Supernatural: Phantom Traveler

Spoilers for the episode

The Story:

A demon brings down an airplane by possessing a man and making his eyes go black but doesn’t do his job very well and some people survive so has to go kill them or the recording he left saying no survivors will be very embarrassing. Meanwhile Sam’s having trouble sleeping and Dean refuses to admit he gets scared so later we can have funny scenes of him afraid of flying.

Thoughts:

It starts with a man nervous at flying meeting a man in the bathroom who’s awful at comforting others. Then black mist descends from an air vent (guess it can’t go through walls).

On the plane the nervous man is a lot more confident and his eyes flash black a couple of times so that when Sam and Dean go to question people later about the crash they’ve got something to say. And so they can convince the flight attendant to help them.

Back on the plane the possessed man releases the emergency exit which should be impossible because of the pressure on it and the plane goes down.

Dean’s asleep when Sam enters their room and he hasn’t been sleeping because the demon hunting job’s been getting to him. Dean reaches for something under his pillow before he knows it’s Sam. Turns out he’s got a knife just as a precaution because Dean’s never afraid. He tells Sam he can’t take the job home.

They get a call from someone their father and Dean saved. He wants help with the plane that crashed because he’s found a spooky recording that says ‘no survivors’ even though seven people survived. So it’s a bit like Final Destination but the survivors can only be killed if they go to fly.

To investigate they have to get near the wreck so Dean creates ID’s for Homeland security which Sam thinks is super illegal even for them. I like that there are levels of illegality.

One of the survivors has checked himself into a psych ward because he saw the man with the black eyes open the emergency door. They go visit him first but he ends up thinking they’re crazy because of the questions they ask.

Then they go visit the possessed man’s wife but turns out the guy was really normal and boring.

Then it’s onto the wreckage where they put on suits and pretend to be Homeland Security. Dean’s made an emf which stands for electromagnetic frequency out of a Walkman. Sam gets to be the one to ask what it is even though he knows. It’s for the audience and for him to be surprised Dean made it.

Then the real Homeland Security turn up, big surprise there, and they go to find the brothers but Sam and Dean are escaping at the same time. How did they know to leave? There are no alarms until they’re sneaking around outsdie about to escape.

The pilot form the crashed plane crashes another plane this time there’s only one other person aboard. He’s been possessed by the same demon who makes the same joke about time flying when it gets to 40 minutes as he did in the first crash.

Turns out 40 is a magical number. It means death in the bible because it rained for 40 days so god could kill everything on the planet.

The brothers do some research and realise it’s a demon. They cause natural disasters and so this one has modernised to bring down airplanes. At least that’s their theory because they’ve never seen anything like this before.

They get news that the pilot is dead so they go to the wreckage and find sulfur again. So anyone who’s going to fly is in danger. The only one from the crash who’s going up again is the flight attendant and she’s 5 hours away so Dean’s got to do some really dangerous driving to get there in time.

They get to the airport on time but can’t convince her not to get on the flight. Then we get some more whispering black demon mist but we don’t know who it’s possessed.

Dean admits he’s scared to fly when Sam wants them to get on the flight. It’s why he drives everywhere and I love their entire conversation. Dean keeps pointing out that Plane is going to crash and Sam tries to be understanding saying he’ll go alone but Dean won’t let that happen.

They both get on the plane and Dean’s fear is hilarious. He’s tense and jumpy and tells Sam to shut up when he tells him to relax and starts humming Metallica to calm down. There’s also turbulence when he gets up to go test the flight attendant for possession.

They think she’s been possessed because apparently demons choose people with a weakness to possess. Like an addiction or emotional distress. I don’t remember that in later episodes so they might have abandoned it after this first time.

Dean wants to throw holy water on her but Sam wants to be more subtle. Demons flinch at the name of god in Latin which is Cristo. Dean gets annoyed at Sam telling him what he already knows and again it’s obviously for the audience but I like that they try to make exposition funny.

She’s not possessed or worried about the flight because she’s not going to let her fear hold her back. Dean says she’s the most well adjusted person ever.

Dean gets really scared and Sam says he’s wide open for demonic possession if he doesn’t calm himself down. This doesn’t go anywhere but Dean does do some Yoga breathing.

Turns out it’s the co-pilot who’s possessed because Dean says Christo at him and he flinches. I wonder if the demon realises he’s flinched because he leaves the cockpit rather easily when they trick him into going to Dean and Sam. He could have easily stayed in the cock pit and there’d be nothing the brothers could do.

Amanda the flight attendant also believes them way too easily even if she did see the guy with the black eyes.

They then perform a really loud exorcism behind a curtain but no one comes to investigate. I’m guessing the Latin makes the demon weaker because otherwise I don’t know how they hold him down with how strong he is.

The demon says he knows what happened to Sam’s girlfriend but this is just to remind of us of the plot thread because it doesn’t go anywhere for quite a while yet.

Then he exits the body to bring down the airplane using magic to crash it which makes me wonder why he didn’t do that in the first place. Why did he need a body?

They do the exorcism in the aisle which involves the obligatory loosing the bible for a minute so we can have some suspense. I guess it would have been boring if they’d stayed behind the curtain and read the bible in there as the airplane went down.

Everyone gets saved and the FBI turn up. But no one must have mentioned the strange men shouting bits from the bible because the FBI doesn’t hold them for questioning or anything.

They ask Jerry how he got Dean’s number because apparently that wasn’t important until now. Turns out their father’s answering message on his phone is directing people to Dean who can help them.

This episode is funnier than the last one and Dean being afraid of flying is the best part.

There are some plot holes like why the demon needs a body or why there can’t be any survivors but Supernatural doesn’t really explain it’s magic system. It’s based more on legends so they can get away with it.

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