‘Supernatural’: Or lift it to its feet

Supernatural
“The Future”
April 27, 2017

THEN: “I’m saying don’t…Just ’cause. I’m asking you not to. That’s it.”

“Hold my beer.”

NOW

Kelly is chained to a cot in the basement.  Dagon has stopped playing nice now that she’s proven herself a flight risk.  For her part, Kelly has stopped eating and bathing. There doesn’t seem much point when her baby is going to kill her.

Kelly regards her reflection in a broken mirror. Her image is fragmented. The only part of her that’s clear is her swollen belly.  She talks to the baby as she runs the water. Kelly says she loves him, but that there is no happy ending for either of them. Not if what Dagon says is true, and Lucifer’s child will bring only pain and death to the world.

“I can’t let that happen.”

Kelly settles into the tub. She cries out that she’s sorry as she slashes her wrist with a shard of broken glass. Her blood pools on the floor and turns the bathwater red. The camera pulls back to reveal an objectively beautifully composed shot that brings to mind David’s “The Death of Marat.”

It is also graphic and intense and would have benefited from more than the absolutely zero trigger warnings it received. So good job looking out, Show.

Dagon comes downstairs to find the tub full of bloody water and Kelly huddled in a corner. Her face glows with a renewed sense of hope. She says he wouldn’t let her die. He saved her. Dagon is like, girl no. Evil Jesus saved himself. Nothing has changed. Lucifer’s son will be born and Kelly will die.

Sam is hard at work calculating Kelly’s due date like,

He arrives at May 18 because he read The CW’s press release and knows that’s the date of the two-hour season finale. Dean raises the thorny question of what they do when they find Kelly. Sam doesn’t have an answer. He’s saved from speculating the grim possibilities by the squeal of the Bunker’s front door.

Hey! Cas is back! Sam is warm and cautiously welcoming. Dean is pissed. He’s pissed that Cas ignored their calls when they needed his help with Dagon and pissed that yet another person he loves has been ditching him. His sour chuckle is all, so what else is new in my life?

Not to mention Dean is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. He watches the show. He’s met Castiel.  He knows that nothing good comes from Cas being left to his own devices and good intentions.

Dean stalks off to his room to monitor police scanners for anything that might lead them to Kelly. He ignores the knock at his door. Cas comes in anyway. He pulls a cassette tape from his coat pocket. He says he just wanted to return it. The tape is labeled “Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx.”

Dean made Cas a mix tape.

Dean.

Made Cas.

A mix tape.

Destiel is real.

I still have every mix tape that every boy ever made me. Do the youngs even still make mix tapes these days? Somehow sharing a Spotify playlist just isn’t the same.

Dean holds the tape out without looking up. He growls that it’s a gift. “You keep those.” Cas turns to leave and Dean calls him back. He tells his angel that with everything that’s going on, he can’t just go dark like that. They didn’t know what happened to him.

“We were worried. That’s not okay.”

There it is. The real source of Dean’s anger. Castiel admits a truth of his own. He says he just keeps failing. Again and again. When Dean was in the Black Ops site. When he had and lost Kelly and couldn’t find her. He just wanted – he needed – to come back with a win for Dean. And for himself.

Castiel asks Dean what they’ll do if they find Kelly. “Could either of you kill an innocent?” Dean gives Cas a hard look that I read as, ‘Have you met me?’, but then he looks away. I thought of Cyrus Stein in Season 10 and what Dean said to him then. That the bad in him was in his blood and it would always win.

And then Dean shot the boy.

Dean has touched that darkness, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere near it again. He tells Cas they will find a better way. The angel asks for clarification on the ‘we’ in that statement. Dean calls him a dumbass.

“You, me, and Sam … we’re just better together. Let’s go Team Free Will.”

Dean announces he needs a beer and brushes past Cas. He doesn’t see the look of regret on the angel’s face.

Dean stops off in the library and tells Sam to get some sleep. They’re not going to find Dagon tonight. Sam is like, maybe that’s it. Maybe instead of tracking her, they track the nephilim. He calls back to Season 9 and the spell he and Cas were working on to find Gadreel. Dean remembers – that the spell didn’t work because they needed Gadreel’s grace and Cas couldn’t extract enough from Sam.

Bells and klaxons start sounding in Sam’s head. He says the tracking spell was a bust, but the extraction ritual worked. So if they could extract the angelic grace from Kelly’s kid, he’d just be a kid. No one has to die, everybody wins, we all get ice cream yay!

Sam hedges that it’s just a theory, but Dean embraces the idea. He says this is it. He scurries off to fetch Cas. He knocks and pushes open the door. Cas’s room is empty. Cas is gone. A sick feeling of ‘oh no no nonononono’ washes over Dean.

The Colt is gone, too.

Sam is gobsmacked. How did Cas get the Colt out of the safe in the first place?? Dean comes over all squirrelly. He put the Colt back in the safe, right? Dean admits it was under his pillow.

“I like to keep it close.”

You decide for yourself how it is that Cas knew that.

Dean shoves a gladius in the weapons bag and announces they’re going to find Cas and kick his feathered ass. Sam counsels moderation. There must be a reason Cas took it. He must be going up against something big. In that case, Dean suggests they find him, figure out what’s going on, and then kick his feathered ass.

Cas meets Kelvin. Joshua has located Kelly using the celestial pulse generated when Evil Jesus brought her back to life. Cas says there are only two bullets in the Colt. It’s not like he could ask for more. Kelvin says it’s enough. He commends Castiel for committing to Joshua’s plan and putting angel kind above the Winchesters.

Castiel snaps that he’s doing this for the Winchesters. He stole the Colt to keep them out of the game and out of harm’s way. But more than that, he did it to save them from killing an innocent.

“I will kill this girl so that Sam and Dean don’t have to.”

I mean, that’s a nice thought, but when has subverting someone else’s agency and making a choice for them – even for ‘their own good’ – ever, ever not gone sideways on this show?

Kelvin, Cas, and a red shirt angel slip into the house. Dagon goes poof and that’s one bullet. Kelvin sends Cas after Kelly, but he can’t bring himself to kill her. He whisks her away from the house instead. He tells her not to thank him. He had a mission and he failed.

They drive through the night. He stops at a motel to regroup with Joshua via angel radio and receive further instructions. He tells Kelly he’s taking her (and EJ) to Heaven. Their souls will ascend and their lives will end. Every cell of their beings will return to the Universe. It will be swift and painless, but it must be done.

“Your child could bring the universe to its knees.”

“Or lift it to its feet.”

That’s not a chance that Heaven is willing to take. Castiel turns the key in the ignition, but oh noes! The truck won’t start. Cas rents them a room while he Googles basic auto maintenance. He steers Kelly away from the windows and out of the bathroom. He’s finally learned that lesson. Bathrooms have windows that people can use to escape.

BATHROOMS HAVE WINDOWS THAT PEOPLE CAN USE TO ESCAPE.

Kelly tells Castiel that EJ saved her and is overcome again with fervor that her child is good and that she is part of a divine plan. Castiel is a soupçon kinder than Dagon, but no less blunt. He says there is no grand purpose at work. She’s not special; she was just there when Lucifer possessed the president.

And even if she’s right in her belief that EJ can be good for the world, who will care for him after the delivery kills her? Who is strong enough to protect him and keep him on the righteous path? Kelly huffs a tiny breath as the baby kicks.  EJ is like, what about this big, fluffy dummy? He seems highly suggestible, despite what he just blah-blahed about no longer believing he has a purpose or mission.

There’s a knock on the door. Cas makes a show of uncocking the Colt.

“Yeah. That’s mine.”

Dean backs Cas into the room and slams him hard against the wall. Sam interrupts their foreplay when Kelly slips into the room. Cas tells them he found Dagon, but didn’t kill her. The boys full body Kenan and Kel why.

“She’s difficult to kill, okay?”

Also, the truck broke down. IT’S JUST BEEN A LOT OF DAY. He explains that the lying, betrayal, and theft were all in service of keeping the boys safe. And to think I was wondering just a few episodes ago where Castiel’s loyalty lay. But he really is a Winchester! He says again some more that this is his responsibility and his plan. Kelly tells them Cas is taking her to Heaven.

“You … you’re taking her to the sandbox?”

Sam earnests that Kelly and EJ don’t have to die. They found another way. “And you would know that if you would answer your phone.” I swear, episodes of Supernatural would only be 12 minutes long if people listened to Dean when he said not to do the thing or returned his calls. Just one of those two simple things.

Cas is intrigued by the extraction idea but points out that it nearly killed Sam. Dean is like there are flaws, but it’s a plan. “And it beats the hell out of certain death.” Kelly balks. Going to Heaven seems to her a better option than taking away the thing that makes her baby special. That seems like some insane troll logic, but maybe it’s just the magical pregnancy hormones talking.

The conversation has pediconferenced out into the parking lot and it’s making Sam nervous. Dean suggests they all get in the Impala, go back to the Bunker, and figure it out. Dean gives Cas the face and the angel caves. He drags Kelly over to the car and deposits her in the front seat after Dean tosses him the keys. Cas drops them over the seat next to Kelly.

Oh honey, no …

Kelly shakes her head and muses that it’s not supposed to happen this way. She glances over at the boys – still inexplicably chit chatting in the parking lot – and grabs the keys. It’s almost as though her movements are not her own. She slides over and peels outs.

Cas is like,

Kelly tells Castiel he is chosen. She’s awash in the fevered glow again. She says EJ spoke to her when Castiel put his hand on her belly. EJ told her that if she followed Cas’s plan and went to the gate, that the angel would make sure he was born.

“You asked me who would protect him – guide him – when I’m gone. I know now … it’s you.”

Wait … was this was Dabb and Singer were teasing for next season? This?

While Dean works on the truck, Sam tries to make sense of what just happened and what’s wrong with Cas. As angry as Dean is, he also understands the angel’s motivation. He says Cas hasn’t exactly had a banner year – Lucifer, killing Billie, almost being killed by Ramiel. “Everything’s been blowing up in his face. He’s so desperate for a win right now he can’t even see straight.”

Banner year? Try ever. Castiel’s entire arc on the series has been one good intention after another going bad on him. But bless his heart, he just keeps on trying.

Also, I would watch an entire episode of Dean just working on Baby. I would be happy with a whole season that was just Dean fixing cars and cleaning guns.

Kelly and Castiel arrive at the sandbox. She says as long as he’s here, she knows it’s going to be okay. The sigils begin to glow and Joshua steps out of the celestial elevator. He greets them warmly and tells Kelly not to be afraid.

And then Dagon explodes him.

OH SHIT, WHAT? Man, Dagon is super pissed that they recast Joshua as a white dude. The prince has been waiting at the gate for hours after she tortured the location out of Kelvin. Castiel attacks and Dagon makes short work of him. She mocks Kelly’s belief that this “sad, fluttering, aimless little moth” was going to save her. Dagon hauls Castiel up off the ground and makes a show of smoking him.

Sam and Dean come roaring up to the playground. Sam is out of the truck and firing as Dean skids to a stop. He puts 4 slugs into the demon before he’s out and clumsily loads another clip. Really? You were on the road for how long and didn’t think to check you had a full magazine? It wouldn’t matter if Dean were right at his shoulder, ready with the Colt. But he’s not. Was he having an NPR drive-way moment? In conclusion, the blocking and timing on this scene is not great.

Dagon disarms Dean – almost literally, breaking his arm in the process. She says it’s time to take the Colt off the board. The metal glows white hot in her hand and the barrel falls off. THE COLT, TOO? NOOOOOO! NOT THE COLT!! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?

Castiel staggers over to Kelly. He tells her to run. Kelly shakes her head and takes his hand. Her eyes blaze with power and it passes between them. Castiel’s eyes flare blue-white as his grace is super charged. He grabs Dagon’s splodey hand in mid-air and then her arm bursts into flame. Soon her whole body is consumed by holy fire.

The boys gawp in amazement. Even Cas is like, well. That just happened. He heals Dean’s arm and thanks the boys for coming to fight for them. He says he’s been so lost … but he’s not lost anymore. He has faith. And he knows now that EJ must be born with all of his power.

“You have to just trust me.”

Dean is all like, IS THIS GROUNDHOG DAY? AM I TRAPPED IN GROUNDHOG DAY?

Cas initiates the sleepy time protocol. He touches two gentle fingers to Sam’s forehead. Sam goes down like a moose shaped sack of bricks, followed by Dean. Cas leaves them there, out in the open, unconscious and unarmed. I guess he trusts that they’ll be okay. When they’re in the truck, Kelly asks Cas what EJ told him. Cas glows with righteous conviction.

“He didn’t tell me. He showed me. The future.”

One day Cas will learn and will know better.  But today is not that day.

Supernatural airs Thursday at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern) on The CW.  Follow Whitney on twitter @Watcher_Whitney.