The Wendigo was my favorite story as a kid. It showed up in one of those “Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark” books, complete with eerie illustrations, and quickly became one of my most frequent nightmares. The story involved a tourist visiting some sort of Antarctic area and requesting the guidance of a native (American-Indian or Inuit) to take him into the wilderness. Basically, some creepy stuff happens, and his guide disappears. The tourist attempts to find him, and instead finds footprints leading away from the camp, the footprints getting longer and longer until it seems that something was dragging him away. Then the prints vanish, as if the person making them was simply lifted off into the sky. The tourist manages to get back to civilization safely, and a few weeks later, sees a person who resembles his guide wearing a long coat and a hat. When the tourist removes the hat in an attempt to communicate, there is nothing but a pile of ash.
In a word: traumatizing.
I was so afraid of wendigos after reading this story, so I can’t help but be slightly disappointed in their representation in this episode of Supernatural. To me, the terror of a monster is in its mystery, so I would have been satisfied with never seeing the wendigo. I prefer it flitting around, imitating human voices, leaving bloody scratch marks on trees, and just being generally elusive. There wasn’t too much visualization of the monster, which I appreciated, but I would have been happy with none at all. (P.S. Hello, Cory Monteith. Aren’t you supposed to be singing and dancing at McKinley somewhere?)
There were some nice moments in this episode: tender brotherly love is definitely making its appearance where it was absent in the pilot. I’m anticipating the first “jerk/bitch” moment... I will probably smile like a fool when it does. I’ve forgotten so many of the little things that happen: all of Dean and Sam’s random romances with the damsels on the road, the various assholes they encounter who scoff at their hunting, etc. There are so many monsters and so many one-episode-only characters that I feel like the series will never get old.
I guess right now I’m just relishing in the general innocence of it all. Not to say that there’s anything innocent about the deaths of Mary and Jess, the disappearance of John, or the hunting of ghosts and wendigos. But there’s no heaven or hell, no angels, no demons, no Azazel, Lucifer, Ruby, or Lillith. Just two brothers, saving people, helping things, carrying on the family business. In some ways, I want this to go on forever, but I also can’t wait until the demons arrive. The brief glance into Angry!Sam is incredibly prophetic, and I am on the lookout for his ~~powers~~ so we can really get down to business.
Also, I wants me some Castiel. Need I say more?
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