The Prisoner

• Are all the Stynes dead now, or just the ones in America? If any are alive, will they keep coming after the Book?
• What will happen to Dean now?
• Will Rowena still be willing to help Sam, knowing that he failed to kill Crowley? And what will be the terrible consequences if she uses the Book to help cure Dean?
• Cyrus Styne was planning to run away from his family before Dean killed him. Did Dean make the wrong choice?
• Who is the waiter Crowley was talking to at the diner, and why did Crowley spend any time talking to him?

• This is the first time we've seen Crowley's red eyes!
• Sam finally seems to realize that he owes Dean everything, and he acknowledges that Dean has saved him many times when he was scared, alone, and in trouble.
• Castiel was supposed to stop Dean from going too far. Oops...
• Sam blames Crowley for everything that happened with Dean and the Mark; he doesn't seem to accept any responsibility for his role in Dean's choices.
• Crowley considers himself a "good guy" because of the changes he's tried to make in hell.

• The episode title "The Prisoner" may be based on the Iron Maiden song and the 1960s era British television series by the same name.
• Cyrus Styne and his friend were playing a video game called "Dying Light". This is an actual horror-adventure video game produced by Warner Brothers -- the same company that produces Supernatural.
• The Stynes home base was in Shreveport, Louisiana. It would have taken Dean approximately 12 hours to drive there from the bunker.
• Shreveport, Louisiana is in Caddo Parish, but the arm patches the sheriff and deputy were wearing said "Beauclair Parish" police. There is no Beauclair Parish in Louisiana.
• Sam lured Crowley to a deserted building in Concordia, Kansas, which is about a 90-minute drive from the bunker.
• Phil's Diner is the diner where Crowley had coffee and pie.
• The book that Cyrus finds in the bunker's library and begins to read is "A Practitioner's Guide to Exorcism". If Cyrus was truly planning to turn his back on his family and their occult interests, should he have been interested in such a book?

• Dean spoke on the phone to another hunter named Rudy; he also talked to Rudy in "Inside Man".
• Cyrus Styne teases the school bully about liking rap music, but being afraid of Black people -- even Will Smith. As a genre, rap music is dominated by Black artists. Will Smith is a rap artist (as well as an actor), but he is considered less "hard core" than many other artists in that genre.
• When the school bully teases Cyrus, he asks him if he's ever seen a boob "I don't mean on Game of Thrones. I'm talking about in the wild." The popular sci-fi/fantasy series is known for showing nudity.
• Sam says he "Lo jacked" the Impala so he could track Dean. Lo Jack is a vehicle recovery system that allows a car's location to be tracked remotely.
• Sam asks Castiel to find Dean and stop him from going too far "off the reservation", referring to someone who has rebelled against the accepted behavior of his/her group. The term has negative connotations, however, because it may have originated as a reference to the forced relocation of Native Americans onto reservations.
• Dean's alias on his driver's license is "Ashley J. Williams". This refers to the fictional character/hero from the "Evil Dead" horror movie franchise.
• The other fake names on Dean's drivers licenses are Freddy Mercury (lead singer for the group Queen), Ozzie Osborne (heavy metal artist), and Lemmy Kilmister (lead singer for the group Motorhead).
• "Operation" is a battery-operated children's game in which players use toy tweezers to try to remove internal organs from a cardboard "patient" without touching the edges of a fake incision, which sets off an alarm.
• Dean says to the sheriff "I ain't your Boy, Cletus". He was likely referring to the fictional sheriff "Cletus Hogg" from the 1980s-era "The Dukes of Hazzard" television sit com. The word "Boy" used in this fashion, has a negative connotation, as "Boy" was used commonly by Southerners as a racial slur to denigrate African Americans.

• "Go wherever you wanna go" -- by Patty Griffin (plays as Dean and Sam are building Charlie's funeral pyre and remembering her)
• "Blues with some Booze" -- by Andy Quin (plays when Dean enters the Stynes' mansion)

Scroll down to see the discussion thread for this episode.

EPISODE 1023: Brother's Keeper