Season nine of "Supernatural" ends with a their classic "HOLY POOP ON A STICK!" ending they always leave you with. In this particular ending, Dean is dead in his bed after Metatron beats the snot out of him and kills him. Crowley is standing over Dean telling about the lore of Cain and Dean opens his eyes and shows black demon eyes. Sam comes to Dean's room later and finds a note telling him not to follow him. Dean and Crowley go on a bender of drinking, violence, and all sorts of shenanigans for the next few months while Sam goes to a dark place to try and find his brother.
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After months of this partying, Crowley tells Dean it's time to live up to his promise and help him reign in Hell. Dean pretty much laughs at him because no one tells Demon Dean to do anything. Dean does agree to go on a souls snatching deal for him. But instead of killing the mark, Dean kills the guy who's soul was owed to Crowely. Crowely is pissed off and yells at Dean explaining that since he didn't fulfill the contract that he doesn't get the soul. Dean doesn't take this too well and pushes Crowley down. Crowley says he doesn't need him and returns to Hell.
Sam eventually catches up with Dean while he's in the middle of a fight with a guy who blames Dean for killing his dad (who was a monster of sorts). Sam made a deal with Crowley to get Dean in exchange for the First Blade. Sam restrains Dean in the back seat of the car and brings him back to base. Sam says that he knows there's some good left in Dean because he didn't kill that guy when he had the chance. Dean explains that what he did was much worse. He said that he now has to live with the fact that the man who killed his father just beat the crap out of him and there was nothing he could do about it and that was a fate worse than killing him.
Meanwhile, Castiel is dealing with the loss of his grace and searching for fallen angels with a fellow angel by the name of Hannah. Hannah wants them punished for leaving Heaven, but Castiel understands what it's like to have feelings and emotions and thinks that they should be allowed to live their lives. A couple of Angels eventually catch up with Hannah and Castiel before they could be captured and they beat both Hannah and Castiel down badly. If not for the intervention of Crowley, Hannah and Castiel would be dead. Crowley takes the grace of the angel he kills and gives it to Castiel. Hannah for a while doesn't understand until one day she realizes that the body she is currently possessing is someone that is cared for and is missing. Combined with feeling "bad" for using this woman's body (even though she consented) and Castiel spurning her many advances as a romantic companion, Hannah leaves the body and Castiel brings her back to her family.
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Back at Sam and Dean's base, Sam is injecting Dean with human blood to turn Dean human again. The process looks to be killing Dean, but Sam keeps on going. Dean taunts Sam because he believes there's no more human Dean left and that Sam isn't any better than he is. Dean tells him he knows what he did to get to Dean. He knows how he tortured demons and even caused a man to sell his soul in order to get his brother back. He tells Sam that what h did was just as bad as what he has done. After a few injections, Dean escapes because the devil trap wouldn't hold him because enough of the demon was gone for him to be human enough to escape. The two play cat and mouse in the base for a while until Castiel interjects and takes Dean out. After some more doses of the human blood, Dean is back to normal.
Time goes on and the Winchesters tried to get back into the swing of things. Hunting the supernatural. While everything seemed to be going good on the outside, Dean was secretly still fighting the Mark of Cain internally. Dean continued to to be overly aggressive and violent when fighting and would sometimes his methods would seem like over kill. It wasn't until a run in with Castiel's host’s daughter that Dean would realize that he might have a problem.
After Castiel helped Dean become human again, he set his sights on making things right with Claire Novak the daughter of human he once possessed. Claire had become a problem child and was in and out of juvenile homes after her father Jimmy Novak became the host for Castiel and her mom left her. Castiel ends up finding her and breaks her out of the facility after he was denied custody. Claire despised Castiel for what he did to her and her family and managed to give Castiel the slip and went back to her "adopted" father who was a con man who used her for schemes to get money. Castiel and the Winchesters eventually catch up with her, but the trio end up letting her go after she professed how much she hated and didn't need him. Claire would run back to her adopted father who allowed her to be taken and used so he could get out of his bookies debt and make some extra money.
The Winchesters and Castiel stop to get something to eat and Sam and Dean tell a story about their dad. Dean goes on to tell him that he always remembered a story of his dad saving him from himself and when Dean told him he hated hi, that he responded that it wasn't his job to be liked, that it was his job to raise him right. That is what sparked Castiel to get up and go get her. Thankfully, Castiel and the boys showed up with enough time to stop Claire from being sexually assaulted and possibly murdered. Sam and Castiel got Claire into he car while Dean stayed behind to cover their tracks. One of the goons hits Dean and Dean kills them all and leaves them dead, broken, and bloodied in the house. Sam freaks out and asks Dean if he had to do it. Dean was too shocked to respond to what he had done. The Mark of Cain was very much still a part of him and affecting him more than he was letting on.
Meanwhile, Crowley's servants captured a woman causing havoc on Earth. To Crowley's surprise, it was his mom. Crowley's mother Rowena would go on to talk about how proud she was of him becoming the King of Hell and how she always knew he'd become someone important. Crowley doesn't believe any of this because she left him when he was eight years old and never came back or sent for him. After a brief talk, he had her sent into a cell. While in the cell, Rowena would devise a plan to get her and her cellmate out of the prison. The plan worked perfectly and Rowena had escaped and gained some of her son's trust in the process. Rowena would leave her cellmate there and left with a devilish smile.
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Review:
The first half of this season has been pretty solid. The episodes have been either really good or just ok. The problem was they seem to have cut Demon Dean off too early. When the season started it seemed like every fan of the show was extremely excited that the show was going in a different direction. For once it wasn't going to be going to be the same old thing with Sam and Dean battling their inner demons and having the same talks in the car at the end of the episode. Pessimistic and gruff Dean and hope for the best things will get better Sam. Maybe Dean will be the big bad and maybe, just maybe, Dean dies or stays a demon. The show decided to got with what brought them to the dance.
Good thing is that people like routine and routine isn't always a bad thing. The show is still very clever with their jokes, the stories are still good, and guys like Crowley, Castiel, and Metatron are great. The show is still worth watching regardless. This is the show that got the ball rolling with the fad of television shows jumping on the bandwagon of shows with supernatural villains and storylines and it continues to be the alpha of them all.