Warning: this review mentions violence, blood, and implied infanticide.

Have you heard of the lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia? The colony was founded in 1585 on Roanoke Island, but in 1587 was re-established in Chesapeake Bay. When a ship from England came with supplies in 1590, all 120 or so colonists had disappeared. The only trace of them was a single word, “Croatoan,” carved into a tree trunk. To this day, no one knows what happened to them.

There are a few theories about the fate of the colonists. Many believe they were integrated into the local indigenous population. Some think they were massacred. John White, the colonial governor at the time believed they had relocated to Croatoan (now Hatteras) Island, but couldn’t look into it before he was forced back to England. Supernatural has another theory.

The episode opens with Dean loading a gun and entering a room. A man is there, repeating “it’s not in me” in a pleading tone. Dean says he’s got no choice; then, he shoots him.

It’s one of Sam’s visions, and he insists on going to the town to figure out why Dean “ventilated” the man. Dean suggests that since all of Sam’s visions are connected to Yellow Eyes, then maybe the man was possessed. Sam says there was no sign of a possession, leaving Dean angry that his brother thinks he would kill an innocent person.

The town seems normal when they get there; it’s just a typical day. Sam recognizes Mark—another man from his vision—so they go talk to him. Claiming they’re US Marshals Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard (two-thirds of the band ZZ Top), they describe the man Dean shot in Sam’s vision, and say they need some info from him for another case. This seems like the kind of town where everyone knows one another, so Mark eventually tells them where they can find the guy (Dwayne Tanner).

As they’re walking along the street, Sam notices a word carved into a light pole: Croatoan. Dean’s never heard of it, or the lost colony of Roanoke.

Sam: “Dean, did you pay any attention to history class?”

Dean: “Yeah. Shot heard around the world, how bills become laws…”

Sam: “That’s not school—that’s Schoolhouse Rock!”

Dean: “Whatever.”

Sam fills him in and they decide they’re going to need help, so they try calling Bobby and Ellen. Neither of their phones can get a signal. They then try calling with an ancient artifact known as a pay phone; it’s also dead.

Dean: “Tell you one thing, if I was going to massacre a town, that would be my first step.”

This is where most of us would probably nope out without looking back, but that’s not the Winchester way. Instead, they decide to go to Dwayne Tanner’s house. His brother answers the door and says Dwayne’s gone fishing, and that their parents are inside. But when his dad comes to the door, he claims his wife isn’t home. Red flag? Sam and Dean think so; they sneak around to the back of the house and find Mrs. Tanner gagged and tied to a chair. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Mr. Tanner cuts his son’s arm and lets the blood drip on the woman.

Of course the boys intervene, and Mr. Tanner immediately runs at them screaming, knife in hand. It’s reminiscent of the zombies in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead [external link], only with more anger and less mindlessness. Dean is forced to kill the man, while the son escapes by jumping through a window and running (getting away because Sam hesitates to shoot him).

Sam and Dean rush the woman (and her dead husband) to the local clinic, where the doctor questions Mrs. Tanner (with Sam and Dean in the room, for some reason). The woman claims that one minute her husband and son were normal, and the next “they had the devil in them.” So, basically they’re your average toddler.

While the doctor takes some blood, our heroes speculate with each other that it could be mass possession. Sam’s not so sure, though. His disagreement sets Dean off:

Dean: “You know, if you would’ve taken out the other one, there’d be one less to worry about.”

Sam: “Sorry, all right? I hesitated, Dean—it was a kid.”

Dean: “No, it was an it. Not the best time for a bleeding heart, Sam.”

I have to side with Sam here. The kid was running, not attacking. He’s still human, and the only thing he did was lie and get his arm cut. Dean doesn’t even know if whatever this is that’s making people violent can be cured. Shoot first and ask questions later is not the right policy in this situation.

Since they need the sheriff and a coroner, and all the phones are dead, Dean offers to go to the next town and get help. He also volunteers Sam to stay behind.

As Dean drives, it’s clear that something is very wrong. We’ve slipped into horror (specifically zombie) movie territory. When he stops to check on a car sitting on the road, he sees a lot of blood and broken glass. There’s a knife on the ground by the driver’s door. Worst of all, there’s a baby’s empty car seat covered in blood. It is disturbing.

With no choice but to keep driving, Dean has to stop again when he finds the bridge out of town blocked by a couple of trucks and a group of armed men, including Dwayne Tanner’s brother. A man approaches to tell him the town is under quarantine, and then he starts pressuring Dean to get out of the car. Instead, Dean reverses fast before swinging the Impala around and speeding off.

Meanwhile, the doctor is looking at Mr. Tanner’s blood through a microscope and notices a lot of oddities. For one, there are signs that his body was fighting a virus—but she has no idea what kind of virus. She’s never heard of one that can make people get violent and irrational (just wait until 2020). The virus also left strange residue in the blood: “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was sulphur.” Great, so not only can demons possess you, they can apparently infect you too.

When the doctor asks Mrs. Tanner if she can take a blood sample from her, the woman is calm and cooperative. Until she isn’t. Out of nowhere she’s screaming and trying to attack Sam with a scalpel. He knocks her out with a fire extinguisher.

As he drives back to the clinic, Dean is stopped by Mark, the man they met earlier. He’s standing in the middle of the road, pointing a rifle. Dean reluctantly gets out of Baby and pulls a gun on Mark. The exchange that follows is amusing, but out of place. It’s like ten-year-old kids arguing about a minor rule infraction in a made-up game:

Dean: “Put it down.”

Mark: “Put it down!”

Dean: “Put it down!”

Mark: “Are you one of them?”

Dean: “No, are you?”

Mark: “No.”

Dean: “You could be lying!”

Mark: “So could you!”

See what I mean? Miraculously, they manage to calm down enough to talk. Although neither trusts the other, they agree to both go back to the clinic together since there’s no way out of town.

Once they get there, Sam fills Dean in on the virus. He also adds that he was going through John’s journal and found something about Roanoke. Apparently John’s theory was that Croatoan was the name of a demon of plague and pestilence. He doesn’t elaborate on why he specifically thought it was a plague demon (I mean, why not just a run-of-the-mill demon wreaking havoc?), but the boys are too distracted trying to figure out why it would be acting up again now.

Speaking of Dean’s attitude toward unnecessary killing, he ends up shooting Mrs. Tanner. Why? Because according to Mark, the infected get stronger over time. Oh, and the doctor still doesn’t know what the virus is, so putting together a cure won’t happen anytime soon. Am I the person who would get eaten during a zombie outbreak? I think it’s so wrong for Dean to be killing people just because they’re infected. The woman was contained in a room, and the disease is only hours old—who’s to say it won’t burn out within a few more hours? Okay, it’s a TV show with limited time to resolve the storyline, but I don’t think this was the way to go.

By nightfall it seems that only the people in the clinic remain uninfected. Although no one has tried to break in yet, it seems inevitable that they will. The clinic has no defences, and leaving the building would make everyone an easy target. As the group discusses their options, Dwayne Tanner shows up and begs to be let in. So they lock the doors and threaten him if he doesn’t leave. Just kidding—they let him in without hesitation. Because now is the time to start trusting again, apparently.

Dwayne claims he came back from fishing in time to see his neighbours being dragged out of their house and cut with knives by people they knew. He also asks about his parents. Well, at least he has his health. Maybe. There’s a bloody cut on his leg that he claims he got when he tripped. A blood test is suggested, but according to the doctor the virus/sulphur doesn’t show up until a person is infected. All they can do is wait and see.

While Mark ties up Dwayne, Sam pulls Dean into another room and insists they can’t kill him until they know for sure. The problem is, Dean’s already sure, and he’s not willing to wait until Dwayne infects somebody else. He also insists it’s their job. Sam counters that they’re supposed to struggle with decisions like this.

Dean: “What does that buy us?”

Sam: “A clear conscience, for one.”

Dean: “Too late for that.”

Sam: “What the hell’s happened to you?”

Dean: “What?”

Sam: “You might kill an innocent man and you don’t even care. You don’t act like yourself anymore, Dean. Hell, you know what? You’re acting like one of those things out there.”

Fair point, especially since Dean responds by pushing Sam and then locking him in the room. Sam begs him not to do it, but Dean seems determined to play out the scene from Sam’s vision. Until he’s actually pointing a gun at Dwayne. Then his internal struggle takes over, ending with him putting the gun down with a “damn it,” before rejoining Sam.

Eventually, enough time has passed that it’s clear Dwayne isn’t infected. It looks like they’re finally getting a break. For about five seconds, before it turns out the clinic’s nurse is infected, and she manages to infect Sam.

Damn it.

The other men start arguing that they need to shoot Sam before he gets violent. Dean isn’t having it.

Dean: “Nobody’s shooting anyone!”

Dwayne: “You were going to shoot me!”

Dean: “You don’t shut your piehole, I still might.”

Even Sam agrees with the men, and tells Dean to give him the gun and he’ll do it himself. Instead, Dean gives Baby’s keys to Mark and tells the others to take the car and get out of there. He and Sam will stay behind, a plan that Sam is not on board with. He’s frustrated to tears that Dean won’t listen to him, and tells him he can still keep going. But Dean claims he doesn’t want to. He’s had enough of this life and all the weight on his shoulders.

There’s not much time to contemplate this before the doctor shows up again. Apparently everything is deserted outside, with no sign of anyone. All the infected people have vanished. The plan to take Baby and go is suddenly pointless.

It doesn’t get any less mysterious when, after five hours, Sam is still healthy. The infected blood samples from the Tanners show no sign of the virus. It’s like the whole thing was a collective nightmare—if they didn’t have bodies as proof, there would be no sign that anything ever happened.

With nothing left to do, everyone goes their separate ways. Dwayne and Mark are leaving town. They invite the doctor to go with them, but she’s going to head over to the next town to tell the authorities what happened (imagine being the CDC and hearing this story). Sam’s apparently dodged a bullet, so he and Dean are free to move on, although all the unanswered questions (like why was Sam immune) are weighing on them.

You might think that would be the end of it, but then this wouldn’t be Supernatural.

As Dwayne and Mark are driving, Dwayne asks to pull over so he can make a call. A moment later he pulls out a knife and cuts Mark’s throat. Oh, it’s that kind of call. After collecting the blood in a chalice, he starts talking:

“It’s over; you’ll be pleased. I don’t think any more tests are necessary. The Winchester boy—definitely immune, as expected. Yes, of course—nothing left behind.”

Well, that explains that. Demon shenanigans wiping out an entire town to see if one person is immune. These kinds of demons make crossroads demons look downright civilized—at least the latter get your permission in contract form before killing you—and you usually get something out of it first. The demons that report to Yellow Eyes don’t even tell you what you’re dealing with before they go all murder death kill.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dean are decompressing with a couple of beers by a lake. It’s a nice moment, which Sam has to ruin by asking Dean what he meant back at the clinic, when he said he was tired. Instead of answering, Dean starts going on about visiting the Grand Canyon, or maybe Hollywood.

Dean: “I say we take a break from all this. Why do we got to get stuck with all this responsibility, you know? Why can’t we live life a little bit?”

Sam: “Why are you saying all this?”

Dean finally admits that John told him something about Sam before he died, but made him promise not to tell. Sam wants to know what John said, but the episode ends without Dean telling him.

I’m starting to wonder how each episode can cover so much. The pacing is almost too quick, but if you like your shows to have a lot going on all the time, then you should enjoy this.

I love that they’ve incorporated actual historical events in a couple of episodes now. I’m all for it if they want to keep doing that.

The lighting in this episode also caught my eye. The outdoor scenes when they initially arrive at the town seem to suddenly take on a grey cast—as though they’ve stepped through a doorway into a darker world. I was pretty impressed—until I realized that it was just Vancouver weather making the lighting look greyer. Oops.

Some of you might have noticed that Sam has had a cast on his hand for a few episodes now. Apparently Jared Padalecki had broken his wrist between seasons and it was still weak. When they were filming “Bloodlust,” he landed wrong in a scene and injured it again. By the time he got it checked out, they were in the middle of filming “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” so a line was added in for him where Sam says he thinks Angela Mason broke his hand. He’s had a cast on it since, and it stays on until episode 11 “Playthings.”

“Croatoan” leaves us with more questions: why is Yellow Eyes checking Sam’s immunity to a demon virus? Are any of the other kids also being tested? Is the virus going to be released again? And what exactly did John tell Dean? The answers will come eventually. In the meantime, there’s plenty to look forward to. ASB