In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural Read online

  But what does this have to do with the Colt? To understand how the Colt and John’s journey relate, you first need to understand that objects in Supernatural take on a deeper meaning. In a show where Sam and Dean are the only characters in each episode, the things that they rely on, such as the Impala, Dean’s amulet, John’s journal, and the Colt, take on greater significance. For example, many devoted fans have called Dean’s classic Impala the third major character.47 Some fans have compared Dean’s emotional state in season one to the condition of the Impala throughout that story arc. And at the end of season one when the car was wrecked, fan outpouring of support to bring it back was greater than some canceled shows get.

  If the Impala is affiliated with Dean, then the Colt is an object associated with John’s journey through seasons one and two of the series. Neither John nor the Colt were present through much of season one. But John, like Tom’s father in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, was still an important character-one who was never present, yet whose choices colored everything that Sam and Dean did. While we watched Sam and Dean search for John, John’s adventures took place off-screen. The Demon’s endgame was starting to play out and John decided to avoid his sons, keeping them ignorant of what was happening, to keep them safe. And while he was getting close to finding the demon, he still had no idea how to kill it. Shortly after John re-enters Sam and Dean’s lives, they learn about the Colt. Like the gun, John is wrapped in a little bit of mystery. What was he doing in the year that he separated himself from Sam and Dean? What did he know that wasn’t written in the journals? In interviews, Kripke has said that John knew everything that the show has yet to reveal.

  The mysteries that surrounded the Colt were just as tantalizing. Who was the hunter that Samuel Colt made it for? Why did he create the gun? Where did the extra bullets go? How did it come into the hands of Daniel Elkins? Why did Elkins hide it from John Winchester?

  Even the number of usable bullets left in the gun was significant. By the time the Winchester family obtained the Colt, eight of the original thirteen bullets were gone. Just as there weren’t many bullets left in the gun, John’s time on the earth was short. From this point on out, every choice he made needed to count as much as each bullet.

  Ultimately, in “In My Time of Dying” (2-1), John chose his family over the hunt and vengeance by trading the Colt and his life to the Yellow-Eyed Demon in exchange for Dean’s life. But John’s journey was far from over (and there was still one bullet left in the absentee Colt). John was down (way, way down in the pit of despair), but as we later learned, he was far from out.

  John had given the Colt to the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and we assumed that the Demon would do the smart thing-having been given a gun that can kill anything (except non-corporeal demons, as we saw in baby Rose’s bedroom in “Salvation” [1-21]), himself included-and stash it somewhere that it couldn’t be picked up by an enemy and fired at him (like, say, the New Mariana Trench). Or at the very least, get rid of the last bullet rather than keeping it loaded in the gun.

  Instead, the loaded Colt returned quite unexpectedly at the end of the season as the key to a gate to Hell. (It can kill anything. It’s the key to a Hell gate. Does it also make julienne fries?) If the Colt was making an appearance again, could John Winchester be far behind?

  Apparently not. In the next episode “All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 2)” (2-22), John, in spectral form, clawed his way out of Hell (which, according to Demon Tammi in “Malleus Maleficarum” [3-9], was a heck of a fight) just in time to tussle with the Yellow-Eyed Demon, save Dean, and buy Dean the time to grab the Colt and kill the demon with the last bullet. Many fans saw John’s appearance at the end of this episode as a form of deus ex machina, not unlike the Colt-just one more parallel between them.

  At the end of season two, John’s journey was over and the Colt was reduced to antique status. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the gun. But with the conclusion of John’s journey, the Colt’s function on the show changed. The gun itself even changed: the new and improved version had a seemingly endless supply of bullets. Before this could create another deus ex machina problem, however, the writers once again wrote the Colt out of the show.

  Will the gun ever be seen again? Will John? In a story where a gun can kill anything and a man can claw his way out of Hell, either seems possible.

  TRACY S. MORRIS wants to be as dangerous as possible. She is a black belt in taekwondo and likes to dress in corsetry and poke people with sharp objects-that is to say she has fenced with the SCA. She reports on pop culture, the paranormal, and writing for Firefox News (http://www.firefox.org), and has had an essay appear in the Benbella Books Smart Pop anthology Alias Assumed: Sex, Lies and SD-6.

  Morris’s first novel, Tranquility, a southern gonzo whodunnit, was the runner-up for a Darryl Award in 2006. She is currently working on the sequel. You can find her on the Web at http://www.tracysmorris.com.

  Gordon Walker: Good bad guy? Bad good guy? Is he a monstrous human being made no more and no less monstrous when turned into a vampire? Or is he an ordinary man who lost a loved one to a supernatural force and was simply doing his best to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to anyone else?

  That last one would sound familiar to anyone who knows anything about the Winchesters, and yet by the time Gordon was decapitated by, in his view, the greatest threat to the world in existence (namely Sam Winchester), Gordon Walker had become the bad guy everybody loved to hate.

  Here, Amy Berner examines Gordon’s role in Supernatural, as a yardstick by which the Winchesters’ actions may be judged, and as a warning of what Dean or Sam could so easily become-obsessive, merciless hunters … or the supernatural things they hunt.

  AMY BERNER

  THE EVILS OF HATING … UM, EVIL

  What Gordon Walker Did Wrong and Why We Needed Him Anyway

  “I love this life because it’s all black and white. There’s no maybe. You find the bad thing, you kill it. Most people spend their lives in shades of gray, but not us.”

  -GORDON WALKER, “Bloodlust” (2-3)

  Let’s say that you have a demon hunter who is dedicated, smart, resourceful, focused, and who makes the world safer for ordinary folks day in and day out. Let’s say that this guy will do whatever it takes to rid the world of demons, monsters, and other nasties. Let’s say this guy falls at the hands of a traditionally awful sort of creature, a vampire, but although he becomes one himself, he somehow keeps a remnant of himself and tries to carry out one last mission to save the world. Sounds like a great guy, right? Maybe even a hero?

  Not if he’s Gordon Walker. For a character who only appeared in a whopping four episodes (“Bloodlust,” “Hunted” [2-10], “Bad Day at Black Rock” [3-3], and “Fresh Blood” [3-7]), this character developed into one of the most complex that we’ve seen on the show: a bad guy who honestly believed that his efforts led toward a better, safer world.

  Why have a villain who isn’t, well, supernatural? Because a character like Gordon is essential, both for establishing who hunters are as a group and for taking a closer look at the Winchesters themselves.

  For the structure and mythology of demon hunters to be fully established, the series needed to show what rules hunters follow as they pursue their targets … and, more importantly, what rules they should follow. And to understand what a hunter should do, we need to know what they shouldn’t do. There is no governing body for hunters (as far as we know), so each acts as an independent agent with carte blanche to hunt as they see fit. However, hunters have a brotherhood (and sisterhood) of sorts, and their loose society has a code of conduct. This code isn’t enforced, so only social pressure can change behavior … at least in the case of hunters who care about the opinion of their fellows. Gordon, of course, didn’t care. Above all else, it was the hunt that mattered.

  But more importantly, we the viewers needed Gordon so that we could better understand our heroes. The Winchester brothers are different enough from one another-in a co
mplementary way-that there are opportunities for conflict galore every week. However, to fully understand the nature and extent of those differences we need exposure to someone who is the complete opposite of one of them-in this case, Sam. Gordon’s presence highlights not only who Sam is (by showing us clearly who he is not), but also where Dean falls in the spectrum between them. Sam and Gordon both became hunters because of the death of a loved one, but they took very different paths afterward, and Dean, well, he’s a bit more like Gordon at times than we might like to admit. And he knows it.

  DEAN: (to Gordon) I might be like you, and I might not. But you’re the one tied up right now. (“Bloodlust”)

  Thanks to Gordon, we understand both of the brothers better, as hunters and as people. When we see Dean pushing ethical limits in pursuit of the evil of the week, or when we see Sam acting somewhat un-Sam-like after his return from the dead, we have a way to measure how close to the line they are and whether they have crossed it. Without Gordon the ethical barometer isn’t quite as easy to read. Gordon is the Winchesters’ dark mirror; he shows us what could happen were the Winchesters to travel down the wrong path, a path that both of them approached during the third season thanks to their respective brushes with death.

  What drove Gordon down that path? If the details of his background are a bit fuzzy, not to worry, his backstory was fairly straightforward: His sister was captured and turned by vampires when he was eighteen, and his efforts to save her failed. Driven by revenge, he became a hunter, eventually finding both his newly vampiric sister and the vampire that turned her and killing them both. After that, killing vampires and other monsters filled a “hole” within Gordon, a hole ripped out when his sister was turned, and nothing mattered more to him. He became known in hunter circles as a great hunter but, well, I think Ellen said it best:

  SAM: I-I thought you said he was a good hunter.

  ELLEN: Yeah, and Hannibal Lecter’s a good psychiatrist. (“Bloodlust”)

  In other words, being good at something doesn’t at all mean being in any way “good.” The other hunters respected Gordon’s abilities, certainly, but they were also wary of this member of their loose society. The knowledge and skills that hunters possess give them a sort of power-and Ellen believed that Gordon misused that power, although not to a point that she actively worked against him.

  Gordon’s hunting philosophy was in stark contrast to Sam’s initial style of hunting (although Sam moved closer to the middle as time went by, especially when his brother was in danger), with Dean’s falling somewhere in the middle (though he leaned closer to Sam’s side as they continued to fight together). Sam was a reluctant hunter rather than one who embraced it like Gordon did, someone who could see shades of grey rather than dealing only in absolutes. Dean understood and bonded with Gordon at their first meeting, but Sam and Gordon were oil and water from the very beginning.

  Yes, Gordon did some incredibly awful things while trying to be a good guy: torture, murder, and a near Winchester-cide. But as a hunter, he “embraced the life” (“Bloodlust”). He became single-minded and ruthless, but also incredibly effective at killing vampires and demons. Doesn’t he get points for that?

  Not really. But do remember that Gordon Walker did try to leave the world a better place every day. He didn’t want others to fall victim to his sister’s fate. His problem was that his methods weren’t what you’d call moral. Just efficient. Eliminating something (not “someone”) that was more likely a threat than not and more likely going to kill innocents than not seems, on the surface, like the practical, reasonable thing to do. Walker was a “greater good” sort, the type who is okay with leaving a few bodies in his wake if it means more people are saved in the long run. Problem was, his methods of doing “good” made him as bad as, if not worse than, those naturally predisposed to evil.

  BUT THEY’RE GOOD VAMPIRES!

  Horror audiences are normally in favor of vampire slayers. After all, conventional wisdom states that monsters are bad and those who hunt monsters are good.

  Pitting Gordon against non-evil vampires made for a great character introduction. What happens when the monsters aren’t evil and the hunter isn’t good? A vampire struggling for redemption isn’t a new concept (which is one of the joys of Supernatural, how they take familiar concepts and revisit them the Winchester Way. So what if you’ve seen an idea before on another television show? Horror traditions, legends and folklore are great for storytelling). Such vampires are the reluctant heroes fighting the monsters within themselves every day. But in all of these vampire stories, “good” vampires are the exception to the rule. Supernatural, too, has not revealed any way for vampires to become permanently good and productive members of society. No matter what their intentions or how many cows they may snack on, Supernatural vampires can slip at any time and kill humans again. To Gordon, someone else’s sister could be their next victim. His version of a kindness to a vampire was killing with a well-sharpened weapon, making it “perfectly humane” (“Bloodlust”).

  Gordon took a hard-line view on the world of demons. Evil was evil. Period. Concepts like redemption, mercy, and compassion didn’t enter into the equation. To him, monsters were all creatures of evil bent on death and destruction, and vampires were nothing but “mindless, blood-thirsty animals” (“Fresh Blood”). And 99.9 percent of the time, he was probably right about that. After all, his sister was given no mercy. The guy was bitter due to his history and understandably so. He could not accept shades of gray in his view of the world. A vampire trying to get by as harmlessly as possible could still do harm and therefore must not be allowed to survive.

  Of course, going after a poor waiflike vampire named Lenore and her cohorts, who were just trying to get by on a human-free diet, was nothing compared to going up against the Winchesters. Sam defended the cow-drinkers, Dean reluctantly backed him up despite having bonded with his new buddy, and thus Gordon first became their enemy when he fought back. Dean tied Gordon to a chair after the two fought over the issue, even though Dean did and does agree that, when all is said and done, a vampire is still a vampire.

  But was Sam right on this count, or were Gordon and Dean? Lenore could have gone back to her old ways at any time. Innocent people could have been killed. Did Lenore deserve to be treated as more than a monster, or was that all she was? To Sam, Lenore proved that she could be more by her actions, just like Ruby proved in the third season. Gordon, however, believed that she would ultimately be true to her nature, and that the danger she posed was too great to risk treating her as anything but what she was. And Dean, without Sam there, probably would have agreed.

  SAM: You didn’t kill Lenore.

  DEAN: Yeah but every instinct told me to. I was gonna kill her, I was gonna kill them all.

  SAM: Yeah, but Dean, you didn’t. That’s what matters.

  DEAN: Yeah. ’Cause you’re a pain in my ass. (“Bloodlust”)

  Dean, for all of his anti-vampire sentiments, knows where the all-important line is and knows not to cross it. This line (when his brother draws it) has become more and more important as the series has progressed, especially as both brothers have found themselves approaching it-mainly in order to save each other. Thanks to Gordon, they were forced early on to face that line, recognize where it lay. Gordon’s actions threw up a red flag that made the brothers evaluate what they believed and why.

  The only line that Gordon saw was a finish line, and he’d do whatever it took to get there. He had no moral compass to guide him; Dean, luckily, had his brother. As Dean said, “Come on, man. I know Sam, okay? Better than anyone. He’s got more of a conscience than I do. I mean, the guy feels guilty searching the Internet for porn” (“Hunted”). And that conscience does a lot more than cause porn guilt; it makes both brothers better.

  TARGETING A WINCHESTER WON’T WIN YOU FRIENDS

  Do it. Show your brother the evil killer you really are, Sammy.

  You’re no better than the filthy things you hunt.

&nbs
p; -GORDON WALKER, “Hunted”

  If you believed that someone was evil and would wreak havoc on all of humanity-the Antichrist, a demon power, whatever-what would you do? Gordon, true to form, took action. Gordon began hunting our boy Sam when he found out that he was a part of the upcoming war. How did he learn this nugget of information? By torturing a possessed teenage girl to death. Dealing with the possessed is tricky ground, to be sure, especially as the human may already be dead. Sam and Dean have had to deal with their share of possessed people, and haven’t exactly been pleasant to them by any means, but they seem to save whom they can, using holy water whenever possible and exorcising rather than killing. Gordon apparently didn’t consider that option.

  He’s probably a fan of waterboarding too. But I digress.

  When Gordon learned that the human leader of the demon legions would spring from a small group of people, he began eliminating the threat one possibly evil human at a time. Maybe he didn’t go quite as far as styling himself a Herod, killing children to prevent the rise of a king, but it’s a pretty good comparison. After all, he was trying to kill the Antichrist.

  These people were still human, even if some of them (like Ava) chose to use their paranormal powers to become monsters. Unlike the vampires, who were predisposed to evil, all of these humans were able to choose. But Gordon never even considered that they were not required to use their powers for evil. He believed that it should be official hunter policy-if such a thing could exist-that “Sam Winchester must die” (“Bad Day at Black Rock”), and he doubted that Sam was even still human. In Gordon’s mind, there was no hope of redemption for Sam; he was already a monster and therefore had to be destroyed.

  GORDON: I’m not a killer, Dean. I’m a hunter. And your brother’s fair game. (“Hunted”)

  Gordon truly believed that the world would be better and safer without Sam in it. In his black and white worldview, Sam was the enemy no matter what, and his actual role in trying to stop the gate from opening was dismissed.