WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 15, Episode 10 of Supernatural, "The Heroes' Journey."
After the seismic events of last week's midseason premiere, "The Trap," which saw God/Chuck become more merciless than ever before and restore himself back to full power, Sam and Dean could really use a break. While "The Heroes' Journey" sort of gives them that, the consequences of having the heat turned down on their current predicament actually put them at an even bigger disadvantage going forward.
The episode starts innocently enough: Sam is busy making dinner leaving Dean to do a supply run. Then, things start going wrong. Dean's most reliable credit card is declined and the Impala gets a parking ticket, while everything Sam is cooking ends up either burnt to a crisp or on the kitchen floor. On their way to meet Garth, a hunter-turned-retired-werewolf, the Impala breaks down completely; Sam can't stop sneezing and, upon reaching Garth's house, their old friend is shocked to discover that Dean has 17 cavities. (Garth went and got his dentistry degree after quitting hunting. Now, he helps out his fellow wolves -- and Dean -- with "fang maintenance.")
Fans will no doubt be reminded of the Trickster's antics, but with Gabriel dead, Dean is convinced he and Sam are cursed. Garth asks who they could have annoyed enough to end up on the receiving end of such a thing, and the Winchesters know there's only one possible suspect: Chuck. However, none of their bad luck is exactly life-threatening, leading Garth to conclude that the vindictive deity has simply downgraded his former favorite leading men. "So he's a writer and you've basically been the heroes of his story? [...] The hero never sweats the small stuff. For the first time in your lives, you're having normal people problems."
This is confirmed when Garth takes the boys to the source of his current problem -- his wife's pureblood werewolf cousin, who is badly injured. When he refuses to tell them that the reason he's so beaten up is that he's been taking part in an underground, monster Cagefighting tournament, Sam tries his usual tactic of gently drawing the truth out of him. But the werewolf scoffs at him instead: "The furrowed brow and puppy dog eyes... Does that normally work for you?"
Despite their new lowly status as ordinary side characters, Sam and Dean decide to go and break up the tournament anyway -- which is pitched somewhere between Fight Club and Bloodsport. Naturally, their normie curse continues to set them back: Sam keeps tripping over his feet while Dean suffers a bout of vomit-inducing nausea after eating too many of Garth's wife's grilled cheeses. On a micro level, Chuck's plot armor explains why Dean has been able to keep in top-notch physical condition all these years while maintaining the junk food diet of a teenager. On a macro one, it explains why Sam and Dean have survived so many encounters that average humans shouldn't; encounters they list to the mastermind of the "Fright Night" who ends up capturing them, in the hopes of intimidating him into releasing them.
Dean's boasts about he and Sam taking down angels, demons and Alphas only makes the ringleader even more eager to make the brothers the main event for that evening's brawl. As they wait nervously in a pair of cells, Sam wonders whether Chuck is teaching them a lesson -- that they're nothing without him. Dean is undeterred, though. "Not everything we did was because of Chuck, man. The blood, the sweat, the tears… that’s us! We’ve been doing this our whole lives. We’re the best in the world." Unfortunately, they don't get to prove this in this episode: Garth is the one who ends up facilitating their escape with the help of some C4, "a hunters' best friend," while also getting the final blow on the giant vampire man they were scheduled to duke it out with.
It's a great moment for Garth, who has long been something of a joke character in Supernatural, but it leaves Sam and Dean feeling, for the first time ever, unconfident in their own abilities as professional hunters. And not just professional but legendary ones, at that. Has their reputation as the best of the best all been in aid of Chuck's own amusement?
There's hope on the horizon, though. As they part ways, Garth tells the boys of a story he heard about a place in Alaska that people whose luck has turned bad can go. "You'll know it when you see it." Sam is wary about this idea, pointing out that these things always have a catch. But Dean's counter is hard to argue with, too -- being "normal" is fine for those who have normal problems, but his and Sam's are anything but. As Supernatural deepens its meta mediations on the mechanics of storytelling, it looks like a trip up North is in order.
Airing Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, the final season of Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins and Alexander Calvert.