We all have that one (hell, more than one, honestly) SPN character that we’d like to bring back from the dead and make a regular. Mine? Definitely Bobby Singer. I may not get Bobby 1.0 in this episode, but I do get Alterna-Bobby. And I, like Mary and Jack, will gratefully take it.
I’m Your Worst Nightmare
Jack Kline dreams of the Bunker, and Sam and Dean welcoming him home, before it devolves into the boys being trapped in a fire filled room, needing Jack to use his power to bust down the door and save them. Jack’s power fails, and we see that, in fact, he was being mentally manipulated by Apocalypse World Michael and Zachariah (in a much younger, svelter package.) They want to harness Jack’s power to open the door to our Earth, but they’re having trouble and Michael is losing patience. Zachariah says that if fear won’t break Jack, he knows what will.
A Beautiful Mind
According to the musical remix that my husband says reminds him of Gwar meets Phillip Glass (ha!), Donatello the prophet is apparently going insane, trying to decipher the demon tablet and keep it hidden from Team Free Will. Cas brings him breakfast and a skeptical, worried stare. Meanwhile, Dean and his true love (a giant plate of bacon) are having some quality time in the kitchen. Sam thinks he should lay off the nitrates but Dean insists that if bacon kills him, he wins (there’s a profound truth in that, eh?) Cas talks to the boys, worried that their plan isn’t advancing fast enough. And he ain’t wrong.
Sweet Dreams of You
Jack dreams again, this time of his foster father, Castiel. Cas shows him all the ugliness that humans have visited upon the world and inflicts a major guilt trip on me and on Jack a real responsibility—save the humans and Earth as a whole. Dream Cas disparages Sam and Dean and Jack sees through him, recognizing he is being fooled. He comes to, only to be thrown across the room by Michael.
Michael decides to try things his way, tossing Jack into the cell with Mary to get to know her well enough that when Michael threatens her Jack will do anything to save her. Jack and Mary do bond a little, talking of Kelly and Sam and Dean. She insists that Jack let Michael kill her rather than open the door to Earth Fortunately? It doesn’t come to that. There’s a weakness in the cell’s warding, and Jack is able to free them both.
Breakthrough
Donatello shrieks “Eureka!” over and over, bringing the boys a decoy spell and convincing them that he’s cracked the code. In his spell, they don’t need archangel grace—they need readily available spell components and, oh yeah—the hearts of legendary battle brothers Gog and Magog.
As they go to fight them, Dean and Cas have a bit of a heart to heart, and Cas seems to have more resolve than ever. Cas knows war is coming, and he believes he was brought back to prepare for it. “War is what Michael does,” Cas says. “Well, then, we do what we do,” says Dean. “Whatever it takes.”
Gog of the Jungle
Cas and Dean go to a field and Cas recites the Enochain spell to summon Gog and Magog. When they initially fail to appear, Dean suggests Cas got the words wrong. “I don’t get words wrong,” Cas insists, cross, and Dean rolls his eyes and Jensen Ackles has, as always, the comedic timing this show needs. Gog and Magog show, amusing Dean endlessly with their loincloths.
They speak in ancient Caananite, bickering like brothers before trying to decide whom to kill first. When “the pretty one” is suggested, one of them says, “They are equally pretty,” and I’m sorry but while Misha Collins is a very attractive man, no one is as pretty as Jensen Ackles. (Like, it’s scientifically proven and artistically supported, people.) Anyway, Cas and Dean—well, mostly Dean—defeat Gog and Magog after a knock down drag out and they find out that they are ancient beings forged from rock and sand. They have no hearts. Donatello played them. And Sam? He’s not getting off light. Donatello whacks him with a particularly tough old bottle, and Sam goes down.
Backup Singer
Mary and Jack escape and almost immediately run into Alterna-Bobby, who marvels at the sight of Mary “Campbell” and her “friend of the family”, Jack. Bobby takes them to the safety of a sparsely populated human camp. “Mary Campell saved my ass more than a few times,” Bobby says, charming as hell. “It’d be rude not to return the favor.” AND HAVE I MENTIONED I LOVE JIM BEAVER SO MUCH! Please let Alterna-Bobby make it to our world (and NOT just to kill him AGAIN, writers!) And Jack? He charms the children of the camp with shadow puppets while Bobby and Mary (who have chemistry, I think, is that weird?) talk about the deceased Alterna-Mary.
Apparently, Alterna-Mary never made the demon deal, John died, and Sam and Dean were never born. So it turns out? Looking around? Knowing Sam and Dean prevented this on Earth? I guess our Mary made the right choice after all. Mary confesses that Jack is nephilim, and that chemistry turns cold. Bobby spits that he wants Jack gone by morning, and Mary can choose to go with him.
Speaking in Tongues
Back at the Bunker, Cas and Dean come home to a battered but victorious Sam, who has locked Donatello in a Devil’s Trapped room, where he is raving like a lunatic. Sam and Dean try to talk to him but Donatello uses the power of the tablet? I guess? to choke Dean. Cas, watching on a laptop, rushes in to help and glares menacingly at Donatello.
The three leave the room and talk of the life of a prophet, figuring out that Donatello’s problem is that Amara ate his soul, which Cas says is the filter that inoculates the prophet against the darkness of the tablet. Cas thinks Donatello needs to mercifully die to end his suffering (and create another prophet.) Sam and Dean vehemently disagree. Cas, determined, goes to Donatello, telling the boys he is doing what he has to. He does what he promised what he would not do—he’s going to forcibly remove the spell from Donatello’s mind. “I’m not going to let you or anyone hurt the people I love. Not again!” Cas says and it seems like Season Four Cas emerges once more. And I like it. Even if poor Donatello ends up brain dead.
Battle Royale
Mary tries to gently tell Jack that they can’t stay, but before she can console him Zachariah and his soldiers come for them. Mary tells Jack to run—hide—while she helps Bobby save the pitifully small amount of remaining humans in the camp.
Sweet Jack, however, won’t run. When Zachariah confronts Mary, intending to kill her, Jack swoops in to save the day, killing Zachariah with his powers. He kills the other angels too, and wins Bobby’s trust, which Bobby needs to have when Jack says the only way to end this is to kill Michael. And he vows to do it.
“Whatever it takes!”
Sam and Dean confront Cas about what he did to Donatello, but Cas insists he did right, letting them know Donatello was working with Asmodeus. “Some people just can’t be saved,” Cas says. “Yeah, but who gets to make that choice?” Dean asks. “You?” He asks Cas what gives him the right and Cas says nothing—he took it. War is coming, and he did what soldiers do. He lists the spell components and vows to bring people home so that they can beat Lucifer and Michael. It is the only way to win—to survive. “It’s like you said, Dean,” Cas says, before the fade to black. “Whatever it takes.”
Are you enjoying the return of fierce Cas as much as I am? Let me know in the comments. And I’ll see you next week for episode fifteen, “A Most Holy Man”.
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