So, remember that Crowley person Becky The Wincesting Fangirl mentioned at the end of the last episode? The Lilith minion who's actually in possession of The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't? He's actually the head crossroads demon, and Castiel catches up to him arranging yet another bailout package for Goldman Sachs beneath a ridiculously scenic cloverleaf interchange. My Sweet Baboo attempts to follow Crowley back to the latter's lavishly appointed mansion, but the crafty minion's got the place positively encrusted with Enochian sigils, so it falls to Our Intrepid Heroes -- with a major assist from Jo Harvelle -- to break into the place, and once they've gained access, Crowley rather surprisingly hands them The Fucking Colt with a minimum of fuss, because he's convinced Lucifer intends to annihilate both the human and the demonic races, and Crowley would like to keep his job, thanks very much.

And so, after a brief end-of-the-world get-together back at Bobby's Emporium deep within the lush coastal rainforests of central South Dakota, the boys plus Castiel plus Jo and Ellen motor on down to Carthage, Missouri, where they're greeted by a city that's devoid of actual human inhabitants, but positively packed to the rafters with Reapers. Castiel marches off to investigate The Reaper incursion, and of course promptly gets his tantalizing ass trapped in a circle of flaming Jerusalem oil by Lucifer himself, and there's a bit of endless speechifying until Lucifer skips off on yet another nefarious mission, leaving Castiel alone with Meg -- yes, that Meg -- and My Sweet Baboo most awesomely escapes by luring Meg into the fiery ring and then -- get this -- slamming her demonic ass to the floor and stomping out of the circle across her back like she's some sort of Hell-sent meat carpet!

Meanwhile, Jo gets thoroughly mauled by one of those invisible Hellhounds we haven't seen in what seems like ten years, and as Dean scoops what's left of her up into his manly arms, Sam and Ellen bust open a convenient hardware store, where the four barricade themselves against the beasts outside while scrambling for a way to save Jo's life and make it out to the Civil War battlefield Lucifer's lounging around in order to pop a Fucking Colt cap in Lucifer's brain. Jo eventually cuts though all of the crap to announce that she'll remain behind in the hardware store with a couple dozen hastily prepared super-special anti-Hellhound bombs, thereby allowing the others to escape across the rooftops, but Ellen can't let her little girl die there on that squalid linoleum floor all by her lonesome, and so, the Harvelles sacrifice themselves together in order to give Sam and Dean another chance to save the world, and I... I think there's something in my eye.

And in the end, atop the mass grave Lucifer's constructed for the women and children of Carthage (which means that he's seriously standing on about 9,000 corpses in that last scene), Dean shoots Lucifer in the face. And nothing happens. Because we call it The Fucking Colt That Can Kill Anything Except When It Usually Can't for a very good reason. Fortunately, Castiel flutters on over in the nick of time to whisk Our Intrepid Heroes back to the lush coastal rainforests of central South Dakota, but they've failed, and Jo and Ellen exploded into millions of itty pieces, and Lucifer's summoned Capital-D Death to Earth, and we won't even begin to understand what all of it means until January 21st at the earliest, because that's how long we have to wait for the next new episode.

Eric Kripke sucks. Happy Holidays!