Previously: The Trickster turned up and laid out a ton of punishment on various douchebags, and it was awesome.
Roadkill
Kirsti: We open on a generic two-lane highway at night. A married couple drive along listening to House of the Rising Sun and bickering about whether or not they’re lost. The husband insists they’re taking the scenic route and the wife, Molly, gripes about being stuck in the car on their anniversary. He promises to make it up to her and leans over to kiss her neck. She gets distracted, and a man appears in the road in front of them. She swerves to avoid him and the car flies off an embankment and into a tree.
Sometime later, Molly comes to in the car. She’s alone. She stumbles from the car, screaming for her husband, but there’s no sign of him. She staggers over to a nearby cabin and enters to find a man facing away from her. She calls out to him and he turns, revealing himself to be the man who was standing in the road. Molly’s relieved at first, then sees that his stomach is ripped apart. Blood drips from his face, which turns rotten. She screams, which is totally legit.
FLAME ON!
After the Not!Credits, Molly runs through the woods away from the cabin and ends up back in the road. A car comes towards her and she yells at it to stop. The Bromobile screams to a halt and the Winchesters stare at Molly in confusion. Sam rolls down the window and asks her what happened. Cut to sometime later as Molly finishes explaining things. Dean asks her if the man they hit “looks like he lost a fight with a lawnmower“, and she confirms that he did. She introduces herself and the boys exchange a look. They offer to help her get back to town, but Molly won’t go until she finds her husband, David.
The boys take her back to the scene of the crash but there’s nothing there. Molly’s confused. She heads off to investigate and the boys have a hushed discussion about how they should GTFO before Lawnmower Man comes back. Dean wants to know what they’re going to tell Molly. Sam suggests the truth, and Dean scoffs. Molly returns and says that they have to go and get the police. Dean offers to drive her to the police station in town, and she reluctantly agrees.
In the Bromobile, Molly says she and David only ever fought in the car.
Dean makes “EXCUSE YOU” bitchface in response:
She worries that the last thing she said to her husband was that he’s a jerk. Sam reassures her that they’ll find out what happened. As he talks, the radio crackles and House of the Rising Sun starts playing. Dean stares at the radio in confusion and Molly realises that the same song was playing just before she and David crashed. Another crackle, and a creepy voice comes on the radio. “She’s mine,” it says over and over. Lawnmower Man appears in the middle of the road just ahead of the car. Dean drives straight through him, and he vanishes in a puff of smoke. Molly freaks. Sam assures her everything will be fine, but the Bromobile shudders to a halt on the side of the road, the engine dead. “I don’t think he’s gonna let her leave...” Dean says. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Sam and Dean start pulling weapons out of the Bromobile’s boot. Molly freaks and backs off. She tells the boys to stay away from her. Sam admits that it wasn’t a coincidence that they met her on the road. They were already there, hunting ghosts. Lawnmower Man died 15 years ago and he haunts the road on the anniversary of his death. Molly’s had enough of the crazy talk and announces that she’s going to get the cops herself. Dean’s all “LOL NOPE” and informs her that “Farmer Roadkill” (a much better nickname, if I’m perfectly honest) won’t let her leave. He also earns himself a gold star:
Sam insists that they’re telling the truth, saying that every year Lawnmower Man punishes one person for his death. And tonight, that person is her. “Why me? I didn’t do anything!” she says. “Doesn’t matter. Some spirits only see what they want,” Sam replies. Dean says in order to help her, they need her to help them. Cut to Lawnmower Man’s cabin, which is filled with bloody tools. As in cutting implements that are covered in blood, not incredibly annoying douchebags #funwithEnglish. The boys search for a grave, but don’t see anything. They explain the whole salt-and-burn-corpse thing to Molly, then Sam infodumps that Lawnmower Man’s wife claimed his body from the morgue 15 years ago and hasn’t been seen since. But they owned 1000 acres, so they’re hoping the body is near a building.
They start searching for a path to Lawnmower Man’s house when Molly hears a voice calling to her. She assumes it’s her husband and calls out in response, following the voice. Lawnmower Man grabs her and she screams. Dean appears to shoot Lawnmower Man with rock salt. He vanishes.
Molly demands to know where her husband is, and Sam tells her to calm the fuck down. Dean suggests they stop fighting and “follow the creepy brick road.” They do so, and as they walk, Sam infodumps about why rock salt scares off spirits. It can be summed up as “BECAUSE IT DOES, OKAY?”.
The creepy brick road leads to a creepy-ass house. There are no headstones outside because that would be far too easy. They split up to search the house for clues, Dean taking the downstairs, Sam and Molly the upstairs where they promptly find a room strewn with papers. Sam sighs, but Molly flips through a scrapbook which turns out to contain a love letter Lawnmower Man wrote to his wife. She marvels at the beauty of the letter, and asks Sam how such a nice guy could have turned into a murderous psychopathic ghost. Sam replies a little sadly that spirits hold on too tight and get trapped in the same loops over and over. She’s surprised that he sounds sorry for them, and Dean enter-nounces that “Sammy’s always getting a little J. Love Hewitt when it comes to things like this.” He, on the other hand, has no fucks to give about ghosts.
Just then, Dean (contrivancely) spots something weird on the wall. It turns out to be a hidden doorway, which he kicks in. They crawl through and Dean announces that it smells like old lady. The smell is apparently explained when they look up to see the mummified corpse of Lawnmower Man’s wife, hanging from the ceiling.
Molly has feels about the fact that she didn’t want to live without her husband. Sam climbs on a chair and demands Dean’s help cutting the corpse down. Dean reluctantly agrees, but makes “EW GROSS, CORPSE” faces the whole time.
Outside, the boys dig a grave for Mrs. Lawnmower Man. Molly asks them what happens to ghosts when they salt and burn the bones. That’s far too philosophical for Dean. Sam says it’s like death for ghosts and he hopes they go somewhere better, but no one knows for sure. Molly says that she has to see her husband again, she just has to. And we fade to black. It’s a really weird place for an ad break, but just go with it, okay?
After the Not Commercial Break, Molly’s pacing back and forth while flipping through a photo album. In the next room, the boys have a hushed conversation – Sam thinks they should tell Molly about her husband because it’s cruel to keep letting her pine. Dean disagrees. She overhears the tail end of the conversation, and accuses them of not caring about her or her husband. Conveniently, the boys are saved from answering when the radio starts to play House of the Rising Sun. Dean creeps towards the radio and finds that it’s not even plugged in. The glass in the front door frosts over and the words “SHE’S MINE” appear on it.
Sam walks cautiously towards Dean as Molly stands by the window. A figure crashes through the window and grabs Molly, who screams as she’s dragged outside. The boys give chase, but it’s too late. They return to the house, and debate whether to look for Molly or to find Lawnmower Man’s bones, because there’s less than two hours until sunrise. Sam flips through the photo album and finds a picture of the creepy cabin in 1992, a couple of weeks before the accident. There’s no big tree out the front. He joins the dots, and tells Dean that planting a tree as a gravemarker is an old country custom. Dean’s all “WHY WOULD YOU KNOW THAT??” which is a pretty legit question. They head back to the cabin.
Cut to the cabin. Molly’s hanging from her wrists. She asks where her husband is, and says she’s sorry Lawnmower Man’s wife is died. He tells her that all he has left is hurting her, and proceeds to slice her up WITH HIS FUCKING FINGERNAILS. That is all kinds of nasty. Molly screams, understandably. The boys arrive and Sam starts digging up the tree while Dean heads inside to save Molly.
But this time, rock salt only has a temporary effect. Lawnmower Man starts hurling Dean around the room. Conveniently, Sam’s had time to dig down like six feet to the bones. He dumps a bunch of salt on them as Lawnmower Man pins Dean to the wall. Sam squirts lighter fluid onto the bones as Lawnmower Man reaches for a knife. He lights a match and drops it in, and Lawnmower Man screams “No, no!” before he bursts into flames and disappears. The knife clatters to the floor. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys and Molly are back at the Bromobile. Dean’s relieved to see his car, because obviously. Sam opens the car door for Molly, but she refuses to go anywhere until they tell her where David is. She tears up as she says that they know he was killed by Lawnmower Man. But no, it’s time for a plot twist: David’s alive. They promise to take her to him, and she gets into the car with a smile.
Cut to a suburban home. The boys pull up, and Sam tells Molly that David’s inside. She’s confused, but gets out of the car and walks towards the house. Through the window, she can see David doing usual morning things, dressed in a robe. But he’s older. Molly’s confusion deepens, especially when a woman walks up and kisses David on the lips. Molly turns to the boys in confusion, and Sam tells her that’s David’s wife. When their car hit Lawnmower Man? David survived. Dean finishes the plot twist: there were two spirits haunting that highway – Lawnmower Man, and Molly. Her accident happened in 1992.
That throws us into a flashback. The boys infodump about the case: twelve accidents over the past fifteen years, all on the same night. And all the witnesses said they crashed because a woman ran into the road, being chased by a blood-covered dude. Another cut and the boys are at the library researching the original accident. Another cut and they’re asking David where Molly’s buried (she was cremated). Another cut and the Bromobile screams to a halt in front of a panicked Molly on the highway. “Dean, I don’t think she knows she’s dead…” Sam says. Back in the present, the boys tell Molly that Lawnmower Man has been punishing someone for his death every year, like they said. It’s just that every year, it was her. She realises that she’s responsible for his death and we fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, it’s almost dawn. Molly sits on the steps of David’s house and asks why they didn’t tell her. Dean says they wouldn’t have believed her. Plus, they kind of needed her as Lawnmower Man bait. She says she has to talk to David, to tell him she loves him, but the boys declare that to be a terrible idea because David will just freak the fuck out. Which is, I think, fair. I’d freak the fuck out if my dead-for-fifteen-years spouse turned up on my doorstep… Sam tells her to just let go. They think if she does, she’ll move on.
Sorry. I couldn’t not. Molly cries because they can’t tell her where she’ll be going, but Sam says she’s suffered enough. Molly nods reluctantly and steps away from the house. As the sun rises, she turns her face towards it. There’s a burst of light, and Molly vanishes. Dean asks his brother if he really thinks she’s going to a better place. Sam says that he hopes so, and that hope is the whole point. They head back to the Bromobile and we fade to black.
This is one of those episodes that gets better on rewatching. Molly’s not a particularly in-depth character – all she cares about is finding her husband – but I just have so many feels for her once you rewatch it knowing that she’s dead the whole time. A lot of Sam’s lines take on a whole new meaning (“Some spirits only see what they want“). And you almost end up with feels for Lawnmower Man, because at least he wasn’t taking his rage out on innocent people…
Next time, there’s a werewolf on the loose. It’s not nearly as cute and fluffy as Oz, unfortunately… Find out more in Supernatural S02 E17 – Heart.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
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