1.04 Phantom Traveler

In 2005, a supernatural creature crashing planes was still a bit in poor taste. How well has it aged?

Pre-show notes

You can never get back the first time you watch something, unspoiled, with no idea of what’s coming. With this episode, that’s particularly significant because hindsight changes a lot about how I read it.

I remember Phantom Traveler as an odd episode. It’s our first introduction to a character who knows the Winchesters from a past encounter, yet we never see him again. It has the hilarious gag of Dean’s fear of flying. More significantly, it’s our first introduction to demons, and the first time the brothers perform an exorcism.

But the final scene of the episode, largely unrelated to its main plot, overshadows all of that. The brothers sit on the hood of the Impala, complex emotions rising as they finally make contact, of a sort, with their missing father. What an emotional gut-punch!

Episode notes

The episode opens with a plane passenger waiting to board. Black smoke Drifts toward him and invades his body, turning his eyes jet black for a moment. It still makes me think of the “black oil” of The X-Files”.

Here’s our weekly reminder that Sam still isn’t sleeping. And Dean sleeps with a wicked looking knife under his pillow. He insists the knife isn’t because he’s afraid, it’s merely precaution. Dean, babe, it’s the same thing. No one takes precautions against something they don’t fear.

The fake ID of the week is Homeland Security. Apparently it’s okay to turn up in denim and claim to be FBI, but Homeland Security requires proper attire. Sam insists on suits. Poor Dean does not like dressing fancy. I don’t know why. He thinks he looks like a Blues Brother, but for me those suits perfectly evoke Reservoir Dogs. Dean would think that’s cool as heck, wouldn’t he?

When they first hear the story of the plane crash, the brothers suspect some kind of haunting. It makes sense. They have EVP on a recording, just like in the pilot. But the EVP voice says “No survivors” which is odd because there were survivors.

They head out to interview witnesses. First is Max, who has checked himself into a psychiatric hospital because he is certain he hallucinated on the plane. When Sam describes for him what a ghost would look like, the crazy-dude thinks Sam is nuts. Hilarious.

Next is the wife of the guy who was possessed. When asked if there was anything unusual about him, his wife confesses he had acid reflux. Acid reflux! This episode is way funnier than I remembered.

So they have eliminated haunting, and the main suspect was not secretly a supervillain. So the next step is examining the plane wreckage. In a post 9/11 USA, that’s not something you can just do, but the brothers blag their way in to the warehouse. They must have supernatural powers.

Sam ribbing Dean about his home made EMF meter is rather bitchy. That must have taken some skill to make. Sam is booksmart, but Dean isn’t an idiot. In another life he could have been an engineer. I guess it’s good-natured teasing between brothers but Sam should give Dean credit where it’s due.

Finally, they realise they are up against a demon, and we get this quote:

“I mean, demons, they don’t want anything, Just death and destruction for its own sake.”

Dean

Oh, Dean, are you ever going to wish that were true!

This particular demon does seem to be interested only in destruction for its own sake, but believing that could steer the Winchesters badly wrong in future. But it’s clear they’ve never gone up against a demon before – at least not without their father taking the lead.

So now the race is on to stop the demon from crashing another plane. Amanda was a flight attendant on the first plane, and survived the crash. Now it’s going to crash her next flight. The brothers’ assumption that keeping her off the plane will prevent the crash seems like some overly optimistic logic, but I can go with it.

Dean calls Amanda from an airport phone and spins a story to stop her from boarding. Amanda isn’t buying it, and Dean’s legendary improv skills have failed him a little.

Getting on the plane is really ballsy, though. The Winchesters are used to facing the supernatural head-on, and they have strategies for surviving. But even if it has a supernatural cause, a plane crash isn’t something you can train to survive. Getting on board is either reckless or courageous…or both.

Naturally, John’s journal had an exorcism ritual in it. This I find interesting. Dean carries holy water. They use the name of god (technically, the name of Christ, but I’ll let that go) to flush out the demon. But neither of the brothers has much to say about faith, or god. Indeed the “every culture has demons” line seems to paint this as a universal thing, not demons as a Christian belief. But the Roman Ritual is very specifically Roman Catholic. It’s not a magic spell: it needs to be backed by faith.

“I know what happened to your girlfriend. She must have died screaming.”

Demon

Sam is understandably freaked out by the demon talking about Jessica. It seems like an attempt to distract – Dean says that demons read minds, that they can use your fears against you, and that seems like a good explanation. But is it? It’s hindsight again, but I like how this episode is laying little bits of groundwork for what is to come.

And finally we have the revelation that John’s voicemail message is directing callers to Dean. His phone has been out of service for weeks, so this at least confirms for the brothers that he’s still alive. On the other hand, it’s pretty cold. He hasn’t called Dean to let him know there might be people asking for his help. He hasn’t left any hint of what’s going on, or even whether he knows what happened to Sam and Jessica. His message doesn’t even mention Sam, which implies he doesn’t know his sons are together.

“This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean. He can help.”

John’s Voicemail

The message says a lot about the kind of person John is. He expects calls for help. We don’t know much at this point about the hunters and how they work, but we’ve seen Dean seeking out cases. This says John’s cases sometimes come to him. It’s in the nature of it that these will be emergency calls: they generally don’t get involved until someone is hurt or dead. Then the last part: call Dean, he can help. It’s a vote of confidence in his son’s ability.

The message is also a clear instruction to Dean: stop calling me and do your job.

Associations

The “No survivors” plot seems inspired by the original Final Destination (2000) movie, in which the survivors of a plane crash are killed off one by one – they were destined to die, so Death takes its due.

It’s difficult to feature demons and exorcism without evoking The Exorcist (1973) – it’s a horror classic for a reason. Dean references the movie when they first discover sulphur in the plane wreckage, but it’s interesting how the episode goes out of its way not to reference The Exorcist visually or plot-wise.

I can’t watch anything featuring a plane crash without my mind going to Airplane! (1980). It has nothing at all to do with Supernatural but my brain still plays clips from that movie in the crash scenes. Yeah, my brain is weird. So what?

Final thoughts

The demon we meet in this episode is very unlike those we’ll meet later. I think that’s intentional. What we are seeing in these early episodes is “normal” life in the Winchesters’ world. It’s life before the storm that is coming.

Dean says In the episode that he’s never come across “something like this” before. It’s unclear whether he means he’s never encountered a demon, or never this particular kind of demon, but either way he’s freaked out by having to hunt one. Which says something about how rare demons are in this world before the storm.

Rewatching these episodes, I am feeling more empathy for Dean than I did first time around. Dean’s character falls into a trope I generally dislike: he’s contemptuous of education, arrogant when he feels he’s right and his attitude toward women is pretty much the definition of toxic masculinity.

But that voicemail! It’s so good to hear John’s voice again – I can imagine a bit of what Dean is feeling. At least he has confirmation that John is okay, but that message is such a kick in the teeth for him. But his response is simply to climb into the car and hit the road.

Dean is a little bit awesome.