Skin ->
  • Terri Hughes Burton
  • Eric Kripke
  • Ron Milbauer
  • Peter Ellis
  • December 2005/January/February 2006

Summary

Official WB Description In suburban Nebraska, a group of partying high school teens jokingly dare their friend Charlie to look into the mirror and repeat "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary," not knowing this will unleash a series of mysterious murders. Dean and Sam realize that Bloody Mary has the power to travel through all reflective surfaces when she is hunting a victim. Worried that teens are accidentally summoning Bloody Mary, Dean and Sam race to destroy the violent spirit before she can kill again.

Timeline

December 2005/January/February 2006 (day 1) Lily's slumber party; Steven Shoemaker dies
December 2005/January/February 2006 (day 4) Sam's nightmare about Jess; Dean and Sam visit the morgue and view Steven Shoemaker's body; talk with the girls and investigate the Shoemaker house after the funeral; Jill dies
December 2005/January/February 2006 (day 5) Dean and Sam investigate Jill's bedroom and find writing on the mirror; they find writing on Shoemaker mirror; nationwide search
December 2005/January/February 2006 (day 6) Dean and Sam interview the Detective in Fort Wayne; Bloody Mary comes after Charlie; Dean and Sam find and smash Bloody Mary's mirror
December 2005/January/February 2006 (day 7) Dean and Sam take Charlie home

In Toledo, Ohio, three young girls are playing truth or dare. Lily's dare is to say "Bloody Mary" three times in front of the bathroom mirror. The other girls scare her by banging on the door, and then Lily's father, Steven Shoemaker, appears and tells them to be quiet. As he returns to his bedroom, a figure appears in every mirror he passes. When he looks in the bathroom mirror, his eyes start bleeding. His eldest daughter, Donna, later discovers him dead in a pool of blood.

In the Impala, Sam wakes from another nightmare about Jessica, which he will not speak about. He and Dean visit the morgue and bribe the attendant so they can view Steven Shoemaker's body. While the cause of death is unclear, his skull was full of blood and his eyeballs had liquefied.

Visiting the Shoemaker house following the funeral, Sam and Dean speak to Shoemaker's daughters and Donna's friends, Jill and Charlie. Lily reveals she feels responsible for his death after invoking Bloody Mary.

The boys look for clues in the bathroom, when Charlie finds them. They admit they think there is something suspicious about Steven's death, and Sam gives Charlie his cell number in case she thinks of anything helpful.

Later that night, while on the phone to Charlie, Jill jokingly says "Bloody Mary" three times in front of the mirror. Soon after, Jill sits in front of a mirror and the eyes in the reflection in her mirror start bleeding and the reflection says "You did it. You killed that boy." Jill's own eyes start bleeding, and she dies.

Charlie reports Jill's death to Sam and Dean and helps them get into Jill's bedroom. On the back of her mirror they find the name "Gary Bryman." Research shows that he was a young boy killed in a hit and run - and the description of the car involved matches Jill's car. At the Shoemaker house, they find the name "Linda Shoemaker" inscribed on the mirror, which was the name of Steven's wife who died suspiciously after a sleeping pill overdose.

Dean starts researching all deaths of women called Mary who died in front of a mirror and finds the death in Indiana of Mary Worthington. The brothers travel to Indiana and speak to the police detective who worked on her case.

Mary was 19 when someone broke into her apartment, murdered her, and cut out her eyes with a knife. Before she died in front of a large mirror, she tried to spell out her killer's name but only managed the letters T-R-E. A surgeon named Trevor Sampson was suspected but nothing was ever proven and her murder went unsolved.

Although she was cremated, the boys postulate that Mary's spirit was trapped in the mirror, which they found has been recently sold to a shop in Toledo.

Meanwhile, Donna and Charlie are in the school bathroom, where Donna says "Bloody Mary" three times. Charlie begins seeing the figure in reflective surfaces. Distraught, she seeks out Sam and Dean. She had a boyfriend who once threatened to kill himself if she left him. When she left, he committed suicide. Sam and Dean remove or cover all reflective surfaces in their motel room so Charlie can stay there.

Sam and Dean decide that to destroy Mary they need to summon her. Sam offers to do it because she seems to be targeting people associated with deaths who keep secrets. Dean argues that his guilt over Jessica's death is misplaced and he is not keeping any secrets, but Sam says Dean does not know everything.

After summoning Mary, she appears, and Sam's eyes start to bleed. His reflection accuses him of being responsible for Jessica's death and reveals that he had nightmares about how she would die for days before the event, but failed to warn her.

Dean smashes the mirror, but Mary emerges from the frame, and accuses Dean of being responsible for people's death. Finally Dean shows Mary her own reflection, who accuses her of killing people. Dean smashes the mirror and she disappears.

The boys take Charlie home, and Sam tells her not to feel guilty over her boyfriend's death because she could not have prevented it. Dean tells Sam it is good advice. As they leave, Dean asks Sam what his secret was, but Sam refuses to tell him. Just then he sees Jessica, standing on a street corner in a long nightgown, before she disappears.

Music

  • Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Going Down
    plays during Jill's encounter with Bloody Mary
  • Def Leppard - Rock of Ages
    plays in the car, when they're talking about how Mary is connected to all the mirrors
  • The Rolling Stones - Laugh, I Nearly Died
    plays at the end of the episode when Sam sees Jess on the side of the road

Trivia

Writing the Episode

  • The WB Description was wrong, in saying the partying high school teens jokingly dare their friend Charlie into saying the Bloody Mary three times, for it was actually a pre-teen party of just 3 girls, and the girl dared was named Lily Shoemaker.
  • The episode is set in Eric Kripke's hometown - some names of characters in the dialogue are shout-outs to his friends.
  • "We invented that back-story for her. What would turn somebody into Bloody Mary? Why would a character show up, and why would it claw your eyes out? Obviously there's not much of an episode if all you have to do is summon it and that's what kills you. And if that's all there is to it, why aren't millions of people across the country dying? So the conceit we came up with is that only if you have a secret will she really appear and kill you." - Eric KripkeSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 44

Filming

  • Filming Locations: George's Taverna in Steveston, Richmond, Canada (Jess, final scene). The flight of stairs used when Dean and Sam return from talking to the coroner were used quite a few times in Supernatural, namely in Asylum, Scarecrow, and In My Time of Dying.
  • This is the first episode to feature the starburst clock. Dean takes it off the wall when he is in the process of covering up all the reflective surfaces in the motel room. It is in many motel rooms and home of the victims the brothers visit throughout the series.
  • "'Bloody Mary' was one of my favorite ones (shows) - some really creepy scenes. I think that the visual effects really enhanced the show. Those are the ones that I like. You wouldn't necessarily know that it was a visual effect, but it still adds a little bit of that horror beat to what they're trying to do." - Ivan HaydenSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 144
  • "... that was a really good transformation. She had shoulder length hair and I put hair extensions on her to give her that greasy, textured, can't-see-her-face kind of look." - Key hairstylist Jeannie ChowSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 38
  • "Her costume was a dress that I designed and we made, then we seriously aged it and broke it down and put wax on it and made it look like she was there for a hundred years." - Costume designer Diane WidasSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 38
  • Everything dealing with the blood rig, "(t)hat was a pretty tricky gag to have. Especially for Jared, who had such short turnarounds as it is, to have a prosthetic like that, which took so long to put on and have him bleeding from his eyes... He's a great guy, but he hates sitting still - for him to sit still for two and a half to three hours, it's just prison." - Key makeup artist Shannon CoppinSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 38
  • "What I remember about that is buying every mirror in town in triples or quadruples. And they had to be very large mirrors. I remember probably half my budget was spent on the mirrors. And we tried to find enormous, very ornate mirrors. I had buyers driving around all over the place, from shop to shop. Mirrors! That's all I remember. And they all got broken..." Set decorator George NeumanSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 39
  • The "glass" that Jovanna Huguet's Bloody Mary crawls across is made of rubber. Many of the mirrors that were broken were candy glass, which is made of sugar.Supernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 36

Other

  • The Meaning of the Episode Title: "Bloody Mary" names the monster of the week - the spirit of Mary exacting revenge.
  • The subtitles on the DVD sections are:
    1. Reflections.
    2. Hidden messages.
    3. Antique store.
    4. Through the looking glass.
    5. Good advice.
    6. End Credits.
  • It's pulse-pounding and terrifying to think you can't see this spirit in real life, but only in a mirror behind you. It's classic, the idea of spirits in mirrors. People would cover mirrors after someone died, to keep a soul from being trapped. "There's something about mirrors, about stealing people's souls that is very hardwired in the primal group consciousness of humanity... So I think because of that Bloody Mary is intangibly chilling in ways we can't even understand." - Eric KripkeSupernatural The Official Companion Season 1, p. 44
  • Eric Kripke was asked why Dean's eyes bled, since only someone who has a secret would have bleeding eyes. He answered, "Right, I know. It's just one of those things. As a writer you know things about these characters; you have histories and backstories. And there IS a real secret to Dean's character that we know and that we have; it's not core or central but it's there. It appears that the fans have latched onto that and it's driving them crazy, and at some point before the show is over we'll need to reveal it, but not now. And the more time that passes that harder it gets to revisit." Supernatural Creator Eric Kripke Answers Fan Questions - Part II
  • When Sam sees Jess's spirit standing in the street, she is wearing a long white nightgown.
  • Supernatural.tv: Inside the Legend: Bloody Mary

Pop Culture


  • The title of the episode, "Bloody Mary", refers to the urban legend of the same name.

  • A great deal of the aesthetic of the villain in this episode is taken from the Japanese horror film and American remake, The Ring.
  • Sam: Hey, night vision.
    Dean turns on the night vision for him.
    Sam: Thanks. Perfect.
    Dean: Do I look like Paris Hilton?
    Reference to Paris Hilton's infamous sex video, which made the rounds on the internet. It's also perhaps a bit of meta, as Hilton and Jared Padalecki worked together in the film House of Wax. Ironically four years later Paris Hilton appeared in Fallen Idols.

Species

  • Human
  • Spirit