Fianna's Awakening (Warriors of Myth and Legend #1) by Ron C Nieto

Aisling is one of the Fianna, charged with protecting Ireland from supernatural threat - even if the other Fianna are less than accepting of that

And Ronan is one of those supernatural threats - a Tuatha de Danann, exiled from Ireland by the Fianna on pain of death. But he’s back, desperately looking for the four treasures to save his people

When one of those treasures emerges, their paths are bound to cross in a mess of secrets - but while they are old enemies there may be a common enemy far darker than either

I am left with a sense of… disatisfaction. And not just because we have a book devoid of minority characters.

Looking back I can think of all the good things about the book - the concept of the setting, the Fianna, the Irish history and mythology, the hints of the Tuatha De Danann - I mean these are all things that are designed to hook me in. The writing was also really good, excellently paced with some awesomely immersive action scenes that still managed to bring in introspection. (There are authors but write tangents into their action scenes and I just picture the protagonist staring into space for 10 minutes while the fight rages around them).

And the main character, a strong capable woman without either a desperate need to go it alone nor a refusal to accept help. Who has agency without a hint of spunkiness, pushes back against sexist patronising without being ridiculous or cliched or without the situation being cartoonishly silly. Magic and fighting and fun… She is the only woman in the book which would generally be an issue but it also kind of underpins a central conflict of her character. She’s not an exceptional woman and certainly doesn’t seem to regard other women with contempt or negatively. But she’s the only female fianna surrounded by men who don’t give her the respect she is owed.

Ronan’s story, the refugee of a broken people trying to bring some hope and salvation to his people - but it’d be nice to see that more developed, explore what a Tuatha De Danaan actually is - and what a Fianna actually is. Still these are great things I definitely liked.

And yet….

And yet I’m not hooked in. Oh I can talk myself into being hooked in because I love these elements. But I feel this book maybe went too far in for plot and not enough in for world building. We introduced the concept of some of these creatures and beings but it’s brief. We get an idea of Aisling’s struggles in the Fianna and her place in it - and it’s really well presented as Aisling constantly expects behaviours from Ronan he doesn’t display. It’s woven into how she’s clearly had to live and work and it feels more natural and real because of it.

A Tale of Two Demon Slayers (Accidental Demon Slayer #3) by Angie Fox

Lizzie is going to Greece to have a holiday with her Gryphon boyfriend in his ancestral home - while Dimitri can finally look to a future with his family and clan now the curse has been lifted

But peace is quickly menaced by an ominous prediction of Lizzie’s death. Oh and Dimitri’ ex who raises some disturbing questions about where Lizzie actually fits in his world.

This is one of this books that surprises me. The first two books of this series have… not been my favourite series, been often quite simplistic and sidelining just about everything that made this book so fascinating - like the biker witches

And a fair bit of that continues - the biker witches are still just a vague background group who don’t serve a great deal of purpose except to be the world’s worst house guests just so Lizzie can feel super super worried.

But it does equally feed quite interestingly into Lizzie’s conflict over just how much Dimitri has done for her, sacrificed for her et al. Which is an interesting element of self-reflection especially from a character who has spent most of her story so far being understandably self-absorbed. I mean this isn’t a character flaw on Lizzie’s part because she’s obviously gone through a lot, being a little self-focused makes sense. I don’t begrudge her a second of this because that’s natural, nor do I think her resisting further revelations or her objecting to anything stopping her having a break, just a brief break. This is a reasonable, human reaction. And it’s equally reasonable for her to, when she has a bit of break, to reflect on that and think that maybe the people around her have done a lot for her. I kind of think that the Witches deserve more of this reflection and realisation than Dimitri. But the whole conflict and internal debate is really well done.

I think that the book kind of misses what Lizzie did for them - saving the witches and releasing Dmitri’s family from a curse that was killing his sisters and destroying his family and future. I mean this whole narrative kind of misses that every side character would actually be dead if it weren’t for Lizzie. The balance isn’t all one way- and I think that this is pushed at least in part because they wanted Lizzie to have break up angst with Dmitri. Which I don’t get the need for, we don’t need a relationship drama as well as everything else and I think the relationship was already super shaky because of how very very.

Supernatural: Season 14, Episode 11: Damaged Goods

Time to cut down another storyline - Nick, Lucifer’s ex-host, who is now dealing with serial killer impulses and a desire to get vengeance for his family by finding Abraxas the demon who killed them. This involves finding various people who are probably really eager to co-operate with him but he decides to go with kidnapping threat and torture anyway

Because evil. Oh and he has an angel blade. Do they mass produce these things?!

But we also have Dean. Last episode we were told by Billie that there was just one possible way that Michael doesn’t escape Dean’s head and causes the world to end. Despite a regular habit of disrupting prophecy and rebuilding reality, Dean accepts this

I approve. This is very very very much in character. If it were Sam who was facing this certain horrible death, Dean would end the world first. But since it involves his own martyrdom and his own self-destructive impulses and lack of self worth, this makes perfect sense

Speaking of that unhealthy co-dependence. Dean decides to set that plan in motion by going on a little road trip to see Mary (staying in Donna’s cabin. Alone as she and Bobby had a little tiff but mainly because with this very personal emotional time for Dean I think Bobby-not-Bobby would just really complicate things. The Pseudo-father-figure-who-isn’t would be awkward). And he wants to go alone. He also hugs Sam goodbye

Sam is SUSPICIOUS. Dean does not go places without Sam. He just… doesn’t. That unhealthy attachment ensures it. Dean also doesn’t hug. Dean doesn’t do emotion like that. Hugs mean the end of the world. As Sam says. Which kind of annoys me because I think one of the advantages of having fourteen seasons is that a show doesn’t need to explain things like that, but hey.

Dean heads to Mary, dropping in to see Donna, who is always awesome and show have had her own show like Wayward Sisters and I am NOT OVER THIS.

Donna also notices Dean is acting… oddly but he continues on to see Mary who, thanks to lots of phone calls with Sam, knows Something is Up and they do lots of family bonding and reminiscing while Mary tries to figure out exactly what is happening with Dean. I like this - I like the dynamic and the recognition that everyone is deeply worried but also fully away Dean will neither ask for nor accept help.

Star Trek Discovery: Season 2, Episode 1: Brother

Supernatural: Season 14, Episode 10: Nihilism

After a very very very long recap - honestly after fourteen seasons it’s amazing every episode isn’t just endless recap - we open with Dean running a bar with Pamela Barnes. She was a recurring character on the show, a psychic and one of Bobby’s contacts who became blind when looking at Castiel’s true form and later died because she’s female and on Supernatural and that’s just dangerous.

He’s having a happy time drinking booze, having no customers, not!flirting with Pamela and killing the odd vampire who shows up. And not selling his bar. This quickly replays on a loop and this is obviously Dean stuck in his headspace

And am I the only one who thinks that there’s absolutely no way Dean’s headspace bar would have country music while classic rock still exists? C’mon Supernatural you know your own soundtrack!

So to everyone else - the terrible plan of terribleness has failed and now Dean is newly possessed by the archangel Michael and there’s an army of monsters about to turn an entire city into monsters. Not an important city or big one, but Supernatural has always had a kind of rural-mid-west thing about it that it’s not going to break that now.

So then the gang throws holy oil at Dean!Michael and manage to get the holy handcuffs on him. Which… well they had a plan B I guess? They could have maybe included this in the planning? Maybe thrown the holy oil at Michael and then gone in with the spear? Or maybe it needed unnecessary gloating to work?

Michael declares that their puny handcuffs totally can’t hold him. Except they can. Or at least for the time being. But they can’t stop him summoning his growing army of monsters who begin banging on the hastily secured doors.

With no idea what to do, Sam decides to call on the Reapers. Billie, the new Death, always has a reaper following the Winchesters around because they’re both a) annoying and b) there’s grudging respect. But mainly A.

So Jessica is their currently assigned Reaper - because they’re so annoying that she’s had to assign shifts of Reapers to watch them. Jessica then explains to Sam that she’s a reaper and it’s so very much not in her job description to save people. Quite the opposite. He tries to invoke some debt the Reapers owe them but she points out the Winchesters can’t fuck things up, then fix said fuck up, then act like everyone owes them for that

I like the Reapers, they’re so very good at calling out Winchester shit

Michael pipes up to say in his world they’ve destroyed death and enslaved all the Reapers. Since people are regularly dying on his world I can assume this is either a) nonsense, b) the writers threw it in to sound ominous without thinking what it meant for their world building) or c) Archangel shenanigans

Thankfully some other mystical force gets in touch and whisks Sam, Castiel, Jack and Dean!Michael to the Winchester cave which is rather surprising but hey good use of Deus Ex. It’s also surprising to Maggie leading the extras to fight the monsters in the city - but thankfully Michael now summons those monsters to the Winchester cave so they stop destroying and recruiting

That leaves Sam & co thinking what to do next and they decide, following a previous experience with Crowley and possession. So they want to go into Dean’s head using shenanigans to snap him out of possession

Van Helsing: Season 3, Episode 12: Christ Pose

As Van Helsing heads towards its season finale, someone on the writing staff has decided “let’s really annoy Paul with big shallow hot takes on things that need way more analysis”

And lo it’s time for the next episode for this. Now we have Scarlett stranded on an island for some indeterminate amount of time… long enough for her to do a full Tom Hanks - Wilson skit. She also shows herself to be not the smartest person around with her spending a long  time making a raft but not checking the island with a lighthouse for boats

One would expect boats in such a location

Anbyway she arrives on shore and manages to catch up with Axel and… ye gods how much time has passed? What has Vanessa been doing? I mean Axel has travelled from San Francisco to Denver then to wherever he is now and now Scarlet went from San Francisco to this island and now wherever Axel is

In the apocalypse. With apparent hordes of vampires around. In fact, where are these hordes of vampires? How come travelling is this easy? Even Game of Thrones wasn’t as fast and loose with distance.

So there’s much kissing and Axel briefly tries to convince her to move in with him somewhere and have lots of little ninjas but she insists on going to help Vanessa. Though Axel adds a little angst to that by asking if Scarlett will be ready to murder her sister should Vanessa have fallen to the Dark Side of the Force

Road trip time and along the way they find a pack of day walker vampires which use their new found intelligence to pull them into a trap. Which would have worked if they weren’t immortal vampire killers who slaughter them all with ease

Except Axel fires a shotgun and it misfires and badly burns his face and eyes. Wait, wasn’t Axel sort of immortal like everyone else? After coming back from being a vampire? Just like Julius and Phillip? He can be mauled by vampires but this brings him down?

Badly injured, Scarlett drags him to a random guy who happens to be in the area for help

Said random guy does help despite all her snarling because he’s Super Holy Guy. He is a man of deep and abiding faith who firmly believes in god and everything is god’s will and all you need is prayer - and that includes Axel’s fate when he gets an infection (wait, again immortal guy has an infection? Really?). Holy guy insists on prayer, everything happens for a reason etc. He also walks around the apocalypse with no weapons, he’s a dedicated pacifist who relies on faith to keep him safe.

What a lucky lucky man. That’s Scarlett’s point of view. But Holy Man invokes faith, telling his story of miraculously surviving a hurricane. Scarlett is still not a big fan of this idea because they’re living in apocalypse world and all - which Holy Man refers to as “god’s discipline”.

Yeaaaahhhhh so special holy man gets to survive and walk around untouched by vampires, but 90% of the population of Earth is slaughtered for “discipline”? Yeah, that’s really really twisted. And part of the utter problem of divine intervention saving you means there are millions upon millions of other people suffering horrendously who are somehow unworthy of such intervention. Throw in the idea of god’s “discipline” causing genocide and I dearly hope a vampire eats the man.

Instead they go looking for antibiotics (which have a use by date, y’know, so this many years after the apocalypse may be a bit...ineffective). Along the way Scarlet saves Holy man’s life (yes he thinks this is divine intervention, of course he does) and they go to help Axel… except a horde of Walkers appear

Van Helsing: Season 3, Episode 11: Been Away

Mini storyline first - Sam is still hunting down the one he loves, Mohammed. He pauses along the way to kill Mike (I’m fairly certain he’s killed Mike before but hey, sacrificial gay men was apparently delayed. These characters exist entirely to die for Sam’s evilness) to tell him that love is the source of all suffering. That people hurt and suffer the most because people they love are taken from them which is such pain

Obviously Mike disagrees, but his refusal to defending himself, repeatedly, because Sam threatens the people he loves. He ends up dying horribly and Chad watching him die which Sam takes as further proof that love is the source of all pain

He insists he’s trying to remove love from himself but the woman vision following him says he hasn’t yet - and directs him to where Mohammed and Vanessa are.

Right, now to main plot…

Actually that’s a lie. I don’t think there was any real main plot here because I’m not sure anything that happened this episode was actually relevant to the main plot which is something I’ve been saying about Van Helsing all season. Did we really need an entire episode to give Axel a tragic past? Really?

So Axel continues his road trip and eventually ends up in his home town waiting for Scarlett. He even turns on the lights to draw attention from passing vampires though apparently it’s for Scarlett. I guess. He has a memory board and one of them is a newspaper clipping of his sister Polly who apparently went missing when he was a

While hanging around he meets a group of survivors who are using sirens to distract vampires while they loot stuff. It doesn’t go entirely well and someone gets eaten. Axel charges in to the rescue and they all run off together. We have Lorne, a man with obvious dementia and memory problems, Axel remembers from his childhood. And Axel is remembered as well - but briefly due to his dementia.

We also have Carter who is aggressive and harsh and scathing - especially to Lorne. Nelson who is, well, there. And Kelly.

Carter doesn’t welcome Axel because GRRRR ARGGGH I’M THE ANGRY ONE. Kelly does welcome him because she thinks he’s cute and I’d be kind of really happy with this except Carter is pretty scornful about it and Axel openly is a “Good Man” by saying she doesn’t need to trade herself for protection. Which is super condescending and don’t tell me Axel has body image issues and doesn’t realise how hot he is because he definitely knows he’s hot. Hey, a woman can want to have sex with a hot guy because she wants to have sex with a hot guy. This is a legitimate desire and can we not have everyone making an issue of it?

Anyway she dies later.

Axel decides to help them on a raiding run because their plan of using the siren distraction then stealing lots of stuff won’t keep working on the more intelligent, organised day walkers. So Axel makes a plan (Carter is both scathing of the old plan and scathing about Axel’s ability to make a new plan because she has a characterisation as the Angry One damn it) and they go in with lots and lots of power tools

This may actually have been the point of the episode - someone wanted to kill vampires with a chainsaw. Which is a legitimate wish I perfectly understand

During the attack Kelly is bitten and Axel shoots her to stop her turning so tragedy. Well if anyone cared. No-one really does. It’s also sort of Lorne’s fault because he charges on the scene firing his gun randomly before running to the cellar. Carter kind of freezes and needs to be snapped out of a fugue state to get her to move and they all retreat to the basement.

Z Nation, Season 5, Episode 12: At All Costs

We’re heading towards the season finale and the big confrontation at Altura. Murphy has been marched into a load of busses by Estes and his cronies. Not to go anywhere just to detain them.

Because buses are secure?

Murphy is not amused and Estes really should pay attention to when Murphy uses his terrifying super powers to control all the Talkers around him. Yes he sounds like he’s joking when he says “undead demigod” but he really isn’t.

Everyone else is sneaking into Altura despite the security, facial recognition and habit of shooting traitors in the head.

Ok, let this rant hereby stand for the whole episode because otherwise I’m going to have to say this over and over and over and over: 5 seasons of canon do not support the technology of Altura. The conditions the Alturans have been living under since the apocalypse do not support the technology of Altura. Computers are dubious from what we’ve seen, computer networks more so and even less necessary, mobile phones are ridiculous and, most of all, all this electronic and cybersecurity makes no sense. The enemy for these survivors has been, for the most part, mindless zombies. You don’t need facial recognition for this - it’s ludicrous that Altura has this kind of security structure

In classic Z Nation fashion they even lampshade how ridiculous this is with Murphy repeatedly being bemused by the fact they have phones. So take my rant as done so I don’t have to repeat it

Inside Citizen Z joins Kaia and they do a fair bit of hackingness while George and Warren are captured - apparently by design. Their presence is convincing Estes that the Talkers are preparing to attack. And he may be right because Doc, Addie and 10k have rescued all the Talkers to take them to a place they start fortifying… and we have a really nice father/son moment with Doc and 10k (in that it’s really real because Doc is all real and emotional while 10k is faintly bemused and doesn’t quite know what to do with all this emotion. The accuracy is painful). Addie is also still not entirely sold on Newmerica, not having enough faith in humanity to have it happen.

Pandora finds Murphy all alone and fails to get him to talk except to snark. I would have liked him to use his super powers on her but apparently not. The most disappointing part of this scene is that Pandora vehemently rejects the idea she’s a Talker. So rather than having some kind of long running sinister plan, it turns out she’s just utterly in denial over what she actually is… it feels like a missed opportunity to have a character more complex than evil character is evil. Anyway she leaves because she hears the vote is on - some dastardly vote of Estes to make himself supreme leader (only the living may vote, of course) so she decides to leave the demigod behind untouched. This is not a good idea

Van Helsing, Season 3, Episode 9: Loud Love

We’re going to the other half of the split storyline again - so it’s back to Denver.

Julius is officially done with feeling that guilty over Phil and his big dramatic attempts to commit suicide. He sneaks into the morgue to free him and cover up that Phil keeps dying and then reads Phil the riot act. He can keep trying to kill himself but Julius is done covering it up and will allow the people of Denver to discover he’s a quasi-immortal and then he can see if vivisection will be the thing to finally kill him. Phil takes this into consideration and decides to find his wife

Julius is super happy about this and on cloud nine tries to flirt with Frankie his boss - and we see some consequences of Julius being a vampire for so long: he has no knowledge of modern slang. Frankie brushes over this so she can get to climbing that tall, hot bunch of muscles. Make the most of it Frankie, the fridge is calling.

Phil goes to the record office to find his wife and is told it will take several days. To which Phil responds with a deeply menacing death threat. This is a foreboding warning of things to come… he learns his wife has beens shipped to Loveland. A prison camp where people never ever come back. And Phil can’t go there unless he commits a heinous crime

Yeah… that was probably not the best advice to give. He promptly shoots the guard giving him this advice and then gives himself up so he can be taken to the prison camp.

As an aside we also learn that Denver keeps track of your “debt” and you’re not allowed to leave until you’ve paid up. Including the “debt” you accrue while eating while in quarantine

Another person facing imprisonment is Jolene. Jolene has been handing out pamphlets warning people that the vampire repellent they all are injected with causes psychotic breaks. Jolene has no regrets, she will continue to inform her patients of the risk. This isn’t really a crime but no-one cares and she’s locked up - so Caitlyn can control Sarah and her brilliance.

Caitlyn openly says this to Sarah’s face and Sarah begins her Done Era. She demands a captured vampire and a gene sequence - barking angry orders at Caitlyn in a nice little power play. She gets her sequencer - with ominous words from Caitlyn about their power and reach. Sarah doesn’t care much, she gets the elder blood gene sequenced, does some weird experiments with the angry vampire - which she then uses to murder Caitlyn

Including letting the vampire bite Caitlyn, killing the vampire, watching her feel the pain of turning… and then kills her. Do not piss her off - she does not take prisoners.

She then tries to rescue Jolene - but she’s being shipped to Loveland in the evacuation.

Evacuation?

Well -first let’s catch up with Axel and the survivors who are derailed in their trip to Denver by Kit going into labour. There are complications in pregnancy… and when their uneducated attempts to turn the baby fail they resort to caesarian section. Which is, of course, a commonly used and success medical procedure in 21st century hospitals… and pretty much guarantees the death of the mother when performed by non-medical personnel, in non-medical settings without medical tools, drugs or even herbs.

And Kitt dies

And while it is very sad and emotionally powerful it is surprisingly rare to see dystopians acknowledge things like how dangerous childbirth is when you don’t have 21st century technology and resources.

Of course it also means that Kitt has existed entirely to be a baby dispensary. Baby has now been dispensed so she can shuffle off. They continue to Denver where Axel drops them off and goes his merry way. The rest of them go into Denver and notice that all their defences are very good against vampires who die under ultraviolet light and pretty much useless against day walkers.

Z Nation: Season 5, Episode 11: Hackerville

Time to follow this nonsensical storyline further - they need to bypass Altura’s security so they have gone to Hackersville, an old telephone switching centre which is now occupied with Hackers who have been hacking into Altura’s systems. At one point we even see people using mobile phones

To which I have to ask… how?! Why? For most of this series people have been hard pressed to even find electricity - and a radio mast is something unique and special. The whole power of Citizen Z was that he still had the technology to speak to the world. So where did this all come from?

And why does Altura even have public network? How are the Hackers attacking this? Why does Altura have a network that isn’t self-contained? Given that outposts are pretty self sufficient in this new world, why would it have any kind of open internet which the hackers can access? And why would they connect their CCTV to it? My own firm doesn’t link their CCTV to the internet! Why is Altura? Why can Altura connect to the internet?

But hey let’s not let common sense get in the way of a plot. So they go see the Hackers and shenanigans ensue. There’s a series of geeky clues to get in which is solved by George kicking down the door. The head of the hackers can be a little awkward but Warren keeps pointing a gun at him. Because she has no time for arguments. Also Citizen Z is super protective of Kaya and it’s nice to see the power of their love… but at the same time there’s way too much jealousy about it all

There’s a brief attack by zombies and some nifty drones hunting them down which everyone loves except Warren who has no time for these nonsenses.

Between them they do guide Kaya through Altura and past the security to find Estes’s laptop. There they find about his plan for “The Final Mercy” which has some unpleasant words about elimination. This is not good.

Legacies: Season 1, Episode 6: Mombie Dearest

It’s Lizzie and Josie’s 16th birthday. Which means a big party and Lizzie making everything about her as usual. There will be a lot of teen drama about this. Yay.

But there’s still a story about this shiny knife of why-has-Alaric-kept-this-my-gods-doesn’t-the-supernatural-world-have-someone-more-qualified-to-handle-this-aaargh-I-can’t-even-get-up-without-asking-Hope-for-help to deal with. And the latest monster to collect the knife is… Alaric’s dead wife Jo

Jo, as we recall from the Vampire Diaries trainwreck, is Josie and Lizzie’s mother who was killed on her wedding day to Alaric by her evil twin (since her whole family has twins and oh, one is destined to kill the other at age 22 and no-one has told Lizzie and Josie this yet) and her family magically stuffed the babies into Caroline’s womb. Vampire Diaries went to some strange places.

Alaric is pretty suspicious about his dead wife coming back from the dead and points a crossbow at her. Well, I get the suspicion but, as Jo points out, this is Mystic Falls. Everyone has come back from the dead at some point. She also makes a hilarious comment about Alaric looking “seasoned” since he’s 16 years older than she remembers.

Alaric tries to keep this from his daughters but they quickly find out and don’t remotely respect his no because he’s helpless and useless anyway so discover their biological mother. Lizzie is kind of hostile to Jo, having the idea that bonding with her is somehow disloyal to Caroline. While Josie instantly wants a closer relationship. Alaric wants to keep her away from them until he is sure that Jo is who she says she is. Which involves testing and that huge huge hugely useful lie detector orb which really really could have been really super useful in The Originals. Where were you little plot breaking orb? All the tests point to her being the real deal

Dorian’s research does turn up the idea of people being resurrected in order to murder someone though. So she’s still a risk

Teenaged angst time! So Hope is all crushing after Landon but at least she is self-aware enough to recognise this. She also tries to make peace with Rafael - he’s super angry at her for kicking out Landon for his own good but he also needs Hope’s help. He agreed to be Lizzies date for the party and, especially since he just slept with her (which he regrets) he feels he needs to do right by her. Which means learning all the ornate, rather old fashioned party etiquette which Mystic Falls loves so much. Hope is happy to teach him since Aunt Rebekkah has a weird fixation with this kind of nonsense.

This gives them chance to bond, Rafael admit he’s not all that into Lizzie and Hope to realise that he’s still mourning for his dead girlfriend and kind of working through his issues by being afraid of letting Lizzie down. Honestly that amount of angst means you probably need to not date for a while. Hope seems to agree and encourages him to be honest with Lizzie

Supernatural: Season 14, Episode 9: The Spear

Time for an epic opening with an epic voice over from Dean about how they are the people who monsters are afraid of. Which is, yes, kinda epic. But this is Supernatural. Epic pre-ambles to any kind of find finale need classic rock. It is known. Know your brand, Supernatural.

So we have a bit of domestic moment with Jack eating late night cereal and asking Castiel not to tell his other dad, Sam, who disapproves of high sugar food. Which is kind of cute and I think a lot more of these would have done a great job of turning Jack into someone I actually care about rather than that extra who keeps tagging along for no apparent reason. But really these scene is for Castiel to remind Jack not to tell anyone about the deal he made with the Empty

We’re already setting that up for a lot of angst because Dean is so super happy because they managed to bring Jack back from the dead and nothing went wrong and they didn’t have to pay a price and everything is awesome

So that’s definitely going to be future angst. But can I say again that we have another angst or personal drama moment that is centring on Dean even when this should be more Cas’s woe. Dean doesn’t have to be the centre of all.

But we’re back on track with Michael. Naomi has told them where Michael is. Kansas City. And he has a new body, a woman’s.

And I’m sure there are many reasons why anyone, let alone an Archangel, would go to Kansas City

I’m sure.

I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure they exist. Yes.

Sam has also snuck Garth into Michaels’ orbit. Since Garth is a werewolf so fits his whole army of monsters thing. Garth hopes to actually not consume the Michael Blood/Grace potion… which doesn’t go to plan because it’s hard to deceive an Archangel and he ends up taking the upgrade potion which is definitely not going to end well.

Between this spying they know Michael’s plan - send his army into Kansas city and turn every one there into more monsters. I am sure there are many… sensible reasons to begin your invasion of North America in Kansas City…

So the counter plan is to get the angel-killing spear from Dark Kaia (Dean and Castiel on that) and Ketch has some mystical golden egg which will help imprison Michael which he’s put in the post. Yes there are convoluted reasons but he still put it in the post. Sam and Jack are off to collect that.

Predictably it all goes horribly horribly wrong

To begin with Sam and Jack are attacked by Michael and it goes horribly wrong because, well, Michael is an Archangel which makes him pretty unassailable. He knocks Sam out, doesn’t kill him because… because… the script says so that’s why! He also destroys the magical egg so that’s out of the picture. Personally I don’t remember the egg was in the picture so there’s that.