to convince other demons Ruby was a traitor.
- Super strength - Though preferring not to get her hands dirty, Lilith was unnaturally strong. When she got involved in a physical struggle with Sam, she quickly overpowered him.
- Advanced Telekinesis - She broke a grown man's neck without touching it, and later used telekinesis to fling Sam and Dean across the room, holding Sam immobilized to a wall at the same time she did the same to Dean to a table. On one occasion, she forced an entire police station staff to watch as she flayed a victim for forty-five minutes using this ability.
- Reality Warping - She could grant a human's wishes if a deal was made, and also held some of the contracts made by other demons. She once claimed that sex was required to seal a deal with her rather than a mere kiss, but it is unclear whether she was telling the truth or lying to coerce Sam.
- Biokinesis - Lilith was able to manipulate Nancy's skin, by 'flaying' it off.
- Demonic White Light - She could generate a blast of white light from the palm of her hand that apparently destroyed anything she wanted it to. For example, she blew apart an entire police station by raising her hand, but later concentrated it solely on Sam so that it did not affect the house she was in at the time. She was also able to control its intensity to use only a very small amount to destroy a Devils trap.
- Spell-Casting - She was able to raise the Witnesses in "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester".
Relationships
- Lucifer (creator/leader)
- Crowley (second-in-command / possible lover)
- Merrick (lieutenant)
- Cindy McKellan's demon (personal chef)
- Other demons (subordinates)
Notes
- She was the first white-eyed demon introduced as well as the first female Big Bad.
- Eric Kripke stated that Lilith outranked even Azazel in the demonic hierarchy.
- She was the third main villain whom Sam killed.
- She was the second character to be the main antagonist for two seasons; the first being Azazel and the third being Crowley.
- It is possible that she was a knight-of-Hell; they are described as being "hand-picked by Lucifer himself", "the first-fallen, first-born demons", and "very pure, very strong", all criteria that apply to Lilith as the very first demon Lucifer created. On the other hand, it was never mentioned she was.
- She fed on human infants and even had a special "chef" who kidnapped babies from hospitals for Lilith to eat. This is a reference to the real-life mythology surrounding Lilith, who is said to kill newborns unless they are protected with appropriate talismans and the like.
- In "The Real Ghostbusters", Becky Rosen speculated that Lilith and Crowley were lovers.
- Lilith is the second Demon of the lore to appear in the show, the first was Azazel.
Trivia
- Originally, the writers did not know who the main antagonist to replace Azazel would be. They gave the character the nickname "Zarqawi" as a reference to the real-life terrorist (the demon war in Season 3 first being planned as a reflection on real-life terrorism and war) and planned for the character to be male, but Sera Gamble insisted it be female and suggested Lilith be the new Big Bad.
- The writers debated whether Lilith should be presented in the form of a woman or a little girl. Although they initially settled on the latter for Season 3 because they found it creepier, they had her possess adults in her later appearances.
- The mythological Lilith is commonly portrayed as either a seducer of men or the destroyer of children. The character of Lilith in Supernatural is meant to represent both aspects of that mythology, according to an interview with Kripke.
List of appearances
Season 2
- "All Hell Breaks Loose - Part 2" (cameo)
Season 3
- "Malleus Maleficarum" (mentioned only)
- "Jus In Bello"
- "Time Is On My Side" (mentioned only)
- "No Rest For The Wicked"
Season 4
- "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester" (mentioned only)
- "Yellow Fever" (as Dean's hallucination)
- "Criss Angel Is A Douchebag" (mentioned only)
- "On The Head Of A Pin" (mentioned only)
- "The Monster at the End of This Book"
- "When The Levee Breaks" (mentioned only)
- "Lucifer Rising"
Season 5
- "Sympathy for the Devil" (mentioned only)
- "Fallen Idols" (mentioned only)
- "The Real Ghostbusters" (mentioned only)
Season 7
- "Repo Man" (mentioned only)
Comics
- Supernatural: Rising Son (as Susan Lyle)
- Supernatural: Rising Son #2
- Supernatural: Rising Son #3
- Supernatural: Rising Son #5 (first appearance as herself)
- Supernatural: Rising Son #6