Initial reaction 13.20: "Unfinished Business"
THEN: Oh, wow, you guys. What a walk down memory lane. All things Trickster/Gabriel, and then Samifer, and Sam talking to Rowena about her fear of Lucifer and how nothing will ever change that, and angry Dean finding out that Gabriel and his grace are both long gone. Wow. This was a good Then. Well, other than the AU Land stuff that warns us we'll be spending some time there.
NOW. Central City, Colorado, which sounds totally made up. Dark alley. Liquor store with a wolf on the sign. Drunk guy. Music that sounds Celtic to me. A familiar voice calls out "Fenrir Odinsbane!", and it's coming from the same source the music is coming from - Gabriel himself, with the world's best kazoo. Now, I'm not really up on my Norse mythology, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night watch Thor: Ragnarok recently, and isn't Fenrir the wolf Hela rode? Anyway, I know Fenrir is a wolf.
Fenrir's accent sounds more Russian than anything else, and he assumes Gabriel isn't here to apologize. Nope, he's here to kill him. The Show confirms Fenrir's wolf status by superimposing a wolf face over his (okay) and giving him claws and teeth, and then we get some weird 70s music which can't decide if it's from a porn or a cop show, but either seem very appropriate for our favorite little archangel. Fenrir is surprised that he manages to make Gabriel bleed, and so am I, because it's actual blood, not the grace we see escaping every other angel's wounds when they get wounded. Gabriel ends up running Fenrir through with a wooden sword, but not without getting pretty badly wounded himself. In fact, the husband and I both thought Gabriel had shoved the sword through his own body in order to stab Fenrir behind him, which would have been badass.
Anyway. Fenrir is dead, and Gabriel pulls a list out of his pocket. He crosses of the first name (Fenrir) with his own blood, leaving two more that we can see. But IF there were a fourth name, it would be covered by his thumb. Just saying.
Title card!
Hotel room. Sam is unpacking; Dean is on the phone. This is the third time this season that we've seen them either unpacking or using the closet in a hotel room, and I kinda love it. Did this start after they moved into the bunker? Did they become accustomed to living out of drawers instead of suitcases? Dean, however, doesn't love it, and tells Sam not to unpack. He hangs up the phone and the guys exposition the situation for us - Rowena tracked Gabriel to either "here," which hasn't been identified yet, or Amarillo, and Cas is in Amarillo, and maybe I'm a tiny bit surprised that Dean is here with Sam, instead of running off with Cas, because we've seen a lot of that this season, Show. (Spoiler alert: \o/!!!!!!!!) With Cas's absence nicely explained away, it looks like we might have a Winchester-heavy episode tonight. (Spoiler alert: Or not.)
Anyway. Sam thinks it might take days to find Gabriel, Dean says they don't have days, they've already spend two weeks seaching for Gabriel, and he doesn't want to be stuck in this stupid motel room while Mary and Jack are possibly "hurt, or worse." (However, during this speech, he kicks the bed, sending it into magic fingers mode, and he's probably a little more interested in being stuck here now, and also, Sam jumping off the now-vibrating bed is adorable.) He insists they don't have time to spend "looking for some runaway, dumbass archangel who doesn't want to be found." But I don't know what he thinks the alternative is. What is plan B, if they give up on finding Gabriel? It doesn't matter, because there's a knock on the door, the guys draw their guns in sync (which I love), and they open the door to reveal the runaway dumbass wounded archangel himself. So I guess "here" is Central City, Colorado.
Hi there, befuddled!Sam and gunpointing!Dean, two of my favorite things.
Cut to AU Land, and I think I'm just going to get the entire AU story out of the way here. Jack is telling Mary about killing Balthazar, and Bobby bringing refugees, but it sounds like something that happened since we saw them last, since it's the third battle in a row, and I thought he killed Balthazar the last time we saw him, so I'm not really sure what's going on. Anyway, Mary's not thrilled about more refugees, because they're running out of supplies, and those people are going to take all their jobs, and probably half of them are ISIS. They're interrupted by someone named Jacob, who doesn't seem to be an angel, despite his name. He tells them the angels are leaving.
The next thing we see is from the POV of someone traveling quickly through the original AU Land, the one with dust and spires and constant lightning flashes. (Sidebar: Now that we know there's a section of AU Land with trees and bridges and snow, why is anybody living in the part we saw first?) It reaches a door and goes into what we can now recognize as Michael's headquarters, and then we see it's just happening in Jack's head. "It's all empty," he says. A few angels are guarding the perimeter, but most are gone. He thinks Michael might be afraid of him, and that might be why he buggered off. "I'm winning!" Jack says. Oh dear. That's not anything you ever want to think on this show, sweetheart. He wants to go there and see if they can find anything that tells them why the angels left. Mary thinks it's a trap, and Jack says "It's all right. I'll keep you safe." Seriously, Jack, you need to become a lot more pessimistic.
Jack, Mary, and crew burst into Michael's headquarters, guns drawn, but it's as empty as Jack said. They find a map of the US on the table showing where Michael's armies are located. They're all in the south and south central US, as far north as Kansas and stretching from Texas to Florida, and all apparently facing toward the New Orleans area. But the most amazing thing about this map is this part. The land south of Texas is labeled South of the Wall. There's a fucking wall along the southern border, guys.
Apocalypse World is LITERALLY Trump's America.
The rest of their crew returns with AU Kevin, who they found in the dungeon. He says he served Michael because he had no choice, and his friends and mom died. Michael put him in the dungeon because he couldn't perfect the spell, "but I fixed it," and yet, if you fixed it, why are you still in the dungeon? We know what spell it is, but Mary doesn't. Kevin tells her there's a place in the south where the wall between worlds is thin; Michael is going to the rift there and invade the other world. You know, ours.
There's some discussion about what the map means. Is it legit, or was it left there as a trap? Jack wants to go to the thin spot right not, but Mary wants to wait until Bobby joins them tomorrow. Jacob suggests they just let Michael go through to the other world and be some other world's problem, and I can't really blame him.
Jack decides to go on his own, without Mary, and accuses her of not having faith in him. She reminds him they don't know how strong Michael is. She says she was just like him as a hunter, but running in blind instead of making a plan is how you make mistakes. Hey, that happened last year, didn't it? Mary didn't want to take the time to make a plan? Am I remembering right? If so, good on you, Continuity Fairy. She's worried about him being killed, "and I can't lose another boy." Aw. He's not your boy, Mary. He's Cas's. And Sam's. He promises he'll be okay.
"No," says Kevin, who opens his shirt to reveal a sigil carved into his chest. Michael told him to wait for Bobby, but he's not going to. And Michael says that when he lets Kevin into Heaven, he'll see his mother again. Mary tells him that Heaven is just memories, but Kevin doesn't care, and I can't blame him, because if earth is this bad, living inside happy memories would be a big improvement. Kevin feels guilty about everything he's done, and he's ready for an end. Jack tells him that Michael's spell won't kill him, and Kevin knows it won't. Michael only wants to break Jack, not kill him. "He said for me to tell you that even if you win, you still lose." He slams his hand on his chest and there's a bright flash of light. Jack grabs Mary and we see the shadow of his wings folding over her to protect her. So, Jack has wings!
After, we see Jack sadly surveying the ruins of Michael's headquarters. Some things are on fire, the crew is dead, and Mary is presumably unconscious in his arms. Well, that didn't go well. When she wakes up, he says "It's my fault. I didn't protect them." Mary says they can't prepare for everything, and he says "If I can't keep them safe, then what's the point?" Oh, Jack, my poor sad little cinnamon roll.
Let's get back to the Winchesters I actually care about, shall we?
It was just a few days ago that I reposted a Tumblr post about how s13 is borrowing from fanfic, what with actual goddamn tentacles, and Sam tenderly caring for Gabriel, and guess what, if you're into Sabriel h/c, here's more of your jam. Sam patches some nasty clawmarks on the angel's abdomen, and Gabe tells the brothers he knew they were there because he felt Rowena's locating spell as soon as she cast it. "It tasted like haggis." Hee! (Sidebar: I actually kinda like haggis. Is there something wrong with me?) He claims to be in town vacationing, which the guys don't believe, and asks if they happen to have any of his grace left. What he has will recharge eventually, which is good to know, because certain episodes left us wondering why regular angel grace can recharge but archangel grace can't. Ahem. (And also why Anael's will recharge but not Castiel's, but let's not go there now, okay?) Dean tells him they used it to open a rift, and Gabriel is all, cool, Gabe out, except he's in too much pain to actually make his grand exit.
Meanwhile, in the dark alley, a guy in a plaid suit munching on an apple is neither surprised nor saddened to find Fenrir dead. A second guy chides him for his lack of respect for "our brother." Not Plaid Guy dips his fingers in Gabriel's blood, tastes it, and says "this is archangel blood." Huh. It's rare to get an archangel to bleed, and yet this dude is familiar enough with archangel blood that he knows what it tastes like? That's... odd. Plaid Guy calls their father.
Gabriel wakes from his nap, and the Winchesters try again to get him to join Team Free Will. He declines again, but before he can leave, the door bursts open to reveal Plaid Guy and Not Plaid Guy. Not Plaid Guy says, in yet another accent that sounds Russian to me, "we're here for the angel." We get a glowing face superimposed over his, like Fenrir's, except it just looks like a skull. And Plaid Guy's superimposed face is a horse. (Oh, god, he was eating an apple earlier. That's funny.)
It's a rude intrusion but I've got to applaud anything that makes them look like this.
They're a couple of Norse demigods, Gabriel explains, just before the demigods attack. Not Plaid Guy goes for Sam, choking him (surprise), while Plaid Guy has a horsewhip (heh) that he uses to attack Dean. Gabriel just watches, apparently planning to escape, but he ends up stabbing Not Plaid Guy in the back just in time to save Sam. Plaid Guy escapes, but it kind of looks like Gabriel lets him get away. He says he'll go after him in a second, but Dean pulls out the magic cuffs and tells him he's not going anywhere.
Next we see the brothers coming back from somewhere, which turns out to be the junkyard where they disposed of the demigod bodies. (Have you boys learned nothing from the Ketch debacle? Burn the bodies!) They demand answers, and Gabriel begins by explaining that the demigods were more like "god-begotten monsters." And that they were after him because he killed Fenrir. He tells the more detailed story of his time in Monaco with porn stars. The demigod brothers were the ones who hid him. They lived a Rat Pack lifestyle and had a great time until the brothers feared Lucifer was going to win the big showdown, and it wouldn't do to be in cahoots with the little brother who plotted against him, so they sold him to Asmodeus. So that means Asmodeus has had him since s5? Wow.
Sam recognizes that since Gabriel was low on grace, he had to kill the brothers the "old fashioned" way, with wood. "Don't let anybody ever tell you you're just a pretty face," Gabe says to him. (Which is true, Sam. You're also a magnificent body.)
And Dean's all, no, wait, I'm the one with the pretty face.
Sam asks, since there are only three brothers, why are there four swords here in your case? Well, sword number four is for the worst one of them all - "their papa, Loki." And oh, here's yet another plot inspired by fanfiction! Are we going to have an actual MCU crossover here? Cut to Loki, who looks exactly like Gabriel, except he's wearing a hat. So, no. It ain't MCU unless we get Hiddles. (Also, I suspect the timing of this episode is not completely coincidental.)
"I thought Loki was you?" Dean says, as he hits his flask, because this day is taking a lot out of him. (I know, Dean. I hoping for Hiddleston. And Hemsworth and Downey and oh god Chris Evans and those fucking shoulders. I mean, I love you, Speight, but come on.) It turns out Loki was the one who helped Gabriel go into the witness protection program in the first place.
What did Loki do while you were impersonating him?
Well, he had his own family drama to deal with. It was in his best interest to go off the grid for a while.
Yes, it probably was. (Although, if someone was after Loki, wouldn't they be equally after Gabriel!Loki?)
Dean gets angry, and tells him none of this would have happened if he'd just stuck around and helped them fight Lucifer, but he ran off then and he's running off now, and he needs to drop this unimportant little revenge quest. Gabriel has a very nice emotional moment where he shouts that he was tortured every day. "What I went through?" he says. "You don't forgive. Everyone who had a hand in it will die. You get me?"
"Yeah," says Sam. "We do." And oh, god, Sam does.
Sam gets it.
We get it, Dean says, but it's probably not even going to make you feel better. Gabriel doesn't really care what Dean thinks. Sam points out that Gabe is low on grace, and Dean pulls him aside for a private talk (although Cas could hear them from the other room, and I bet Gabriel can too). He warns him that revenge never ends well - not for him, not for John, and it won't for Gabriel, and Sam says this might be different, and oh, Dean thinks he knows what's going on.
You, you're so hopped up on this Kill Bill fantasy of his -
No, this has nothing to do with me.
If you had a shot at Lucifer, you wouldn't take it?
Of course I would. But this is about Gabriel. He needs our help.
Mmmm. I like any indication that Show hasn't forgotten how messed up Sam is about Lucifer.
Mmmm indeed.
Sam tells Gabriel they'll help him if he agrees to help them. And then I guess it's the next day, because Gabriel's feeling better and Sam's wearing a red plaid shirt instead of his earlier blue one. Dean calls Gabriel "Uma" and yeah, his jacket does have kind of a Kill Bill vibe. He says Plaid Guy (okay, he doesn't call him Plaid Guy) is a coward, and he'd bet "all the personal lubricant in the SFV" that he ran back to Loki. The guys look at each other, confused, because they don't know what the SFV is, and neither do I. San Fernando Valley? Is that an area known for using a lot of personal lubricant?
No matter. Gabriel knows they're at a particular crap hotel that Loki will have given the "Loki treatment," and the guys are annoyed that he's known Loki's location the whole time. Dean asks why he didn't kill him earlier, and he says it's more satisfying to take on the big guy last. He shows them his kill list, so I guess we're in a GoT crossover now? (Check off yet another AO3 tag, guys! Or did The Bride have a list in Kill Bill? I guess she did, with Bill at the end, so we're still in Tarantino territory. Sorry, Arya Stark fans.)
Plaid Guy is next on the list, and once all of the sons are dead, Gabriel will kill Loki. Dean is really dismissive and calls his plan stupid, and Loki says seven years is a long time to plan his vengeance, and Sam's probably been thining about his own vengeance for seven years as well, so he's on Gabriel's side.
Dismissive Dean is awfully pretty, so I'm going to handwave it.
I really need to watch Kill Bill again, because I suspect the scene in the hotel is an homage. Classical guitar, whistling, horns, Plaid Guy eating a carrot (because he's a horse). They get in the elevator, and then Gabriel and the Winchesters creep into the hallway and watch it go up to the third floor. They follow.
Height difference kink and bowlegs. You're welcome.
Gabriel reminds them that he's the one who gets to kill Plaid Guy and Loki. Dean doesn't accept this. He's still being really dismissive about Gabriel's revenge needs. He tells him "You want Loki dead on the ground, that's what you're gonna get." But he doesn't want Loki dead on the ground, Dean. He wants Loki dead on the end of his sword. Before they can go any further, the elevator opens, we see Plaid Guy and his two henchmen standing at the end of the hall, and Plaid Guy yells "get 'em!"
Gabriel kills the lights and we see the scene in flashes of gunfire, as Sam and Dean fire at the henchmen and Gabriel gets Plaid Guy's sword. When he turns on the lights again, the point is on Plaid Guy's chest. And Dean is gone. As Sam shouts for him, Gabriel ganks Plaid Guy. Three down, one to go! Gabriel thinks Dean's absence is amusing until Sam sees the elevator going to the penthouse and realizes Dean went after Loki himself.
Penthouse floor. More spaghetti Western music as Dean eases Loki's door open. The Trickster takes the lollipop out of his mouth and says "so you are Dean Winchester." Because of course he knows the Winchesters. Loki puts the lollipop back in a case (ew) and informs Dean that the true cause of beef between him and Gabriel is the death of Loki's father, Odin. That was Lucifer, Dean points out. And oh, it was! I had forgotten that Odin was killed at the Elysian Fields hotel that night. {high-fives the Continuity Fairy} Loki blames Gabriel for Odin's death, because he'd promised to stay out of the affairs of angels if Loki loaned him his face. And since Lucifer followed him to the Elysian Fields, it ended in Odin's death. Is that really what happened, though? Don't we think Lucifer might have shown up anyway? Doesn't matter. Gabriel still needed to be punished. "Odin was a salty, disagreeable bastard," Loki says. "Truth is, he despised me. But he was my father. I'm sure you understand. What would you do for your father?" Depends on when you ask, doesn't it? At one time Dean would have killed or died for his own salty, disagreeable bastard of a father. Aw, hell, he'd probably die for him now, too, if it were an option.
(Sidebar: Why was Fenrir called Odinsbane, if he's not the one who killed Odin?)
Dean runs Loki through with the sword (when did he swipe the Loki sword) but hits nothing but air, because he's an illusion. In the hallway, Gabriel encounters the real Loki. Illusion Gabriel can still smack Dean around, which is hardly fair. And real Loki can use all of his powers on Gabriel, who doesn't have the Loki sword. They fight, and Loki yells, and then Dean slides the sword to Gabriel, who ends up with it pointed at Loki's chest. Loki does some emotional yelling and some deathbed snarking and tells him "you stand for nothing, and in the end, that's exactly what you'll die for." Foreshadowing? (I know, I said I wasn't going to use the F word. I lied.) Anyway. Loki's dead. As far as we know.
Aftermath! The Winchesters head outside to the very clean and shiny Impala, and Sam puts Gabriel's sword case in the trunk. I wonder if they'll use them later?
Isn't she pretty?
Gabriel thanks them for their help and asks how we're going to fight Michael. They're surprised that he actually plans to help. "A deal is a deal," he says. Dean gets in the car, but Sam gets closer because they're going to have A Moment! (Somebody hold me!)
Hey. How are you feeling? Now that you...
Got my sweet sweet vengeance on?
Yeah, sure, I guess.
(sarcastically) Swell, Sam. I'm a whole new guy.
That's what I thought.
Well, dammit. Sam's tentative, hopeful little face, and then his sad, self-deprecating half-smile at Gabriel's response, it's just. Ugh. Yes, he wanted this to work for Gabriel, partly because (for some reason) he cares about Gabriel's well-being but partly because he wants to know this could work for him, that he could destroy whoever damaged him and it would make a difference. Even though he warned Rowena that nothing would ever change what had happened to her, he still wants to think it's possible. And Gabriel tells him it is not. And then, the way Gabriel lets his smirk fall after Sam turns away. Good lord. This a lot packed into less than a minute of dialog.
Oh, Sammy.
Back at the bunker. I hope someone called Cas and told him he could abandon his search of Amarillo. Oh, they did, because he's here, helping Gabriel settle in. And apparently Rowena's here too. Sounds like another AO3 tag to me. Dean's drinking whiskey, and have I mentioned how much I love to watch this man drink? I'd love an entire episode that was just Dean drinking whiskey, and Sam cleaning guns or doing something else with his hands, and them just talking.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Sam is excited, or at least hopeful, saying that they'll be good to go as soon as Gabriel's grace is restored. Although it seems like that would take a very long time? Considering that Lucifer and Cas never actually regained their normal level of power on their own? (Ha ha ha continuity.) Dean is less excited. He is, in fact, not happy at all. Sam takes this as his cue to ask why he left him and Gabriel to go after Loki, and Dean claims he just saw an opportunity, they seemed to be handling the goons okay, it was no big deal. It's interesting that Sam is framing this as "why did you decide to kill Loki on your own," and not "why did you try to take away the one thing Loki requested, the one thing that mattered to him, that he be the one to kill Loki." But Sam does recognize that Dean's lying, and he accuses him of going off without him ever since he opened the rift and went with Ketch, and yes! They're actually saying something about this! Although it actually started much earlier, like, in Tombstone, which was over a dozen episodes ago! But I'm happy to get any recognition of this pattern. And then this happens.
Well, we talked about that.
Did we? Because, I gotta be honest, after everything, you're treating me like I deserve to be back at the kids' table or something.
Sam, I'm not gonna apologize for protecting you.
So that's what you think you're doing here.
You remember what happened, the last time we had front row tickets to the Lucifer-Michael show? Cause I do. You died. And went to Hell. But see, this time the apocalypse isn't looking for us. We're actually looking for it. I don't care what happens to me. I never really have. But I do care about what happens to my brother.
Dean, we're going to that place, and we're going to save Jack and Mom, together. And if something happens, we will deal with it, together. And if we die, we'll do that together too.
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Y'all know what Sam does to me, but DAMN, Jensen is gorgeous in this scene.
Things I love about this scene:
1. Sam finally telling Dean that he doesn't appreciate being sidelined.
2. The way Dean says "well, we talked about that," which for some reason reminds me of Demon!Dean and his conversation with Sam in the bar, like, I don't care what you say, Sam, this is what I have decided, and I'm being very calm and rational about it.
3. "You died. And went to Hell." (And it almost ended me and I'll never let it happen again, or have you not noticed that?)
4. "I don't care what happens to me. I never really have." And this has always been true. Dean has his ups and his downs, but in general, he's always ready to sacrifice himself for something. He's already decided that's his fate, and when it finally happens, he'll be fine, whatever, is Sam okay?
5. "But I do care about what happens to my brother." (And I think he's got this idea about getting vengeance on Lucifer, and that scares the everliving crap out of me and I can't let it happen, I've got to keep him away from that.) (Also: translation: I love you, Sam.)
6. "And if we die, we'll do that together too." (translation: And if you die, you have to let me die with you this time. Also: I love you too.)
So, we've had another emotional flip-flop. At the beginning of the season, Dean was full of despair but Sam had hope. After Cas came back, Dean had hope and Sam was depressed and maybe a bit suicidal. And they seem to have switched sides. But it makes sense. Someone's got to be functional, so it's pretty realistic that when one of them starts falling apart, the other one pulls it together. I hope it doesn't mean we're going to forget or ignore Sam's feelings of hopelessness earlier in the season. I think he's just situationally happy now, because they have a plan and things seem to be coming together. I hope I'm right.
I loved that last conversation, and I loved the references to Sam wanting revenge against Lucifer. I love Sam being kind and understand with Gabriel, and Dean being not-so-much. (I'd love it more if Dean reminded Sam of the awful things Gabriel did to him as the "Trickster.") As for the rest of the episode... well. It's not that I'm not interested in Gabriel's story, but now? Why now? Why so much time dedicated to his backstory and revenge plot? Did a season that already lost an episode to Wayward Sisters need an episode of The Gabriel Show? (Not that I'm opposed to Wayward Sisters, but that wasn't a Supernatural episode.) Is it going to be relevant? Was it just a wink at Infinity War?
Let's hear what you thought! And, as always, no spoilers in the comments, please!