Previously: Sam fucked a demon and Dean needed to borrow our brain bleach.
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Heaven and Hell
Kirsti: We continue on immediately after Cas dropping his “we’re gonna kill Anna” bombshell, and the boys demand to know why because she’s an innocent girl. Uriel chuckles and says she’s far from innocent, and almost as gross as Ruby. He demands that they hand her over. “Sorry. Get yourself another one. Try JDate,” Dean sasses. I admit, I did chuckle a bit at that.
Uriel calls Ruby a “demon whore” so that we can get our first round of misogyny shots over nice and early, and a fight breaks out. Uriel pins Ruby against a wall, and Dean rushes over to help. Cas walks slowly towards Sam, who begs him not to do this. Cas touches Sam’s forehead, and Sam crumples to the floor. Uriel, meanwhile, is having tons of fun pummelling Dean. Suddenly, a bright light flashes, and Uriel and Cas grimace in pain before disappearing.
Dean helps Ruby up, and she rushes to Sam’s side. Dean heads into the back room, and finds that Anna’s used her own blood to draw a bunch of sigils. She asks if they’re gone, and Dean asks if she killed them. She tells him that she sent them away, and she has no idea how. It just popped into her head. Dean looks spooked.
Marines: That was a pretty great thing to just have pop into your head just then. Nothing particularly helpful ever just pops into my head. I think about snacks a lot.
K: Same. Although what usually pops into my head is annoying songs that then never leave.
CREEPY BIRDS!
After the Not Credits, Ruby bandages Anna’s wounds while the boys discuss what the fuck is going on. Dean tells Sam to look into the sigil that Anna drew while he gets her somewhere safe. That somewhere safe turns out to be Bobby’s panic room of awesomeness. Ruby tosses in a couple of hex bags that will apparently keep Anna hidden from literally everything, and Dean thanks her. Ruby looks startled. (M: ME TOO.)
Dean asks Anna what the angels are talking about, and she says that there’s total silence. Which is disturbing. Sam calls out to Dean, and he heads upstairs. After reassuring Dean that the Bromobile is fine, Sam pulls out Anna’s psych file. Apparently this isn’t her first mental break. When she was 2, she freaked out any time her father came near her, and started screaming that he wasn’t her real father, and that her real father was mad and wanted to kill her. So her parents took her to a shrink, which seems pretty legit.
Mari: I’ll admit that I thought that this was pointing toward Anna’s dad being a demon at first. Sometimes I’m bad at TV.
K: But only rarely.
From behind them, Anna demands to know why they didn’t just ask about her history rather than stealing her file. The boys look a little guilty, and ask if she’s hiding something. Anna has no fucking clue, and would really like to know why her life is suddenly a trainwreck full of murder. “Then let’s find out…” Sam says.
Cut to the Bromobile driving back into Bobby’s place. Dean leads Pamela down to the basement. I don’t quite know why Pamela would agree to help the boys after THEY GOT HER FUCKING EYEBALLS BURNT OUT, but whatever. (M: Either she’s a much better or much stupider person than I am, because NO.) She grabs Sam’s arse in greeting, which is gross, then introduces herself to Anna. She also says she wants to take down an angel in revenge for the eyeball burning, so I guess that explains why she’d help. (M: Fine.)
In the panic room, she puts Anna into a hypnotic state as the others sit around watching. Pamela asks a few basic questions, then asks Anna who her true father is. Anna says she doesn’t want to go back and look, but Pamela insists. Anna starts screaming that he’s going to kill her and writhes in pain. The door to the panic room slams shut, and the light bulbs explode. Dean rushes over to hold Anna down, and she backhands him across the room. Pamela quickly wakes her up, and Anna sits up calmly. She thanks Pamela, and says she knows who she is now. “I’m an angel,” she says. Everyone looks shocked. (M: They are bad at TV too.) Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Anna insists that she’s not like the others. No one is reassured by this news, kind of like when women aren’t reassured by dudebros saying “not ALL men”. (M: A+. Not ALL angels burn out eyeballs!) She says that back in her angel days, she was Cas and Uriel’s boss, and Dean’s impressed. Pamela mentions that whole wanting-to-kill-her thing, and Anna shrugs because orders are orders. Besides, there’s a death sentence on her.
Everyone’s all “Skkkkkrt, WHAT?”, and Anna says she disobeyed and fell to Earth – which was hella painful – and as a result of disobeying, she’s Heaven’s Most Wanted. But also, she has a plan. Falling to Earth required her to rip out her grace, her angelic energy or some shit. (Basically, graces are to Supernatural what souls are to Buffy and Angel: a big old mess that changes as the writers need it to.) (M: Aw, crap. Why’d you have to go and tell me a thing like that?) (K: SORRY. I figured you deserved a warning upfront?) She’s going to get it back.
Dean approves of this plan. He asks where her grace is, and Anna has no idea because she was too busy falling out of the sky. The knowledge that she was literally falling gives Sam an idea. He checks a bunch of books and finds a report of a meteorite disappearing in the night sky near where Anna lived about nine months before she was born. “You’re pretty buff for a nerd,” Ruby says. (M: Hahaha “pretty” buff. Good job trying to play it cool.) (K: Part of me suspects that line was ad-libbed by Genevieve in mid-JPad crush)
Sam eyerolls a little, and says there was another meteor over Kentucky at the same time, and maybe it’s Anna’s grace. Ruby’s totally not down with searching an entire state, but Sam insists that it’s a start. Ruby sighs and apologises for getting him into this mess. She has no desire to get stuck between two armies, and suggests they dump Anna and make a run for it. Sam says he knows she’s scared of the angels, but Ruby interrupts: “Forget the angels, it’s Alastair I’m scared of!”
She tells him that Alastair’s basically in charge of torture in Hell, and that Sam should have exorcised him when he had the chance. But his abilities are weakening. Ruby snaps that he knows what he needs to do, but Sam insists he’s “not doing that any more“. Ruby says he’d better hope Anna’s plan works out or they’re all fucked.
Outside in the junk yard, Anna’s staring up at the stars when Dean returns from dropping Pamela home. Dean asks why the angels saved him, but Anna doesn’t know. It was before she started hearing them and after she fell. At that, Dean looks confused and asks why she’d fall, why she’d want to be human because humans are “a bunch of miserable bastards“. She rattles off a bunch of positive qualities, Dean counters with negative ones. They go back and forth until Anna says “sex“. He admits defeat.
Mari: Awww yeah! Anna is #teamfeels. I mean, a weird extreme fringe portion of #teamfeels, but you know.
K: Make room on the Couch of Feels for Anna, Mari!
Dean, meanwhile, is on Team Heartless Cow: “Feelings are overrated, if you ask me.” Anna says having feelings is better than being an angel, and Dean’s shocked. Angels are powerful and perfect and have no doubt in anything. Anna counters that they’re cold, like a marble statue, and all I can think of is this:
M: A+. Look at his stupid face. It’s great.
K: Y’all should appreciate how much effort I put into finding a gif that didn’t show you his squiffy nipples. YOU’RE WELCOME, INTERNET.
Anna says that only four angels ever have seen God’s face. Dean’s all “WTF?” and asks how they know that God’s real. Anna says they have to take it on faith, and anyone who questions things is killed. (M: I don’t really think that’s how faith works…) (K: True, but that’s how contrivance works) Anna spent 2000 years on Earth, just watching, feeling homesick and waiting on orders from a father who may or may not exist. Dean chuckles, and Anna gets offended. But he tells her that he can relate. They share a feels-laden look. It’s interrupted by Sam, saying that he’s found something.
Back inside, Sam tells them about reports of a local miracle in Union, Kentucky the year Anna was born: a fully grown oak tree, at least a century old in size, grew in six months. Anna says her grace could do something like that. Cut to the Bromobile speeding through the night. Dean eyes Anna and Ruby sitting in the back seat and chuckles that it’s like the set up to a bad joke or a Penthouse Forum letter. Ruby eyerolls. Sam reminds Dean that there’s a difference between reality and porn. Dean sad pandas.
The next day, they arrive at the oak tree in Kentucky. Dean’s blown away by how pretty the tree is, and I’m inclined to agree. Anna says she can feel that this is where her grace touched down, and rushes over to touch the tree. Then her face falls, because her grace is gone. Someone stole it. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, they hole up in a barn for the night. Dean thinks they should head back to Bobby’s and the awesome panic room. Ruby thinks that’s a terrible plan because Anna can’t live in a panic room forever and also she can’t protect them without her grace. Anna interrupts to say that the angels are talking again. It’s an endless loop informing them that if Dean doesn’t hand Anna over by midnight, they’ll throw him back into Hell. Dean looks terrified.
Mari: I’m weirdly entertained by the angels rigging an endless head loop. Well played, angels.
K: “This is the message that doesn’t end. It just goes on and on my friend. Hand over Dean Winchester before you end up legitimately insane.”
Sam asks if Anna knows of a weapon that will work on an angel, and she says there’s nothing they could get to before midnight. Dean says they should call Bobby and he’ll help them come up with a solution. Sam thinks that’s a terrible idea. Cut to Dean leaning on the Bromobile, studying a book by torchlight. Anna comes up and thanks him for trying to help. Dean shuts her down because “participation trophies suck ass“.
Anna says sadly that she’s not sure she deserves to be saved. She knew the rules and she broke them anyway. Maybe she has to pay for it. Dean looks feelsy, and says they’ve all done things they should pay for. Anna tells Dean that she overheard the angels talking about what he did in Hell. She runs her thumb over his cheek, and says it wasn’t his fault and that he should forgive himself. Dean stutters that he can’t talk about it, and she says she understands, and just wanted him to know that he’s not alone. Then she kisses him.
“What was that for?” Dean asks. She points out that it’s their last night on Earth, and Dean accuses her of stealing his best line before kissing her. Cut to them having sex in the back seat of the Bromobile. Because, you know, nothing says OMG SO HOT like a seatbelt clicker digging into your arse, and hitting your head on a door handle. The sex is accompanied by classic rock, because of course it is. Also, Anna places her hand over Cas’ handprint on Dean’s shoulder and for some inexplicable reason it made me snort laugh?? And then we get a terrible hand-down-the-fogged-up-window, Titanic style.
Mari: She presented him with love, forgiveness and sex. Where the heck was the chocolate cake?
K: Surely WE deserve that part of the equation.
Back inside, Sam’s asleep. Ruby stares down at him fondly, then heads outside and burns the hex bag that’s keeping her hidden. Alastair appears behind her. He sarcastically offers her the knife back, and she tells him to keep it because she just came to talk. She doesn’t want to be in the middle of this, and offers to give them Anna. In return, she and the Winchesters walk away. Alastair calls her a slut – SHOTS! – and a couple of demons appear behind her, and grab her arms. Alastair presses the knife to her face and sasses that he’s making a counter offer.
Dean walks into the barn to find Uriel waiting for him. He realises that he’s dreaming, and Uriel says it’s the only way they could talk to him. Dean asks where Cas is, and Uriel’s all “Oh, he likes you so he’s not here”. (M: Your lack of comment on this shows super restraint.) (K: Clearly Cas is sulking because his boyfriend boinked the wrong angel) He tells Dean that his time is up. Dean sasses that Anna got her grace back, and Uriel chuckles that that’s a pretty good trick seeing as he’s got her grace in a vial around his neck. Womp.
Mari: Womp at Uriel for TELLING HIM WHERE THE GRACE IS. Dumb.
K: Damn that Big Book of Villain Gloating.
Dean asks why he doesn’t just give it back, and Uriel’s all “Duh, she broke the rules”. He says this isn’t even Dean’s business regardless of the fact that he “just cut yourself a slice of…angel food cake“. Ew. He demands Dean give up Anna or be thrown back into Hell because he’s totally replaceable. Dean calls his bluff, and says he doesn’t break easily. “Oh, yes… You do. You just gotta know where to apply the right pressure,” Uriel says. Dean looks worried.
Elsewhere, Ruby screams. Alastair has her tied to a dentist’s chair and he’s torturing her with the knife. For inexplicable reasons, she’s naked, with only the leather straps holding her to the chair covering her. It’s total torture porn, with lingering close ups as blood flows over her skin, and I kind of want to throw up. Or drown myself in brain bleach and Misogyny Shots.
As he tortures her, Alastair says that the current generation is all about instant gratification and has no patience. He says he hasn’t been top side since Poland in 1943, and I kind of want to throw up again. (M: Legit.) He wants Ruby to talk so that he can put this whole stupid angels thing behind him and go home to “my studies“. He takes the gag off Ruby’s mouth and demands to know where Anna is. Ruby refuses to tell him, because if she does, he’ll kill her. But she’ll show him. Alastair smiles.
Mari: I get that Alastair didn’t trust Ruby and all but bro. She offered to tell you where Anna was from the beginning. I’m not sure what this whole, “are you ready to talk??” business is about because she was ready with all of her pieces of skin intact.
K: SERIOUSLY.
Back at the barn, it’s the next morning. Sam’s panicking about Ruby’s sudden absence as Dean swigs from a flask. Anna gets judgey, and he says “It’s 2 a.m. somewhere…” The doors burst open and Cas and Uriel walk in. The doors slam behind them. Cas tells Anna it’s good to see her. In disbelief, Sam asks how the angels found them, and Cas glances at Dean.
Dean looks guilty. He apologises to Anna, and Sam demands to know why. Anna says she knows how the angels work, and they gave him an ultimatum: either he gave up Anna, or Sam dies. Because Dean gives zero fucks about his own life, but God forbid someone threaten his little brother. (M: It was cute the first 1,000 times…) Anna kisses Dean goodbye, tells him she forgives him, and says she’s ready. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Cas says he’s sorry. Anna smirks and says he’s not really, because he doesn’t know what the feeling is. Cas says they have a history together, and Anna interrupts to say that he’s just following orders and to make it quick. “Don’t you touch a hair on that poor girl’s head…” comes a voice from behind them. Everyone turns to see Alastair standing there. His two goons are holding Ruby, who’s sagging towards the floor, her stomach covered in blood.
Sam and Dean pull Anna to one side of the room, and the goons throw Ruby to the ground. The angels and demons close in on each other. There’s name calling and ignored demands, and then they fight. Cas tries to exorcise Alastair with his hand, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, Uriel exorcises one of the goons. Alastair starts muttering a spell in Latin, his hands around Cas’ neck. Which, incidentally, is the point at which Castiel was apparently meant to go bye-byes. But, much like Spike, the fandom loved him so much that the showrunners decided to keep him around.
Dean whacks him over the head with a crowbar, and Alastair drops Cas. Alastair shakes his head disappointedly, saying that Dean had so much promise. Sam looks shocked. Alastair holds out a hand, and both the boys double up in pain. Meanwhile, Uriel is fighting the other goon. As he exorcises him, Anna grabs her grace from around his neck and smashes the vial on the floor. A stream of white smoke appears and pours into her mouth, kind of like a demon possession but not. Cas watches in awe.
Anna falls to the floor. Her body stars to glow, and she yells at everyone to shut their eyes. She explodes into light with a scream. Alastair – the only one without his eyes covered (M: because he’s an idiot, apparently) – vanishes, and Ruby’s knife clatters to the floor. Clearly, angel grace is a lot like those creepy ghosts that came out of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and all you have to do to not get killed is cover your eyes. Okay, show. Whatever.
Mari: Thankfully when Anna was going COVER YOUR EYES COVER YOUR EYES, Alastair decided to just look up and go, “huh?” PHEW. CLOSE CALL.
K: It’s a good thing Hell’s worst torturer has auditory comprehension issues.
Dean sasses at Uriel to go get Anna, and Uriel glares before saying it’s not over. He and Cas vanish. Ruby staggers over, and Sam asks if she’s okay. Not so much. Dean asks what took her so long, and she glares that she was busy being tortured. Dean compliments Sam on his genius plan to get everyone in the same room and hide until they killed each other. Sam says he guesses Anna must be happy now that she’s a big time angel, and Dean’s all “Yeah, probably not…” Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, the boys are sitting on the Bromobile drinking beer. Dean says he knows Sam heard Alastair’s “you had such promise” comment, and wants to know if he’s curious. Sam admits that he is, but says he’s not going to push it. Dean takes a swig of beer, and says “It wasn’t four months, you know.” Sam looks confused. Dean tells him that time moves differently in Hell. It was four months on Earth, but it was more like 40 years for him. Sam looks horrified.
Dean says they tortured him in ways that Sam couldn’t possibly imagine. They’d slice him up until there was nothing left, and then magically he’d be whole again, and the torture would start anew. At the end of every day, Alastair would come over and offer to take Dean off the rack if he became one of the torturers. And every day, Dean refused. “For 30 years, I told him. But then I couldn’t do it anymore, Sammy. I couldn’t. And I got off that rack. God help me, I got right off it, and I started ripping them apart. I lost count of how many souls…” Tears roll down his cheeks.
Sam wipes his eyes, and says that Dean held on for thirty years, and that’s longer than anyone would. More tears roll down Dean’s face, and he cries that he wishes he couldn’t feel anything at all. Sam sits there silently as Dean bites his lip and cries some more. Fade to black.
Mari: I was put off of Ruby because of the actress change, but remember I was all, “can she be back and working with the Winchesters please??” Here was the first time I felt fond of her again because she does go through a lot for these boys. If she has an ulterior motive, I have no damn idea what it could possibly be, and the show would have to try real hard to convince me of it.
I liked that we saw Dean also kind of warming to her here in an episode where we learn more about how terrible his stint in hell was. It’s easy to forget that he’s got very valid reasons to not trust any single demon, ever. And yet, here he is, even saying thank you.
If this is the last of Anna, I will be pissed.
Even though the grace thing was a bit sloppy, I’m at least intrigued by what the show is trying here with the angel and demon lore. We’ve got a demon apparently on the side of the Winchesters and the same angel who saved Dean, showing up at every turn to make their lives impossible and now an angel who willingly fell to earth because pain and sex and chocolate cake were better than waiting for Godot, or whatever. They are really mucking things up here, and that’s commendable. Just don’t poke any plot holes too much.
Poor Dean. Not only is the revelation just ROUGH but it colors everything he does so much now.
Next time on Supernatural: A haunted house that’s basically straight out of a horror movie in S04 E11 – Family Remains.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
