'Supernatural' recap: 'Devil's Bargain'
We start with Castiel, injured from his fight with Lucifer, roaming the woods. He eventually collapses only to wake to two kids poking him with a stick. Apparently, these children think that poking a “dead” body is a totally okay thing to do. Once he’s back up, Castiel goes looking for Lucifer, but it turns out Lucy is already long gone. Currently, Lucy is in Missouri. He’s on the hunt for grace, which means he’s on the hunt for angels, and right now, he’s found one — Cupid.
Moments after Cupid organizes a meet cute for a baker and a woman on roller skates, Lucifer shows up, steals his grace, and then puts his fist through Cupid’s chest. Hey, Lucifer’s never exactly been a fan of love. He then yells one of my favorite lines of the hour at some strangers on the sidewalk: “What are you gawking at? You’ve never seen the Prince of Darkness before?!” Not only have they never seen the Prince of Darkness before, but they’ve never seen him look so…human.
Without enough grace, Lucy is starting to experience some of the things we humans deal with: He’s cold. He’s hungry. And he’s poor. So he tries his hand at begging, and he’s TERRIBLE at it. (I could not love this plotline more.) Lucy, sitting next to another, much nicer homeless man, is yelling, “Money, please!” as people walk past him, and with each person, he gets angrier. His fellow homeless man then offers him a meal, but it turns out he was just offering to look through some garbage with Lucifer, who’s not interested. However, Lucifer is interested in this guy’s story. It seems he’s got a bum leg and he knows a legitimate faith healer who can help him with it. Consider Lucifer intrigued.
While Lucifer looks for a faith healer, Castiel catches Sam and Dean up on everything — they’ve been talking to Asmodeus while Castiel has been in jail with Lucifer. Oh, also, there’s a Kevin Tran in the Apocalypse World. He’s the one who figured out how to open the rift with the angel tablet. And then there’s a new Michael who wants to invade and conquer our world. But hey, at least mom’s alive!
The boys take it all in — they’re pretty used to bad news at this point — before crafting a plan. They don’t have an angel tablet, but they do have a demon tablet, and they know one person who can read it: Donatello.
Sam brings Donatello to the bunker in the hopes that he can find a similar spell in the demon tablet that will help them save mom and Jack and get back to their world before Michael can invade. As for Lucifer, they’re going to kidnap him while he’s still weak. But there’s a problem: Castiel hears over angel radio that someone is killing angels.
The boys leave Donatello a bucket of chicken wings — his brain food of choice — while they look into the angel killings, but they’re not the only ones tracking Lucy. Asmodeus puts Ketch on the hunt, which leads them all to Sister Jo.
Turns out, Sister Jo is less of a faith healer and more of an angel in disguise. Her name is Anael, and she’s one of very few angels who doesn’t seem scared of Lucifer. She explains that after the angels fell to earth, she found a woman praying for her dying husband. She then offered to save the woman’s husband in exchange for her vessel. Now, she’s established a business and gone from being a so-so angel to an excellent businesswoman. And to prove it, she makes a deal with Lucifer: Instead of him draining her of all her grace, she suggests he sip it and then let her recuperate. That way, he’ll have an unlimited supply until he’s back at full power. And guess what? She has a deal. (Next: Sister Jo meets the boys)
But Sam, Dean, and Cas are hot on Lucy’s trail. After Sam runs into Lucy’s homeless buddy, they show up at the church where Jo was healing people. Only, all they find there is Ketch. The former British Man of Letters tries to convince them all to work together and pool resources, but Castiel’s heard enough. He knocks Ketch out with a simple touch to the forehead, and they throw him in the trunk. Their plan is simple: Take Ketch to the bunker, question him, and then kill him. But when Sam gets an alert on Sister Jo’s credit card, they head in a new direction.
At a nearby motel, Jo continues to share her grace with Lucifer in what’s seemingly a very sexual moment that ends with them both collapsing on the bed and talking about the wonder of being human. Lucy hated it, and whenever Jo gets close to losing all her grace, she loves it. “Sometimes I envy humans,” she says. “They can be anything.” Meanwhile, in Heaven, all Jo did was push a button every time a new soul arrived. Up there, no one would listen to her. But down here, she’s somebody.
When she lost her wings, she says she felt liberated. She was finally free. As for Lucy, he admits that he’s worried he’s going to screw up being a father just like his dad before him. But the second Lucifer utters those words, he sits up. Emotions aren’t his thing, and as soon as he’s back to full power, he will be back to his old, non-caring self. And he’d like Jo to remember that.
With the guys on the road, Donatello is left to make his own food runs, and that becomes a problem when Asmodeus appears to him as Castiel and Donatello essentially tells him everything. He tells him about Jack and Mary being trapped and about his work on the demon tablet. Asmodeus then seems to do some kind of mind control to make sure Donatello keeps him up to date on all of his findings. If only the Donatello had Seamless, this wouldn’t have been a problem!
Back at the motel, Lucifer is enjoying himself by reading the Bible: “It’s wrong. Has anybody fact-checked this stuff?!” But when the front desk calls and asks for Jo’s card, she heads downstairs. Only it wasn’t the front desk calling; it was Sam. The guys talk to Jo, and she asks for their help. She then leads them to her room (where Lucifer is complaining that “Dad’s always stealing my best lines”). I LOVE THIS.
When Lucy opens the door, Sam, Dean, and Castiel are there to greet him. Lucifer tries to distract them all with compliments — “Is that a leave-in conditioner?” he asks Sam — but it’s Jo who has a plan. She makes sure Lucifer knows that the guys think he’s WEAK, and then, when the moment presents itself, she takes out Sam while Lucifer handles Castiel and Dean. Lucy then takes a moment to enjoy hurting them all before Ketch shows up and throws down a demon bomb. Lucy and Jo get out in time, but Ketch would like to revisit his plan of everyone working together.
Ketch comes clean and admits that he’s working for Asmodeus, but he tells the guys that he can pass information along to them. It turns out even Ketch has to draw the line somewhere, and apparently that somewhere is at Lucifer roaming free. And then there’s the Michael of it all. As Ketch tells them, “I’m the lesser of, well, at least three evils.” All he asks is the the boys wait to kill him until he’s proven that he’s useful. And they agree…for now.
And that brings us to Hell, where Asmodeus shows Ketch the item he went to retrieve: the archangel blade. It’s the only weapon capable of destroying an archangel, but it has to be wielded by another archangel. And that’s when Asmodeus leads Ketch to one of his cells, and sitting there is none other than Gabriel!!! Sure, his mouth is sewn shut and he looks terrible, but it’s Gabriel! Now, we don’t know if he’s been in Hell since Lucifer killed him in season 5 or if this is somehow a Gabriel from a different universe, but whatever it is, I’m SO into it.
Let’s all take a moment and appreciate that Gabriel died eight season ago. Eight! This was one return I genuinely wasn’t sure if we’d ever get, and I love that this show can still surprise me. And then there’s the idea of what this could mean: Lucifer’s ruling Heaven, and now we’ve got Gabriel back. So it’s safe to say this season is headed in a great direction.
Overall, I thought this episode was a lot of fun. I loved the Lucy stuff, and so far, I really like Sister Jo. But that final reveal is what took it to another level.
