Penultimate episode of the season! It promises to be a gory one as it opens up with a plastic surgeon getting jumped, locked into the trunk of his car, and then stumbling into a hospital with an injury so horrific, it makes an experienced nurse scream. Is everyone excited (and not reaching for their buckets yet)? Good, because this is only the beginning.

Three weeks out, and Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jenson Ackles) are the middle of an exorcism, trying to get the name of the demon who holds Dean’s contract. Watching them coldly interrogating the demon, with Dean’s expression never changing and Sam reciting the exorcism ritual from memory… they’ve certainly come a long way from Devil’s Trap and the first season, haven’t they? They’ve grown into their roles as ruthless hunters, but in my mind, they’ve lost a little bit of the empathy they used to have for the victims of the supernatural. Then again, with the major theme this year being saving Dean from hell, it’s hard to blame the Winchesters for being a little more self-absorbed than usual.

Also, did anyone else sit up a little when the demon replying to Dean’s question answered, ‘your mother?’ It would’ve been a mind-fuck and a half if it turned out it was Mary Winchester who held the contract.

Anyway, getting back to the case we saw in the teaser, Sam notices the headline in the newspaper, and it seems that the easiest way to get to Dean’s heart is to offer him a zombie hunt, which this case seems to be. But after talking with the coroner who tells them that the man’s liver was removed surgically, and another hospital patient who had a kidney stolen, it appears it’s not zombies after all. 

It’s a body organ stealing episode! I love it – this is classic urban legend, and they even include some of the details like a man waking up in a bathtub full of ice with his kidney removed. Awesome.

Sam digs up some details on the case, and he realizes that the Winchester family has run into this before. According to John Winchester’s diary, a certain Doctor Benson learned the secret of living forever, before John cut out his heart. Apparently you can read about that case in the new Supernatural comics.

Sam does his best little brother attempt to gross Dean out with the maggoty details of how the doctor treated his victims, but it appears that Dean has an iron stomach.

We finally get to see the face of the doctor and watch him in action as he kidnaps another man, and steals his heart. Ah, ripping the beating heart out of the chest and watching the heart monitor go to zero were nice touches, I thought. Preeetty gory.

The boys are preparing to find the abandoned cabin Benson is holed up in when Dean’s cell phone rings. It’s Bobby (Jim Beaver) and he’s finally found a lead on Bela (Lauren Cohan) and potentially the Colt, up in Canaan, Vermont. Dean’s anxious to go after her, but Sam wants to stay and finish the case.

Sam reveals that he thinks solving this case could save Dean—if Dean can’t die, then he can’t go to hell, right? Dean’s not so sure, pointing out that living forever is welching on the deal, therefore Sam would die too. Sam says that he’d join Dean too. Ah, and now this is where you can see that the cracks we’ve seen coming in Sam all season become readily apparent. Sam’s gone off in the deep end, trying to save Dean.

After a rather intense conversation, the boys separate (nooo, don’t they ever learn?), with Dean going off to meet with an odd, old recluse of a hunter named Rufus, and Sam going off into the woods to learn more about Doc Benson.

While Dean learns some surprising facts about Bela, thanks to her ear (don’t ask), Sam sneaks around the doctor’s cabin, stealing his alchemic journal and rescuing a girl in the meantime. But unfortunately for Sammy, apparently running over the doctor twice isn’t enough to kill him.

Dean finally has a reunion with Bela, and to no one’s surprise the Colt is gone, halfway across the world. We learn that Bela killed her parents, and that she was a victim of child abuse. I’m not a big fan of the this back-story for Bela—I wish the writers had chosen differently, rather than bring out the tired trope of ‘abused children go on to become psychopaths’, especially with the show already having been called out on misogyny issues earlier this season. But I did like the twist at the end, where it turns out that she made a similar deal with a demon, getting ten years before the payment came due. Good-bye Bela, you were a good antagonist – it’s too bad the writers couldn’t have found a better way to fit you into the series.

Back to the other case, Dean saves Sam from having his eyeballs scooped out with a melon roller and the boys end up burying Benson alive, after Dean firmly rejects his offer to help them. Dean would rather go to hell than risk becoming a monster like him. Burying the doctor alive is a rather cruel fate, but it also leaves open the possibility that if anyone were ever desperate enough… they could dig him (and his formula on how to live forever) back up.

Less than three weeks before Dean’s deal is due, and they’re still no closer to a solution, until Bela, who’s waiting for the hell hounds, gives the Winchesters the clue they need—that it’s Lilith who holds the contract for Dean’s soul.

Now the Winchesters just have to figure out a way to break Dean’s deal with her…

Supernatural 3x15, "Time Is On My Side"
Writer: Sera Gamble
Director: Charles Beeson  
Guest stars: Jim Beaver, Lauren Cohan, Billy Drago, Peter Birkenhead