Supernatural is Back!

A slate of four new episodes of Supernatural starts tonight (Thursday, April 24), building up to the long-anticipated crisis over the expiration of Dean's one final year on Earth before he must descend into Hell.

Tonight's episode, though, provides some relief from Dean's impending doom thanks to the return of bumbling ghostbusters Ed and Harry. 

The episode details are as follows:

• "Ghostfacers" (3x13, airing April 24). Sam and Dean take a break from their usual gig to star in a gritty reality show called "Ghostfacers," which chronicles the pursuit of the paranormal. Ed Zeddmore and Harry Spengler (A. J. Buckley and Travis Wester, reprising their roles from season 1's "Hell House") have created a radically different and sometimes violent show full of profanity that takes them to the Morton Mansion, an abandoned estate which becomes one of the most haunted places in America one night each year. However, as their team begins to get picked off in grisly manners not fit for television, they realize they are in over their heads.
• "Long-Distance Call" (3x14, airing May 1). Dean is stunned after he receives a phone call from his long-dead father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who tells him he has a solution to get Dean out of his deal. Sam and Dean argue, because Sam is skeptical that it is really John on the other end of the phone and warns Dean not to listen to him. But Dean disagrees and sets off on his own path to follow his father's orders. Guest starring Tom O'Brien (Roger Nixon from Smallville).
• "Time Is On My Side" (3x15, airing May 8 ). As time runs out for Dean, Sam convinces him to head to Eerie, Pennsylvania to investigate a possible zombie case. Instead, they discover Doc Benton (Billy Drago), a real-life doctor who, in 1816, abandoned his medical practice to follow his obsession with finding the key to eternal life by drugging people and stealing their vital organs. Meanwhile, Bobby (Jim Beaver) finds out where Bela (Lauren Cohan) is hiding, and Dean heads out to confront her, leaving Sam behind to deal with the good doctor. Dean and Bela battle it out for the last time, and Dean leaves Bela in a desperate, and possibly fatal, position.
• "No Quarter" (3x16, airing May 15). The season finale, written by series creator Eric Kripke, takes us up to Dean's last day on Earth. "It's a fight to the finish," writer/producer Sara Gamble told Sci Fi Wire. "Several of the players that we've been watching deal with this over the course of the season will be in the episode. We said we weren't going to make it easy for them, and we've made it pretty difficult, bordering upon impossible." Will Dean survive? "For all you know, [in the fourth season] it's going to be Sam with a flashlight in haunted houses with a special cell phone that calls hell," Gamble joked. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if Dean stayed in Hell for a while – after all, that's how it played out for John.