Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 14.17 “Game Night”

THEN:  Jack inhaling grace and saying, “I’m me again.”  Anael healing people for money and talking with Lucifer.  Nick killing his neighbor, talking with Sam, and Sam saying, “You can burn.”  Nick escaping custody and rejecting his wife.  Donatello.  Jack promising not to use his powers without telling the Winchesters.

NOW:  A man in a cozy sweater is making cookies and humming.  It’s Donatello in a pleasant kitchen, singing, “Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head.”  He even picks up a few balls of dough and juggles them just as he’s interrupted by the ringing doorbell.  He heads toward the door, telling the visitor to hold their haystacks, opening the door to reveal a figure in a dark coat that lunges toward him.  Strong hands tie ropes, leaving Donatello securely tied on his back on his kitchen table.  His assailant plunges a silver syringe into his neck.  He begins to scream. 

WINGS – SUPERNATURAL

At a table in the bunker, Dean is focused, intent on flipping a plastic ball into a small, brightly-colored cup.  TITLE:  “Game Night.”  The lens pulls back to reveal the game Mousetrap set up on the table.  In the kitchen, Jack is making popcorn on the stovetop with Mary.  They hear a frustrated “Son of a bitch!” resound from the other room.  “It’s supposed to relax him!” remarks Jack.  Mary says it was his favorite game as a kid.  When Mary asks how Jack is doing, he’s a little frustrated with her question, so she clarifies that they’re family; it’s their job to be concerned.  “It’s annoying,” Jack replies as he smoothly heads toward the other room, Mary looking after him with a little crease of worry on her face. 

Dean is griping about the pizza that Sam has gone to get – according to him, pineapple pizza is a crime against humanity – when the phone rings.  Dean stands, body tense as he listens; then he replays it for the others.  It’s Donatello, first asking for help, then whispering strange words in a foreign tongue.  Knowing they need to help him at once, Dean calls Sam, then heads out with Mary while Jack waits in the bunker for Sam to return. 

Anael looking smooth and superior meets Castiel in a diner.  She doesn’t like the ambience, but she does like the earrings Cas shows her – they’re Burmese blood ruby, probably cursed but that’s no concern for an angel.  The earrings aren’t a gift; they’re payment for her help in contacting God.  Anael laughs shortly:  “Good luck with that.”  Cas is sure she can help; in heaven once, she was Joshua’s right hand.  Briefly, he sums up the situation:  their Nephilim has perhaps had his soul consumed by magic when he killed Michael, and, according to lore, only God can restore his soul.  Anael surmises that the Winchesters don’t know about this meeting; she recognizes Cas’s “ill-conceived, lone-wolf desperation.”  At first, she says she can’t help because Joshua didn’t talk to God; God talked to him, and that’s not the same thing.  But then she adds that there is someone she can take him to who might have information.

Back at the bunker, Sam has been replaying Donatello’s voice message.  The words were not Enochian but rather ancient Hebrew. 

In the Impala, Mary is stressed over Sam, over Dean, over Jack.  Dean reassures her with the thing that’s always been essential to him:  “Hey, you’re here.”  “I should have been here more,” admits Mary, adding that she knows she’s been closed off and hard.  Once again, Dean comforts her with a smile:  “That’s where I get it from.”  She smiles back.  “I need you to know:  I’m grateful for every day I get to spend with you and Sam.” 

Back at the bunker, Sam excitedly announces that the words Donatello is reciting are from the Bible – Peter 5:8:  “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking who he may devour.”  [Note:  That’s actually 1 Peter 5:8 – pronounced First Peter – and the New Testament was written in koine Greek not Hebrew.]

The Impala pulls up in front of Donatello’s house.  Dean and Mary run up the walk, the sidewalk bordered by a snowy yard, and cautiously enter the house, guns drawn.  They hear Donatello calling for help, but when they get closer, they see an empty table with a phone playing Donatello’s voice.  An aproned figure, holding a tray of cookies, steps out of the kitchen, greeting them cheerfully.  It’s Nick.

Dean cuffs Nick’s hands behind his back while Mary unsuccessfully searches for the missing prophet.  Nick remains unruffled, questioning if Sam is home sick, but Dean is intense; he wants to know why Nick is there and not in jail.  Nick says it’s a funny story, if by funny you mean a lot of people died.  Mary enters the room saying she’s found a syringe in the trash.  “Dumpster diving?  Classy, Mama Bear!” mocks Nick.  He’s injected Donatello with thalium (?), poisoning him.  He’ll die within a day.  Dean wants to know why he’s doing this, but when Nick says it’s to get their attention, Dean says he’s not buying it.  Nick tells them to check the live stream on the phone:  they see Donatello tied and gagged in a deserted warehouse.  “You can save him if you can find him,” Nick tells them.  Dean holds his gun to Nick’s head, but Nick just laughs about his “angry voice.”  “What do you want?” Mary asks.  “I want to talk,” he replies.

Cas and Anael, driving a large pickup,  pull up outside Orlando’s Emporium.  “We’re closed,” says a bored young man in a gray sweater, hunched over a desk.  This is Methuselah, an angel.  After the fall, Joshua stayed with him, though they were more roommates than friends.  Joshua did make a mean lasagna.  When Cas requests Methuselah help with finding the conduit to help them contact God, he refuses, and Cas, eyes glowing blue, demands he comply or he’ll burn the store – with Methusaleh in it – to the ground.  The angel admits that it’s in there somewhere among all the junk; they’ll recognize it when they see it. 

Dean and Mary guide Nick, still handcuffed, down a hallway In the bunker, shocking Jack and Sam.  Sam grabs Nick, slamming him aggressively toward the wall, but Dean stops him.  After locking him in the bunker’s dungeon, they parlay in the warroom.  They’re not sure what Nick is up too; apparently he’s watched too many 90s serial killer movies.  Sam says he has the antidote to the poison, and perhaps he can hack the live feed to find out where the prophet is being held.  Dean heads off to talk to Nick, but, when Sam wants to charge toward the dungeon, he stops him with a hand on his chest, telling him that he can’t talk with him right now.  Sam is frustrated and angry.  He tells Mary that all this happened because of HIM.  He’s the one who let Nick go.  “I’m the one!”  Mary gently says that Sam thought that Nick deserved a chance.  The choices that Nick made after that are Nick’s not Sam’s.  “That’s not an excuse,” retorts Sam, but Mary wants to comfort him:  “You felt for him because you’re a good man.  That’s why I’m so proud of you.” 

In the crowded junk store, Cas blows dust off an old doll, making Anael cough and complain about her expensive “mulberry silk” attire.  “God’s not going to care,” she tells Castiel.  Once she believed in heaven, in their mission.  Then she got to earth and saw it so flawed.  It wasn’t the paradise God promised.  When she questioned why God didn’t help his favorite creation, Joshua told her that God didn’t meddle.  But she does.  For money, Cas reminds her, unwilling to let her pretend to be a philanthropist.  Anael explains that she does it for herself; she doesn’t need heaven or God; she’s happy.  “Really?” questions Cas.  “It sounds lonely.”  “We’re all lonely because we’re all alone.”  Castiel tells her that God does sometimes meddle — he’d brought him back from the dead – but Anael scoffs at that:  “He saves one angel and watches millions of people die screaming.” 

Nick is in the dungeon, chained hand and foot to a chair in the middle of a devil’s trap, while Dean tries to pound answers out of him.  Despite the blood running down his temple, Nick remains casually conversational, remarking that he and Dean are almost like bros because they’ve both been possessed by archangels or, in other words, “hog-tied to a nuclear warhead.”  “You’re not the same,” Nick elucidates.  “It changes you.  It makes you more than human.  With Michael, you were a prince.  Now, you’re a broken hunter too stupid to know you’ve been beat.”  Dean wants to know how he’s been beaten; what game is being played?  “What’s this all about?”  “I want to see my son,” states Nick.

“He said HIS son?” questions Mary in the other room when Dean reports what Nick has said.  Jack says that he’s not afraid to face him though Mary warns that he’s always a threat.  Jack wants to help Donatello.  Sam agrees that they don’t have another choice.  Jack needs to talk with him.  Jack slowly enters the dungeon, walking straight toward their captive.  “Hey, sonny boy,” chirps Nick.  “My father was a monster,” responds Jack.  “Everybody’s a monster.  Do you know how many innocent people that Sam, Dean, and Castiel have killed?”  He adds, “He loved you.  I felt it.  You broke his heart.  Of course, that was the you with a soul.  Jack insists that he has a soul.  Nick claims he doesn’t.  Jack leans in closer, then there’s a sudden clash and Jack backs off with blood on his face and spattering Nick’s shirt.  Still staring at Nick, he passes his hand over his face, and the blood disappears.  “Sorry!” Nick apologizes with a nervous grin.  Jack glares at him. 

Leaving the dungeon, Jack tells the Winchesters who are gathered in the hallway outside that Nick will show them where Donatello is. 

Anael is frustrated with the fruitless search of the cluttered emporium:  “I’m done.”  She tells Castiel that his real reason for wanting to contact God is that he is afraid to tell Sam and Dean the truth that Jack’s soul is gone and there is nothing he can do.  Before she leaves, she wants the earrings Cas offered her.  She places her purse on a counter near a cluttered display of hanging necklaces.  One catches Cas’s eye:  it’s a horned pendant, a match to the one Dean wore for most of his life.  Methuselah offers that Joshua had crafted it after his arrival.  Cas holds it in his palm, then closes his fist over it, holding it up in front of him.  He begins to earnestly pray even though he doesn’t know where God is or if he can hear him.  “Please, we need you,” he entreats earnestly, voice rough.  There is no response.  “Never worked for Joshua either,” Methuselah remarks. 

Sam and Dean are in the Impala with Nick handcuffed in the back seat, blood on his face, collar, and shirt front.  “That Jack!  He’s got issues,” Nick confides with a friendly tone.  When they get to the warehouse, Sam hands Dean the antidote.  Dean rushes off to find Donatello while Sam stays in the car to guard Nick. 

“Too bad,” Anael tells Cas, “but I’m always right.”  Castiel says that he will go home and tell Sam and Dean the truth.  He gives her the earrings, and she begins to walk away; then he adds, “You know, you’re not always right.  Just because God isn’t here doesn’t mean we’re alone.”  “Because you have each other?” questions Anael.  “Yes,” Cas affirms.

Back at the bunker, Mary and Jack are looking at the stuff they’ve taken from Donatello’s house when Jack realizes that the syringe had grace in it, not thalium. 

While Dean goes up a metal stairway into the warehouse with his weapon drawn, Nick smiles creepily in the back seat of the Impala.  “We’re finally alone!” Sam ignores him, then his phone rings.  Nick starts singing obnoxiously so Sam gets out of the car.  It’s Mary telling him about the grace.  Nick removes a narrow blade from the skin of his arm and begins to pick the lock on his handcuffs.  Sam approaches the car with his gun pointed at Nick, demanding he get out and telling him that knows he injected Donatello with grace not poison but wants to know why.  Prophets are CB radios, Nick tells him.  Lucifer is awake in the Empty.  He spoke through Donatello and told Nick how he could bring him back.  The essential ingredient is Jack’s blood.  Anyway, nobody stays dead anymore.  Nick got some new friends  who helped him.  He’s been working the handcuffs all this time and they suddenly drop to the ground behind him.  He’s free.  Sam and Nick begin to fight. 

Inside the warehouse, Dean has spotted Donatello and untied him, but suddenly two figures leap into the room, attacking Dean who fights back. 

Outside, Sam has gotten the best of Nick, who’s on his back on the ground with Sam’s hands around his neck.  Sam keeps choking him until Nick’s eyes roll back.  Sam pauses and then lets go.  Nick coughs, but, unbeknownst to Sam, reaches out to grab a rock from the dirt road.  He rapidly swings it up and smashes it into the side of Sam’s head.  Sam stumbles back and Nick rains down blows on him, taunting him as Lucifer’s supposed perfect vessel.  Sam jumps into the Impala and pulls the door closed, blowing the horn.  From inside the warehouse, Dean hears but can’t go to his brother’s aid because an assailant is about to impale him with an angel blade.  Dean wrestles it away from him and stabs him instead and he dies with a demonic red glow from his eyes and mouth.  Dean runs out, leaving Donatello to follow at his own pace.  With Nick nowhere to be seen, Sam has opened the Impala’s door and fallen to the ground outside.  Dean dashes up and falls to his knees beside him:  “Sammy?”  While Dean calls Mary, letting her know that Sam is badly injured and an ambulance is twenty minutes out, Nick steals a pickup truck and drives off.  “It’s not good, Mom,” Dean says.  “We’re on our way,” she replies. 

Nick breaks into an abandoned cabin, pours a circle of salt and kneels inside.  He cuts his palm, then removes his outer shirt, still covered in blood, and wads it up in a large bowl, then lighting it on fire.  In the bunker, Jack shudders in pain.  He feels like his blood is burning.  Then he realizes that Nick has his blood from when he smashed his head into his face in the dungeon.  “This was about YOU!” Mary realizes.  While Nick kneels, reciting a Latin incantation, Mary asks Jack, “Where is he?’  Jack tells her that he can get there, but he’ll need to use his powers.  “Do it!” says Mary.

In the cabin, a black portal appears, an ebony mass of writhing goo, sparkling and twisting.  A vague figure can be seen, forming and dissipating in the embodiment of the Empty.  “Lucifer!  I’m here!  I’m ready!” calls Nick eagerly.  “I’m your perfect vessel.  Make me strong again.  Make me you.”  The supernatural figure glows darkly while Nick waits with a smile.  “No!” shouts Jack, entering with eyes aglow.  In just a moment, he has extended his hands and pushed the figure from the Empty to the side and then out of our plane of existence.  “What did you do?”  screams Nick.  Jack’s eyes still glow.  He reaches toward Nick and begins to break his fingers one by one.  “Stop!” cries Mary, but Jack continues, causing Nick to start to burn from the inside.  Smoke starts to rise; Nick’s skin begins to bubble.  “Stop it!” Mary repeats.  Jack flings Nick to the side where he collapses to the ground, skin and clothes blackened.

Dean kneels next to Sam, talking gently to him, trying to smile reassuringly, asking him to count with him.  Sam, head bloody and eyes closed, is struggling to breathe and has difficulty repeating the numbers after Dean.  Urgently, he manages to convey what he really wants to say:  “You put me first . . . your whole life.”  Dean doesn’t want to hear this, keeps trying to smile, then shouts, “Sam!” as his brother sinks into unconsciousness.

Mary is in the cabin looking worried.  “I had to!” insists Jack.  “Sam!  He’s hurt.  Help him!” she commands.  Jack disappears, reappearing with a flutter of wings next to the Impala.  He reaches out to Sam and heals him.  Sam wakes with a gasp.  Dean stands and turns away for a moment to gather himself.  “Where’s Nick?” asks Sam.  “It’s over,” Jack tells him.  “Mom?” wonders Sam.  “Everything’s going to be fine,” Jack says.

Mary is walking out of the cabin into the snow when Jack reappears with a smile:  “I healed Sam.  Everything’s going to be OK.”  Mary says that’s good, but Jack can tell that she’s disapproving.  “Nick was bad.  I had to stop him,” he defends himself.  “Not like that,” Mary tells him.  “He deserved it,” replies Jack firmly.  “Take me home,” Mary demands.  “I will,” responds Jack but adds, “Tell me it’s OK.”  With a sad smile, Mary says, “It’s not.  You’re not.  It’s not your fault, but the Jack I know would never have done that.  Something’s wrong.”  “YOU’RE wrong,” retorts Jack, somewhat aggressively, adding, “Sam and Dean were grateful when I helped them.”  “If they saw what you did, they’d be as worried as I am,” Mary says.  “Are you going to tell them?” questions Jack.  “We’ll help you!” Mary entreats him.  “We’re family!”  Suddenly Jack clutches his ears, leaning over as a shrill ringing resounds in his head.  Mary is speaking – “Listen!” – but he can hardly hear her over the incessant, painful sound.  “Listen!” she repeats.  “Leave me alone!” he finally shrieks, eyes golden.  The screen goes black.  Then Jack whispers:  “Mary?” 

QUESTIONS:

1. This episode is entitled “Game Night.”  Who’s playing games?
2. What did you think of Mary’s words to both Dean and Sam? 
3. Anael says that earth is not the paradise it should be.   Both Lucifer and Michael wanted to create a perfect earth, and Kelly Kline envisioned Jack bringing about utopia.  Is a perfect world achievable?  Is it preferable?
4. Anael says we are alone. Do you agree?
5. Nick says everyone is a monster. Do you agree?
6. Is Jack going darkside? Has he hurt Mary?

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