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#buckleming appropriate wank for ts
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15x13 watching notes
https://archiveofourown.org/works/22400713/chapters/67617233
Coming up on 11pm and WOW am I suddenly feeling like I could have been quietly playing final fantasy all day instead of watching this D: I am so sorry for everyone who has ever had to watch a buckleming episode and especially for this one. 
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tinkdw · 5 years
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So, despite telling everyone that Eugenie is a troll who doesn’t even know her own canon and literally told us the impala would be docked at the beginning of the season AND pointing out that the turning point doesn’t necessarily mean romantic cos it could be plot related or a turning point about literally anything else than their feelings because there’s been ZERO build up to telling us that Dean and Cas have gotten over their individual issues yet in fact they’re both smack bang in the middle of arcs that emphasis them MORE right now in order to get past them in the END sure but right NOW are in the middle of it, individual arcs which I’ve yelled for 3 YEARS have to be resolved before they can be romantically together....
Despite all this I still have angry anons in my inbox yelling about this episode.
Literally do people even read anything meta writers write? I’m not alone in this literally every meta writer I know urged caution here, alongside cheeky silly crack posts sure, but literally everyone I associate with on here has said we don’t expect a Destiel turning point just cos Eugenie said something vague about a turning point, which again, was never framed as romantically about them, and literally could have been about anything and likely was about the plot or some kind of family theme.
Literally everyone.
And for the anon saying this is season is pandering to incest fans because the brothers hugged I have news for you.
BROTHERS HUGGING AND SHOWING NORMAL AFFECTION ISNT PANDERING TO INCEST JUST BECAUSE 0.0001% OF FANS ARE INTO INCEST PORN AND WILL TWIST ANY LITTLE THING. ITS JUST A NORMAL HEARTWARMING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT STORYLINE JFC.
Like, I haven’t even seen the episode yet and already I’m wired up pissed off because of the crap in my inbox. Not even at the Bucklemming episode. I mean jeez, to those people sending me this negative self baiting made up nonsense and ignoring the real world, if you’re worse than Bucklemming at winding someone up who can’t friggin stand Eugenie, sort it out.
And with that I will now watch the episode.
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I'm starting to think that Donatello and Nick only exist during Bucklemming episodes. 😂
VERY occasionally they appear in someone else’s episodes. Most notably, Bobo and Meredith have BOTH tried to murder Donatello out of the story, which leaves me to wonder who will try it next… It reminds me of that prohibition era story of those awful men who tried to kill a homeless man to collect on his life insurance and went through increasingly horrifying wacky schemes to murder him for like, a year or something. 
Except, swap the awfulness from murderers to victim in this case :P 
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14x12 watching notes
Plot twist tally: ///// ///
Read on Ao3
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I kinda wanna know what Eugenie said in the SDCC interviews without actually watching it (idk it seems really off putting idk) so... do you mind giving some uhh... highlights?
Honestly aside from the 2 things I mentioned that she directly messed up - the car not being in 14x01 and calling Jack “Nick” - there weren’t errors so much as what really came across as tells about how much she doesn’t care about the rest of the story, how she doesn’t REMEMBER parts of the story, even stuff she wrote, or just generally her POV on a lot of things which is so wild when it comes to emotional reasonings or what she cares about… Brad’s interviews were entirely coherent and even interesting or well-reasoned to the point where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious he was part of a problem if you didn’t know he was connected to it… She is the one who loves Lucifer and feels he’s misunderstood, she’s the one who wanted Ketch back even though he had been a 1 season character who fully and excellently served his purpose and wasn’t needed back (as usual, no shade on DHJ, who is marvellous and it’s not like it’s his fault for taking the job when offered) and she’s also said the actor who played Donatello is a personal friend so you can bet she’s why he ended up in the show and also coming back. I actually started to find her kind of fascinating because her character was so strange that I’d want to know more just to even begin to grasp what her deal is. Like, I’d choose to sit across from her at a dinner party just to prod her with leading questions about the arts and politics and feminism and just let her talk, you know? :P
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Even though I wanted him to stay dead after 12x22, I have to admit I enjoy Ketch now that he has been getting less and less the sociopathic murderer and more just a semi-bumbling British version of DHJ
Yep… DHJ is doing a wonderful job as Ketch and that’s the most annoying part since thematically he should have stayed dead after 12x22 if only because he had served his story purpose and he’d only been brought in to do that, it’s not like he was introduced as a character to bolster the ranks because lord knows we need more violent white guys. I don’t think DHJ excuses that entirely because as lovely as he is as a person and as well as he plays Ketch he’s still not necessary for the show and it would be neater and better if we could just follow him to other projects and admire him giving other characters some love elsewhere. It’d be cool if he got a big job on another TV show and Ketch had to die and that was that, though the damage is done to 12x22 already and there’s no taking it back… 
But if Ketch HAS to be on the show, DHJ still makes him annoyingly enjoyable and it’s pretty hilarious having him pop up just to be dunked on by Bobo, who clearly has not forgiven Buckleming for bringing him back if this is how he writes him now… >.> Because, like, 12x14 for example, or even 12x22, you can TELL Bobo actually really LIKED Ketch and thought he was kinda fun to write back when he was plot relevant. He really made him pay off as a villain, and THAT was what was taken away by bringing him back. Any meaning in his death which had rounded off the epic-ness of 12x22′s confrontation… 
*sigh*
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I still feel robbed of a proper Sam n Cas episode
They're brothers, not co-workers
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So looks like BL forgot about Rowena shoving Jack’s 3 dads in Luci’s face??
please, that was so last season, darling
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Suddenly I'm getting these psychopath!dean thoughts after reading the new buckleming interview. God help me
I need to preface this with a signal boost of @justanotheridijiton‘s gif request :P
https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/179162557389/alright-i-need-me-a-gifmaker-willing-to-make-a
Anyways after that completely irrelevant thing I put here, and, weirdly, an aside that I swear I remember her talking a lot about how Dean was going to be affected by like… tentacles of trauma or something afterwards at SDCC, here’s the interview:
https://tvline.com/2018/10/17/supernatural-spoilers-season-14-big-bad-not-michael/
As for the beloved Winchester trapped inside Michael, if/when Dean is eventually freed, he won’t be as traumatized as one might think by the horrible things the archangel did while sporting his vessel. “Dean’s been contaminated by Cain. He’s a tough guy,” Ross-Leming notes. “His body’s sort of accumulated a lot of, I think, antibodies against evil, so he’ll be OK. He knows how to handle himself, even though he’s been altered. But there is a little bit of a surprise, in terms of this semi-possession, which I can’t tell you about. There’s a little bit of a twist.”
Given that I’m at an all time low for thinking she knows what she’s talking about after watching so many interviews with her in a morbid attempt to learn anything I can about this fascinating and terrible person, I can barely lend any credence to what she says, whether these are points that will be discussed in the show or things that she has thought for herself at random and may or may not be the subtext to her specific chunks of the show and nowhere else :P That lack of faith in this specific writer makes it super hard to engage with the commentary.
She says he’s been contaminated, which is more of a poisoning which would imply ongoing damage that creates ill-effects, and also that he has antibodies, which are positive and good things in the body that are created to protect us from the bad, and would be making the opposite point that instead of him picking up more and more badness to the point that it affects his personality, that his experiences have given him a stronger immunity to lingering corruption and that he will survive relatively intact.
(vaccinate your kids)
Which means she’s literally saying he’s altered, he’s semi-possessed, he’s fine, and that somewhere in that there’s a twist. And this also:
Plus, this ordeal with Michael “doesn’t take as big a toll” on the hunter as, say, his experience in Hell did, the EP reveals, “because there’s something else that’s going to happen that will take a bigger toll on Dean, and he has to pay attention to that.”
reads to me as another instance where she has her focus on what she herself is writing, and not particularly on what the other writers might do. I doubt that in a season where Dean started off possessed, that the other writers will not want to tackle the rich, rich psychology of post-Michael Dean, whether she has thought it was interesting or not. 
I kind of feel like whatever she’s trying to say, the message is that she hasn’t focused on Dean’s post-Michael trauma, is interested in something else, and has written him coming out of it relatively unscathed and focused on something new, which is actually fairly common for Buckleming episodes, to fling us to a new event and not focus on what had been previously traumatising the characters, as they’re kind of terrible at doing deep introspective episodes with the pacing to allow for that :P 
But away from all that… Yeah, I have always liked the whole Mark of Cain destined for Dean stuff from back in season 9/10 and find it really interesting even if it was wearing by the end of season 10, I had a lot of fascination in the character study of Dean, the psychology behind demon!Dean, and all the stuff that was brought out over the seasons of how the Mark affected him, that there was a connection back to Michael and Lucifer, and how it seemed like Cain was the Dean mirror who would have been the more natural Michael!vessel and Abel the Lucifer one and so on. And in 10x14 the interest in Cain decimating the planet because he believed his descendants were inherently killers, and how he identified Dean as a killer. 
Which is a struggle Dean has had for a long time through canon, especially since 2x03 when Gordon showed up to highlight the difference between killing monsters for bloody minded vengeance and pleasure, vs being heroic and making the good calls. And I think why Michael has symbolically ended up with vampires as his choice of monster to play with now, because Dean’s struggle is so tightly wrapped up with vampires, whether it be turning into one, or befriending Benny and clinging to the purity of Purgatory. Which is a state very similar to what Michael identifies in the vampires as a good motivation and something admirable to spread and remove all this dumb human confusion. 
In every way Michael has been designed from the start to be the worst!Dean, all his struggles with being the elder son and dealing with Lucifer. His dialogue especially in 5x22 is anvil heavy to make him a Dean parallel, except showing where he lacks love and compassion and forgiveness, the traits that make Dean show up to Stull to save Sam, while Michael is banished for being terrible, and symbolically was a moment where we could see shunning of how Dean was raised (it was “jacked up” Dean says in 2x03 when he first reflects on how the world wasn’t as black and white as he thought) and all this is blamed on John, or in Michael’s case, on Chuck.
They’re both given the same burdens of killing their brothers, and Michael goes so far as to make that awful spear (which was his reintroduction into the narrative - the toxicity of his choice to kill Lucifer enacted on Cas as an innocent bystander to all this, one of Michael’s former underlings being stabbed by one of Lucifer’s former underlings). Michael has already banished Lucifer to the cage once, and is fully committed to the apocalypse and killing his brother a second time. For all Lucifer’s flaws, I think he would genuinely hesitate to try to kill Michael in all the iterations of these fights, which is how in this fable, that we know at least 4 enactments of JUST in the primary set of Michael vs Lucifer before we get to all their mirrors in Cain & Abel, Gordon and his sister (and Jake from 2x22 and his) etc, and Sam and Dean… Michael kills Lucifer almost every time unless stopped, and many of the worst mirrors do too. Cain asks Dean why he didn’t kill his, as if fully aware of the weight of how every Michael has his Lucifer, and Dean says you never give up on family, ever. Dean has love, and that is why he said yes to Michael.
So it’s that balance that there’s a killer streak in them, that Dean can descend into states of killing for purity, for the mindlessness of it, that he becomes a tool, a blunt little instrument, and finally the Michael Sword, and yet he also has this ultimate power of love that the universe literally turns around and has shifted on its axis multiple times because of, because of all these people, Dean is the one who never gives up on family. So the issue of how murderous Dean is is REALLY REALLY interesting, like how they got him to break in hell, bookending his power of love saving of the world in 5x22, from his worst to his best. And then on it’s “oh you’re torturing again!?” as a sign that Dean is in a bad place. And of course now Michael in Dean is torturing vampires, so this is the absolute culmination of all the darkest parts of the symbolism and themes that make up Dean’s darkest side, and he’s being made to live through all of them right now. 
However, I expect Eugenie to consider maybe like 2 facts from that whole thought process while writing because she’s just so wildly bad at this whole thing… So, yeah. I’d like to see what Meredith does with this instead, by a factor of millions. 
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Hot take: known Social Media Guru Eugenie Ross-Leming saw all the #savelucifer a few months ago and thought it was for her
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So sorry to butt in on the Buckleming matter, but as someone not entirely up to date with SPN, they did WHAT NOW to Crowley??
Made Mark S so utterly fed up he rage quit the show, and honestly, I would only want him back if they were gone (which I assume is also the only terms he would consider it) because for season 11 and 12 especially, Crowley  had the life completely sucked out of him and it was ghastly and miserable to watch as a fan of his :( 
He was stuck doing interminable repetitive episodes covering the same like, 2 versions of a scene over and over and over in what I can only imagine was some sort of acting purgatory, while they used him as a foil for whatever self-indulgent weirdness they were into that week. Over and over and over. 
Every now and again someone else wrote Crowley, and it was like oooh wow that was awesome! and then the next episode would be them and it was like —-oh no wait we’re back here doing this again. Yay.
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Ew Ross-Lemming said her fave character to write is Lucifer. This in itself does not surprise me, but she also said she thinks he is still redeemable. Like????? I mean yeah he only tried to kill his only son and destroy the universe, no big deal anyone can do that on a bad day.......-_-
STOP WRITING REDEMPTION ARCS FOR ABUSERS 2kEVER
Well Dabb’s statement combined with the whole arc of showing true colours and being immediately murdereerered is A+ handling of that and he seems to think it’s done and dusted. I just hope he can keep those gargoyles under control with something as important as this, since they managed to drag Ketch back in already >.>
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I honestly think Buckleming forgot that Jack has no relation whatsoever to Nick.Well, apart from him being the face Jack saw Lucifer occupy last and to whom he said "You're not my father. You're a monster" before getting his grace stolen. (Tbh I forgot about the president as well before thinking about it more. But I ain't the one writing canon :P). Jack calling Nick dad makes zero sense to me.
YEP I’m pretty sure they’ve forgotten a lot, but that was one of the most conspicuous random lines. The worst bit is, we all had to sit through 12x08, so I’d like to remind everyone that if I’d had to write the exact same episode pitch, the cold open would have been a Leverage-style nonsense and in the cold open they’d all have been at a fancy fund raiser and right before the title card, Cas tackles the president when he comes on stage to make a speech. Which is something fun to remember instead of the actual episode, if we play by Buckleming rules.
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The car isn't being used this season?? Do we take Eugenie's word for it?
Absolutely not. @justanotheridijiton guessed that the best interpretation of this balls to the wall statement was that she, personally, did not write any scenes with the car by SDCC and somehow just assumed that was a thing…
Her SDCC interviews were so horrifying i watched all of them, sometimes twice. She legit doesn’t know the show’s ass from its elbow D:
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Someone ANYON tell me how people are allowed in a writing room with the attitude we don’t read the other scripts? Just AGH how? Everything I learned in film school is a lie
Nepotism gets you all sortsa places :D
everything I hear about Buckleming’s creative process makes me weep as a writer but is also somehow at the same time the most unsurprising news >.> They don’t even really care about each other’s side of the script so.
Look. The other writers care SO MUCH they’re managing to make a really good product AROUND them. >.>
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13x22 watching notes
I already miss Bobo
(sometimes I can still hear his voice)
It's 7:15 and I have yoga in a bit and the sun is shining directly on my screen where my cheap ass curtains don't meet but I am gonna start watching because what is flow and continuity in tone to these writers anyways. This is a "may as well rip the plaster off" sort of start.
Regular readers of my notes will know exactly how thrilled I was to have BL handling the big character driven everyone in the same room clusterfuck this episode promises to be and lil update: since then the promos have reassured me that nope they don't have tone or nuance and we're in for some quality characterisation.
This is a damage control set of notes, I assume.
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Blah blah plot recap. They cut the conversation from 13x20 to just Sam n Dean talking about going into the apocalypse world, then "we'll die together" which I can't work out in this context (I'm hoping against hope the recap isn't dictated by BL and TJW is cobbling it together) is irony that Sam then went and died, alone, or a yet-to-come omen of the end of the season. At least BL are handing us over to Dabb for the end of season nonsense so I have to rely on him having a wacky emu war of 1932 hits the present day through Shenanigans sort of season 14 premise to build up and fling at us to make us forget all this.
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I love Sam's "we're gonna drain you" speech layered over everyone dramatically walking into apocalypse world.
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Christ for half a sec I thought they were gonna recap Gabriel in Cas's crotch
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Did Lucifer only start calling Rowena "Red" when he was Vince or is that something I missed from season 11? Because hearing boring ass Lucifer say it just makes me miss when he was Vince.
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this is such a full recap of 13x21 I'm basically just writing fresh episode notes for it
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I don't think I saw anyone talk about how cool it was when Dean shot a vampire and exploded its head off. Like, understandably Sam was dead and it was a high-pressure situation but
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ALSO Cas says "he's gone" and he sure as hell didn't mean "I can't find him" he meant "Sam's dead" but that euphemism landed Cas so much fandom flak for not looking for Sam I am starting to feel like he should have just said "I saw eight vampires chowing down on every part of him they could reach" and traded Dean's feelings for clarity.
...
I love that Cas has evolved as a character to the point he uses a gentle euphemism to spare Dean's feelings because there was once a harsher version of Cas that would have said that.
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Are they going to recap the whole Lucifer conversation
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I mean it means we can't judge Sam at all for what he did
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HUGS
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Mary's like holy shit he's really here, all shaky hands and scared to touch him. Good. She was criticised so much from the promo for not caring, I'm gonna gif that in extreme slow mo close up if I get even one (1) pissy anon about her
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Dean hangs back, knowing that Sam walking in with Lucifer can NOT be good news, and asking "what happened" is basically already knowing what happened
Oh good we already have "I didn't watch the last episode despite the 40 minute recap" syndrome.
Just quickly to get us up to that point - Lucifer is playing all benevolent when Sam says "he brought me back" with the due horror of the situation. Cas, with Jack at his side, also glaring father-like-son, says "that's not what you do" in defiance of what Lucifer has done - good to call him out for his personality traits not matching his actions, e.g. there's always a catch and we know it, but to Jack if there is to be conflict, is in the face of Lucifer's actions and we're manufacturing that TFW judge Lucifer harsher than he deserves. Even when we know Lucifer said that he'd take Jack by force and Sam is pretty much protecting Jack to take this bargain.
Anyway. Cas asks "how did you get in here" perhaps in the assumption a: they're in a walled compound rather than open woodland with perimeter guards and b: that Gabriel didn't melt all the warding last episode meaning it's not even open woodland with perimeter guards and anti-angel warding, it's just a big ass open space that they strolled into. The implication in Cas's words is that it should have been much harder for Lucifer to show up, that this place is better defended, to the point of bafflement about that. It's a smaller thing, but it's irksome because I know BL don't read the other episodes because they've literally said it in interviews, which makes stray details stand out like a sore thumb, especially when characters sound stupider than they should - rephrasing this "why are you here" or "what's going on" would be a neutral way of asking without mis-characterising the situation or having it come across just... slightly odd. Just seems to be an implication that Lucifer didn't just stroll between the trees and through an open gate as his arrival and more specifically, that there were wards or barriers that could have done anything to stop him, and Cas is talking like it's inconcievable he got past them all - what all? :P
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Lucifer says "VIP pass - I'm with the band!" which is extra hilarious that I was missing Vincifer a minute ago, because it's downgraded him from that rock god status he wanted, and now he's acting like the whiny groupie and Sam is the rockstar, TFW and family the band, and Lucifer is desperate to get in with them. Of course the Vincifer arc revealed that Lucifer never was a rock god, a year before he fails at actually being God for the exact same personality flaws, but at this point the acknowledgement is pretty much just for kicks and giggles because seeing him mocked amuses me. Seeing him have to admit there's a higher order he wants in with and TFW etc are more important than him and this is like, backhanded grovelling... yeah.
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As soon as Lucifer redirects his attention to Jack, Dean comes storming in. Of course Sam is excluding himself from this conversation in raw shame and I can't even look at his face because it is the Worst(TM) but now we have Cas, Dean and Uncle Gabe defending Jack (BL politely not writing any Gabriel dialogue yet and every minute they don't is a minute I don't have a migraine so thanks guys, appreciate it.) and Dean sounds extremely protectively fatherly and Cas is also then weighing in with parental authority... Yeah, last episode Rowena said all 3 of them were Jack's fathers and it's a different dynamic from Claire but I like seeing Cas and Dean as a parent team and I won't apologise for that :P
But, again, Jack is only 7-8 months old with a still tuning moral compass, a teenager disposition, and Cas and Dean are making parental decrees about who he can talk to, and catching him in the middle of a fight over the right to have access to him without asking his opinion. It could possibly be more frustration over that than genuine desire to meet Lucifer that upsets Jack.
Because he's still like *SCOWL* at Lucifer, still being framed with Cas. Cas says he's "kelly kline's son" and I love that Cas continually reminds Lucifer that Jack had a mother too, and that for all her terrible writing in season 12 at the very least we established "human" and "generically nice and loving towards her baby" as traits to call on :P I like that Cas is determined to emphasise where Jack gets his personality from, and that Cas doesn't define Jack by his powers. But that is ignoring that Jack HAS powers and that does factor into his life in a... rather major way... especially as the way he's been flung around so far he's had so little time to develop a personality outside of having powers, except for Sam encouraging him to watch movies and TV to foster a shared taste before Dean could think to twist Jack to his cruel purpose and have another vote on movie night in his favour, so now it's Sam n Jack vs Dean n Cas and -
Anyway. I'm procrastinating.
Lucifer emphasising that he has powers, even if he gets carried away describing how ruthlessly he uses them, is a way of connecting with Jack that no one else dared, when in 13x06 all of TFW are just like, shit, when I had magic powers I unleashed Lucifer/went on a megalomaniac God rampage/hooked up with Crowley, and immediately all get too ashamed of themselves to sit Jack down and have The Talk so he freaked out and left and tl;dr that's how we're here.
Just, like, shit, show him all 3 Spiderman films where Uncle Ben tells Peter "with great power comes great responsibility", and you're set, guys. Sheesh.
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"No. Kill him."
*Gabriel side-eye reaction shot with no dialogue but a fascinated amusehorror about what's going on*
I'm starting to get the feeling BL just plain forgot Gabriel was in this episode, but the rest of the peeps involved were like, uh, he's in this episode because where else would he be, so Speight just came to set like he was supposed to, and hung out in all the scenes as appropriate.
I will now watch and interpret this episode based on that fact.
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Sorry, Jack's going through a lot of conflict because Dean just point blank ordered him to melt his biological father on the spot, and I'm bitching about how someone forgot to add any pointers for Gabriel's existence into the script, not even in a character stan way, just in a sheer disbelief way, because of my horror of this being an episode with double digit named important characters in it and all in one location and being handled by the writers who can't even deal with Sam and Dean having distinct personalities in a scene with 3 characters half the time.
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Okay, Gabriel ad libbed a "Dean" in there. I'm assuming after like 3 minutes of contact he's quite chuffed to have a nephew and knows Dean can be too harsh so he was being protective.
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But yeah, of course it was Dean getting too angry about Lucifer (rightfully too angry, but still, emotionally mis-handling it) and making Jack disappear that sets this off, because Lucifer can just be a hub of chaos based on his reputation and act chill in the knowledge it will infuriate everyone around him into acting irrationally. Dean's been especially anxious and angry this recent year - and is building up to something awful perhaps if he is possessed by the end of the season - so it makes sense with his history of acting irrationally and being harsh on Jack from the start of the season that at the end he causes this.
Look, I'm complimenting character choices as much as being baffled by them, but what is clear is I need to be this in depth to have a chance in hell of grappling this episode >.>
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Long shot where everyone just stands there in mute horror and Cas is the only one who looks around like he might see Jack hiding in a tree.
Remember back in 9x11 where I was like... did they just confirm he can see through walls... and literally no one ever replied to me about this hypothesis because it was too batshit? Well I am gonna have to assume that Cas looking around like that would only make sense if he can X-ray vision Jack hiding nearby >.>
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Dean's like "He does that when he's scared. Way to go, dad!" despite the fact he was the one responsible for scaring Jack - I mean, Jack is probably FREAKED OUT about Lucifer showing up in general, but Dean's reaction is upsetting as well, especially when he's already emotionally in a bad place and now Dean is asking too much of him.
This episode is where all the stuff about fatherhood lands, and Jack is playing Dean and possibly Sam, while Sam, Dean, Cas and Lucifer are probably all playing shades of John Winchester.
It's a shame Lucifer changed his clothes because the Nick vessel was wearing up to a point always the same clothes that John had been wearing last time we saw JDM on screen, and that was a subtextual "brrr" about Lucifer in season 5 - that he was mirroring John in some ways.
We got enough parents here that they could literally all play, like, a seven deadly sin or something of John's.
Dean, of course, playing explosive anger. Sam seeming at the moment to play the part that shut down in horror and wasn't there for his boys and made all the bad choices for good reasons that exposed them to the bad stuff. Lucifer playing the abusive side that manipulates, uses as bait, and was in general dangerous - the John that Dean thinks of in 5x16 when not saying what he did when Sam ran away. Cas is playing the side that truly loved his boys, but saw their mother in them and there has been plenty of analysis of how this messed up the dynamic in any way from John withdrawing from Dean for reminding him too much to the parentification thing.
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Gabriel is like, I'm not meant to be in this episode, so I'll just... go look for Jack... to explain why I was not in the following conversation.......
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Lucifer drops the parent thing as soon as Jack is gone and switches to saying they "need" him to use against Michael, while bragging he "beat" him (good to know his ego and lying remains intact - the same boasting that got him in trouble with Heaven when he said he could make new angels and give them their wings back).
Cas immediately does the most #married thing I've ever seen him do to Dean - the "we're on a hike together and I want the trail mix in your bag honey so i'm just gonna open it up and get it out while we stand here" thing.
But with handcuffs.
Look, Dean n Cas are special and perfect in a way no one else can get on their level and sometimes it's because this is their dynamic.
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Anyway Cas is being a BAMF to Lucifer and that is a good and important part of his characterisation this season.
Not Taking Shit!Castiel
or
as I call him
Party!Cas
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I can literally see a manifestation of Jared that has left his body in distress, wrapped around Sam in a hug, as he's forced to casually ask Lucifer a question on screen that he didn't ask at any point on their hike down here but now the scene is about everyone else who was standing around watching (except Gabriel, who was never in this scene) so Sam gets to butt in with a question that literally anyone else would have been better suited to ask for both character and mechanical reasons.
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Oh that "31 hours" thing was a total lie because of course Lucifer did no such thing. He knows the rift will probably close in either 24 from when it was opened or 24 from when he was punted through it, but that telling them a number that seems to add up that it's from then but plus an extra dose of grace, means they will let it close and they'll all be stuck here, and that's a tomorrow!Lucifer problem and in the mean time he can utterly fuck them over by thinking that they have a comfortable window to operate in. The countdown is meaningless, however. It all depends on if Rowena can strengthen and stabilise the portal on her end, and nothing else.
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I love how the contracts are set up in such a way we got all the main stars, "And" Misha, and then we get all the guest stars, "And" Felicia Day. Also this episode is an over-stuffed mess.
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RO RO
I didn't think she'd be in this episode, but we see her hard at work with... bagpipe music playing in her head/the Bunker's sound system? *shrugs, moves on* - anyway, either dramatic irony or Buckleming literally are working on the 31 hours thing depending on how much they read about other episodes. I hope dramatic irony. This is a dialogue-less insert so it's very possible TJW stuck it in to help.
-
"Are you good?" "I'm alive, yeah."
guys, you fuckers know "alive" ain't the same as "good" but in this case Sam's consequences for being alive are the chaos playing out with Lucifer and Jack so that's like... whatever, we can deal with it, so yeah he IS good, and no he doesn't have anything to apologise for, and in a way this is all fairly straightforward so yay!
Now hug
Oh shit, that never normally works
HUGS
\o/
-
"What are we gonna do about Lucifer?" "I'll handle it. I will, Dean. Let me handle it."
THE POWER OF HUGS. YOU RIDE THAT DOPAMINE RELEASE, YOU BRAVE BEAUTIFUL MOOSE
-
I feel like I spoke this episode into being by complaining "not enough hugs" as my tagline for last episode.
-
Anyway Sam is doing WELL because sure he is a guilt ridden bloodstained mess but he has inner strength and outer beauty so he can do this.
-
And Dean says "okay"
Which holy hell is a character growth of utter, sincere trust in Sam. Not that he wouldn't trust him because, you know, in some ways every moment of character growth is "we already covered this in the opening scene of 5x22 where we sat on the car and had a huge BM" because Kripke spitefully wrapped up the entire story pretty much to piss off every future showrunner when it came to deciding how to write Sam and Dean going forwards. But in the sense that Dean is trusting Sam not to turn this into a ridiculous tragedy again, perhaps. Since that BM was about Dean allowing Sam to die for the cause - as I've been following with Gabriel, I think there's a probable theme of learning to LIVE for the cause now, through a character whose main trait is to die to solve the cause and then run away and not deal with consequences, over and over. And Sam would embody it well to confront Lucifer with a desire to live and not to self-sacrifice, but to fix this so that their family can go home and have a belated pizza birthday party for Sam. FOR SAM.
You aspire to that pizza party, you magnificent moose. Get selfish. YOU DESERVE PIZZA. YOU'RE ALL INVITED
(Except Gabriel)
-
Nougat!
"Hi Jack, I'm your mom!" At the end of the season we're getting back to all the stuff that has been shoved down since the start. Jack has accumulated more parental figures than he knows what to do with and now he has to sort out how he feels about them, and how much each influences him.
Cas, his father who was supposed to be his guiding figure, the person he was searching for from the moment he stumbled naked and Bambi-like into our world (oh shit he's Bambi, shit. Stay away from Bobby!!) insists that he is most like Kelly, who only Cas can vouch for as a fellow person with a, like, personality, because hell knows if we or any of the other characters spent any time with her :P Cas is supposedly Jack's trustworthy rock, and his insistence that Jack is most influenced by Kelly rings true to the sympathetic audience who sees Jack as a nougat-centred boy. Named by his mother, of course.
"No one would blame you if one day you went looking for your dad" have they been holding this back since 13x23? I feel like this was all recorded then and they set up Jack's arc based around it. Because now he is flashing back to memories of Lucifer bound circa 12x13 or 12x15 when he was calling out to Jack in the womb (while dressed in those John Winchester duds). And in 13x09 they used this in a recap before the episode, and I was like this ain't the last we heard of it, and sure enough all the pressures that have been on Jack since before he was born are finally being addressed one way or another. Having held back the lines from Kelly - his Cas-approved moral beacon - telling him that there's nothing wrong with at least looking for your bio father no matter how much of a prick he may turn out to be - means that this is a pressure that's been on him since 13x03 and despite the fears in 13x09 that he was looking for Lucifer with this in the recap to remind us that Lucifer had been exerting his will on Jack since the womb... Now that Lucifer has found Jack, it's KELLY telling him that it's okay to at least be curious about him in a way that presumably resonates a lot with adopted kids who may have always known they had a terrible bio father but still felt curious/that pressure internally or externally to investigate their roots if only to find out who they themselves are...
I feel like this is an all the cards on the table moment, in any case - something Dabb set up about Jack which has been the secret behind the season, something only Jack knew up to this point, even from us the viewer, and we have been the most active participants in the story this season.
"Jack, don't let anyone tell you who you're supposed to be. You are who you choose to be."
Kelly has all the best words.
But yeah, this may not work well in the context that Lucifer has come seemingly in peace, Sam is hanging his head in shame, knowing the terms of Lucifer's non-violence are that Sam doesn't reveal that Lucifer was gonna storm in and steal Jack, and only making it easy for Lucifer to have access maintains his peace - that same peace in turn which sows the conflict simply by Lucifer existing there.
It plays into Lucifer's game that everyone who he has abused and or killed is there acting with justified rage at his presence, and telling Jack how to react to it based on their past experience. But Nougat is 7 months old and can not make these calls. Which means Kelly's words are now ones of conflict instead of the comfort that he's been choosing to be good and heroic like the real and fictional characters he wished to emulate.
-
Now we move on to Sam, the first living voice of comfort. "Maybe I'm not worth all this." "Your mom thought you were," Sam says, using her as a bridge from the parental authority (and he's also the one who brought her words to Jack). "So did Cas, so do I." It's building these steps of people Jack knows love him, the moral authorities he looks to, to Sam next. Sam's death worked so well last episode not just because of what it did to Dean, or even how the Lucifer thing was so wonderfully tuned both in Sam's personal arc to be in that room with him and the vampires, but also that Sam is the most hurt by and connected to Lucifer but he's the one walking him into the camp. But also that Sam was the one who reached out to Jack first of the living parents he encountered in life, and therefore caring for Sam and being upset by his death was such a horrible thing for Jack to experience, where we see his anger with Dean, Cas and Gabriel for not bringing Sam to him alive.
We get the montage where Jack's powers were in their early stage, harming people at random, and Sam empathised because of all he'd been through with his own powers. A connection that was so hugely imporant to both of them, that Sam could even start to guide Jack through who he was and how he was related to his powers, and feeling that he didn't belong.
Now we get Jack's mess up where they rushed in to Michael's place, and Kevin self-destructed everyone but him and Mary, and his connection to her - the grandmother sacred object to save and protect because she is Loved and Good and this is how all the men he knows relate to her. (I have talked about how Jack's represented accidentally ingrained toxic masculinity before >.>)
-
And the scene changes at this point, leaving us with Jack's reflection on not just his powers, but his own personality, and who he is supposed to be, whether it's his choice, his genetics, or just who he is in some intangible cursed way where he hurts people and all around him his choices lead to pain. And how much could Sam's guidance and trust help when even up to last week he was still getting people killed... Bleh.
-
Since it keeps on working... Someone hug that nougat child by the end of this ep?
-
Promo scene, now with context!
"Hey momma," Lucifer says, also defining Mary only by her relationship to her sons, and his own creepy interest in her.
She punches him because she is more than just momma
Cas continues to be a BAMF Party!Cas in the background but very in the background, hauling Lucifer away with a sharp word.
-
(Incidentally that means everyone from the opening was in this scene, except Gabriel, who they forgot to write into this episode.)
-
So this is post-shower Sam, and I'm gonna assume that he's either dressed in Bobby's clothes or dressed alike to Bobby, and either way it continues the Lazarus Rising parallels to Lucifer's creepy resurrection of Sam after he was dragged away underground after being torn apart in front of his brother - when Dean got back he wore Bobby's clothes for the first part of the episode. Finding Sam new clothes from AU!Bobby's wardrobe both puts him into this military camo jacket which almost certainly has some symbolic relevance at some point but at the very least is important for now that Sam's resolved to deal with Lucifer, and also just has the connection to Bobby.
-
Anyway now Mary has to break the news that she's planning to stay, after spending months defending and fighting for these people and very much getting embedded in the fight.
Dean looks on blankly, Sam shifts like he's realised what she's going to say as soon as she says "about that..."
-
And now we have that "need" thing again. Lucifer just said these people needed him to fight. Mary now says they need her too, for the same reason. One of them is probably a LIL MORE SINCERE than the other.
but Dean turns that into "we need you, mom. *WE* do." because she's the thing he needed the most, and this entire process is playing out now about how that even affects them.
And that "we" is sincere because the thing is, Dean might have learned a few times over that is sucks not to have Mary but as horrible as it is, he CAN cope without her but still hasn't been given a chance to fully actualise that in a healthy environment where Mary is not wildly endangered and dangled out of his reach for true character development (in much the same way his shit with Cas has been hovering on the edge since, like, season 8), but Sam - Sam needs her. Every time they lost a chance to find her, he slumped into utter despair. He only kept going as long as he did at the start of the season on the belief she could be retrieved and was alive, and his depression has been a strongly flagged thing since the midseason where he struggled with it bad enough he was having depression sleeps in 13x11, and 13x14 showed how bad it was, and his despair and desperation have been oozing off him.
Dean knows how much they need to bring Mary and Jack back, for SAM.
(Which is why I think there's something horribly disingenous about thinking Mary can just be written off to stay in the AU... Which is fine if you don't like Mary and don't think to look at it through the POV of how her being alive-ness has been wrecking Sam for TWO SEASONS now and taking her away again to teach Dean a lesson he's been through three times already (one of them being the entire run of the show 1-11) about how to lose his mother, just hurts Sam an incredible amount. He deserves that fucking pizza party, and he wants his mother to be more than a mirage that an alarm clock can shatter. And sure the story may not grant this wish instantly, but it's dreadful to want her gone for good because that will harm Sam on a MOLECULAR LEVEL to have an alive and well Mary teased in front of him but never to have her. We need to hold on to her returning in some solid way so that she can throw him a damn birthday party)
-
Ew, Lucifer calls Cas "old sport" fuck off with that, Gatsby.
"I am not your sport" he may misinterpret the reference (come the fuck on, Metatron must have read that book) but he does it in a way that at least gets in a sharp statement of party!Cas's new line of taking no shit.
But before he can decree for certain that he will not let Lucifer near Jack, refusing to accept Sam's deal without even really knowing that this WAS the deal, Jack shows up because he's at the very least taking some agency in all this.
And at this point, my nervous eyeballing of the clock suggests it is time I go to yoga. D:
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I hope Gabriel shows up at some point again. The fact that he was gone looking for Jack but Jack has now been "found" by turning up voluntarily means that Gabriel vanished completely pointlessly unless they were just moving him out of the way because he's not in this episode :P
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"Speak of the not-Devil" - in 13x09 they played on this with a "speak of the devil" preceding Jack's entrance. As usual, Buckleming taking a clever line someone else used, and turning it around in a way that's just a bit too silly and contrived >.>
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"Son." "it's Jack."
Good. Please keep Lucifer at that arms' length. Regret will only come if you let him in >.>
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"It's not a good idea to talk to him." "i'm not going to talk, I'm going to listen"
Sweetie, that's even worse. I know you're curious but oh boy Lucifer is evil, unredeemable and a master manipulator. I know what Jack means - he's not opening a dialogue, he just wants to hear what Lucifer would say to him, and not talking indicates hearing him out without weighing his words with any critical weight, but on the other hand, it can come across that he's going to sit and let Lucifer fill his head with whatever, without arguing or reasoning what he says, and it depends on how much you think Jack can resist being taken in by it
And in this scenario Lucifer's smugness and everyone else's horror of the situation already has a strong weight. We can HOPE that Jack prevails but I'm nervous that Lucifer might exert some magical influence over him as much as I feel like a season worth of Jack nearly is enough to make me feel like we are supposed to trust his instinct to be good, unaltered. If there is to be tension about it, that has to be affected.
-
Oh dear, now Dean's ranting to Mary about what he and Sam have been through, saying "we" about every statement, including "we've been possessed" but isn't it true that almost nothing has ever possessed Dean except a few small MotW moments of control? We statements possibly creating a dramatic irony gap to fill with Dean being possessed, if he is.
He says they never walk away ever, even when they should have, which is acknowledging at least that there were times when with hindsight they should have left each other well enough alone. Thing is he's talking about how he and Sam clung to each other when it was just them, but for Mary it's not about walking away from family here, it's about walking away from this war where people are being killed and she has been helping them to save people and to fight back against the angels. To her, leaving now just because there's a door back to her old universe - which she has felt adrift in ever since she was resurrected - is walking away. And this is a cause she can believe in far more than the bad cause she got in with the BMoL. There's a very very clear right and wrong here.
Dean is trying to argue that this isn't a fight that they can win, that Apocalypse World is doomed, and they're just going to have to leave it to its fate.
-
Sam is inclined to listen to Mary more often anyways, went with her on the BMoL thing, and this time reads it as her making up her mind, rather than her being right - he is telling Dean the argument is not worth it, rather than immediately that he understands where Mary is coming from. More than he has seen how Mary feels. I hope he says they should stay and help.
"Mom doesn't to leave these people."
...
"So let's take them with us."
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I mean. I guess it works???
You just going to empty all the survivors of this war into another universe???
This feels... unsustainable.
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Oh okay he wants to get them out the way long enough to work out how to fight Michael, then to come back and fight the fight. More like, the portal is the time pressure here, and on the other side of it is safety and resources and time to think.
Except for everyone who they can't take with them in the first place.
This episode is titled "Exodus" so I mean it COULD end up being about this exact thing, or that's referring to some other thing and this is just a concept they're floating but not what ends up happening. If they set off with the entire camp, they're going to be very vulnerable.
-
Anyway seems Mary likes the plan?
And she looks proud of Sam so that's something.
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Dean says they've got 9 busting out. Uh, were they planning on taking AU Charlie and Bobby back with them? I am genuinely confused because the core team is 6, and they should PROBABLY not litter the AU and take Lucifer back with them so 7... Maybe Ketch if they take back everyone from their world who shouldn't be there? But who is 9??
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Mary says 25 people which is not like... a whole army at least. I'm legit confused about the numbers, especially as it seems like more than 25 people at the camp, never mind that Mary was talking in 13x20 about how many people they had to look after now. I don't know, maybe it's just how many extras they could convince to come/plausibly film. But it's weird to me that this whole thing is... well, a thing.
-
Okay so Jack is all resolutely glaring at Lucifer, and Cas is allowed to hang out and stand there watching, so I guess this is ... something at least between them.
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Mrghhh I hate Buckleming dialogue so much especially when Lucifer is saying it. Starting with "I don't know what to say" is admitting writing weakness, that they didn't have a hook or enough sense of the characters for them to come up with any declaration or question or comment that would have been more meaningful. Even just a sense of drama to have Lucifer introduce himself and Jack to immediately ask his first question.
"Why does everyone hate you?"
Because you SUCK
Also: apparently no one wants to tell Jack in graphic detail all the pain and suffering that Lucifer has inflicted to them personally >.>
And then, Lucifer said, yeah we've been waiting for this moment all season in a way, but not only is his blathering on but then when asked a hard question, it turns into an excuse to make him say "fake news" and sure the comparing him to Trump thing is funny a few times (I mean he was literally possessing a president when Jack was conceived) but it's taking tension out of this moment entirely. This should be for Jack, and he doesn't deserve this awful writing where nothing Lucifer says matters, because he's just rambling on in generalities and answers which sound like all the moaning he's ever moaned about.
Like, yeah, sorry kiddo, your bio dad is a whining whiner who has had the same line about how misunderstood he is as long as we've known him, which he usually says when standing on a literal pile of corpses he made while complaining no one gets him and everyone typecasts him as evil.
But yeah, Jack's question is just met with rubbish being spewed, instead of Lucifer even trying to explain the misunderstandings he's had personally with TFW
-
He's just talking about how humans suck and are easily led into temptation instead of focussing on why he feels the need to do that.
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Oh him talking about Kelly to Jack is absolutely revolting. I'm confiscating the nougat child and BL can have him back when they earn him.
Thank goodness Cas is here to scowl at Lucifer for us.
"That's a vast over-simplification" thanks buddy.
But yeah he's right, the point is that Lucifer is talking in ways where he can rabbit on about ethics and shit without falling into real human pain. He doesn't talk about how his betrayed Kelly's trust, tried to kill her, or sent a minion to harass her while calling her the container. He talks about how awesome it was to kiss her. (And not even getting into him cheerfully talking about losing his virginity to Kelly like it was some sweet first love thing rather than rape by deception and some new gross evil he had discovered was a horrible thing to do to people.)
-
Also, fuck Buckleming for pretending they can stump Cas with "I was locked up for eternity so how did I do all this evil?" we literally have seen how. It's called the plot of the fucking show.
It's ethics as angels would learn it 101.
WE FUCKING MET GADREEL A FEW YEARS AGO, MAYBE ASK HIM
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Cain who?
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AZAZEL? You fuckers killed the last YED like 4 weeks ago
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Fuck you entirely
-
That is in ratio of intelligence and easy answer on hand to presented moment, the biggest stupidity drop they've ever made. And that's saying something.
-
Somewhere Edlund is clutching his head and he doesn't know why but he doesn't feel so good.
-
ABBADON?
-
So, there's this place called "hell"...
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Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmrgghghhghghgfghfgghfhaskjfhaskjghfsjlasdjaghfs paskfh;asdgkflsdjg sgkjhlfk gha
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Well, the zen from yoga lasted all of like 4 minutes of episode
-
Anyway now we have to deal with Lucifer's hurr blurr about waaah God locked me up because I stood up for myself and told the truth, which, again. One note character. He met Chuck and didn't even change. Rowena got more character development out of meeting Chuck than Lucifer did. Heck, I think even Cas got a little personal satisfaction just from ignoring him and finding a clearer sense that his path doesn't lie with God's validation.
And then he starts talking about how garbage humans are and we get Cas's reaction because Cas loves humanity, and Lucifer is like "he loved humans so much he couldn't see their flaws" and Cas is like excuse you I tell Dean to get his muddy boots off the chairs in the Bunker like six times a day but I still fucking married him."
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But telling Jack how humans suck is not, like, the best path, because Jack has spent a lot of time bonding with humans.
-
"I had my reasons, I just want the opportunity to get better" dude, you are so the abusive fuckwad of a drunk father who comes stumbling in late to the kid's life, promising to do better while in no way capable of it because mean and selfish person...
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Jack's micro nod to wanting to do better shows that despite every indication that this was one of the worst written conversations ever, Lucifer has somehow manipulated him with this nugget that Jack feels like he wants to be a good person and Lucifer's promise he wants to be a better person is affecting him, and A: Alex is a great actor to try and sell this and B: honestly Jack falling for that garbage rant is like... the second biggest stupidity drop ever >.>
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Cas is like, fuck this entire concept you fucking fuckers, I'm out of here to go sit with Gabriel wherever he is. We're gonna... go skip rocks.
-
Nope, Cas went for emotional back up, seeing that Jack was starting to be suckered in by this and decided he needed Sam, Dean and Mary to come Winchester some sense into Jack
-
Uncle Gabriel is having a great side adventure
He is probably doing the equivalent of End!Cas in this camp.
-
Ew they're sitting together, just chilling ew ew ew ew ew
Lucifer going on about how Jack's grandfather is literally God, trying to stir a little egomania in Jack.
Remember in 13x07 when he was so excited to know if Jack killed anyone? If he had a killer instinct?
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Yay Dean comes to shout at Jack and Lucifer, I have never been happier to tick the Everyone Is Irrationally Angry BL Bingo Square.
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"Dean, he's in chains." "His mouth isn't."
That's the good side of Buckleming banter. Have we swapped writers?
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"I need to know about my powers. My family." "Jack, we are your family."
Oh no, Cas is starting to sound a bit desperate. Pleading with Jack to remember he's their family. I don't wike it *hands Cas a blanket*
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Sam showing up like, "You have no idea who Lucifer really is"
Like, I know it's horrible but could you go into graphic detail right about now?
Or... is he still bound by the promise to let Lucifer see Jack?
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"Jack..." "Dean! He's my father!"
Aaaaack, so there's the slip from 13x01 where we thought he meant Lucifer but it was actually Cas, and 13x09 where he disowns Lucifer casually and talks about how they're his real family instead...
Oh ew I paused the screen on Lucifer looking all smug, hang on
Anyway, yeah. This is the first time Jack has proclaimed that, and I think this is revealing the greatest miscommunication this season - something we picked out a while back, in the first few episodes, about how everyone was so unwilling to tell Jack just how horrible Lucifer even was. I mean. I don't think he even knows for sure that he's the reason why Cas was dead? And does he know how Sam was destroyed by having powers BECAUSE he was raised to be Lucifer's vessel? And - even basic info like this, if not the murder and torture in his wake...
Without telling Jack the harsh truth, he's vulnerable to falling prey to Lucifer's manipulations, because for him, new to the world, it's just not a given that Lucifer is evil. Even "speak of the devil" is ironic, because they DON'T speak about him, and so that phrase is meaningless to Jack because it doesn't describe anything about evilness.
And I think this goes back in a way to the theme of confronting trauma, that TFW just do not talk about what has hurt them, aren't open when they ARE hurting, at least until it's too late, and so the damage that Lucifer has done to them, even when he can taunt he's in a room full of all his favourites to kill and torture, when he's killed Rowena twice, tried to kill Gabriel and Dean, and caused the worst suffering to Sam, they just aren't a Lucifer damage support group >.> And all season they never told Jack a full story about who they were, what they've done, and what has happened to them along the way...
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Anyway I guess Edoras is moving to Helm's Deep now?
-
Ew Jack and Lucifer are walking together
I can't even see Cas in shot so I'm gonna assume he's bringing up the rear with Uncle Gabriel
-
I mean
I hope someone friggin told Gabriel they were leaving. He's gonna pop back to camp in half an hour like, so I looked everywhere and I could not find - waaait a minute. Where is everyone? Are we playing hide and seek? Sexy hide and seek? .... Nope, I've just been forgotten.
I'm not in this episode, am I?
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Anyway Dean sends Sam back to lurk on the Jack and Lucifer conversation
Which leaves Mary and Dean free to chat!
Dean is like, I am listening but I am also sulking. About everything. Mary starts explaining that Nougat is getting hardened by war, having been fighting and losing people. Turning into one of them, a scarred, miserable Winchester.
I love that Mary is defending Jack, that she has spent so much time with him - more than anyone else - that she is the sympathetic character towards Jack. He's not an object to obtain to her, he's very much a kid who has landed in it and is doing his best.
And, of course, a surrogate for the sons she never got to know growing up, when they were being fucked up in the exact same way Jack is currently being fucked up, which means, hopefully, she will learn to relate to them better through seeing what Jack goes through??
And cut to Jack telling Sam that he was telling his father that together they can take down Michael. Which... Isn't super reassuring tbh, if you flip it to season 5 where Lucifer getting a surefire powerful boost like a Nougat to help him take out Michael would have been dooooooom and that is why they sent Jesse on a surfing holiday in Australia.
-
This also means Sam has to walk alongside Lucifer and Jack all chill and like... we're on a walk together
-
Ooops and Sam is like, but that's not the plan, and Jack is like, hi, while you were gone I fixated on killing my AU!Uncle Mikey.
-
Again, Mary reasons that Jack's interest in Lucifer is not unexpected, based on curiosity, and Dean complains about the threat that Lucifer corrupts him. Mary sounds both confident in Jack not being evil that it seems a little laughable to her, and also that Jack will soon see Lucifer's true nature.
And honestly, this is the longest Lucifer has held it together possibly EVER without doing something petty. Maybe just because with the handcuffs on he can't get irritated and melt people who are annoying him. I'm not sure how much restraint he has left not to say something wildly wrong. Like a homophobic relative at a family dinner with all your nice gay family, and you know Some Shit will leave their mouth sooner or later, even though they're playing it nice and got a pride pin before they knocked on the door.
-
Mary is proud of her big gay family
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sorry that metaphor wandered off
-
not sorry.
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Hi Cas, love it when you *gestures him walking innocuously around a corner*
"Hey, did you find him?"
"No, Gabriel isn't in this episode for some reason. I think BL have a restraining order?"
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LOL here he is! RUN LIL GUY RUN!
"ANGELS!"
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Aw no, the handcuffs. They were Dean n Cas's personal ones.
-
blah blah joke about impotence, Lucifer got to melt some things so he might be able to stay chill for a while longer having scratched the itch to murder...
-
I just took a lil break to complain to Mittens about the geography, she assured me Singer Salvage Yard isn't in South Dakota in the AU, and I'm just like... debating whether I think this is better or worse. it's a headache, for sure
-
Hi AU!Bobby! They immediately discuss how Bobby decided not to put his salvage yard in Sioux Falls because the weather sucks, and I am sitting here wondering if TJW looked at the script and was like... there's no Gabriel... they WALKED from Ohio to Bobby's on the way to Kentucky... I -
-
Why do they always give me their scripts to un-fuck?
-
AU Bobby makes me miss Bobby while simultaneously filling the void not having Bobby puts in me and I feel weird
He's telling them their idea sucks in colourful language and it's like oh I am home, but at the same time... it's not in Sioux Falls
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Dean automatically protective of Charlie when Ketch is around and again, the weirdest feeling that Ketch killed Charlie hits me, but he still didn't and it's still just because BL like him so much they've made him their new toy.
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Bleh more Jack and Lucifer
He's now explaining the archangels to Jack. Mansplaining, in fact, since Jack already knows.
it seems this was just a way to say they were both tortured by Michael in order to bond some more
Lucifer forces Jack to do a high five and Jack is baffled
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"That's your Uncle Gabe" *points at him throwing rocks at a car* Jesus christ he's literally... off throwing rocks... I was kidding when I said he was off doing it earlier... I was kidding... holy shit they literally forgot to write Gabriel into this episode.... in the script it was "then there's your uncle gabe" without pointing, just, in the abstract, like, yeah, he exists, and Jack is like yeah I sort of noticed him existing. And then they both pause. Funny, that. Gabriel existing. Anyway - and they move on?
-
Woah, no, they're actually going to talk to him.
Hey, Gabriel, did you know you're in this episode?
His expression says, wow, no I did not. But now I hear them coming over, I need to Deal With This Shit
-
Lucifer describes him as "class clown" which is automatically reducing him back down to the Trickster, and of course he's said tricks are for kids and is trying to be all mature and the new version of Gabriel.
-
I hope new and improved Uncle Gabriel tells Jack what's what, even if it's just with eyebrows and pointed looks
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"And you're an ass clown"
That works.
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Oh ew, Lucifer immediately pulls Gabriel's torture on him as a hey how are you lol that was funny when you were tortured and metaphorically raped for 7 years huh?
Jack, again, seems to lack the context of what happened to Gabriel, the state they found him in, all the stuff we've seen on screen, so the dramatic irony of what we know vs what Jack knows...
Also how does Lucifer even know?
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Oh whatever.
-
Gabriel has no time for this, and turns to walk off, like, fine, I didn't even want to be in your stupid episode anyway. Lucifer follows, Jack walking along beside him, eyebrows furrowed.
-
Gabriel has a headache at Lucifer rambling on (and they've literally just forgotten about Raphael. Wonderful.) Anyway, super relatable.
Here he goes. "You think Dad was a bad guy and you were a victim?" Well Scout will be happy, Gabriel standing up for the ole God n Gabe relationship. I mean, much as it sucks, Gabriel still has a connection with Chuck that no one else does, just in personality.
"That was just your excuse." "For what?" "For it all, Lucifer! For it all!"
Thank fucking God for Gabriel. He wasn't even meant to be here so he's like the one person who can call Lucifer out, from outside the narrative, fed up of this whole stupid charade.
Gabriel is not a Buckleming character, he's here because he deigned to be, and he will leave on his terms too.
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(I've legit been having issues that I keep thinking Speight-directed episodes are Gabriel episodes, and at this point he's such a meta character to me I literally think he's transcended the story)
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Nice of him to walk off screen with both middle fingers raised.
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Oh my GOD how stupid was that trap that Charlie just fell for?
My unspoken comment from earlier that the dumbest drop in intelligence Buckleming ever inflicted on a character was Charlie's death feels like I should have said it, because making her fall for that dumbass trap was just... wow.
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Wow.
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Blah blah manufactued drama, Ketch has stubble now, apparently a conscience about not letting Charlie get killed because Dean was once attached to his world's version of her
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Goddd I am with Andy the sceptic about their fairytale world where everything is pretty. They don't want to abandon the fight, and like, there's a sizeable chance Dean and Sam just wanna shove Mary through a portal with them and call it a day.
Why are we getting this when we could be getting Sam and Dean learning from Mary how they need to fight for this cause against Michael? Whyyyyyyy. This whole plan is so stupid.
I mean, it wouldn't be wholly stupid for Sam to pop back through the rift, grab all the weapons he's promising, and come back to arm them, in their world, on their turf, somewhere defensible from angels.
Like, even the odds a bit so they can finish this fight so they can take Mary and Jack home and stop stressing about this
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Now Sam's making his Inspiring Speech of the season, about how even if they aren't people from the AU and were never born there, all these masses of people fighting back are still like them and represent what they do. Like, how all the random hikers you might meet know vampire lore these days. Everyone's a hunter in these times.
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Andy narrows his eyes
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cut to: Ketch being tortured and using American monopoly references to fuck with the angels.
he is presumably secretly American, because there's no way he'd casually think of American locations on the board unless he coincidentally grew up with an American monopoly board for some reason
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While complaining about this Mittens reminded me that Metatron made a reference to always winning by building hotels on the expensive square and that gives us an indirect connection between the two of them for some reason.
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Ooooooooh the exterior reveals they're being tortured in the creepy Gas n Sip.
Well. I wonder who is about to show up
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Twitchy!Castiel
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Who inexplicably looks 10 years younger than our Cas.
Dean really did a fucking number on him.
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Anyways of course Castiel is the expert... He's terrifying when he gets going, and this one hasn't been Dean'd.
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Our Cas seems to be doing some scary manhandling on this guy
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And some really scary looming
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Uhoh
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And that was with one lil look from Dean, like, go on, babe, read his mind and do what you do
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No, apparently he wasn't even reading the guy's mind, he was just hurting him
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Lucifer's whining, in the least breaking news to ever break.
Gabriel's like, Dean told us to stay behind, because I'm not in this episode, so I have to babysit your dumb ass before you say anything else stupid to my nephew.
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"Do you see any version of this where he sticks by you?"
I mean that's probably what's stressing Lucifer out, knowing he has nothing to offer as a father. Gabriel is kind of enjoying it. And sitting watching Lucifer from a distance, where he can mock him. Again, he seems weirdly out of the story, the one person who isn't affected by all the bullshit and somehow has this glossy shine on him, un-Buckleming'd even as the empire crumbles around him.
It's like... he doesn't feel a part of all this because he's seeing clearly and calling out Lucifer in real time instead of standing dumbly while Lucifer poses questions to prove he's good that only a 7 month old babyman would fall for.
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"He's a kid.  He likes shiny objects and magic tricks."
:')
"But he's not like you. You can see it in his eyes." YUPPERS. He has Cas's eyes.
his father's eyes
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(Thinking of which, I had to go back because my video went a bit wonky... am I right in thinking AU!Castiel has a bad eye? That's not meta interesting at aaall)
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Gabriel mentions his mother's bloodline, the Winchesters' influence... is Cas included in that?
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"He'll see who - what - you are."
"I've changed."
"Dude. It's me. I've known you since the stars were made. You can't change. You're incapable of empathy, love. You live to be worshipped! Or feared! Or both!"
And now Gabriel is calling out that Lucifer says that God made up all the lies about him, which has been his fallback for literally ever about how woe is me misunderstood God was so meeeean
It's like Gabriel and Lucifer were having that argument back in 5x19 and then Lucifer killed Gabriel and then 7 years passed and now they're alone together again and they just pick up where they left off.
Gabriel praising how humans are innocent and beautiful has weird overtones of how protective Dean was of the Scooby Gang and I think that is adorable.
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Gabriel is officially tearing Lucifer a new one after dropping by to be in the episode and I am gonna stan this fucker forever.
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LOL he made Lucifer cry
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God, I mean I am never ever going to feel sympathetic to Lucifer, but if Gabriel helps him like, sacrifice himself for Jack later at some point, I'm cool with that.
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AAAH AU CASTIEL IS THE WORST. I HATE IT. MISHA, NO
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Nice coat though.
In a horrifying way.
They did, however, find a coat that actually makes Misha's shoulders look huge in a sexy way
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you can hear the Cas voice in there, but it's so messed up.
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This guy is BFFs with Bartholomew I bet.
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okay I'm rewinding and actually trying to pay attention to wtf he's saying.
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It's so messed up that he's in a Gas n Sip. It's like showing how broken his soul is. And the fact his soul is a Gas n Sip absolutely murders me
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Also AU Castiel doesn't have a soul, probably, unlike our Cas
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He's mirroring Dick Frigging Roman while eyeing up Charlie and telling her there aren't many like her.
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Castiel mirroring Dick in a Gas n Sip is how to cram in the most awfulness you possibly could to show a ruined version of Cas.
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He's parting his hair on the other side.
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It seems Castiel pretty much has destroyed himself by psychically harming humans.
Can we rewind so our Cas stops torturing that other guy so that he doesn't remotely turn into this guy?
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OH NO, I was gonna ask where Jack was back in the previous scene but it seems he's flapped off to deal with this before I could ask him where he was.
Now he's gonna meet Worst!Castiel
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Meanwhile: stabby stabby, the rest of the Winchesters are here. Never mind, Cas got the intel from that other guy. Jack isn't going rogue :P
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I hope party!Cas doesn't meet worst!Castiel
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Party!Cas is beating up Worst!Castiel
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"More than one of us. Fascinating." "I've gotten used to it."
Party!Cas is basically just a bundle of one-liners in a trenchcoat.
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LOL Dean freeing Ketch but will we ever be free of Dean x Ketch nonsense?
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Sam randomly hugs AU Charlie because he hasn't got over the guilt of getting our Charlie killed, and can't separate the two on instint of seeing her face again and this is awful.
When I said more hugs I meant more NICE hugs
"Sorry"
She punches him in a hey it's cool we all freak out sometimes
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Oh jesus christ after the saving hanging Ketch by getting all up in his space, now I turn out to have had the screen paused on Ketch and Dean getting all cosy and looking at each other in alarming proximity
"oooh... hello. You saving me? It's about bloody time."
Dean looks furious
good.
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"You aligned yourself to humans?" "I *vastly* prefer them to angels"
Love you too, babe
"Don't think you are better than me. We are the same." "Yes. We are." *STAB*
Bye bye worst!Castiel
Man, I never thought I'd be glad to see Cas die, but that was satisfying watching Cas kill this awful version of him who had been utterly destroyed by being an angel while affirming to himself that humans are the best. And being an angel sucks and is destructive to his very sense of self.
I like that a lot.
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Long live Party!Cas
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And we begin and end the season with a dead Cas
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I mean we're not quite at the end but we're close enough that this counts as bookending symmetry.
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"For whatever reason, I have a good feeling about you two"
it seems a little worrying that apparently the entire lot unanimously voted to go to the pretty AU. I think they're making a joke that Bobby feels some sort of cosmic fatherly vibe towards them but in truth Bobby complained they were idjits with terrible plans quite often, as he did earlier... I'm not sure it's going to be good that everyone Exoduses with them and I feel like them celebrating a win with 10 minutes to go before whatever leads into the finale is a terrible thing. All in all we've got a last 10 minutes of a Buckleming episode vibe going on and I do not like it.
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Okay Lucifer helping Dean revive the bus is the weirdest cooperation I've ever seen on this show.
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Making Lucifer drive so they can keep an eye on him is the worst idea ever and I don't care what Dean justifies it with, Gabriel came rushing in from left field to say hey hey hey this is a dumbass idea and Dean's like shut up you're not in this episode but Gabriel is the one voice of reason here because he's the guy who's not in the episode so can see it for what it is.
Dean's supposed to always want to drive.
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Where is Nougat going?
Why are you even upset?
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Oh, he's realised they're all fleeing to plan to kill Michael later and even though this plan was all worked out a while back he is reacting now - is it just that they didn't include him in the planning and he buckleminged between the cracks of an episode ABOUT HIM and only found out now...
He's like but I wanna kill Michael NOW
Okay, no, he's got a cool heroic mindset
but you know what, after hanging with Lucifer, there is something about how they've put Jack in a position where he is driven to Kill Michael just like Lucifer was originally driven to Kill Michael. Of course everything around them and the utter horror of worst!Cas proves that killing Michael is necessary for this world to even have a sliver of a chance of survival, but at the same time, Jack is now irrationally stuck on a mission purpose identical to the one that once powered Lucifer to start the entire apocalypse. And having Jack mirroring that need, to the point of irrationally leaving the party bus when the plan IS to regroup, arm up and return to kill Michael, shows that he has -
At least this one brewed up fast, because the longer you leave the apocalypse to stew, the more complicated it is to start a fight with Michael??
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Sam goes after Jack because he cares and then Lucifer saunters over because he wants to latch onto Jack, and once again we get Jack caught between two parent figures - in his flashes of choosing who he wants to be after thinking about Kelly's message he had flashes of both Lucifer and Sam - not Cas and Dean.
Look
I'm just sayin' as a random aside
which I should not be saying but I mean I hope I earned some sam!girl cred earlier so let me ruin this
because they're framing it as Lucifer vs Sam
it sets aside Cas n Dean
and they're like
A different set of parents on like, a different level. If Jack has 4 dads, Cas and Dean are one pair and Sam and Lucifer are the other... Thematically... but like... also Cas and Dean are weirdly in a different sort of world when it comes to relating to Jack apparently.
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Sam is all concern about Jack, Lucifer tries to talk Jack out of it with seeming concern which is really just about how he isn't very good at fighting Michael. Lol.
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UUUGHHHH Sam having to hear Jack say "my father makes a valid point" and then Lucifer claps Jack on the shoulder and walks off with him in front of Sam and it feels like Lucifer somehow retroactively has kicked off this whole nonsense JUST to spite Sam.
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Oh my GOD Dean isn't even ON the party Bus with Lucifer what the heck who PLANNED this plan
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I like Gabriel just chilling with like, an RPG launcher or something.
nice callback to last episode re: lol penis
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Also Jack is sitting with Uncle Gabriel in the jeep! Good! I hope he is saying lots of good sensible Nice Uncle Who Gives You Candy things to Jack, and then makes a coin appear out of his ear.
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Portal's closing
Run run run
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Amazingly, Lucifer's maths about the portal were not wrong?
I mean... do we just assume that that was a lucky guess?
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Rowena has been reading the entire time, and I can tell why we haven't seen her since the start of the episode but it's still a total waste of her.
Maybe Gabriel was slipping off and hooking up with her whenever he wasn't in the episode.
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You know I am not 100% Rowena was in this episode either. I do appreciate her and Ketch making eye contact like, oh, you.
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With 6 minutes to go you know some serious shit is about to go down
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JACK IS BACK
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Lol Sam is like no you stay here, Lucifer. Fuck you being in the same universe as Jack for any length of time.
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Okay we got a Mary and an AU Bobby here, good, good. And a Charlie! Wonderful!
The last 6 minutes of the episode might be all like, 30 people coming through the rift one by one to dramatic music.
If the Winchesters don't make it back then there's going to be one hell of a kegger thrown here by all the gnarly post-apocalypse peeps suddenly filling the Bunker unsupervised.
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CAS!
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He does not count as a responsible adult. Party!Cas is in the Bunker, currently unsupervised, with Rowena.
That is going to be a fucking wild kegger.
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Oh good they sped up the dramatic entering the portal bit when it was randos we've never met who are now all filling the Bunker
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Guys, you do realise if you leave BOTH archangels on the other side of the rift... you don't have any grace on YOUR side of the rift?
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I mean
that... did occur to you?
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Oh great the angels just crashed down on top of them and of all the people on screen, we get a close up of Andy the doubter dead. Nice going, BL
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Michael! Badass wings in the dust!
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Oh that's why Asmodeus did the ridiculous grace hurling. They wanted Lucifer to do it to Michael.
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Now Michael is doing it to Lucifer
Just... like... kill him for us... put us out of our misery...
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Gabriel, no, don't do this... D: If I have to watch you die again I'm suing.
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Like, worst time to suddenly show up in the episode.
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Dude you can not die,  you have to come back and run Heaven and bang Rowena on the weekends.
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Sam and Dean are like... just not running away.
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I'm suing.
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Gabriel better be behind Michael and stab him now
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I mean I'm just assuming he's standing behind a tree like, wow, it's amazing how often people fall for that
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"How did you think this was gonna end?"
I love you Sammy
You get the no.1 dad mug
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Oh good, Michael is alone with a weakened miserable Lucifer. Can you just stomp him out of rage now?
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Cut to: Bunker kegger.
I immediately spot Cas and Dean standing together not in the main party, with AU Charlie. AU Bobby and Mary together, Rowena sitting down needing a rest, and Sam wearing just a t-shirt and chilling with her. Ketch and the girl from the vampire mine sitting either side of the stairs, probably both like ???? about events, from completely opposite directions.
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AU Charlie and Ketch are weirdly friends. I am so conflicted.
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FINALLY FOUND JACK
he doesn't look very happy. He's a corner child. Sitting in the corner. With a beer he is like 20 and a bit years too young to drink.
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Anyway guess Samwitch is still on the cards even if we can be really miserable about Gabwena or whatever you call it ending too soon.
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Cas and Dean are talking about I guess a toast to Gabriel, presumably prompted by Cas being really sad about Gabriel, probably because now there's no one to teach him magic tricks to amuse Jack.
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Cas really isn't much fun at parties, now I think about it
I'm not backing down from my stance. He just needs to get BETTER at parties.
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"Been here 5 minutes and he's taken over the joint"
I've wanted to see Bobby in the Bunker a million years and while I am miserable it's not the real thing, it does still feel at least kinda right.
*sighs forever*
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What is Jack going to do
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Why are people toasting Sam and Dean but not Cas
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Cas isn't toasting them either, he's standing there with his hands in his pockets like yeah I always knew these two idiots were the best, thanks for catching up.
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Jack continues staring into the void
Cas continues standing there
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Awww no why did you give us a closeup of Gabriel lying there? Also his eyes were wide open. What does that mean? I mean is it because no one's bothered to close them, or is it a symbolic thing?
anyway Michael you are not stabbing Lucifer fast enough. Don't bargain with him. He just wants to go be a pest in the main world.
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What the hell was that last look about? UGH. Do not want.
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tl;dr Gabriel is probably fine. He sneaked through the portal when no one was looking and flapped off. 
Rowena will probably get a series of bizarre sexy presents delivered to whatever hotel room she's in
Cas needs to work at parties
Jack is contemplating what the hell fathers' day even is.
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