So it turns out that
Castiel stabbing Lucifer with an angel blade didn’t go quite as planned. In
fact, Castiel ended up half dead in a park or forest or woodland or something
Lucifer is a tough
cookie to kill.
Lucifer, meanwhile,
is trying to stock up on grace, apparently not having snacked on Castiel.
Instead he finds a passing Cupid (who is a disgrace to humanity since he
rewards a woman who willfully destroys perfectly good cake with true love
rather than sending her to the worst depths of hell as she deserves), sucks him
dry of grace and, duly vulnerable and human like, plunges his arm right through
the man’s chest
Which is messy
But also doesn’t net
Lucifer a whole lot of grace because Cupids are pretty low down the angelic
totem pole. More, since Lucifer is all human like without his own grace, he’s
suffering from hunger and cold and other squishy human things. Without money or
super powers he resorts to begging. And fails because everyone can pretty much
sense his “I want everyone to die” vibe. He does win the pity of a fellow
beggar whio helpfully tells him about a faith healer who has “angel” written
all over her
He goes to check her
out and finds Anael, an angel who is using her angelic powers to heal - for
considerable profit. Yes, she’s not the nicest of people and, upon falling
along with the rest of heaven, she decided not to freak out or panic but to
study humanity and do the best she could with her assets, choosing the right
vessel and going into business. And she does consider herself a business woman.
She is ruthless,
cold, disinclined to panic and very intelligent. So when Lucifer comes to her,
she doesn’t panic - she offers him a deal. He can snack on her grace - but not
all of it, not enough to kill her. He can take a little grace, let her
regenerate and then take more so on so forth, guaranteeing him a nice,
continuous supply to get up to full power while she doesn’t get dead - and has
lots of time to ingratiate herself and almost seduce him.
She also tells her
story - and it’s a nice complex one. Because back in heaven she was a very low
ranked angel, she had a very boring, monotonous job and any ideas she had were
just ignored because her rank was just too low. It really emphasises the whole
idea of free will, lack of agency and the issue angels had - and just how
little freedom they had. While most angels panicked when they fell, she
rejoiced because she was free. Interestingly this doesn’t actually resonate
with Lucifer as he was always about trying to please dad and failing and then
resenting it more than seeking his own freedom. But it does add another angle
on angeldom. Anael also feels human when her grace is drained and likes it -
the ability to feel, all that hope and love. While Lucifer clearly is not a fan
- not just because of all the physical sensations but also because he’s much
more inclined to doubt and worry about things like being a good father when he
has all these human emotions
Can we have a
shenanigans here? Because the idea that angels don’t feel seems… odd. We’ve
seen angels be angry, jealous, feel abandoned - and Castiel has felt just about
every emotion under the sun. I think we need to expand this idea of angels
feeling differently
Castiel returns to
Sam and Dean, letting them know about Lucifer being back, about Mary being
alive in the alternate dimension, about the evil archangel Michael’s plan to
destroy everything etc etc. It’s a lot and Sam and Dean aren’t exactly thrilled
with Castiel working with Lucifer but Castiel stands by his choice.
The plan is to tap
prophet Donatella and, powered by a huge amount of fried chicken, he will use
the demon tablet to figure out how to open a portal to the parallel dimension
so they can free Jack and Mary. They also need Lucifer’s grace to power this.
So not a big ask
And for added
vexation, Kentucky Fried Archdemon Asmodeus is also looking for Lucifer. He
wants him dead before he gets back to full power and they’re all doomed. He
dispatched Ketch who-should-be-dead to hunt him down. He ends up running into
Dean, Sam and Castiel to make a plea for them all to work together. Yeah
no-one’s having that: Castiel uses his angel mojo to send Ketch to sleep
They don’t kill him
Why they don’t kill
him I don’t know
They really should
kill him
The winchesters find
Anael and think she’s been kidnapped by Lucifer - not realising she’s not a
full collaborator - she warns Lucifer while hiding from them that he has
recharged his grace a lot. Which means when they confront him he’s powered up
enough for things to go badly wrong. They’re saved by Ketch (who should be
dead) and Lucifer and Anael escape. Lucifer winded - he’s powered up but not
that powered up yet.
Of course Ketch
saving them means they do make a deal to work with him and not just murder him.
They really should just murder him - especially since he tells them he;s
working for Asmodeus
Asmodeus also uses
his disguise act to make sure Donatello tells him if they manage to open a
portal to the alternate world. Asmodeus doesn’t like fried chicken - because Supernatural
is fully aware of the character they’ve created here. Asmodeus also has an
Archangel blade - a weapon that can kill Lucifer. Except only an archangel can
wield it
He has Gabriel
imprisoned - and mutilated and tortured. And I’m going to ask how that happened
since even holding Castiel captured was taxing. I know Princes of Hell are big
deals but Archangels are supposed to be the biggest of deals.
Lucifer decides to
consolidate his strength - by going to the angels. The angels are all prepared
to dog pile him when he makes them an offer: he knows how to make more angels.
We know they’ve been panicking about their lowering numbers for a long time: as
one of the oldest of Archangels, Lucifer saw God create the other angels. He
adds in an offer to get their wings back - all in exchange for their allegiance
Which is a big ask…
but he’s offering their continued survival. And with Asmodeus in charge of
hell, the angels are concerned whether they have the mojo to take on hell (and
there’s never a shortage of demons). They agree… and kneel before Lucifer, new
king of heaven
I can actually see
the angels supporting Lucifer after so little deliberation and despite him
being the Enemy. Give their desperation over their population it makes sense
(think back, from the Fall, to Castiel’s Leviathan time to various other battles
- how many angels have died and not been replaced?) - but also the decimation
of their leadership and the fact, as Anael revealed - angels don’t lead. Free
will is alien to them. Lucifer saying they need a leader makes sense: they’ve
had millennia of being led
Supernatural has always been kind of inconsistent
with angelic powers. At one time they were terrifying tanks of incredible power
that no-one could touch. Then they were fodder like many other creatures… now
we seem to be inching back towards angels-are-scary land. We can see this
especially with Castiel’s power. Last episode he used the “I touch you and sear
you to death from the inside” power - this was always one of the scary things
about angels. Demons, who could literally only be killed by a tiny number of
super powerful weapons (the colt, the demon knife, the first blade, angelic
blades. Killing a demon was a major thing) could be killed by an angel with a
single touch. It made angels super scary… and then they just… stopped doing it?
For reasons? (About the same time everyone and his cousin started acquiring
demon knives/angel blades). Now we had Castiel doing it again - and sending
humans to sleep with a touch. And am I seeing a change of attitude? For a long
time Castiel seemed to be almost subservient to the Winchesters - but now while
he’s not as arrogant as he first was, there’s a sense of… I don’t know, a “I
don’t have to justify myself to you” vibe when Dean is chewing him out for
working with Lucifer. It’s not huge but I feel a slight sense of “hey, you
remember I’m like a million year old angel, right?”. I’m thinking the writers,
with the new focus on Lucifer, the Archangels and heaven, is trying to pull
back from the whole Castiel-as-pet/comic-relief and remind us of Castiel of season
4: a being whose true form burned out a woman’s eyes, whose true voice brust
Dean’s ear drums and shattered all the windows in a building.
But for all that - I
still need an explanation for Gabriel here
This would also be a
good time for Chuck to show up again
