Welcome to week forty-three of the rewatch project, superfans! This week, the boys are both separately courted by angels hoping they’ll consent to be vessels. Will they say yes to the mess?
Cheers to being in demand!
THE OFFICIAL FYA SUPERNATURAL DRINKING GAME:
Take a drink every time:
• There’s a corpse
• A demon possesses/de-possesses and/or makes a deal with some hapless schmuck
• A far-off disaster is mentioned but not shown for budgetary reasons
• Dean crams his face full of junk food
• An angel is snotty
• Anyone is tied up
• Either brother picks a lock
• Someone employs a Titan of Classic Rock as an alias
• The Glorious and Faithful Impala is damaged in the line of duty
5x3: Free to Be You and Me
Monster of the Week: Raphael
Cas needs Dean’s help! He wants to hunt down the archangel Raphael and interrogate him as to God’s location. Dean reluctantly agrees, but draws the line when Cas reaches out to teleport him.
Aha! No wonder the Once Upon a Time sorceresses always looks so constipated.
In the course of their investigation, during which Cas makes an adorably bad fake FBI agent, they discover that Raphael’s now empty vessel is living like a vegetable in a hospital. Cas has some complicated plan to trap Raphael which involves surrounding his vessel in special oil from Jerusalem and then lighting it into holy flame which does not really matter at all. The important thing, darlings, is that Cas is fairly sure Raphael might kill him in the attempt, which leads to Dean wanting to give him a last fun night on the town, which leads to non-shocking revelations about the state of Cas’s virginity (intact), which in turn leads to them visiting a brothel.
Uncomfortable Cas is my favorite Cas.
Cas soulfully looks a hooker in the eye and volunteers that it’s not her fault her father left her family. She threatens to kill him and the two run from the club. Dean can’t stop laughing and realizes it’s the first time he’s had real fun in years. Ouch. Sorry, Sam.
With hijinks out of the way, Cas and Dean perform their ritual and summon Raphael. He displays his power via a neat light show.
If he could only sync it up with Floyd, Dean might be impressed.
Raphael gets all threatening, telling Dean he’s taking him to Michael. But Cas isn’t about to let his new partner go out like that, and traps Raphael in holy fire, demanding to know where God is. Dead, Raphael insists. He ran off, leaving a world to run with no instructions, and Raphael, for one, is sick of it and ready to bring on Paradise. He ventures that maybe it was Lucifer that brought Cas back to life, looking for more rebellious angel. That angers Cas enough that he walks away, leaving Raphael trapped.
Later, Dean tries to console Cas, saying he looked for Papa Winchester even when all signs pointed to him being dead. Cas can do the same. It’s a nice moment. Then Dean starts talking like a jilted ex about how Sam had been ruining his life before and now he’s gone he’s finally happy, OKAY, and Cas uses his powers to peace the hell out of there because Cas is awesome.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Living in Obscurity
Sam dreams of Jessica. She sweetly tells him there is no use in him running away, he’s always been dark, and sooner or later the past will catch up to him and then people he loves will die. Just like her.
You were better off going to that great Friday Night Lights in the sky anyway. Trust.
When he wakes we find he’s burned all his fake IDs and got himself a job as a bartender in a small Oklahoma town. It isn’t long before a waitress notices his tall hotness and tries to get him to go out with her and also confess all of his mysterious secrets. He declines both opportunities, but she is annoyingly persistent plucky and he eventually lets it slip that he’s made mistakes and hurts people. She takes him for a fellow former addict and insists that no one has ever done something so bad they can’t be forgiven.
Too bad not everyone feels the same way.
Three hunters come through the area after Sam tipped Bobby that some apocalyptic shizz was going down in the next town over. They want his help on the job and are pissed when he refuses. They’re even more pissed when they come back from the job down a man after being ambushed by demons. They managed to capture one and he told them all about Sam’s role in the apocalypse and his demon blood thirst/power. They take the waitress hostage, saying if Sam doesn’t drink demon blood and go back and kill the demons who killed their friend, they’ll murder her.
They fight. Sam wins. He spits out the demon blood they tried to pour in his mouth and takes a knife to the throat of the ringleader. But before he slits the man’s throat, he catches the waitress’s eye, remembers his humanity and lets them go.
Later, he dreams of Jessica and tells her she’s wrong, people can change and there is reason for hope. She responds by morphing into Lucifer! Lucifer tells Sam that he’s meant to be his vessel, the one he currently has isn’t strong enough to hold him. Sam says no way. Lucifer says yeah huh.
Fin.
Paradise Lost of It All: God’s dead. OR IS HE? Sam’s Lucifer’s vessel. OR IS HE? Amanda is weary of this angel business. OR IS SHE? (Just saying, a ghost or two would be fun.)
How Drunk Are We?: Barely. Take two drinks for a corpse and an apocalyptic disaster not shown.
The Quotable Winchesters: “Eat it, Twilight.” –Dean as he dispatches a vampire.
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
But he wants to be close to you!
Notable Cameos:
Demore Barnes of The Flash and Hemlock Grove plays Raphael
5x4: The End
Monster of the Week: Zach/Lucifer
On his way into his seedy motel du jour, Dean runs into a street preacher who asks if he’s taken time to consider God’s plan for him. “Too freaking much, pal,” he replies. Inside, he consults on the phone with Cas who has a lead on the Colt. Cas wants to meet right away but Dean reminds him that humans need to sleep sometimes.
He’s barely fallen into the sack when he gets a call from Sam, spilling everything Lucifer told him. Sam wants to come back. Dean is unmoved and insists that they’re weaker when they’re together. Sniff. The next morning when Dean awakes, he finds out the Apocalypse has happened overnight!
Good to see movie theater employees had a sense of humor right until the end.
Dean dodges Croatoan zombies and soldiers spraying bullets and comes across a sign that’s dated five years in the future. Zach shows up and says he found Dean through a tip from the street preacher. He’s transported Dean to this hellscape to show him what the future will look like if he refuses to be Michael’s vessel.
After Zach disappears, Dean heads to Bobby’s only to find a shot-up empty wheelchair and a lead on militaristic camp for hunters. He heads to the camp and finds a rusted-out Impala overgrown by weeds. While he’s yelling “NO!” like Kirk yells “Khan,” someone gun butts him over the head. He wakes handcuffed to a pipe, guarded by…himself.
It’s Future Dean! He confirms Past Dean’s identity when they share a memory of a girl who got him to try on her panties when they were nineteen, and how they kind of liked it. Past Dean wants to know what happened to the world. More importantly, what happened to Sam? Future Dean says he heard he died in Detroit, but they hadn’t spoken in five years.
Dean’s tour of the future includes cameos from Chuck the Prophet and a drugged-out, sexed-up Cas who lost all his angelic powers when the other angels realized they were losing the war against Lucifer and fled.
Going full-on Gauis Baltar.
Future Dean has the Colt and he’s ready to go after Lucifer. He insists Past Dean come along on his mission so he can show him something. It turns out Sam didn’t die in Detroit. He said yes to Lucifer. Future Dean isn’t doing so hot either. He’s back to torturing and sacrifices his friends with no hesitation if it will buy him a little ground. He says he wished he’d said yes to Michael and urges his counterpart to do so when he travels back in time.
The mission goes bad and Past Dean arrives just in time to see Lucifer snap Future Dean’s neck. Lucifer is looking fresh as hell in a gleaming white suit and Sam’s lanky frame. But he’s got the smugness dialed up to eleven, telling Dean that he loves Earth and God and he’s sorry for everything that had to happen. Dean says he can keep his stories. He’s like any other monster he’s ganked, just with a bigger ego, and that he’ll stop him, just the same. Lucifer doesn’t agree, saying he’ll win every time and he’ll see Dean in five years.
Look at this smirking mofo.
Zach yanks Dean back to his present time and pleads with him to say yes to Michael. Dean thinks about it, but ultimately goes with, “Nah.” Zach is about to go full-on ballistic when Cas pops him out of there.
Brotherly Angst Quotient: Being Human
At the end of the episode, Dean decides the problem with the future wasn’t him saying no to Michael. It was him saying no to Sam. He calls him up and tells him they might make each other weaker, but they also make each other more human. With that, they get the band back together.
Paradise Lost of It All: Much to Zach’s annoyance, Dean is newly resolved to say no to being Michael’s vessel.
How Drunk Are We?: Dead. Take twelve drinks for corpses dropped, snotty angels, Dean handcuffed/picking the lock, and the rusting out of the Glorious and Faithful Impala.
The Quotable Winchesters: “Some free advice. You ever get back there, you hoard toilet paper. You understand me? Hoard it. Hoard it like it's made of gold. Because it is.” –Future Chuck the Prophet.
Moment Most Likely to Inspire Troubling Fan-Fic:
Two Deans. Two.
Notable Cameos:
Lexa Doig of Continuum plays one of Future Dean’s soldiers.
Next Week: The boys fight evil in my very own hometown, Canton, OH. Contrary to my childhood memories, the evil is not “football enthusiasts.”