Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 3x16 No Rest for the Wicked, Part 1
This is part one of two. Part two is available here.
Right at the beginning of series three, I commented on the fundamental changes wrought on the show as a result of the Writers’ Strike of 2007/2008. The most immediate of these was the need for the writers of the show to concentrate on getting a story told in the four episodes remaining to them. The original plan to have Sam use his demon powers to get Dean out of his deal would have taken too long, for which reason they decided that Dean would actually die and go to Hell. Because of the sudden change in direction, the first twelve episodes of the show are out of sync with the final four, and things such as Isaac and Bobby leaving Dean bleeding on the floor in 3x01 The Magnificent Seven look really bad. On the other hand, the last four episodes are – in my opinion – a significant improvement to what came before, as well as a fitting conclusion to the story.
That is not to say it was pleasant, though. In fact, when making my initial notes for my analysis of this episode in January 2021, I actually put off watching this episode for a week, and seriously considered skipping it. The reason is Dean’s death at the end: it is unexpectedly gruesome and brutal, something I would expect more from The Walking Dead than Supernatural. Glenn’s death in TWD, for example, came to mind as a comparison, but Dean’s death stands out more than deaths in TWD because that show is much more graphic and gory than Supernatural.
Besides that, the plot of the episode is rather disappointing for several reasons. For one thing, the story is almost entirely self-contained rather than being the conclusion of a multi-episode arc as is the case in Buffy. It is also hindered by the fact that children are not scary: they were not scary in 3x02 The Kids are Alright, and they are not scary now. Consequently, a goodly chunk of proceedings follow a sickeningly-sweet blonde girl’s antics in a middle-class house in a middle-class neighbourhood, but the antics are not scary, tense, or horrifying: they are mostly boring. Perhaps if the show had stuck with the horror-film aesthetics and colour grading of series one and two, this would be more atmospheric, but alas…
The main plot of this episode involves a pretty hopeless attempt by Dean and Sam to kill Lilith (the Holder of Contracts) and thereby save Dean from his deal. My gasts were recently flabbered when a friend who is relatively well-versed in Sumerian mythology had never heard of Lilith, so I will not take for granted that my readers know who she is, either. The roots of the figure known as Lilith go back to ancient Mesopotamia and Akkadian/Sumerian myths and folklore. In the earliest extant sources, Lilith was an order or variety of malevolent spirit with similarities to incubuses and sucubuses. The males were given the name lilu and the females the name lilitu, a name ultimately derived from a word which meant wind or spirit.
The same mythology also hosted the demon queen Lamashtu who was associated with infant mortality and perhaps death during childbirth. She was depicted as having animalistic features such as a wolf’s head, but was often also depicted as having feathers and talons, much like a Greek harpy. She was a baby-killer, causer of miscarriages, and eater of men. She also caused diseases and nightmares, and was associated with Pazuzu, the king of wind demons.
(Please watch the two videos posted above -- two of my main sources -- for more in-depth discussions of Lilith.)
The two separate ideas of the lilu/lilitu and Lamashtu found their way into ancient Hebrew mythology, but at some point along the way the two became syncretised (blended together) as Lilith. Who or what precisely Lilith was in ancient Hebrew folklore is uncertain, as there is only one reference to her in the Old Testament / Talmud, that being in Isaiah 34:14. The New Revised Standard Version reads thusly:
Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other, there also Lilith shall repose and find a place to rest.
This translation is contentious, however, as it implies Lilith is one entity. Some scholars would prefer it to read ‘the lilith’ to refer to a class of demon or spirit, or even a screech owl. The King James Bible reads as follows:
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.
Here the original word ‘Lilith’ has been rendered as ‘screech owl’, which brings to mind the depictions of Lamishtu with feathers and talons. The association of Lamishtu – and thereby Lilith – with witches is reminiscent of the link between the Latin word strix (‘owl’) with the shtriga in 1x18 Something Wicked who preyed on children at night. It also brings the vampire-like strigoi from Romanian folklore to mind, suggesting that perhaps all of these concepts are distantly related.
The Finnish translation from 1933/38 translates Lilith as ‘öinen syöjätär’ or ‘nightly devouress’ (literally ‘nightly eater-woman’), while making no reference to the name Lilith. As such, the name Lilith is absent from some translations of the Bible. Other translations, however, both mention her by name and give further information on her, e.g. the 1992 Finnish translation:
Villikoirat ja sakaalit siellä kohtaavat, villivuohi villivuohta kutsuu. Siellä lepäilee Lilit, öinen velhotar, sieltä hän löytää rauhallisen sijan
Wild dogs and jackals there shall meet the wild goat to the wild goat shall bleat, there reposeth Lilith, nightly sorceress, and findeth peaceful rest
‘Lilith’ here is much more akin to the Lilith of later tradition, and the link to witches and magic is made explicit through the editorial addition of ‘nightly sorceress’, but what ‘Lilith’ would have meant to the earliest adherents of Abrahamic faiths almost 4,000 years is unclear.
It was some time later that what we recognise today as Lilith as a single entity came into being in Abrahamic mythology. This arose from the fact that the Book of Genesis contains two different creation myths. God made the first man and woman from dirt, yet later in the same book makes Eve from Adam’s rib. How could God have made the first woman from Adam’s rib if he had already made the first woman from dirt? Most likely out of a desire to cover up flaws in the text, a story was made wherein the first man and woman were not Adam and Eve, but Adam and Lilith. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith refused to be ‘sexually submissive’ to Adam, so left the garden of Eden, refused to return, and had lots of demon babies with the archangel Samael who presumably did let her ride reverse cowgirl. Eve was later made out of Adam’s ‘rib’ (perhaps a metaphor for another body part). In this way, an inconsistency in the Bible caused by trying to blend different traditions together into one coherent narrative was explained.
A similar story is known in Islamic tradition (which, as you all know, has its origins in Judaism in the same way Christianity has) of a djinn whom Adam rejected who then had babies with Iblis. Iblis is the Islamic version of Satan, who funnily enough is also called Azazil, the Islamic equivalent of Azazel, i.e. the Yellow-Eyed Demon. This is fitting as – just like Lucifer in Paradise Lost – Iblis refused to bow to Adam and humanity in a similar way to how Lilith had no interest in just lying down and thinking of Eden while Adam got down to business. The aforementioned djinn was named Karinah,
Whether or not it was intentional, the fact Azazel in Supernatural killed his victims with fire is a nice reference to the Islamic Azazil’s origins in fire.
This Lilith is a murderer of babies as her predecessor Lamashtu was. She is a night-stalker and mother of demons. Alphabet of Ben Sira has it that every day a hundred of her children (demons) die, and as revenge she kills the children of Adam unless they are warded against her with amulets.
She has also become the antithesis of what a mother ‘should’ be, but perhaps more tangibly, she is a manifestation of that fact that a huge percentage of babies died very young up until the 1950s. In Finland, it was a tradition to not give children a name until they were at least one year old (I think) because so many died before then. Babies and young children dying was commonplace but no less difficult for parents than it is today. Nowadays, infant mortality rates in developed countries are exceedingly low, but the huge size of the Baby Boomer generation testifies to the fact that even as recently as the 1950s, parents had a lot of children because they expected some of them to die. As long as people have been cognisant enough to know they will lose some of their children, they have wanted an explanation. Lilith provided them with this.
If you want more information on Lilith, please do read the chapter ‘Lilith is One Scary Bitch’ in the book The Mythology of Supernatural: The Signs and Symbols Behind the Popular TV Show. That chapter discusses, among other things, the possibility that the earliest account of Lilith in the epic of Gilgamesh is actually the memory of a goddess from a much older religion or tradition, as well as the similarities between that story and the Garden of Eden.
The Lilith in Supernatural is a version of the Lilith from mythology. Aspects of her character are taken from extant lore, such as her being a queen of demons (though no mention is yet made of Asmodeus, the king of demons and co-ruler in some myths) and even her indirect control of Sam through Ruby is reminiscent of her succubus-origins as a Sumerian lilitu. However, Lilith’s behaviour and presentation in the show is rather generic and uninspiring: as so often happens with mythological figures in Supernatural, she is stripped of her aesthetics and the grandeur one would expect from such a high-ranking divine being.
Associating her with owls or raptors would harken back to Proto-Jewish legends, and having her minions kidnap children from hospital for her to kill and eat would have brought Lamashtu and modern Lilith to life. A link to fire, e.g. her being a pyromancer of some variety, would have connected her to the Islamic tradition of Karinah, Iblis, and djinn who were created from fire. Part of their plan to kill Lilith could also have involved the curse bowls used in Ancient Sumeria to trap lilu and lilitu demons, as well as amulets to protect themselves against her. Or am I to believe that Bobby, with his vast library on ancient lore, does not have access to information on Sumerian daemonology?
I am very aware of Eric Kripke’s adoration of Neil Gaiman’s work (as well as the film Constantine. Bobby’s trick with turning the water in the sprinklers into holy water is taken straight from Constantine, as was John doing a similar thing in 1x21 Sanctuary). Kripke’s love of Neil Gaiman shows in the demythologisation and the introduction of divinities etc into mundane, banal life such as a middle-class detached suburban house. While this worked quite well for me in Sandman, it did so because the deities etc spend time in and are shown in their natural habitats. We see a lot of the grandeur and magic, so that when e.g. Death appears as a 1980s goth girl, we see that it is just a costume she has put on for dealing with humans, and it is simply an avatar of her true self which exists on a different plane.
None of that is present in Supernatural. Much of this is due to the show’s small budget (although given how much Jensen was earning per episode by the end of the show’s run, the network was very far from skint), but the fact remains that divine entities and their ilk lack majesty. There are a few exceptions to this, though, such as Castiel’s appearance in 4x01 Lazarus Rising, Michael smiting Cas in 4x18 The Monster at the End of This Book, and Michael!Dean in 14x01 Stranger in a Strange Land, but these are exceptions. Even God ultimately feels anti-climactic.
That is unfortunately my opinion of Supernatural’s Lilith: anti-climactic, disappointing, and generally a bit of a let-down. This is not simply because of her presentation (a tall, blonde woman in a white dress in series four) but also because of how underused and absent she is and will be from the story. An antagonist needs to have a presence throughout a narrative in some form or other in order to be constantly interacting with the protagonists and hindering them in achieving their goal. This is not to say that the antagonist needs to be in every scene, chapter or episode, but the antagonist’s actions need to have an impact on the protagonists’ progression through the story. This can take the form of minions trying to kill the protagonists, amassing huge armies which forces the protagonists to take certain courses of action, or somehow feeding the protagonists false information which takes them far off course. The antagonist could have such widespread influence and sway that the protagonists need to go into hiding and get cut off from all help and have to fight alone against overwhelming odds.
What has Lilith done since she was introduced? There was no ‘war’. The Ghostfacers had nothing to do with Lilith, nor did the telephone monster or Benton. There were none of Lilith’s minions interacting with Sam and/or Dean, and then suddenly little pet-murdering not-creepy Lilith appears and I am supposed to care. I might be easy, show, but I am not that easy…
In spite of that, her role in this episode changed the course of the show, as she was the one to kill Dean at the end. ...by proxy, of course, but still.
Apropos la morte de Dean, this episode allows him to take a more central role in his own story. He is proactive in refusing to allow Sam to make a deal of any kind to save him from Hell, and is also proactive in hunting Lilith down and doing his best to kill her. But while the audience is privy to some of Dean’s fear at what awaits him, we are offered very little, if any, of his own grieving process. I do not expect a monologue from Dean, but he is a young man who expected to die young and believed he deserved no better, but he wanted things. He wanted a dull, muggle life with Lisa (or at least believed he was supposed to want something like that), and he wanted children. Because of his sacrifice for his ingrate brother, those things are denied him.
Dean was also a victim of John’s abuse, but he was not a victim in making the deal. That was an active choice he made, though even so, it was a direct result and logical end-point of of his abuse and consequent codependent relationship with Sam. There was prime opportunity to explore Dean’s perception of his abuse here, and his own need to face and come to terms with what John did to him. The show almost gave him that with his admission that he and Sam are each other’s weaknesses (well, Sam is Dean’s), but it fell short.
Could the show not have provided us with a scene or two involving Dean’s feelings of guilt at leaving Sam behind? A conversation or something with somebody about the future he has lost? What about anger like at the beginning of 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part II?
With the lack of these things, a casual viewer would be forgiven for seeing nothing more than Dean dying to save Sam. What struck me upon rewatch was the fact that this is now Dean’s second Gardens of Gethsemane moment, the first of which was 2x20 What is and What Should Never Be. I expounded on this in great length in my analysis of that episode so will refrain from repeating myself too much, but in case you are not familiar with Christian mythology, this is a reference to Jesus’s fear the night of his betrayal by Judas, his pleading with God to ‘let this cup of suffering pass from me’, but ultimately accepting his fate if God so wills it – ‘not my will but yours be done’.
In 2x20, Dean chose to sacrifice his own dreamworld (and metaphorically himself) in order to save one dying girl. In this episode, he chooses to accept his fate and goes to the gallows with his head held high, only to suffer a brutal, painful death in order to save somebody else (this time Sam) before going to Hell. The story of Jesus’s descent to Hell is not related in the Bible, but rather forms the fifth article of the Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead;
A traditional concept in Christian belief is the Harrowing of Hell, though this is not part of the Bible either. The idea is that during Jesus’s time in Hell, he defeated those held captive in Hell and freed the righteous men and women from the Old Testament before his resurrection. If this sounds familiar to you, remember that Cas is appearing in the next episode, the one who gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition.
The episode of Cas’s first appearance is called Lazarus Rising, named after the dead man whom Jesus resurrected. This puts Cas in the role of Jesus and Dean in the role of Lazarus, but the similarities between Dean and Lazarus are superficial: his similarities with Jesus are much deeper. Once again, I do not mean that Dean is the superverse’s Jesus, but rather than his character bears a great resemblance to Jesus.
Sticking with the subject of Jesus for a moment longer, one of Jesus’s epithet’s in the Enemy of Death because in choosing to die and being resurrected, he made death meaningless. Jesus conquered death and thereby changed the entire story: the Easter celebration is to mark this belief in Christianity: that though we will die, we need not fear it if we believe in and follow Jesus. The belief is that Jesus won and we can all go and join him in Heaven where:
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)
It is appropriate, therefore, that upon his eventual introduction in the show, Death should take an especial interest in and liking for Dean. This relationship with Death began in 2x01 In My Time of Dying (via Tessa, his reaper) continues for the rest of the show, at first amicable, but eventually turning hostile until Death’s successor truly treats Dean as her enemy and needs him sent into the void with Morgoth so he can stop upsetting the natural order, i.e. to give Death her power back.
I have said it once and it bears repeating: the show should have ended with Dean picking up the scythe and becoming the new Death.
(I originally saw the Dean-as-Jesus-figure in Paula Stiles’ analysis of 15x18 Despair. Please do go and read her stuff if you enjoy what I do.)
As for Dean’s actual death in the episode, it was unexpectedly brutal and graphic. I have watched it once or twice, but in every rewatch I turn the sound off and look away as soon as Lilith says ‘sic ‘em’. On the one hand, it is unpleasant to watch (especially given how cursed I am with empathy and a vivid imagination) but I am glad the death was given the visceral gravitas it deserved. It was savage so that the audience could really feel it and did Dean’s story justice in a way an off-screen death simply would not have. It was like how I imagine Mr Muldoon’s death in Jurassic Park would have been if they had actually shown it happening.
Remember that Dean’s death here is only the overture to what awaits him in Hell. In the Superverse, one month on Earth equals one decade in Hell. By the time Sam recovers after Lilith tries to kill him, the sun has risen implying around 6 hours at least had passed since Dean’s death just after midnight. Three days is roughly a year in Hell. One day is four months. Six hours is one Hell month. One hour is roughly six and a half Hell days. Dean had been in Hell for six Earth hours, equalling around five weeks. If we assume that how Dean described Hell in 4x11 Family Remains was how things worked from his first day there, he had already been tortured to death thirty-six times.
Remember when I say ‘torture’, I mean parts of him were cut off and cut out. Was he flayed alive his first time? Or… My brain is unfortunately capable of conjuring up far too many horrific and disgusting possibilities, as I am sure yours is too. In my previous analysis, I wrote about sexual violence and its impact on mental health, but what I neglected to mention is that these people are damaged because they survived. If people who died were able to talk to us, what kind of things would they say? What kind of damage would they be dealing with?
Being killed by the Hellhound would have caused serious mental damage to Dean, but when next we see him chained up with hooks in his flesh, he has endured worse for over a month, severely compounding the damage. How would the torture with the chains have ended? Would the hooks have been pulled out of his body so that he bled to death? Would he have been pulled apart?
This is the end of part one of my analysis. Part two is available here.
You can read more of my analyses here:
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
Sundry
And you can read Paula’s here.
