Episode Details

Supernatural Season 1, Episode 15, The Benders recap 🦷 People are disappearing in Hibbing, Minnesota, Sam gets snatched, and Dean teams up with a local deputy to find him on Denim-wrapped Nightmares, a Supernatural rewatch podcast. This week's monsters might be the scariest ones yet.

A little boy sees something drag a man into a van outside his window, and the boys roll into town in state trooper uniforms (with the HATS). But when Sam goes missing from a bar parking lot, Dean has to team up with Deputy Kathleen (Jessica Steen), who has a missing brother of her own and is NOT thrilled to learn that Dean Winchester is supposed to be dead (thanks, shapeshifter). Meanwhile, Sam wakes up in a cage next to a very rude fellow captive, and the family holding them captive is creepy as hell.

Episode Highlights:

• The Winchesters in state trooper hats (a look we support)
• Dean's legal death catching up with him, a callback to Skin
• Sam's cage neighbor being a total dickhead
• That spear-through-the-thigh close-up (we clenched EVERYTHING)
• The creepy little Bender girl, who ate up every scene she was in
• A jar full of teeth. A JAR. FULL. OF. TEETH.
• Dean putting up a real fight against the big Bender boys
• Sam's agile little somersault to dodge a bullet
• Kathleen getting the last word (we would have done the same)

In the lore segment, we dig into the history of human hunting, from Richard Connell's 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game to the real-life horror of Robert Hansen, the Butcher Baker of Anchorage, a respected business owner and bow hunter who hunted his victims in the Alaskan wilderness. Fun fact we missed: the name likely comes from the Bloody Benders, a real family of serial killers who ran an inn in 1870s Kansas. Want more? The Serial Killer Podcast covered this true tale in 2018.

"Demons I get. People are crazy." – Dean Winchester

Your turn, hunters: What's scarier, monsters or people? And did the creepy Bender girl haunt your dreams too? Tell us in the Spotify comments, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts (it's how new hunters find us), or send us fan mail. Bonus points for fandom fun facts we missed.

Sources:

• https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/The_Benders
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hunting 
• https://allthatsinteresting.com/robert-hansen 
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-most-dangerous-game-summary-and-themes.html

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Denim-wrapped Nightmares is a Supernatural rewatch podcast hosted by Berly and LA, breaking down every episode of the Winchester saga with lore deep-dives plus cast and crew interviews. Special thanks to David Fesliyan and Fesliyan Studios.

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