Supernatural, season 5

Lucifer is risen, and the apocalypse turns out to run on consent: Michael needs Dean's yes, Lucifer needs Sam's, and the whole architecture of the war - Zachariah's pressure, hell's temptations, destiny quoted like scripture - is aimed at two signatures. The season is the brothers refusing, badly, at cost: the Four Horsemen surface one by one, entire towns are spent as leverage, and the fifth season's best hours - a suburban life for Sam that was never real, a 1978 detour to save their parents, heaven itself with its Route 66 of memories - keep restating the same question. Whose story is this?

The alliance thins and hardens: Castiel, cut off from heaven, falling by degrees and swearing anyway; Bobby, dealing his soul to find Death and getting his legs back in the bargain. Death, when found, hands over his ring willingly - four rings, it turns out, open the cage.

The plan is Sam's and it is terrible: say yes, take the Devil, and jump. Detroit goes wrong on schedule - Lucifer wears him easily - and the last stand is a cemetery, Michael in the borrowed shape of a half-brother, and Dean arriving in the Impala to be beaten nearly to death for standing there. A toy soldier in the ashtray does what willpower could not. Sam takes back his hands, opens the cage, and falls - taking Michael with him. Dean keeps a promise, drives to a woman named Lisa, and the last frame is a streetlight coming on over Sam watching the house.