WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Supernatural Season 15, Episode 15, "Gimme Shelter," which aired Thursday on The CW.
The latest episode of Supernatural, “Gimme Shelter,” is full of bombshell revelations and surprises. First Amara finds the Winchesters before they find her and then goes on to finally explain her head-scratching decision of resurrecting Mary Winchester. By the end, we are in for a second shocking reveal, but there is another rather unexpected surprise in the middle -- Dr. Sexy from Season 5 is back but sans the “sexiness.”
Dr. Sexy was last seen in Season 5’s “Changing Channels,” when the Trickster, a.k.a the archangel Gabriel, trapped Dean and Sam in an alternate universe where they are characters in different television series. One such show is the fictional drama Dr. Sexy, M.D., a guilty pleasure of Dean's who is an avid admirer of its main character, Dr. Sexy. Despite Dean denying that he likes the show, he is quick to notice that the Dr. Sexy they meet isn’t real but Gabriel in disguise as “the thing that makes Dr. Sexy sexy is the fact that he wears cowboy boots. Not tennis shoes."
But after being last mentioned in Season 7's “Hello, Cruel World,” Dr. Sexy was never seen again, at least until Supernatural Season 15, Episode 15.
In the episode, before Sam and Dean leave, hot on Amara’s trail to Atlantic City, they suggest Castiel and Jack check out the murder of a young teen, Conner, in Missouri. So, this time it’s Jack and Cas headlining their own murder investigation even though Sam is sure that it’s “not our kind of thing.” After following all the leads where Jack finally gets to play the cop (an endearing reminder of the amateur Cas was in his early days of hunting), the duo make a visit to the faith-based group, Patchwork Community Center, Connor worked for.
It’s here they meet Dr. Sexy, or rather the actor, Steve Bacic who played the character, as this time he appears as Pastor Joe. While it’s not a trippy return of the Season 5 character, it would have been a treat to see Dean solving this case, interrogating the Pastor and maybe dropping an offhand remark about the actor’s former role in the show, just like he did when he met actor Linda Blair from The Exorcist playing a detective in Season 2.
But he is not the only blast from the past -- the pastor’s daughter Sylvia is played by Nicole Muñoz, who was seen way back in Season 2, “Everybody Loves a Clown,” as young Nora who inadvertently invites a monster called a Rakshasa disguised as a clown inside her house, who ripped her parents to shreds and feasted on them.
This is not the first time that Supernatural has re-cast an actor who has earlier appeared in a different role. In fact, before Episode 15, this season's Episode 6 was the last one that featured an actor from previous episodes -- Keegan Connor Tracy as Witch Mother who tortures Sam to get her hands on Rowena’s secret stash. This marked her latest appearance on the show. She first appeared in Season 2 as Karen Giles, a mourning wife who is later murdered by a corrupt cop. She later appeared as Sera Siege in Season 5 as an ardent fan of the Winchesters and the publisher for the Supernatural book series by Carver Edlund a.k.a. Chuck.