Sam Winchester

Samuel "Sam" Winchester is a fictional character in The CW Television Network's Supernatural, played by Jared Padalecki.

Background
Sam was born on May 2, 1983 to John and Mary Winchester in Lawrence, Kansas. He was the couple's second-born child and younger son, four years younger than his older brother, Dean. Sam stands at 6' 4" tall.

Sam is different from his older brother, in that he is sensitive, rational, more innocent, and seemingly more concerned with living a "normal life" than his brother; in spite of this, it is apparent that he would do anything for Dean. He also rebelled against his father's attempts to raise him as a demon hunter and enrolled in Stanford University.

When Dean came to ask Sam for his help in the first episode, the viewers are introduced to Jessica, Sam's girlfriend. It is apparent that Sam was somewhat popular, despite no one knowing what it is his family really does. His brother Dean is the only one allowed to call him by his nickname, "Sammy." Sam has also had more love interests than Dean, although Dean has had a few flings on the show.

Although this is the Sam the viewers have come to love in Seasons 1 & 2, Sam has slowly become more and more hardened and cold hearted as Season 3 continues on. This is most likely a result of trying to become more like Dean so he can help Dean get out of 'the Deal.'

Season 1
When Sam was only six months old (November 2, 1983), his mother was killed in his nursery by the demon Azazel. Infant Sam was saved when Dean ran outside with him while their father went back to try to rescue Mary, who was stuck on the ceiling and consumed by the flames that later engulfed the entire house.

Twenty-two years later to the day, Azazel kills Sam's girlfriend, Jessica, spurring Sam to embark on a journey with his brother to find their dad and kill the demon that killed their mother. While their father, John, is missing, he occasionally contacts the boys to leave them missions. The boys take care of mythical creatures and urban legends such as the Woman in White, the wendigo, folklore's Bloody Mary, and shapeshifters. During this time, Sam begins experiencing episodes of precognition and once displays telekinesis. He also attempts to meet girls in the many towns they visit. The season finale concludes with Sam, Dean, and their father escaping from a horrific crash with Azazel in Salvation, Iowa. While Sam is driving his father, and a badly-wounded Dean to a hospital after his brother is nearly killed by the demon (who had been possessing John), a truck piloted by a possessed man crashes into them, totaling Dean's Impala and leaving Dean on the cusp of death.

Season 2
In the beginning of the second season, Sam takes a more active role in the hunting. He tells Dean that this is what their dad would have wanted him to do. Azazel's plans for Sam are still unknown. Dean and Sam meet with three people that John once knew: Ellen Harvelle, her daughter Jo, and their computer genius associate Ash. They assist the brothers in their hunting.
In the episode "Simon Said", Sam displays immunity to Andy Gallagher's power of mind control, as opposed to Dean, who gave him his beloved Impala. He is also immune to the demonic sulfur virus in the episode "Croatoan."

Since "Hunted", Sam has learned what his father told Dean moments before his death: That Azazel plans to cause Sam to become evil and use him and "children like him" as soldiers in an upcoming war. Dean was told that if he could not save Sam, he would have to kill him. Sam is convinced that he must save as many people as he can in order to change his destiny, as he drunkenly states in "Playthings."

In the episode "Born Under a Bad Sign", Sam is possessed by the same demon responsible for Meg Masters' possession in Season 1, and the demon uses Sam's body to kill another hunter. This demon may also have knowledge of the events that led to the death of Ellen's husband. It becomes clear that if the time comes for Dean to shoot his brother, Dean would not be able to do so.

In the episode "What Is and What Should Never Be", Sam and Dean aren't close in the alternate reality created by a djinn. Neither Sam nor Dean had ever hunted, and Jessica is Sam's fiancée. As in reverse to reality, their mother is alive.

The first episode of the second season finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1", Sam is trapped in a haunted abandoned town in South Dakota with "others" of his kind. It is revealed that there is demon blood in Sam and his mother knew who Azazel was, much to Sam's surprise. Sam is stabbed by a soldier named Jake and collapses in his older brother's arms just as he and fellow hunter Bobby Singer come to the rescue. He dies within the minute, amongst his brother's pleas for him to stay with him.

In the second episode of the season finale, Dean made a deal with a "Crossroads Demon" to deliver himself to Hell in one year, in exchange for Sam's life. Sam doesn't know of what happened while he was dead, and is in fact unaware that he was ever dead in the first place. In the following battle to prevent Jake and Azazel from unleashing a demonic army, Sam shoots and kills Jake, unloading seven bullets into his body, four in the back and three in Jake's face. This is the first time Sam kills a man, or someone that isn't a demon, and seems to show no remorse; this could be because Jake killed him prior. Azazel questions Dean if he is sure that what he brought back in Sam is 100% pure. Sam figures out that he was dead, and tells Dean he'll get him out of the deal he made, no matter what.

Season 3
Season 3 mainly focuses on Sam taking a darker tone than he had in the previous seasons. He is doing whatever he can, or has to, to save Dean from going to Hell. In the episode "Fresh Blood" he decapitates Gordon Walker , a hunter who is turned into a vampire after he tries to kill Sam. Sam kills him with only a long piece of barbed wire. Furthermore, Sam says that his powers have gone away since Dean and he killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon. Thus far during the season Sam has seemed to show no remorse for killing people possessed by demons or other "human" enemies as previously seen in the show.

In the season finale Dean and Sam confront Lilith and her demon forces in a last ditch effort to protect Sam and save Dean's soul. Lilith ultimately incapacitates Sam and opens the door for the hellhounds to attack Dean. Sam gains control of the situation by somehow blocking Lilith's attack on him, and recovers the knife as the demon possessing Ruby's host leaves her body. Sam then goes to Dean's bloody and lifeless body and cradles it as he begins to cry.

Equipment
In Season One, he owns what appears to be a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, which he uses to gather information for hunts. The first time Sam uses the laptop is in the second episode "Wendigo", where he plays a video message. His possession of the laptop is ambiguous at this point because it is unsure what he did and did not salvage from the fire at Stanford in the pilot episode. In that same episode, his brother Dean makes references using computer software which leads viewers to believe that Dean may, in fact, be the owner of the laptop. In "Tall Tales," Sam claims ownership of the laptop, accusing Dean of misplacing it.

In the beginning of Season Two, when Sam and Bobby Singer are surveying the wreckage of the totaled Impala, Sam pulls the broken PC from the passenger seat. Then, in "Crossroad Blues," Sam is seen using an Apple 15" PowerBook or MacBook Pro, though interestingly, its display shows a Windows OS.

Sam also appears to own a Verizon-branded Motorola Q which has on at least one occasion (in "Hollywood Babylon") been used to visually track unseen ghosts. This phone however was destroyed in the third season episode "Fresh Blood."

Powers, Skills and Abilites
Sam exhibits both telekinetic and precognitive abilities at various times throughout the show. His telekinesis onscreen is limited to a single incident wherein he was under extreme stress and pressure, while his precognitive abilities, manifesting as dreams and visions of others' deaths, started prior to the first episode with dreams of Jessica's death, and continued throughout the first two seasons. Sam stated that visions stopped with the death of Azazel at the end of Season Two; Azazel is assumed to have given Sam and the other psychic children their gifts. However, according to Ruby, his powers are simply dormant. Ruby also states that if he was in full control of his power, he could blow away demons as powerful as Lilith with no effort. At the end of "No Rest For the Wicked", Sam demonstrates an ability to stop Lilith's attack, proving Ruby's theory correct.

Thanks to his training as a hunter by his father he is a skilled fighter, expert with firearms, shotguns, and melee weapons. Like his brother Dean he is skilled in many areas frowned upon by law, such as lock picking, computer hacking, car jacking and the list goes on. In the first two seasons he is often hesitant about using these skills because of his desire to be a 'normal' citizen, however this lessens over time. He has vast knowledge of the supernatural and is considered an "encyclopedia of weirdness." He is proficient in reading spells written in foreign languages such as Latin and more often then not is the brother stuck with doing the research for their latest hunt.

Weaponry
Sam uses a chromed Beretta 92fs loaded with silver rounds and uses a pistol grip 4-shelled 12 gauge shotgun loaded with rock salt. Is also very talented at hand to hand combat shown in season 1 episode 1 when he fights Dean in his dorm room. However, Dean appears to be the more skilled of the two when it comes to hand-to-hand, something Sam would never admit.

Though Sam is usually more concerned about not hurting the hosts and others possessed by deamons, he has actually used The Colt on more occasions than any other known person, including the original hunter. However, as of the end of the third season he has only killed three demons with the weapon, the same number as Dean.

At the end of the third season Sam loses possession of The Colt, but he now has possession of Ruby's Dagger, upon the death of Dean and Ruby's absence.