The games girls play at pyjama parties… But we all remember them, so the twist of the childish game turning real is genuinely frightening.
Pre-show notes
This was the episode where I realised this show was something special. Not that the first four episodes were bad – they are good. But Bloody Mary is something else.
I don’t recall the Bloody Mary game being a thing in my childhood. In the UK, “Bloody Mary” refers to Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. But that doesn’t matter. There are a lot of similar games. Using a mirror to scry out a future lover comes closest. But the episode makes a very effective use of the “something lurking behind you in the mirror” thing. That’s a horror cliche for a reason: it happens to everyone at some point.
Episode notes
Sam is still having nightmares. This time we can see it’s a nightmare, not a flashback. First because Jessica is clearly alive when on the ceiling – in the pilot she was certainly dead – and secondly because there’s dialogue. The dying Jessica demands “Why, Sam?” As if he’s the one who killed her. It’s a manifestation of Sam’s guilt, of course, but we will learn in this episode that there’s something more to it.
In another small midwestern town, a group of teenage girls are hanging out in one of their homes, late at night. They play Truth or Dare, and one of them is dared to say “Bloody Mary” three times in the bathroom mirror. The girl does so, a little apprehensively, and her friends give her a bit of a scare. It’s all good fun. But moments later, their father is looking into a mirror and his eyes begin to bleed. He dies.
The Winchester brothers sneak into the morgue in order to examine the victim. No fake IDs this time. At the morgue they pretend to be medical students working on a paper, and later when they crash the victim’s funeral they actually give their real names. Both stories are ridiculously transparent lies, and neither really works for them. At the morgue Sam pays of the attendant (with Dean’s money 😜) and at the funeral it’s not long before someone calls out their deception. Maybe those fake IDs are magic, like Doctor Who’s “psychic paper”.
It’s interesting how much trouble this mystery gives the brothers. In the first four episodes, identifying the monster of the week has been fairly straightforward, but here, the easy answer doesn’t actually explain what’s going on. Kids play Bloody Mary everywhere – so why in this one town, does the game turn fatally real? It’s this sophistication in the storytelling that raised Supernatural above other case-of-the-week shows.
The other thing I really love about this episode is the pattern in how people react to the supernatural. Someone begins to fear that the ghost is real, and shares their fear with a friend. The friend, intending to reassure, promptly goes to the nearest mirror and says “Bloody Mary” three times. Because, why wouldn’t you? It’s the quickest way to prove that the story is childish nonsense. Except here, their reassuring action summons Bloody Mary, with deadly consequences.
The first is Jill, who dies in front of her mirror after teasing Charlie. Charlie helps the Winchesters get into Jill’s bedroom which they search using a night vision camera and blacklight. They find a boy’s name written on the back of the mirror, which fills in another piece of the puzzle. Jill killed the boy in a hit and run. The first victim’s wife died of an overdose; the brothers pick up a pattern of secrets involving deaths.
Jill is culpable. Even if it was an accident, she fled the scene and never reported it. So by the black-and-white logic of the vengeful spirit, she deserves to die. Steven Shoemaker’s wife died of an overdose. Perhaps he was involved – he could have been the reason she was suicidal, or maybe he got her the pills – but we are never told and statistically it’s more likely he feels guilty for failing to prevent her death, rather than being the cause of it.
So Mary isn’t killing killers – what she’s targeting is secrets about death. This makes more sense when we learn more about her own story.
When Donna summons Bloody Mary, she has no such secret, so Mary’s wrath instead turns on Charlie. Her secret isn’t anything she’s to blame for. She had a boyfriend who threatened to kill himself if she dumped him. She didn’t keep the threat seriously, and the boyfriend died. Naturally, she feels guilty. But when a man says something like that, it’s not an expression of love, it’s controlling and manipulative. It’s a form of domestic abuse that’s getting more attention now than when this episode first aired, but I remember thinking the same thing back then: that Charlie did the right thing.
Sam also has a secret involving someone who died: Jessica. I’m going to unpick this more below, but here I just want to point out my only major issue with the episode. I just don’t believe that Dean doesn’t also have at least one secret involving a death. Given how he and John have lived their lives, there has to be something he feels guilty about and hasn’t told Sam. So Sam’s plan potentially puts Dean’s life at risk – they can’t know which way Mary will turn when summoned.
Dean has been watching Sam struggle and he’s had enough. Sam’s plan is the last straw, but Sam won’t talk to him. Still the plan works pretty well. They have tracked down the mirror which carries Mary’s ghost. They break into the antique store that holds it, summon Mary and just as planned she attacks Sam. Dean smashes the mirror but it’s not enough. Mary crawls out of another mirror and again comes after Sam. Dean vanquishes her by holding up a mirror, forcing Mary to see her own reflection. I guess her ghostly murders qualify as a secret, so she destroys herself.
Sam’s secret
“You’re my brother, and I’d die for you. But there are some things I need to keep to myself.”
Sam
Again, a lot of layers there. So let’s unpick this a bit.
We learn in this episode that before Jessica died, Sam had nightmares, premonitions of her death. In his confrontation with Bloody Mary, it’s implied that Sam knew he was seeing the future. But even if he didn’t believe they were true visions, at the very least we know he was afraid of something happening. So why did he let Dean persuade him to leave in the pilot?
Because Dean is his brother. Because no matter how much he loved Jessica, he loves Dean more, and maybe John, too, for all their conflict. Dean showed up and said his family was in danger. So Sam went with him, simple as that.
Why, then, is Sam so unwilling to tell Dean his secret? Could it be because he’s afraid of Dean’s reaction? The brothers were raised to hate supernatural creatures, and at this point in the series it’s not clear where humans with powers would fit in that worldview. So it is possible that Sam believes his premonition makes him an “evil thing” and that his father and brother would feel the need to put him down. That’s a hell of a secret to carry. Coming out of that particular closet won’t be easy.
Yay, subtext!
The “coming out” metaphor won’t work throughout the series but it is pertinent here. Sam’s Position is analogous to the child of an ultra-conservative family whose identity doesn’t match what the family deems acceptable. Such children internalise a lot of the bigotry they learn from their families as self-hatred. Sam may be in the same emotional place. He feels guilty because he believes he could have prevented Jessica’s death. He feels afraid of what the premonition says about him, and he’s turning that family hatred of the supernatural onto himself. That manifests in his nightmares, twisting the reality into a conviction that by keeping quiet he effectively murdered Jessica himself. He is afraid to tell Dean because of his own feelings, not Dean’s.
Final thoughts
I love this episode. It has everything I love about Supernatural and I think it’s improved with age.
