Written by Kroze Kresky

During the third season of Supernatural, head show-runner Eric Kripke started plotting out a spinoff to his hit series, while delving deep into his own mythos – chronicling the adventures of the first Hunter, Samuel Colt. Kripke felt there was so much that could be done with a Supernatural series set in the old wild west, bringing about a new feel to the genre.

Now here we are, three whole seasons later, and fans finally get a glimpse of Kripke’s vision as Sam and Dean do a little bit of time traveling back to the old days in order to find and hunt a phoenix.

The Brothers fight against the mother of all things, “Eve” (our big baddie for this season it appears), and so far we’ve only ended up with only dead ends and lives lost. They need to figure out a way out of this mess… thankfully, recently-deceased Gramps kept a lot of info hidden away in a secret cellar beneath his cabin, so the boys (and Bobby) decide to raid it in hopes of finding a lead on anything that might help. And boy, do they ever find a lead… turns out Gramps was not only researching a lead on how to kill Eve (with Phoenix ashes), but he also has the great Samuel Colt’s journal, which goes into detail about all that the legendary hunter has ever done. Including kill a phoenix! Dean, already no stranger to time travel (or love), figures he can get Castiel to zap them back into the past so they can retrieve the ashes from the dead phoenix (killed by Samuel Colt), thus beginning a very fun (if not too serious) episode of Supernatural.

This episode is packed full of time travel references to other movies. For instance, when Dean hatches his wild plan, he explains it by saying “Lets Star Trek IV this bitch… you know… save the whales?, also including nods to other great wild west time traveling adventures – Such as Back to the Future Part III, and as always, Supernatural aces the delivery on all of these things, making none of it feel out of place.

Jensen Ackles seems to have way too much fun playing a completely geeked-out Dean Winchester in the wild west, completely hamming it up with the delivery of lines taken right out of old westerns. Jim Beaver is also given a few select lines that make references to the previous series he worked on, Deadwood.

Supernatural is always at its best when it is having fun with its material, very much reminiscent of some of the more lighthearted Buffy and Angel episodes, and “Frontierland” is no exception. Granted, its not all sunshine and flowers, as the show makes more hits to what Castiel has really been up to in his heaven-civil-war with the other angels, as well as revealing that human souls can be used to supercharge an angel’s powers. Both these things hint at some really dark times coming up for the end of the season but never overpower the comical and lighthearted feel of the episode’s main plot.

ComicsOnline gives Supernatural – “Frontierland” 4 Kentucky fried angels out of 5.

Stay tuned to ComicsOnline.com for more Supernatural coverage and for everything geek pop culture!