Let’s Speculate: Supernatural 15.17 “Unity”

Then:  Dean is telling Sam that Jack’s supposed to kill God and the world is saved.  Chuck is seen destroying worlds, “clearing the board.”  Dean tells Amara, “We need your help.”  The Empty tells Cas, “I’m on Death’s side.”  Billie talks about Jack’s transformation.  Dean is driving and tells Sam that Jack is going to die.  Sam yells, “Just STOP!”

NOW:  The episode begins with the shot of the night sky absolutely brimming with stars.  Pine trees stand around a large, clear pool in Reykjavik, Iceland.  Lights make their branches glow.  In the pool sits Amara, reading a book and sipping on a glass of wine as vapor rises gently around her into the air.  A young man asks her if she wants more wine, but she declines.  She glances up at the magnificent Milky Way and sees one shooting star, then another, then dozens mixing their fiery trail with the green aurora borealis and are reflected in her eyes as she stares up into the night.  “Welcome home, brother,” she says.  

SUPERNATURAL – “Unity”

A computer and open books sit on the library table in the bunker.  “Nothing?” Sam asks into his phone.  Cas is on the other end out in the countryside telling him that what he was searching for was a dead end; he has nothing.  He doesn’t know what else to do.  “We’ll find another way,” Sam tells him.  Dean enters the room and asks if it’s Cas.  Sam ignores him.  “So it’s the silent treatment?” Dean remarks.  “I thought you got it.  Killing Amara, Jack dying — it’ our only way.  We don’t have to like it, just get it done.”  There’s a crash from another room, and both brothers head downstairs to find Amara rummaging through their liquor supply.  They stare at her.  “My brother has returned,” she tells them.  

Jack, Dean, and Sam stand in the bunker’s main room listening to Amara.  She doubts their ability to trap Chuck; after all, he had four archangels to trap her.  “We have one Jack,” Dean tells her confidently.  Amara looks over at the young nephilim.  “I wish we’d gotten to now one another,” she muses reflectively.  “Maybe after.”  Jack looks straight at her.  There’s just the slightest of pauses, then he smiles and nods.  He says that they just have to do the final ritual.  

Dean and Amara have a moment for a quick private conversation.  “We can count on you, right?” he asks.  “You and I will always only help each other,” she tells him.  Then in a blink of an eye, she’s gone.

Jack and Sam also have a chance to talk.  “Are you angry?” Jack asks.  Sam tells him no.  “Disappointed?”  “I wish you’d been up front,” Sam tells him.  “Sacrificing your life for a cause takes a lot of courage,” he continues earnestly, “but I still think it’s wrong.”  Shortly after, Dean enters; it’s time to head to Santa Fe.  Jack is getting his stuff.  Sam tells him he’s not coming.  Dean can’t quite buy that Sam is going to take a knee on this one.  “That’ not what I’m doing!” Sam says.  “We have to do it!  It’s in the book!” Dean insists.  “Does anything about this feel right to you?” Sam asks him.  “Our feeling don’t matter,” Dean tells him. “I guess I have to be the grown up on this one.”  “We don’t give up on family!” Sam tells him passionately.  “Jack’s not family!” Dean retorts.  There’s a huge pause as Sam stares at Dean as if he can barely believe what he just heard.  “He’s not like YOU, not like Cas!” Dean tries to explain.  “He’s just NOT!”  “I’m ready!” says Jack, standing in the doorway with his coat on and his backpack over both shoulders.  The brothers stand frozen a second looking at him, unsure what to say, but his bland expression doesn’t change.  “Then let’s hit the road,” says Dean, walking briskly toward him.  Sam’s eyes are tormented and sad.  

The Impala drives through a rainy night, Dean behind the wheel, Jack in the passenger seat.  Dean looks conflicted but determined. He glances Jack’s way sometimes, concern in his gaze. Jack looks placidly ahead.  Back in the bunker, Cas enters the library where Sam is researching.  The angel tells him that he would have done the same and joins Sam in perusing the old books.  

Amara sits on a bench surrounded by trees.  She holds a flower in her hands, as still and quiet as the peaceful forest around her.  Suddenly, Chuck is there with a huge, toothy grin.  “Hey, sis!”

Black screen with the name – Amara

Chuck asks her if she’d checked out his light show.  It was pretty rad.  “You’re ending world,” Amara tells him.  Chuck tells her that he’s saved the best for last.  “Then what?”  Amara asks him.  Chuck acts unperturbed.  He tells her he needs her help.  Amara tells him a flat no.  “I can’t do a hard reset without you,” Chuck tells her.  “Not happening,” Amara states.  Chuck shakes his head in annoyance.  “The Winchesters got to you.”  He shudders at the thought of her and Dean and the connection between them.  “That wasn’t you?  You didn’t write that?” questions Amara.  He hadn’t.  His sister tells him that she’s not on Dean’s side or on Chuck’s side.  “You don’t care,” Chuck tells her.  “I do, and so should you,” she replies.  “Walk with me.”   She strolls down the path and Chuck joins her, sarcastically saying, “Walking.”  “Take a breath!” Amara tells him.  “Revel in this wonderful thing you created.”  They muse about his first tree.  It was perfect.  Chuck remembers that it was a fern.  He’d been obsessed with fractals.  “Now you want to annihilate it!” Amara remonstrates, “because the Winchesters won’t do what you say.”  Chuck shakes his head.  He says that this world reminds him of his failures.  Why’d he go with carbon-based life forms?  Why not silicon?  He’s going to be zeroing it, starting fresh.  “None of this was a failure!” Amara tells him.  “Not a tree.  Not a human.”  “Humans are the worst!” Chuck rants.  Not only are they bad, they’re boring.  He’s over them.  “Then what about your first children?” Amara asks with a snap of her finger.  They are in heaven, a bland white room.  She wants him to meet his fans.  There’s a buzz of excitement, and a small flock of angels enter, dressed in gray and white and clutching books.  “Oh, my God!”  one exclaims.  “Oh, my YOU!”  They beg for autographs.  He’s the way, the truth, and the light.  For just a moment, Chuck seems pleased by the attention, but he quickly grows annoyed when one keeps asking for him to sign a different name.  He snaps his fingers and they disappear.  He reassures Amara that they’re not really GONE, just not right here right now.  “I wanted you to feel their love, perfect angelic devotion,” Amara tells him.  Chucks blows a long, loud, childish raspberry.  He tells her that he always gets what he wants.  She responds by saying that what she wants is balance – light and dark, brother and sister, united again.  True balance – once world.  “Hmmmmmm,” says Chuck.  “You can’t,” realizes Amara.  “You only care about your pleasure, your story.  I guess that makes you the villain.”  “Villains get all the best lines,” Chuck tells her.  Snap! Amara moves her fingers, and they’re in the bunker, surrounded by brick and concrete, railings and closed doors.  Chuck isn’t going to stay.  He snaps his fingers – once, then again.  Nothing happens.  “Is this a trap?”  Amara gives him a slightly guilty look.  “I gave you a chance,” she says.  “You B – word!” Chuck says.  “The Winchesters have found a way to bind you,” Amara tells him.  “No!  No!”  Chuck is upset.  “You can’t hold me here forever!”  “I can hold you long enough!” Amara replies intently.

Black screen with the name Dean.

Back in the Impala, Dean tells Jack, “I didn’t mean what you heard.”  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Jack says calmly.  “I’m not like Sam or Cas.  I understand.”  Dean looks at him searchingly, then turns his troubled eyes back to the road.

Daylight has dawned, and the Impala is pulling up in front of a small touristy shop named Jim’s Gems.  A long sign shaped like the Santa Fe landscape lines the length of the building.  “Billy said this is where it ends,” Jack says.  The door opens and an effusive, dark haired man with a long silky scarf hanging around his neck smiles at them.  “Jack?”  “Hello?” Jack responds.  A beaming dark haired woman appears behind him, and they welcome Dean and Jack into the shop, flipping the open sign to closed.  The woman is beaming.  She’s invaded Jack’s personal space and seems almost to be touching him but instead is caressing the air around him.  The man tells them that he’s Adam, the first dude.  Yup, the one with the apple — only it was a quince.  “So that’s Eve?” Dean asks, pointing at the joyous woman.  “Seraphina,” Adam says.  “His aura is like Skittles!” she exclaims.  Seraphina is an angel, explains Adam.  “The only one who can put up with me!”  They start kissing and making out.  “What’s happening?”  Dean is thoroughly taken aback by this couple, their announcement, and their behavior.  “You’re with me!” Adam tells Jack.  “What’s happening?” repeats Dean.  “It’s a pop quiz,” says Adam.  “I’m OK,” Jack reassures Dean, following Adam through a doorway covered in a curtain of swaying red beads.  “Relax,” Seraphina smiles.  “It’s gonna pass.”  She’s seen it in her dreams.  “So you were tripping balls and you saw Jack?” Dean questions, not impressed with her blissed-out state.  

In the next room, Jack says to Adam, “You hate him.”  Adam tells the nephilim that killing God has been his plan all along.  Billie’s been helping him.  And Jack is the main ingredient.  He’s all powerful, or he will be if he passes the test.  He takes him to an open display with several rocks and crystals.  Jack needs to find the one with the spark of the divine.  Which has God touched?  That is Jack’s test.  Jack reaches out slowly, picks up a clear one, and eyes it, then touches a second, then a third, taking his time.  

Seraphina is happily saying, “Think of everything that had to happen to get to this moment.  It was meant to be.”  Dean frowns but nods.  

In the other room, Jack points at one of the shiny rocks.  “That’s your choice?” asks Adam, trying to stay noncommittal.  Jack says yes.  Adam sights.  But Jack isn’t done.  He points to another and another.  “Their existence makes them divine because God is in everything,” he says.  Adam perks up.  “Right on!  At least, he should be.”   Jack pushes his way back through the beads.  “I did it,” he declares proudly.  When Seraphina holds up her hand, he gives her a high five.  Adam and Seraphina embrace, then she pulls out a giant knife and sticks it into Adam.  Jack and Dean are standing behind Adam’s back, but they know something bad is going on.  “What?” exclaims Dean.  “Dudes!  Chill!” commands Adam, unperturbed by the blood and the squelching as the angel reaches into his lower left chest.  With a ripping sound, she removes a four-inch piece of slightly curved bone.  “What the hell is that?” Dean questions. Seraphina holds her hand over the slice she’s made in her lover and heals him with a shiny glow.  “One of my ribs, dude,” Adam tells him.  There’s enough punch there to create life or destroy.  Everything Jack’s been doing – making his vessel strong, reclaiming his human soul – has been preparing him.  “What will it do?” wonders Jack.  Adam tells him that the power of the rib will fuse Jack’s soul and his grace creating a metaphysical supernova.  “Meaning what?” demands Dean.  Adam explains that this will create a living black hole strong enough that nothing can escape.  Once they start it, they can’t stop it.  He puts the rib, some tissue still redly clinging to it, and hands it to Jack.  “You dig?”  Jack looks at the bone in the bag.  “I dig.”  “He digs!” Adam smiles.

Once again, the Impala is traveling through the night.  Dean looks over at Jack, and then pulls the car over to the shoulder.  Surprised, Jack says, “We’re almost home.”  “I need to say something,” Dean tells him earnestly.  “You didn’t need to hear that,” he says, referring to what he’d said in the bunker.  “Not now, not with the weight that you’re carrying.  Jack, I don’t know how to explain it.  when I found out about Chuck, it was like I wasn’t alive, like we were never free.  But now me and Sam — we got a chance at living the life without all this crap on our backs, and that’s because of you.”  He has turned in his seat and is looking intently at Jack.  “I need to say — thank you.  Jack, thank you.”  Jack looks down, then back at the hunter in the driver’s seat.  “You’re welcome,” he says seriously but calmly.  Suddenly, Dean’s phone buzzes.  He glances at it and Jack can tells from his expression:  “It’s time, isn’t it?”  “It’s time,” Dean replies.  Jack takes the rib out of the baggie and holds it on his palm.  His eyes glow.  The rib dissolves.  Jack takes a couple heavy breaths, then looks straight ahead.

Sam has been researching, but its ineffectiveness leaves him angry and frustrated.  Cas understands.    “Maybe Dean’s right,” says Sam, “but it doesn’t feel right.”  Sam wants to talk to Billie himself.  This worries Cas, who says it’s not easy to summon Death and he’s not going to let Sam die, but Sam has remembered something.  Sergei had mentioned that there was a key to get to Death’s rooms.  Maybe Sam can just walk up to her.  He jumps back to his research, this time trying to find the key.  His finger taps on a picture in a book of a red skull.  Cas helps him, bringing box after box to the study tables.   One after another, they open them, removing strange items like a large black chess piece and a brass goblet set with simple gems.  Cas opens one box to reveal a smaller box with a 3-D image of a red skull on the top.  When they open it, a large key is revealed.  Sam reads the Latin inscription on the lid, and a yellow line appears on the wall, outlining the shape of a door.  Next to it appears a keyhole.  When Sam inserts the key, the portal swings inward.  Sam is ready to step through, but, when Cas wants to join him, he tells the angel that he needs to stay and buy Sam some time in case Dean gets back while Sam is still there.  

Sam swings open the door and is immediately in Death’s quiet, gray room of books.  He’s in the section marked W.  Ominously, a body lies collapsed on the floor, slumped in death.  Sam glances down the long corridor lined with endless shelving; the hall eventually disappears into darkness.  A couple more bodies lie between the stacks.  Nearby, a voice pleads then cries out in pain.  Sam carefully looks to see, a simple desk in an alcove, where a blonde woman – Meg – sits unruffled with a man on his knees nearby.  “Please!  She won’t come!” the man is saying with a tone of desperation.  Realizing he has no option, he recites an incantation, a summoning or prayer, and, as he said, nothing happened.  So the woman kills him with a twist of her hand.  Sam attempts to sneak away, but the creature is aware, and, in a moment, he’s right in front of her desk.  “Meg?”  he says.  No, Meg is still dead.  He’s just borrowing the face “because, really, I’m Empty.”  The Empty explains spitefully that Death is ignoring him.  See, the Empty was supposed to be his, but then his trench-coated friend came and gave him trust issues.  Billie wants to be the new god.  She’ll send everyone back to where they belong – the angels to heaven, the demons to hell; those who were made alive again would die.  “You’re in God’s book,” the being says, touching a large book on the desk in front of it.  “Have you read it?” asks Sam.  “Only Billie can read it,” says the Empty.  “She needs you.”  Then it realizes that it has another option besides fruitlessly killing reapers.  “Maybe if I hurt you — ” A casual twist of its hand has Sam on his knees, doubled over in pain.  “Billie sent me!” he manages to gasp.  The Empty isn’t sure whether to believe him but allows him to regain his feet.  “Billie sent me to get the book!” Sam says.  Billie’s on earth where the Empty can’t go; God’s so protective of his little world.  “If God and Amara die, you go back to sleep,” Sam says, appealing to the Empty’s primary desire.  The Empty wonders if Sam is lying.  “You have two choices.  Give me the book.  Maybe we all win.  If you kill, we all lose.”  

Sam’s been able to persuade the Empty.  He steps back through the doorway in the wall, holding the Book, but Cas has news:  “It’s time.”  “We have to stop it!” Sam exclaims.  

Chuck and Amara are waiting in the locked room in the bunker.  “It’s not too late, brother,” pleads Amara.  “You can still choose this world – US!  It doesn’t have to end like this!”  “Shut up!” Chuck says fiercely.  

Dean brings Jack down the hallway, supporting him as he seems barely able to hold himself up.

“Dean, brought to the edge of doubt.  His sense of duty, his rage, are willing out,” remarks Chuck, like a narrator commenting on his characters.

Sam and Cas are closely following Dean and Jack down the hallway.  “I’m trying to make you listen!” Sam insists.  In the other room, Chuck continues his comments:  “Sam – always has to know everything.”  Sam has gotten around Dean and is blocking the hallway. “I’m not going to ask you again!” Dean warns him in a determined tone.  “This is my ending – my real ending!” Chuck exclaims triumphantly to his sister.  Back in the hallway, Dean pulls his gun out and points it directly at Sam.  “Move.”  “Dean, don’t,” says Cas.  Chuck is laughing.  He’s controlled, planned visions, and brought about his real ending.  “Don’t do this!” pleads Sam.  “I don’t want to!” Dean responds, then adds, “This is EVERYTHING!  Get out of my way!”  Sam swings at him, attempting to knock the gun away, but Dean punches him and he falls.  “This is a cage,” Amara says.  “They want to KILL us,” Chuck tells her.  Dean has started back down the hallway, but Sam grabs him from behind, and Dean knocks him to the ground again.  “Dean can’t hurt me!” Amara tells her brother.  “But he can lie to you,” Chuck counters.  Sam hasn’t been able to overpower Dean physically so he earnestly, passionately, explains his point of view:  if they follow through on Billie’s plan, then everyone goes back to where they belong.  All the people from Apocalypse World — they’ll be sent back to a universe that doesn’t exist anymore.  Eileen won’t be alive.  Chuck is telling Amara that she wanted him to care about her, but humans will always disappoint.  Dean tells Sam that they don’t have a choice.  “We always have a choice!” Sam argues.  

“I spent so long looking for happiness,” Chuck tells his sister.  “But the only ones that get us is US.  You and me – back together.”  In the narrow hallway, Cas is next to Jack who has slumped to the ground while the brothers face off.  “There’s nothing else we can do!” insists Dean.  “We get out of the way.”  As for everyone else?  “I’d trade them all for Chuck in a heartbeat!”  he states angrily.  “What about me?”  asks Sam.  “Would you trade me?”  

“Balance,” Amara says.  She’s torn; Chuck’s words are convincing her.  “Us!” Chuck continues.  “Fresh, creating something new, beautiful, peaceful.  Together.  Forget all this pain.  No baggage — only balance.”  He holds out his hand to her.  She stands facing him for a moment, then stretches out her hand to meet his.  When they connect, a light appears, and Amara dissolves into smoke and is sucked into the light which gets closed into Chuck’s fist.  Chuck turns away, one eye normal, the other black.  

“Chuck has to die!” Dean nearly yells.  “I can’t live like that!”  Sam keeps pleading with him:  “You’ve gotta trust me.  My entire life, you’ve protected me — from Dad, from Lucifer, from everything.  I didn’t always like it, but it’s the one thing I could always count on.  It’s the only thing I’ve ever known that was true.  So please put the gun away.”  Tears have filled his eyes and begin to fall.  “We’ll figure it out.  We’ll find another way.  We always do.”  Eyes glistening, Dean lowers his gun.  

Just then, from down the hallway, a door splinters and Chuck steps through.  “Are you kidding me?”  he complains.  “Where’s Amara?”  “She’s in here somewhere,” he answers casually.  “You consumed your sister?” Cas questioned.  Chuck looks at him with distaste. “Every other version of you, after rescuing him from perdition, did what they were told.  I tried and tried but you’re all just too stupid, too stubborn, too broken.  I’m over you.”  “Good!” Sam says defiantly.  “Screw you, Chuck,” Dean glares.  “Screw you!” Chuck retorts.  “You know what you do with broken toys?  You throw them out.  I don’t care.  Have fun watching him die.”  Jack, whom Cas had helped to his feet, now falls to his knees.  All three men – Dean, Sam, and Cas – are circled up behind him, leaning in protectively, but his eyes are glowing in a pale way and strange veins are starting to spread out from the glow.  “Jack?!!!”

THE END. 

We’re so close to the end!  Let’s get the discussion going.  

1. Sam says we always have a choice.  Do you agree?
2. The episode was titled “Unity.”  Did Chuck achieve unity, balance, with Amara, or did he consume her?  
3. Who is the real villain here?  Chuck?  Billie?  The Empty? 
4. Death said he’d reap God one day.  Is Billie just continuing Death’s plan or is Billie doing her own thing?  
5. How would a huge black hole that not even God can escape not also suck in the whole universe?   
6. Amara said Chuck was all about seeking his own pleasure, but isn’t that what she was doing herself, enjoying luxuries most humans can’t indulge in?  
7. Was the chess piece Sam took from one box a pawn?
8. Was this truly Chuck’s plan all along or did he adjust on the fly when he found himself trapped?  
9. How could Dean tell Jack that he’s going along with this plan so he and Sam can live free but then pull a gun on Sam?
10. Is there something that you know is true with absolute certainty the way Sam declared his trust in his brother?
11. In a previous episode, Dean was lying to Amara.  Tonight, Sam lied to the Empty.  When is it ok to lie?

Extra Credit (I can’t stop myself! There’s so much to talk about in this episode!):

1. What will happen to Jack?
2. How did Seraphina’s words – “Think of everything that had to happen to get to this moment” echo Michael’s words to Dean when they went back in time to the 70s?  
3. When has Sam reached out to Dean in a similar way, first with physical violence, then with words?  

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