Supernatural: Devil's Trap

With these last few episodes, Supernatural has really begun to shake off its mantle as the red-headed stepson of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and The X-Files and create its own mythology and world view.

Picking up where Salvation left off, Sam is all for charging in, guns blazin', to try and rescue their dad, but Dean wants to take a more measured approach and turns to their old family friend, Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver aka Ellsworth from Deadwood) who helps them set a trap for Meg.

With Meg held in a 'protective circle', the boys start to perform an exorcism - to drive out the demon possessing her - until Bobby points out that without the demon inside her the damage she sustained from her seven-storey window dive in Shadow would kill the innocent Meg whose body has been taken over.

Discovering where their father is being held, the boys go to rescue him and end up in an isolated cabin, uncertain of where the Big Bad yellow-eyed demon has got to. Then he makes his play...

Hints are dropped as to his motivation, and his reasons for targeting the loved ones of children with 'special powers' (see Nightmare), but he is defeated before he can explain further.

Bobby had also hinted at a massive rise in the amount of demonic activity in the last year and warned of an "approaching storm" (always an old favourite on the Apocalyptic metaphor front).

So more seeds have been planted for Season Two of Supernatural, if - after the sudden, and shocking, denouement of Devil's Trap - there is anyone left alive to do any monster hunting...

Through this first season, Supernatural has quickly set itself up as the definitive resource for modern, urban fantasy roleplaying game inspiration.

With its proactive (rather than wholly reactive, as seen in so many shows) heroes, Supernatural has created a mythology with its own spin on cliched monsters (e.g. the vampires in Dead Man's Blood) and introduced us to a variety of little-known folklore beasties and demons.

The show has also been an object lesson in character development and the use of clever sub-plots (e.g. the "one that got away" in Something Wicked, the return of first loves in Route 666 etc) and shown the benfit of an ever-expanding support network of contacts and sundry 'non-player characters' (NPCs).

Even without the Margaret Weis Productions official Supernatural RPG, should it ever actually see the light of day, the series is a gold mine for games from the World of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu and all stops inbetween, not just for new bad guys to hunt but also for its ideas on plot twists and character development.

I can't believe it has taken me almost four years to catch up with this show (it tends to get hidden away on late night ITV2 here in the UK), but it's definitely on my 'must watch' list now.