#sammy the beardie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

caranfindel · 5 years

Text

Recap/review 14.08: “Byzantium”

THEN: Beardy Sam! Lily Sunder! Oh, I had such high hopes for Sam using Lily's dark angel magic... could this be happening? (Spoiler alert: nope!) Jack's total systemic failure!

NOW: TFW is gathered at Jack's bedside. Sam's the one sitting next to him, but Dean is the one who's the most upset. OF COURSE. Jack thinks maybe this is just how it's meant to be, which of course Dean disagrees with, because this "isn't part of some damn plan." And of course, even if it was part of some damn plan, it's not like Dean follows anyone's damn plans. {Sidebar: It reminds me that, when Kelly was pregnant, Cas received some kind of vision about unborn Jack saving the world. Was that supposed to be a prophecy? Or just a possibility?}

Jack's still coughing, and actually using an oxygen mask, but there's no blood and he can breathe enough to speak easily, so he doesn't seem to be at death's door just yet. Dean stomps out into the hall to hit things, and Jack asks Sam to tell him he's okay. But clearly Jack isn't, like, 2 minutes from dying, so Sam says Dean will be back in a minute and Jack can tell him himself.

Jack asks what will happen after he dies, and Sam sadly says he doesn't know. "Then it's going to be an adventure," Jack says, and he lies back and coughs a little bit more.

Cas comes out into the hall to comfort Dean, or confront him, I don't know. Dean says it's not fair and Cas is all, yeah, duh, but he needs you (ah, confront him it is), so stop making this about yourself. Even though the previous episode obviously did give you the idea that it is, in fact, all about you.

Dean comes back into Jack's room, 66 seconds after he left it, to find him lying quietly with his eyes closed. "He's gone," Sam says. Wait. What? Like that? No more coughing blood, no rattling last breaths, no slip into unconsciousness? Just boom, Jack's gone before the title card like a random victim of the week? That's cold, guys. It's a good thing Sam didn't follow Dean out into the hall, or he would have died alone. As it is, Sam was the first person he saw when he was born and the last person he saw when he died (I'm not crying, you're crying). Everybody is sad (oh god, you guys, Sam's face), but Dean is the saddest, at least as far as we can tell, because he's the one who gets the sad, sad closeup.

Well, that escalated quickly!

Title card!

TFW stands sadly in the hall (Sam's all hunched over, poor baby) and discusses what to do next. "Wake and a bonfire," Dean says, because that's what Jack would have wanted, and because that's what they'd do even if he didn't want it. {Sidebar: Has anyone noticed these signs that have appeared in the bunker? I never saw them before. Do the new roomies need directions, or rules posted on the wall, or something?} Sam quickly peels off without saying a word. Cas tries to go after him, but Dean stops him, saying Sam needs his space.

That’s the sound of my heart breaking.

Dean calls Mary to tell her Jack died. I don't know that I would have done that. I would have asked her to call me so I could tell her in person, considering that they were close. And apparently she didn't even know Jack was sick. Seriously, boys, you don't communicate well at all. While Dean makes his uncomfortable phone call, we see Sam leave the bunker with a bag slung over his shoulder. Cas watches him but doesn't say anything. Dean shows up, literally a second or two later, and asks him if he's seen Sam.

Cut to Cas driving, with Dean in the passenger seat. It's not his tiny blue car from the last episode, it's something much bigger. Dean is berating him for letting Sam leave, and he doesn't accept Cas's defense that Dean said to give him space. Cas, you're supposed to know that Sam is allowed space in the bunker, but that doesn't mean he gets to leave. They find him quickly enough, though, which makes sense since he had like a five second head start. He's just off the road, in the dark, sitting next to the Impala. Sam, you took the Impala? What were you thinking? {Sidebar: Dean told Mary Jack died "this morning," and now it's dark. Does that mean Jack died very early, and it's still before dawn? Or have they just sat around grieving all day, and now it's nighttime?}

(Could you please stop worrying so much about minor timeline inconsistencies? Nobody cares!)

Sam weakly raises a hand to block the headlights when Dean and Cas arrive, but doesn't get up, and he just looks broken and miserable. Dean is furious. He jumps out of Cas's car (which turns out to be a big Dodge truck, and why does Cas get two cars when Sam doesn't even have one?) and yells "tell me you didn't make a deal!" Sam's shocked that Dean would accuse him of such a thing (ha ha, why would he ever) and says he was trying to build a pyre.

We get a flashback of him furiously chopping trees until his axe handle snaps in the middle of the second tree, and yet he still took the second tree down, so he must have kicked it over or attacked it with his bare hands because he was JUST THAT UPSET. Oh, Sammy. "I couldn't... I couldn't even do that for him," he says. "I should have done more. I should have tried harder. Everything we've got, the spells, the lore, what good was any of it if we couldn't save him?" Oh, oh, Sammy. He's so broken-hearted.

Ha ha this is not okay.

{Sidebar: Was Sam planning to build the pyre out there in the woods? Or take the wood back to the bunker in the Impala? I mean, he knows Cas has that nice big truck, right?}

(Again, we do not care as much about logistics as you seem to think we do.)

Cas remarks on how odd it feels for Jack to be dead, that it's not so weird for angels to die but it just doesn't seem right that Jack can. Apparently he considered the boy immortal. Dean decides they will say goodbye tomorrow, but tonight they're getting shitfaced.

And they do. As a sad Allman Brothers song plays in the background, they drink whiskey and eat candy bars (do they even know about his nougat love? do they?) and apparently switch to tequila (and Chuck, I do not know what anyone sees in tequila) and I guess tell funny stories about Jack because they're all laughing. Sam's the first one to get up and stumble drunkenly out of the kitchen (and why are they drinking in the kitchen and not the library, which seems like the traditional sad drinking spot). As Cas leaves, Dean says "we did everything we could, right?" (Spoiler alert: wrong!) and continues to drink alone. "Here's to you, Jack," he says, "wherever you are."

Which is our segue to wherever Jack is. He's with his three dads, happily eating a burger on the hood of the Impala on a beautiful sunny day. Sam can't get a signal on his phone, which should be his first clue that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Then Dean kind of fritzes and the sky goes dark and Jack knows something is wrong. We seem him stepping through a door into the white hallway of Heaven. But something is wrong there, too. And the "something wrong" is a great flood of black goo that rushes toward him. He runs.

Cut to Dean, waking up where he's been asleep on the kitchen table (and dang, Dean sleeping on the kitchen table is so pretty). We hear voices in another room and I think oh, people are back in the bunker, but it turns out this is another episode where all of the people are conveniently away at the same time. He staggers into the map room to find Cas and Sam talking to a woman with an eyepatch. It's Lily Sunder! An older version, to be sure {Sidebar: She's played by Veronica Cartright, who you may remember from Alien and The Witches of Eastwick. Or you may not. I don't know your movie viewing habits.} Dean thoughtfully points out that she got old, and she calls it "an unfortunate side effect of giving up magic." You know, she really is a pretty decent older version of Alicia Witt. Good show, Show.

Sam says he realized last night that they'd never looked at Kevin's translations of the angel tablet to see if there was anything there that could help Jack. He hoped Lily would be able to read them, and possibly find a way to bring Jack back. It's interesting that there has been no discussion of whether they should bring Jack back. I guess the talk about how weird it is that he actually died was as close as they're going to get. And yeah, I know, this is nothing new for them. But considering that Jack was at peace with it, and considering how well these things always go, you would think they'd at least pay lip service to the idea that it might be best to let what's dead stay dead.

{Sidebar: Dean remembers that Lily tried to kill Cas, but nobody remembers that Cas thought Lily's child was a nephilim, even though Lily was still alive after giving birth to that child. Just putting that out there.}

Lily flips through Kevin's notes, which look like a bunch of cuneiform, and says she can't decipher them. Dean's all, okay, we're done here, but Lily has a suggestion. They can use her magic, drawing on the power of Jack's soul to heal his body and bring him back. Dean's completely against it, but Lily says it won't use his entire soul. "How much of it?" Sam asks, and Dean gives him a disbelieving look. But Lily says it will only use a small amount, and he'll never miss it. Well, it's not like they've never used soul power before, though those have always been for temporary purposes.

Dean points out the obvious flaw in the plan, which is that Jack is already dead and his soul is gone. But if his soul is in Heaven, Cas thinks he can pull it into his body for a few seconds, long enough for Lily to work her magic. (Ew. I wonder if it's gross for a soul to find itself in a dead body.) Her magic uses the power of his soul to resurrect him and keep him alive, and boom. Jack's back.

But she's not doing it for free. She knows she's going to Hell when she dies, being that she killed a lot of angels, which means she'll never get to see her daughter again. So she wants TFW to get her into Heaven.

Dean still thinks it's a bad idea to use any of Jack's soul for this scheme. Cas thinks Jack should be the one to make the decision, and Sam points out that he knows (better than anyone, one might say) the importance of a soul, but if they can bring Jack back, they have to try. So this still feels flip-flopped: Sam willing to make a possibly unwise deal to bring back a dead loved one, and Dean holding back.

Of course, none of this will work if they can't figure out how to get Lily into Heaven. Dean wonders if they could get Billie to do it, but Cas points out that Death and her reapers don't make that decision (thank you, Continuity Fairy). Oddly, Sam seems a little surprised to hear that. This wouldn't be news to him, would it?

Anyway, they have to turn to Anubis, the ancient Egyptian guardian of the dead. It's interesting that they didn't go with St. Peter. I mean, I like that they're not limiting their characters to traditional Christianity, but it seems like Cas, in particular, would have suggested someone from the Bible. Cas explains that Anubis weighs your heart against "justice's feather," and Sam says what I'm thinking, which is that Osiris did that, and they've already met him. (Did they kill him? I don't remember.) Cas says Osiris is Anubis's father, and when God left, they needed a new judge, so Heaven passed over Osiris to work with his son. It's convoluted but whatever. I mean, it's cool that they're incorporating different religions and gods, so. Let's summon a god!

Cut to a lush garden, with a pond and lots of too-pretty-to-be-real flowers. A little girl is playing with her dog, who runs after a ball and disappears into the bushes. He's gone too long, and then we hear rustling in the bushes, and I'm ashamed to say I was pretty sure Lucifer or Nick was going to step out of them (I covered the guest star credits on first watch and didn't know who was in this episode). But it's Jack. Oh, then the little girl is Kelly, and he found his way to her heaven! When he tells her he's her son, she changes to grown-up Kelly, who is thrilled to see her son until she realizes she's in Heaven and therefore she must be dead... and so is he. I'm glad Jack has the ability to leave his Heaven and find Kelly's. I mean, if Heaven is made up of your good memories, think of how skimpy and repetitive his would be.

Bunker. Sam and Dean prepare for the ritual as Lily writes instructions for Jack. Dean's still disgruntled about the whole thing, and they argue for a bit. Dean says he just doesn't trust her just as we hear footsteps, and it looks like they're doing it AGAIN - the thing where someone says something bad about the character who is right behind them, and can we just not, please? But it's Cas, not Lily. Yay! He reports that Heaven is in distress and all the gates are open. I guess that will make it easier for him to get in. Sam tells him to go on to Heaven, and when they're ready for him, they'll pray. Oh, so they can still pray to him? Good to know.

Dean paints symbols on the floor as Lily hands Sam a really thick instruction manual for Jack. I wonder how long it took her to write all that? Sam says he has to go "grab one more thing" and then gives Dean a significant you need to apologize look and head tilt toward Lily. I do love these unspoken conversations. Dean's apology is everything you'd expect from a man who learned to apologize at John Winchester's knee, since he says "looks like we got off on the wrong foot" (i.e., it's not my fault) and immediately asks, suspiciously, why she stopped using the angel magic if it's so awesome. He guesses, correctly, that she's letting herself get old, because she wants to die, and why does she want to do that if she's pretty sure she's going to Hell? She says she has a tiny bit of her soul left, and if there's even a teeny chance that she'll get to see her daughter in Heaven, well.

Anyway. Cut to Cas, wandering through Heaven. He comes across puddles of goo and a couple of bodies. Looks like we're down to, what, nine angels now? (As always, it's interesting to me that angels use vessels in Heaven, though I understand it would be pretty difficult to portray them if they didn't.)

(Then again, if we didn't insist on including angel drama, we wouldn't need to show angels in Heaven at all, would we?)

(Just saying.)

Turns out one of the bodies is alive, and it's Duma. She has black goo coming out of her nose and only remembers that when "it" touched her, everything went black. Cas dramatically tells her he's looking for Jack, and she goes with him. They find the spot where Jack was with TFW on the beautiful sunny day, but his food is cold. (Does your food get cold in Heaven? I thought it would stay at the perfect temperature. Bummer.) Naomi shows up and tells them Jack is gone, and that they're under attack. "It" stormed Heaven and they can't stop it. What is it, you might ask? "The shadow. The thing that rules The Empty." Naomi reminds us that Cas and Empty Dude are "old friends" and they show us Empty Dude forming out of the black goo and oh, wait, wait. Is this what was happening last week, when Nick prayed to Lucifer and we saw something skeletal forming in The Empty? It wasn't Lucifer at all? It was Empty Dude? Is that what's going on here? I'm confused. I mean, I'd love for Lucifer to stay asleep in The Empty. So I'm all in favor, if that's what's really happening.

Naomi says Empty Dude wants Jack, and maybe he does belong in The Empty after all, since he's half angel. Well, if I were Jack (or Cas), I'd point out that his grace was mostly gone and he was more human than angel. But no one asked me. Naomi says Empty Dude will destroy Heaven if they don't let him have Jack, and "46,750,000,000 human souls will be cast in the wind." I really want someone with math skills to tell me what percentage that is of all of human life so far, because I wonder how many people Show has decided probably went to Hell. Naomi says one nephilim isn't worth all those souls, and I'm sure she's supposed to be Evil Bureaucrat, but honestly, she's right. But you know Cas won't see it that way. He refuses to help, and then suddenly Naomi is overcome with black goo and she yells at him to run. He does.

Bunker. Sam reads the spell. Lily draws her blood. Anubis shows up. Turns out Egyptian gods also look like bureaucrats, with a suit and briefcase. He recognizes the Winchesters and Dean is kind of snarky with him, which is exactly what you'd do if you summoned an ancient god to ask him for a favor. Lily tells him she wants to know where she's going when she dies, and he says it's against protocol but what the hell (spoiler alert...). He draws an abacus with black and white beads out of his bag ("you were expecting a scale and a feather?") and invites Lily to put her hand above it. The beads move and change color and when they stop, there are more black than white. Well, that ain't good.

Anubis tells her he can't change it, and Dean threatens him because, once again, that's what you do when you summon an ancient god and ask him for a favor. And Sam jumps right in there. Come on, boys, you know how this works. Anubis explains that he's not the one who decides if you go to Heaven or Hell (which you should remember from your experience with his father, fellas.) "You do. Each of you. Your individual choices, all tallied at the precise moment of your death. Keep me here. Try and kill me. It is not going to change Lily Sunder's fate. But it might change yours." Now this is how you threaten someone, boys! There's more silent conversation ("I don't want to go back to Hell, do you?" "Aw, fuck no"), Sam rubs some paint off the floor, and Anubis disappears.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven. Cas and Duma find Kelly's Heaven and there is a joyous reunion. Cas apologizes for not keeping her son alive, and tells Jack they have a way to bring him home, but the magic will draw from a piece of his soul. He pretty much takes any choice away from him by telling Jack that Empty Dude will destroy Heaven if he doesn't come back to life. "Smart," says Duma, except she's not Duma! She's Empty Duma! Oh noes! (The black goo effect really is pretty good, I've got to say.)

Bunker. Sam points out that Lily could still do the spell to save Jack, even though there's nothing in it for her. Because that's what Sam would do. But Lily's not interested, and she packs up her stuff to leave and Sam finally shouts "he's our kid!" and oh, Sam. Just stick that knife in my heart and twist it a bit more, why don't you? Dean says he thinks she's lost so much soul, she's not human any more, because why would she let anyone else lose a child, knowing how it feels?

Heaven. Empty Duma says Jack belongs to her and where she's taking him is worse than Hell, because "at least Hell is something." You know, I think The Empty would be pretty awful if you were awake, but from what we've seen, no one is awake there. Even its ruler was asleep. So, would being asleep forever actually be worse than Hell? I'm thinking not. (Honestly, if Heaven is full of good memories, a big chunk of my Heaven is going to be drifting off in a soft bed in a cold bedroom under flannel sheets and a quilt and a cat.) Anyway, Empty Duma is pleased that her threats are upsetting Cas. He draws his angel blade and attacks, but she flings him into the kitchen cabinets.

Bunker. Jack's body is surrounded by candles. Lily pulls out her locket and kisses the photo of her daughter, then says "I'm ready" and picks up the spell book, so I guess Sam and Dean were able to convince her after all.

Heaven. Fighty fighty.

Bunker. Dean prays to Cas and tells him they're ready. Lily starts chanting.

Heaven. Empty Duma starts to strangle Jack. Cas tells her to take him instead. She drops Jack and then says what I'm thinking, which is that she gets him anyway. "Not for years," he says. "Eons, maybe." But if she lets Jack go, Cas will go with her now. She accepts, but says she won't take him now. She wants him to suffer, so she wants him to go back and be happy, and once he does feel happiness, then she'll come and "drag you to nothing." Cas accepts.

The Empty leaves Duma, and Jack angrily confronts Cas, asking why he made the deal. "Because I made a promise. Because I love you, Jack. Sam and Dean, they love you, and they are fighting for you this very minute." He tells Jack not to let the Winchesters know about the deal, and Jack promises not to tell. {Sidebar: Would Jack even remember what happened in Heaven? Sam and Dean didn't, until Joshua specifically made them remember. But does that mean they naturally forgot every time? Or that Joshua made them forget every time, but in Dark Side of the Moon he decided not to, and he let them naturally remember? Discuss.}

Jack doesn't want to leave Kelly yet, but she tells him she'll be waiting. And this is something that didn't occur to me until rewatch - did Empty Duma give up the right to Jack's soul period, or just for this particular death? If and when he dies again, is The Empty going to claim him again? I would have made that clear, Cas.

Anyway. Cas holds Jack's face and in the bunker, Jack gasps back to life. Sam gives him a spell to read and his eyes glow and he says he feels good. Dean hugs him (because of course Dean gets the hug, why would I think Sam gets the hug, for fuck’s sake) and then the guys notice that Lily has quietly died in the corner. Well, I didn't see that coming.

Nah, that’s cool, I’ll just stand over here and watch, thanks.

We see Lily walking into Anubis's office. He holds up the abacus again and this time, when she puts her hand over it, there are more white beads than black. "Did you know what doing the spell would cost you?" he asks. Apparently she did, and that good deed outweighed enough of her bad deeds that she gets to go to Heaven after all. Yay Lily!

Back in Heaven, Naomi thanks Cas for saving Heaven, even though she knows he didn't do it for them. And she wants to give him a reward. "Like, for example, the archangel Michael's location?" Nice try, Naomi. We all know his location. He's in Lebanon, Kansas right now.

Isn't he?

Bunker. Jack and his dads eat burgers and smile at each other and Dean's glad they know where Michael is. Cas points out that they don't know where Dark Kaia and her spear are, and I'm still thinking about that damn archangel blade, and Jack with his archangel grace which is supposedly regenerating, and why haven't any of them made that connection? Anyway, it's a happy, homey scene, and the camera pans off to the side and I'm absolutely certain that something bad is waiting here. It's going to be a dream, or Dean's eyes are going to flash blue, or something. But no, it just fades to black. Huh.

This seemed a lot more ominous than it should.

So. Let's talk about Cas's deal. I hate it. Jack is back, and the only lasting effect from his brief death is something that will impact Cas. I hate that they took a non-Cas problem and made it a Cas problem. I hate that the rest of the season is going to be about the Sword of Damocles hanging over Cas's head. I want my angst to be over 6 ft tall and to be wearing flannel, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I just can't get into the sad saga of Cas waiting to be yoinked away. Especially since we know exactly when it's going to happen, even if Cas doesn't. Bad things happen in May, people. (I also wonder why Empty Dude doesn't just go back to sleep.)

And let's talk about the Winchesters' decision to save Jack in the first place. I don't like it. It makes sense only if you know that (1) he'll be taken to The Empty and that it is somehow worse than Hell, and (b) if he doesn't go to The Empty, Heaven will be destroyed. And they didn't know any of that when they decided to go after him. I wanted at least one of them (spoiler alert: SAM) to say "yes this is awful but he was at peace with it and every time we un-kill someone, something awful happens, so maybe we should just let this one go," and of course they would have done the spell anyway, but there should have been some pushback.

And finally, the Michael thing. Are we to believe that Michael is not hiding in Dean after all? Because that means he really did abandon his vessel for no good reason, and that's... that's something that they REALLY need to explain. Hiding in Dean made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. (Could it be that Naomi is lying to Cas? Was she, possibly, Empty Naomi?)

Also, Sam yells he's our kid and then gives him a hearty pat on the shoulder? What the fuck ever.

Anyway, please help me stay unspoiled, thanks!

#spn #14.08 #spoilers #recap #tv recaps #season 14

21 notes · View notes