Supernatural season 9, episode 11 “First Born” aired tonight, with Dean meeting the Father of Murder, Cain.
So what happened in the episode?
A hunter and a demon walk into a bar
Dean is joined at a bar by Crowley. The King of Hell wants to join forces to find the First Blade, a knife the archangels used to execute Knights of Hell. They both want Abaddon dead, after all, and Crowley thinks the John Winchester Memorial Library has the information they need.
Dean whips out John’s journal and finds a note about the blade that points to one of his storage lockers. Dean and Crowley head out, seemingly unaware they’d been overheard by a demon.
All signs point to Missouri
At the storage locker, John’s notes mention another hunter named Tara, so Dean and Crowley head out to find her. Dean convinces Tara that there’s a Knight of Hell topside, so she shows them an incomplete locator spell for the First Blade.
Crowley gets the final ingredient, and the spell points to Missouri — since all ancient relics are apparently in the U.S.
Somehow they got the address of a specific farm house from the map. Crowley, though, recognizes the bee keeping homeowner as Cain, who became a demon after killing Abel. He walked the Earth doing his killing thing until he up and vanished. Crowley wants to GTFO, but Cain knows exactly who they are and stops them from leaving.
The Father of Murder
After Dean tells Cain what he’s after and how he found him, Cain informs them that he was the one who built up the order and trained the Knights of Hell. But it wasn’t the archangels who slaughtered them — it was him. Respect.
Cain then tells Dean and Crowley to leave; Crowley’s more than happy to comply, but Dean is determined to get the blade. They sneak back into the house later, but of course Cain finds them. Their meeting is cut short when the demon who was spying on Crowley and Dean arrives with some backup. He’s after Dean and Crowley, and Tara was collateral damage.
Dean prepares for a fight, but Cain wants nothing to do with it. Instead, he starts husking corn and lets the demons into the house. Crowley kills a single demon then lets Dean take on the rest in an impressive fight scene. Cain, meanwhile, finishes his corn, grabs a beer, and watches.
After all the demons are dead, Cain says he felt connected to Dean from the start and calls him a kindred spirit. Alas, no mention of the fact that Sam and Dean are the descendants of Cain and Abel.
Kindred spirits
Dean points out that he didn’t kill his brother. Cain agrees, then asks where his brother is now. Dean has no answer since he and Sam are on the outs, so Cain admits he no longer has the blade. The spell only brought them to the source of the blade’s power — the mark of Cain. Without this mark, the blade (a jawbone) is useless.
Backstory time: Abel wasn’t talking to God, but rather Lucifer. To protect his brother, Cain made a deal with the Devil: Abel’s soul in Heaven and Cain’s soul in Hell. Lucifer agreed, as long as Cain was the one to send Abel to Heaven.
Cain and his Knights of Hell ravaged the Earth, but Cain eventually fell in love. His lover wanted him to retire, but the Knights of Hell were having none of that — especially Abaddon, who possessed and fatally wounded Cain’s lover. Her dying wish was that Cain not take vengeance, though, so Cain buried her and retired.
To be worthy
As an even bigger group of demons loyal to Abaddon surround the house, Cain offers to give Dean his mark, as it can be transferred to someone worthy. Only then will Dean be able to use the blade to kill Abaddon. Dean doesn’t think twice, and Cain transfers the mark to him.
Cain’s price is that Dean come when called to use the blade on him. He then sends Dean and Crowley away and kills all the attacking demons in a flash of red light.
Later, Crowley tells Dean he’s worthy of the mark because no one hates Dean more than he hates himself. He then offers to find the blade, which Cain threw to the bottom of the ocean. Dean, for his part, realizes Crowley was playing him all along; Crowley knew they were being followed and fixed the game to make sure Cain saw Dean as worthy.
When Crowley tells Dean they’ll need all the help they can get, Dean shakes him off. “It’s always something with you boys, isn’t it?” Crowley says, sounding amusingly long-suffering, then disappears.
Meanwhile, back at the bunker…
After lamenting his inability to enjoy PB&Js now that he’s an angel again, Castiel notices some angelic leftovers in Sam while healing him. According to the Men of Letters, angels leave some grace behind when leaving a vessel, which could potentially be used to track the angel.
Sam is on board with a way to find Gadreel, though he, like Dean, refuses to call his brother.
Naturally, the grace extraction involves an overly large syringe and a lot of pain. Extracting the grace, though, forces Sam’s body to begin regressing to its pre-Gadreel state. Sam tells Cas to keep going until they have enough to do the spell, no matter the cost.
Sam’s condition worsens, and finally Cas stops and heals him. Cas recognizes that he and Sam have been on similar paths and refuses to do anything that would cost Sam his life, because he believes angels — and Winchesters — can change.
They attempt the spell but they didn’t get enough grace. Sam tells Cas he was right and they awkwardly hug. Metatron is the key to fixing everything, Cas says, and he’ll find him.
