Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 13.23 “Let the Good Times Roll”

“My name is Dean Winchester” – we hear as Dean begins to narrate only to be interrupted by Rowena:  “This is boring!  Isn’t there some music?”  And here comes “Carry on, My Wayward Son” accompanied with varied images from throughout the season.  The Road So Far especially focuses on Alt World, and we glimpse all the characters including Missouri’s psychic granddaughter and Kaia the Dreamwalker.  As the song ends, we see Dean and Sam in the bunker, and Dean says, “That was awesome!”  

NOW:  Sam is in the bunker, so colorful compared to the bland palette of AltWorld, in front of a bulletin board covered with news articles and computer printouts, letting the refugees know about our version of Earth.  Bobby says if the polar ice caps are melting and the guy from The Apprentice is president, OUR world sounds like Apocalypse World!  Sam gets a phone call from Dean.  He’s tracking werewolves.  Sam, Jack, Cas, and Dean meet outside a boathouse; they’re back in our world and back to the family business.  A guy stands on a dock lighting a cigarette; when he turns, Castiel is standing there.  He opens his mouth to reveal sharp canines, but Cas knifes him with his angel blade.  Inside, there are two more.  Jack and the Winchesters make quick work of them – Jack freezing them with his powers while Sam and Dean shoot them with silver bullets.  

Mary and Alt!Bobby are walking on a trail through the woods; they’ve holding umbrellas to protect them from the light rain.  They mention how Ketch is off hunting, the refugees are exploring the new world, and Rowena and Alt!Charlie are off on a road trip.  Without an archangel’s grace, there is no way to open a rift back to the Apocalypse World, but Alt!Bobby says he likes it here and smiles at Mary.  Abruptly, they notice blood on the rain-soaked leaves.  They follow the trail to a boulder, covered in moss and more blood.  Behind the rock, lifeless on the ground, is the body of Maggie, the young woman who’d gone through the tunnel with Team Free Will 2.0 back in Alt!World.  

The Supernatural title card flashes and then the episode title – “Let the Good Times Roll.”

In the bunker, the brothers are discussing their recent hunt, especially how Jack did good.  Dean brings up their prior conversation about whether it is possible to end all the evil in the world.  He thinks that possibly — with Jack — they can.  If they do, though, Sam wonders what they’ll do.  “This!” declares Dean, holding up his bottle of beer.  “Only on a beach.”  He begins to imagine more beachly details, but Sam is a bit taken aback:  Dean is thinking about retiring?  Dean is dead serious.  “If the world is safe, I would.  We deserve it.”  

Dean’s about to enter his room when he hears a sound a bit like a dog barking.  It’s Jack, crying out.  Dean swiftly goes to Jack’s room where the nephilim is caught in a nightmare.  Dean wakes him, reassuring him that he has bad dreams too.  His are about all the people he couldn’t save.  Jack says, “Me, too.”  Jack feels bad that he promised to protect the people in Alt World, but so many of them died.  His mind replays images from the past – Alt!Kevin exploding himself, humans dying.  “I wasn’t strong enough,” Jack mourns.  Dean sits down on the bed:  “It’s not about being strong.  You made it out of there — you ARE strong.”  He tells him that no matter what you do, bad things still happen.   You make mistakes because no one is perfect.  But we keep trying.  We can get better.  Whatever happens, we’ll figure out a way to deal with it together.  “You’re family!” Dean declares.  Sam suddenly appears in the doorway with a cell phone:  “Dean!”

The call was the bad news about Maggie.  AUBobby, Mary, Cas, Jack, Sam, and Dean all gather around her fallen form in the rainy woods.  Who could have beaten her head in like this?

Dean is in the bunker talking to a young woman, one of Maggie’s friends, asking her about Maggie.  As the camera shifts, we see that Sam, Cas, and Jack are all there too.  Cas bluntly states that Maggie is dead.  “No!” exclaims her friend.  “We were supposed to be safe here!”  She reveals that Maggie has been hanging out with Nate, a boy who works at a gas station.  Jack disappears.  

The gas station is white with a fifties-style red sign.  Inside, a boy in a red uniform shirt is stocking the refrigerated storage when he turns to see Jack, hunched menacingly in the aisle, eyes glowing fiercely.  Jack hurls Nate into the glass door which cracks, then closes on him, choking him in rage.  The boy is terrified and helpless; Jack is enraged and merciless, but suddenly Cas is there trying to get Jack to stop.  Jack flings Cas away to collapse on the floor.  “Stop!” Sam exclaims while Dean draws his gun and shoots Jack twice in the back.  The bullets pierce his body but have no other impact, though Jack turns to face the Winchesters:  “You shot me!”  “I had to get your attention,” Dean says calmly.  Jack is sorry when he realizes that Maggie’s murderer wasn’t Nate and once again he disappears.  Cas wants to follow him, but Dean says to give him time.  

Jack is alone walking through the woods.  “I keep hurting people!”  He sees flashbacks of people he’d hurt when he’d used his powers.  He strikes his chest in disgust and anger and begins to cry.  

Back in the gas station, the lights begin to flash; the walls begin to shake; products start to tumble from shelves.  Nate runs.  A high-pitched shriek fills the air, the same sound that assaulted Dean in the gas station after he dug himself out of his grave, the same sound when Michael was coming to the Beautiful Room to take his vessel.  The men hunch over in pain, hands clasped over their ears to block the overpowering scream.

Jack continues to walk in the forest, filled with self-loathing, when there’s a whoosh!  He turns and sees — Lucifer!

Two black shoes enter the gas station.  Cas looks up.  The camera slowly rises – black shoes, pants, the bottom of a coat.  “Run!” Dean yells.  They dash from the building.  The windows explode outward, catapulting Cas and Sam into the side of the Impala.  Dean makes it to the trunk, opening it and searching for a weapon.  Michael exits the gas station, approaching Cas and Sam.  Dean has retrieved the holy oil which he lights on fire, then hurls it at Michael.  “Run!” he yells again.  The three of them jump in the car and zoom away, leaving Michael behind, standing in a ring of holy fire.

Jack can’t believe Lucifer is real:  “Sam said you’re dead.”  “Sam is a liar and a bad person and also freakishly tall,” replies Lucifer.  “Michael didn’t kill me.  Sam left me behind, but, after what I’ve done to him, I had it coming.  Anyway, I’m moving on.”  “How are you here?” wonders Jack.  “Not how.  Why!” corrects Lucifer.  “I’m here for YOU. You need e — we’re blood.  We’re not humans. Humans are so limited and fragile.  Anytime we have anything to do with them, something goes wrong.  It’s not their fault.  It’s not our fault.  It just happens.”  “You’re right!” Jack agrees, so recently filled with grief and disgust at himself for hurting people with his power.  So what should they do?  “Leave!” offers Lucifer.  There’s a whole universe for them to explore.  “Like Star Wars?” eagerly asks Jack, face brightening with childish enthusiasm.  Just like Star Wars, Lucifer encourages!  Does Jack want a light saber?  A Wookie?  Jack pauses; Cas and Sam and Dean will miss him.  “Yes, they will, but you have to live your life for YOU,” reassures Lucifer.  “This is our opportunity to escape our past and our sins and start over.  Father and son.  Are you ready for an adventure?”  Jack is convinced:  “I’d like that!” he smiles.  But there’s something he wants first.

AUBobby and Mary are talking about Maggie in the bunker when Jack appears, followed by Lucifer.  Though Jack tries to reassure them, Mary mutters to Alt!Bobby to call Sam now!  Lucifer walks into the next room where Maggie lies at rest on a table, torso covered with a sheet awaiting a hunter’s funeral.  “You’ve got dead bodies on tables now?” mocks Lucifer.   Lucifer, however, is reluctant to do anything.  Resurrections don’t always work well; people can come back different.  “Sam didn’t!” declares Jack.  “Sam’s different,” admits Lucifer.  Finally, he puts his hand on her forehead.  Mary softly questions Jack who tells her that everything is fine.  Lucifer’s eyes glow as he transfers power, and Maggie sits up with a gasp, alive.  Cas, Sam, and Dean rush in, looking down from the top of the iron stairs:  “Jack!”  But Jack has disappeared along with his father.

Sam wonders how Lucifer got back into our world.  Dean says they have to get Jack back.  “How can we stop Lucifer?” wonders Mary.  Dean is going to call everyone they know.  Alt!Bobby asks, “You’re putting out an APB on the devil?”  Yes, they are!  Sam’s eyes look desperate and sad.

Maggie is looking pensive as Sam asks her if she’s OK.  He wants to know who attacked her.  “Does it matter?” she asks.  “It matters to me,” he replies.  She tells him that she didn’t see his face, but she saw his eyes.

We look up at a beautiful dark sky spangled with stars.  Lucifer and Jack are enjoying the view – “Magnificent!”

Dean has got Jody looking for any signs of Jack, but before they can make more plans, a roll of thunder rumbles through the bunker, then the lights begin to flash. The door rattles.  Sam wants Mary and Alt!Bobby to take Maggie and leave.  He and Dean will buy them some time.  Mary doesn’t want to go, but they do exit, leaving the brothers and Cas facing their angry angelic adversary.  The door shakes, pure white light glowing around the edges and through the keyhole.  Then it explodes inward.  Through the white portal steps a dark shadow – Michael.  Sam and Dean pull guns and start firing at him, Cas has his angel blade.  Unaffected, Michael calmly descends through the air from the top of the stairs.  When Cas rushes forward, he is viciously struck down.  Sam and Dean gamely try to fight back, but they are deeply overmatched.  Michael grabs Dean by the throat.  We see a flashback of Michael and Lucifer in Apocalypse World making their deal.  “This world is mine!” declares Michael.  “I can see it!  I can purge it from sin.”  He’d messed up in the other reality; he’ll do better this time.  His first death will be Dean’s; he’ll take his soul and he’ll do it slowly.  “Eat me!” snarls Dean defiantly, held immobile in Michael’s powerful grasp.  Sam on the floor prays desperately to Jack to help them.

Lucifer and Jack are still looking at the stars.  They’ll explore them all!  Maybe they’ll make improvements.  “Improvements?” questions Jack, but Lucifer brushes it off.  Then Jack hears Sam’s pleas.  

In the bunker, Michael is about to kill Dean when Jack enters, smashing him away, Lucifer following behind him.   Michael gets up, but he is helpless against Jack.  Under the nephilim’s power, he staggers back.  Blood begins to pour from his eyes and ears.  “We had a deal!” he calls to Lucifer.  “Ok, let’s go!” Lucifer says to Jack.  “What do you mean?” asks Jack.  Dean spells it out for him:  Michael gets the world; Lucifer gets YOU.  Jack feels betrayed; he’d believed in his father’s love for him.  “I’m not currently the bad guy here!” deflects Lucifer, but then Sam connects the dots:  Maggie saw glowing red eyes before she was murdered.  Lucifer gets no chance to charm or connive his way out of this one.  Jack turns his power on his father, compelling him to speak the truth.  Lucifer’s eyes glow golden with tendrils creeping out from his pupils across his sockets.  Yes, Lucifer says, when Maggie had seen him, he’d crushed her head in and enjoyed it.  Jack releases him, eyes filling with tears:  “You’re not my father!  You’re a monster!”  Lucifer is upset and tries to cajole his son, but Jack will have none of it.  Lucifer’s eyes burn with scarlet rage as he screams with rabid ferocity.  Jack is unphased.  Lucifer admits that he’s been lying to Jack; he’s just been telling him what he wanted to hear, but Maggie was human.  She doesn’t matter.  “I’m human!” claims Jack.  Father and son confront each other:  We could have remade the universe, says Lucifer.  Together we could have been better gods than Dad ever had been.  But he actually doesn’t need Jack.  He only needs his power.  In a blink, his sword descends and he slices it across the front of Jack’s throat, inhaling the grace as it floats out.  His eyes glow with the influx of the nephilim’s power.  Sam runs toward Jack who’s standing but unresponsive, jacket clutched in his father’s hold.  A flash illuminates the room, enveloping Lucifer, his son, and Sam.  They disappear.  “Sammy!” yells Dean.  He frantically looks around the empty room, then his desperate eyes meet Cas’s:  “Sammy!”  

What just happened?  Michael slowly rises from the floor:  “The devil won”. 

Sam is seen from above as he is hurled to a white marble floor.  They’re in a chapel with a beautiful floor with a curving blue design.  Gorgeous stained glass windows shine serenely above.  Jack’s eyes open while Lucifer triumphantly kicks Sam’s side.  

Michael explains that Lucifer is now supercharged:  “And you thought I was bad.”  He is not strong enough to end Lucifer, not with the devil empowered with the grace of a nephilim.  Lucifer can destroy not just the world, but the universe:  “This is the end of everything.”  It only takes Dean a fraction of a moment to respond:  ‘No! . . . What if you had your sword?”  

Lucifer is choking Sam, then places his hand on his chest, about to kill him, when Jack cries, “Stop!”  Lucifer doesn’t need to placate his son anymore.  He hammers his face viciously.  Jack collapses to his knees.  When Sam tries to interfere, Lucifer hits him.  Sam doesn’t care that Lucifer is so much stronger:  “He’s family!” he exclaims.  Lucifer mocks the idea of family as he stands framed by the rich, red stained glass.  “Go ahead and kill me,” Sam defies his archenemy.  “I’l prove family blows,” Lucifer claims.  “Jack is going to kill you.”

Hearing Dean’s offer to Michael, Cas cries, “No!” There’s a sudden flashback to Zachariah claiming that Dean is the Michael Sword and of Gabriel explaining to the fresh-faced, younger Winchesters the roles they are supposed to play in the upcoming Apocalypse.  In the bunker, Dean is determined to convince Michael to use him to defeat Lucifer.  Michael will be stronger in his true vessel.  “You can’t!” exclaims Cas.  “I don’t have a choice!” declares Dean.  “This is a one-time deal, and I want to be in charge.”  

In the chapel, Lucifer has set up a dilemma:  he’s placed his archangel blade on the floor between Jack and Sam who stand to either side of him facing each other.  His plan?  One of them can walk out of the building, if he kills the other.  One lives; one dies.  Of course, if they don’t, Lucifer will kill them both and destroy the world as well.  This way maybe they’ll have a chance to stop him – one of them, that is.  Sam slowly picks up the blade.  Jack steps toward him, hands at his sides, but Sam doesn’t strike.  Instead he extends the blade to Jack:  “Kill me.”  “What?!!!”  “You can beat him!” encourages Sam.  “No,” Jack replies as he takes the sword.  “YOU can!  I love you.  I love you all.”  Then he presses the blade to his abdomen.  Blood starts to well, when there is a huge flash of light.  Dean stands in the doorway of the chapel in an unearthly illumination.  Huge black wings unfurl behind him against the wall of the church.  

Lucifer, empowered by nephilim grace, and Dean, fueled by Michael, battle each other.  One strikes a powerful blow, then the other.  They fly toward each other, grappling in the air.  Jack and Sam watch.  Eventually, Lucifer gains the upper hand.  Just as he puts his hand on Dean’s forehead to destroy him, just as light begins to pour from Dean’s eyes, Sam throws the archangel blade up into Dean’s hand.  Dean drives it into Lucifer and falls to the floor.  Lucifer glows, held helpless in the air as fire leaps from his eyes – then he falls to the floor.  After all these years, have they iced the devil?

After a commercial break, we return to see Lucifer still lying on the floor.  His wings are scorched into the marble around him.  Jack and Sam gape down at him, then Sam turns back to Dean.  Eyes shining as he gradually begins to believe that Lucifer is gone, Sam exclaims with little-brother awe in his voice:  “You did it!”  “No,” replies Dean.  “WE did it!”  Sam smiles broadly, but suddenly Dean doubles over, gasping.  “Dean?” worries Sam.  “We had a deal!” Dean says urgently.  But then he straightens:  it’s not Dean anymore.  “Thanks for the suit,” he says to Jack and Sam, then disappears.

Mary and Alt!Bobby approach Cas, who’s sitting at a table in the bunker.  A close-up on his face reveals utter grief and devastation on his usually stoic angelic features.  Not a word is spoken.  

The final scene shows Dean walking down a street.  He’s dressed well and formally in suit, tie, and coat, with a cap on his head and a small smile on his face as he mingles with other pedestrians.  His eyes glow with the holy blue fire of the angel Michael.  

Questions:

1. Are Alt!Bobby and Mary going to become an item?
2. Dean’s nightmares are not of hell but of the people he couldn’t save.  What does this say about his character?
3. Lucifer’s true nature is revealed.  Which Lucifer do you prefer:  repentant and caring father or manipulative, self-serving monster?
4. Were the special effects highlighting the archangels’ power effective or not?  In other words, did the flying make the battle more or less intense?
5. Should Sam have dealt Lucifer the killing blow or was having the brothers work together effective?
6. What are Michael’s plans?  How will Dean escape his control?  Who will play a vital role in rescuing him:  Cas, Mary, Sam?

We’ve got lots of time to discuss this before season 14 begins!