I finally broke LJ with this one: my post was too large for a single entry. Oops! The episode summary is in this part, and the meta commentary runs in Part Two. *sheepish grin*
5.10 Abandon All Hope …: Last Words?
Hunters die to learn
There are things the Colt can’t kill:
Satan raises Death.
Episode Summary
A businessman who had negotiated with a crossroads demon for a bank bailout summoned the demon, but got a male demon in place of the pretty nubile female he expected. Desperate, he sealed the deal with a kiss despite his distaste for kissing a man. Castiel, watching, called Dean on his cell to report having found
In a little black dress and with her hair done up, Jo Harvelle arrived at the gate of
At Bobby’s, preparing to go after Lucifer, Ellen Harvelle competed drinking shots with Castiel, who was unaffected by the alcohol but observed he was beginning to feel something. In the next room, Sam observed to Dean that it had to be a trap, and Dean teased him about finally having trust issues with a demon. Dean noted that trap or not, if they had a snowball’s chance of killing Lucifer, they had to take it. Saying the town was lit up with demonic omens and suffering a blight of missing persons, Dean thought the devil was there, but argued Sam couldn’t come along because it would be handing the devil’s vessel right over to him. Sam protested, asking if they hadn’t learned a thing, and said if they were going to do this, they would do it together. Dean reluctantly agreed. Shifting to the kitchen, he tried to persuade Jo to make merry, but she teased him and declined, preferring to retain her self-respect. Bobby summoned them all into his living room where he’d set up his camera for a group shot to remember them by, and Castiel dampened the moment by saying it was their last night on Earth,
Arriving in
Reunited and walking the town, Dean, Sam, Ellen, and Jo encountered Meg. Dean pulled the Colt on her, but she noted she hadn’t come alone; disturbed puddles and the sound of growling betrayed the invisible presence of hellhounds. Meg said her father wanted to see them, and that they could make it easy or hard, but Dean asked when they’d ever made it easy and shot one of the hellhounds, aiming where a puddle was disturbed. The four ran for it, but Dean was pulled down by a hound and Jo, turning back to help him despite his order to keep going, emptied her shotgun to free him and was savaged herself. With Ellen and Sam blasting covering fire in all directions, Dean picked Jo up and ran for the nearby hardware store. Dean and Sam salted and chained the doors and windows while Ellen tended to Jo, but the blood pumping from her ripped side made it obvious she was critically hurt.
Sam observed they were trapped like rats, but Dean emphasized Meg’s comment about her father being there, saying this was their one chance to kill Lucifer and they had to try no matter what. Raiding the store’s stock of equipment and batteries, Dean succeeded in powering up a shortwave radio and punched a call through to Bobby, who was frustrated with his inability to reach the hunters by cellphone. Overwhelmed with grief and fear, Dean started to break, telling Bobby he didn’t think Jo was going to make it, but Bobby pressed him to lead, to say what they would do next. After hearing the report of multiple Reapers being in town, Bobby hazarded that Satan was in town to do a ritual to unleash the Angel of Death, the Fourth Horseman. Bobby said the last time Death had been freed was when Noah was building his ark and the rest of humanity was destroyed. From his research, he reported Death had to be brought into the world at midnight through a place of awful carnage, and said there had been a Civil War battle at Carthage the soldiers had called the Battle of Hellhole, which took place at Jasper’s farm.
Meg reported to Lucifer having the Winchesters pinned down. When she questioned being ordered to leave them alone, Lucifer told her to trust him, saying everything happens for a reason. He told Castiel he had time to change his mind, but Castiel said nothing, instead looking at the pipes running beneath the room’s ceiling.
At the hardware store, Jo stopped the brothers’ attempt to figure out how to get her and Ellen out of town and themselves to the farm before midnight, asking them to be realistic and to get their priorities straight. Pointing out that the hellhounds had all their scents and wouldn’t stop hunting them, and acknowledging that she was going to die anyway, she advocated building propane bombs spiked with salt and iron that she could detonate to take out the hounds after the others escaped through the roof to the building next door. Ellen protested, but Jo insisted this was Ellen’s last chance to treat her as an adult, and Ellen told the brothers to get to work. Hours later, with bombs wired throughout the store, Sam held Jo’s hand as his farewell, yielding his place to Dean bringing her the detonator. He kissed her on the forehead and the lips, and stepped back for Ellen, but Ellen didn’t say goodbye. Pointing out that someone had to open the doors and let the hounds in and Jo couldn’t move, Ellen said she wouldn’t leave Jo alone. The brothers reluctantly accepted her insistence, and Ellen told Dean to kick it in the ass and not to miss. The Winchesters left and Ellen unlocked the doors, brushed aside the salt, opened the stopcocks on the propane tanks, and settled in beside her daughter, telling Jo she would always love her. Jo died in her arms, and then she heard and felt the hellhounds surrounding her, and threw the switch, blowing up the store. The brothers saw the explosion, then ran for the farm.
At the farm, they saw the townsmen standing watching one man filling in a mass grave, and after a moment for last words, moved in. Sam challenged Lucifer, drawing his attention, and when Lucifer said Sam knew he would never hurt him, Dean appeared at Lucifer’s side saying he would hurt Lucifer, and fired the Colt point-blank into Nick’s forehead. Lucifer fell, and for one instant the brothers, bemused, thought they somehow, unbelievably, had won; then Lucifer groaned, got to his feet, gestured toward the Colt, and asked in irritation where they had gotten it. He backhanded Dean across the face, throwing him across the field and into a tree, and Dean dropped, unconscious. Lucifer turned to Sam, the bullet wound in his head vanishing, and told him not to feel bad because there were only five things in all of Creation the Colt couldn’t kill, and he just happened to be one of them. Lucifer turned back to his grave digging, and Sam knelt beside Dean, searching for a pulse.
Lucifer asked if Sam would just say yes right then, ending the whole tiresome discussion, but Sam, furious, said it was never going to happen. Lucifer said he thought it would happen within six months, in
As Lucifer started to chant, Sam knelt again beside Dean, who started to stir. Lucifer had the demons possessing the townfolk profess that they offered up their lives, blood, and souls to complete the tribute. As they finished speaking, each of the demons burned up from within, and their hosts fell. Seeing Sam watching in horror, Lucifer dismissively, distastefully said they were just demons. Meanwhile, Castiel focused on unbolting one of the pipes with the directed power of his mind, talking with Meg to keep her from noticing and to draw her into line with the pipe. Meg was gloating that the demons and Lucifer were going to win and take over Heaven, but Castiel said he’d heard a different theory from a demon named
In the field, Lucifer spread his arms over the mass grave as the ground quaked and the Winchesters watched in helpless horror. Castiel appeared, gesturing them to silence, and translocated all three of them away in a flash of light. Lucifer, seeing the light, turned to see them gone, but only smiled; then he strode forward, looked up, and said hello to Death.
Back at Bobby’s place, the television news reported the governor of
Apologies for the lengthy delay in getting this one up. My hopes for the new year include less schedule insanity in my real life, to better enable my fantasy one!
I'm finally making my own icons, sometimes. Many thanks to raloria , who cued me into the delights of www.picnik.com and who posts the most delightful screencaps to start from!
And ... on to the meta commentary and production notes ...