Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 14.01 “Stranger in a Strange Land”

On The Road So Far, Dean and Sam are discussing whether monsters and demons could ever be completely ended: “Could we stop it – all the evil in the world?” We see flashbacks of Jack with his powers, of the alternate universe, of Mary and Bobby, Lucifer and Michael, and finally of Lucifer’s death and Michael taking over Dean’s body. NOW: the Impala passes us by, Sam is at the wheel. He reaches to turn off the radio, and the music that’s been playing behind the previous scenes cuts out. He drives on through the rainy night.

A bearded man is lying on a bed in sparce surroundings. An alarm awakes him, and he rouses, shaking out a prayer rug on the floor. He begins to pray devoutly in Arabic: “None has the right to be worshipped but you.” He bows, face to the floor, praying praise to the Most High, but when he lifts his head, he is startled to see a figure in suit, tie and cap, sitting in the chair opposite him. It’s Michael wearing Dean. As the panicked man falls back in surprise, Michael begins to quote the Koran in Arabic. The man thinks that his visitor is God, but Michael, in a calm, even voice replies, “Close, but not quite.” When the man then guesses Gabriel, Michael responds, “The other one. The better one.” “Why are you here?” the awed human wonders. Michael tells him that he will ask him a question, a question he’s been going around the world asking holy men and leaders and criminals. The question – “What do you want?” This is a daunting question, but after a moment, the man declares, “Peace and love.” Michael is neither perturbed nor impressed. Instead, he challenges the man’s declaration, saying if he truly desired peace he wouldn’t have left Syria and abandoned his friend, who died. And if he truly wanted love, then what was he doing in the broom closet with Darlene, which is why his wife has left him and why he’s living in this grim little room. With his angelic power, Michael easily hurls the man into the air and back roughly to the ground. “You’re lost, and not worth saving” Michael states. The man stares at him in fear and asks, “What do you want?” Michael wants what he’s always wanted: “A better world.”

BANNER – SUPERNATURAL with wings and bright blue light

S14 Banner

The title, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” appears as our scene shifts to the bunker. Inside, the map table is covered with weapons. A dark-haired man in a pony tail is showing the available weapons to Mary, who picks up a gun and sights down the barrel. Nearby, a young woman (Maggie who Lucifer first murdered then resurrected last season) is patching up another apocalypse world hunter who has been wounded fighting monsters. A middle-aged man enters with a pot – “Soup’s on!” Sam comes down the stairs and is immediately met by Mary who hugs him. Unfortunately, the lead he’d been following was a bust. Mary is compassionate and reassuring. Ketch is in London, Cas in Detroit. But it’s been three weeks. Three weeks too long we can tell from Sam’s expression. The cook approaches; “Chief,” he says, offering Sam a bowl. The hunters discuss how a group of vampires is on the move. Sam swiftly details plans, but when he asks Maggie to hack the traffic cams, she says she can’t so he’ll do that himself. The older hunter says, “Yes, sir” as they disperse to start taking care of the latest threat. Sam says he’s good, but Mary is worried about him and how he’s not been sleeping. “How’s Jack?” Sam asks.

Jack is on the floor. He’s been sparring with AUBobby who obviously has the upper hand on this newly 100% human boy. Bobby encourages him to keep fighting, and says that “it doesn’t matter if you get hit; what matters is how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward.” “Did Ghandi say that?” Jack wonders. They continue sparring.

The sign Motown Meats, and a snazzy pair of shoes under cuffed trousers entering: at first we think it might be Michael, but it’s a cheerful businessman in a suit and sunglasses. He’s meeting Castiel, who’s sitting at a table. He orders from the bar; all Castiel wants is water. The stranger is smug, arrogant, and decisive; Cas is on guard. They’ve planned this meeting. The man takes off his sunglasses to reveal black eyes: he’s a demon. Cas needs information. He’s angry but in control: do the demons know anything about where Dean Winchester is? The demon is amused that they’ve lost Dean: “I thought you were joined at the . . . everything.” Cas threatens to burn him to ash, but the demon says he can do better. Everyone in the bar turns and rises: they are all demons. Cas stands and pulls out his angel blade and rushes them, but there are too many. He’s soon overpowered and on the ground, recipient of their blows.

Next, it is night outside a church in Duluth with a sign proclaiming welcome to Sister Jo. The angel/faith healer is accepting praise from grateful people exiting the church. “God bless you!” gushes one woman. “He does!” Jo smiles. She’s still smiling later walking down an alley and counting her money. There’s a sudden gush of wind and Michael is there. She knows it’s not Dean; for just a moment, we see what she sees – a vague figure suffused with brilliant light with outspread, glowing wings. “Oh, God!” she exclaims, not joyfully. “People keep calling me that,” Michael observes. He says they need to talk. Jo wants to know why Dean said yes to Michael. Michael says, “Love.” Jo tries to be flippant and superior and walk away, but Michael is commanding. He has a question for her: “What do you want?” She laughs and lists name brands like Chanel and Louis Vitton. Michael isn’t pleased that she’s joking. He accuses her of lying. He calls her a rebel, saying she pretends to care about these trinkets, but they’re not what she really wants. She doesn’t speak, but apparently he knows her darkest secrets: he says that she wants love, to belong, to have a place, a family. “Very human of you,” he declares, “and so disappointing.” He knows that there are not many angels left, and he’d thought that he could help with that, but, now, if all the angels are like her, he thinks that maybe the angels aren’t worth saving either.

Jack is sitting on his bed in his room in the bunker; his face is bruised. Sam checks in on him, reassuring him that he knows that it’s hard but that he has faith in him. Mary enters, “He’s awake.” Sam has to go, leaving Jack with a little pat. Sam’s forehead is creased in concern, eyes burdened with worry. In the hall, Mary tells Sam that she can hardly look at him. Sam stands outside door 78, then opens it. A man is sitting there in the dark on a bed surrounded by a devil’s trap painted on the floor. Sam turns on the light and the man turns – it’s LUCIFER! No, it’s Nick, Lucifer’s vessel. There are some brief flashbacks of Lucifer tempting Nick in his wife’s visage to say yes. Sam asks how Nick has been sleeping; Nick had been having nightmares. It’s hard realizing you’ve been the vessel for the devil who tried to end the world. Sam is concerned for him and checks his wound, gently cleaning it while Nick exclaims in pain. The wound is the one from the archangel blade that killed Lucifer, but somehow the vessel is still alive. Nick acknowledges that it must be weird for Sam to look at him and be seeing Lucifer. “Yup,” says Sam, then adds, “I’m glad it’s you.” Nick is glad too; they’re both glad that Lucifer is dead. Nick remembers bits and pieces but doesn’t know anything about Dean. What about Michael? Nick remembers Michael telling Lucifer that he wanted to do it right this time. Sam exits the room, pausing outside the door to sigh, stressed. Then his phone rings. He picks it up. “Cas?” No, it’s a demon. He wants to meet Sam. He has Castiel.

Sam is gathering weapons. Mary says it’s a trap which Sam acknowledges, but he is going to get Cas back. Mary will go with Sam and Maggie with Bobby. Jack wants to come too. Bobby doesn’t want him to, but Sam says he can. Jacks needs this.

Back in Detroit, the demon offers Cas coffee. Cas refuses; the demon said he just likes the taste, like the way he likes infants too. Cas: “Why use me as bait?” “It’s kind of what your’e for,” the demon responds cruelly. Also he needs something from Sam. He’d been asked what he wanted, but he realized he didn’t know what he wanted. Then he figured it out. “What?” asks Cas. “Everything!” replies the demon.

Sam drives the Impala through the night with Mary sitting shotgun. Mary tries to reassure Sam, but he’s reminds her that they don’t even know if Dean’s still alive. Mary says that Dean is out there, scared and alone. She knows. She knows that he might never come back. But she has to focus on the good or else she’ll drown in the bad.

In another vehicle, Bobby talks to Jack, saying Jack had saved him in the other world several times and that now they had his back.

It’s day, and the Impala and the truck pull up. Between the long grass and the trees, the setting isn’t really reminiscent of Detroit, until the camera angle shifts and we see warehouses and buildings in the background. Sam gives Mary the demon-killing knife, then heads toward Motown Meats. He enters the door, a bell ringing over his head, which nearly scrapes the lintel. The demon in charge, now without the suit jacket, smiles. A lackey pats Sam down. He’s weaponless so the demon pushes him towards the leader. “You’re a legend!” he flatters. “The shoulders, the hair! You’re my Beyonce!” Sam is focused and serious. Castiel is embarrassed; he’s shackled to a chair, face bruised and bloody. The head demon introduces himself as Kip; Sam ignores the hand he holds out to shake. Kip is mildly displeased that Sam did not come alone; demons enter with Maggie and Jack captured. “Let’s make a deal,” says the demon. “What do you want?” asks Sam. Kip says that hell is in a bit of a pickle; with Asmodeus Kentucky fried, there needs to be a new king of hell. He wants to be it, with the same deal they had with Crowley. He kept Castiel alive because he wants to work WITH Sam. Sam refuses, and Kip gets truly angry, declaring that once he devastated lands with Ghenghis Khan. He aggressively invades Sam’s personal space, not caring that Sam towers over him. He wishes he could eat Sam’s heart out. He’s not afraid of Sam, but the other demons are. Sam seems to ponder a moment, then decides: “NO!” The other demons stand, when suddenly the door bursts open: Mary and Bobby enter, guns blazing. Some demons go down; one young one, dressed similarly to Jack, does an incredible leap up a wall and across, avoiding the bullets. Everyone is fighting. Mary hurls the demon-killing knife to Sam, who catches it, but before he can use it, Kip throws him across the room. Mary is grabbed by a demon, but she brains him with a bottle, slams his head into the bar, then stabs him with an angel blade. Maggie and Jack are hiding behind the counter, but when Jack sees Bobby on the ground, being beaten bloody, he jumps out, fists up and ready to fight. The demon takes him out immediately. Mary gives Maggie the bloody angel blade. Fighting continues. The female bartender launches herself at Mary and beings choking her, but Maggie knifes her from behind. Jack is knocked out on the floor. Kip and Sam struggle over the knife; it looks as if Kip is about to impale Sam, when Sam shifts his arm and drives the blade into the demon whose eyes flare as he dies. “ENOUGH!” Sam shouts. The room stills. “There will be no new king of hell!” The demons are frozen, listening to him; then they smoke out of their vessels and flee. Their hapless hosts collapse to the floor, the hunters are relieved that they’re alive, and Sam stands in the center of the room, confident and strong.

Sam sits at a table in the bunker. He’s on the phone with a bottle pressed up against his temple on the other side. He tells Cas, who enters still looking beat up, that Ketch was in London trying to track down the special contraption that they’d used on the president to extract Lucifer hoping they could get Michael out of Dean, but they can’t find it. Cas is concerned for Sam. Sam wants to know if Cas is all right. Cas says he shouldn’t have gone to meet up with demons. Sam says that he would have done it if he’d thought of it. He says he’ll do anything to get Dean back.

Mary and Bobby toast each other in the kitchen and smile.

Jack stares at himself in the mirror. Cas appears in the doorway to say that he did well. “All I did was get punched in the face!” states Jack. “We all got punched in the face,” replies Cas. Jack wants his powers back; without them, he’s useless and can’t do anything. Cas reassures him that he has HIM; he has all of them. They will find Dean and defeat Michael together because that’s what they do. He leaves and Jack looks impassively at his reflection.

Sam goes into his room, placing the contents of his pockets on his desk. Suddenly, the phone rings with an unknown number. It’s Sister Jo: “We have a problem.”

Michael is in a grungy warehouse standing near a slumped figure. “You know exactly what you want,” he declares. “You’re pure. You are worth saving. You just want to eat.” The figure looks up and smiles, revealing pointy teeth. It’s a vampire.

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