Supernatural: Exodus

May 13, 2018 6:20 PM - Season 13, Episode 22

Sam and Dean devise a plan that will save innocent lives; Jack continues to wrestle with the consequences of his decisions.
posted by litera scripta manet (16 comments total)

Well, that was a super frustrating episode.

First of all, killing off Gabriel when we just got him back really sucks. I was enjoying having him around. Also, he seemed like the best bet to save heaven.

Secondly, I get that Lucifer is a dick, and I wish he'd been killed off ages ago, but I still think it was an incredibly dumb move to leave him behind like that, especially once Gabriel was dead. For several reasons:

- The only thing worse than enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend Lucifer is friend-of-my-enemy Lucifer. Even though I don't buy his redemption, I do buy that he hates alt world Michael enough to try to screw him over, and his desire to win over Jack means that he had little incentive to actively screw over the Winchesters in the short term, until they did this.

- With Gabriel gone, Lucifer was there ticket to get back to apocalypse world to defeat Michael. And he was also possibly Michael's ticket to get back to their world. (I know theoretically Jack can open a rift, but that didn't go so well the last time.

I mean, I get wanted to get rid of Lucifer, but I this just seemed like the exact wrong time to do it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:27 PM on May 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

It really does not seem like this should have been the penultimate episode of the season. It's hard to see how any of this will be satisfactorily resolved in one episode.

On another note, it was interesting to see alt world Cas, because I'd been wondering about the potential for alt world Cas or Crowley, but it seemed kind of lame to introduce him and then kill him off so quickly, and what the hell is up with that accent?

Also, I had expected if we saw alt-world Cas, he would be in a different vessel, since we know Cas didn't always use Jimmy Novak as his vessel, and it seems like none of the other angels in apocalypse world used the same vessel as when we saw them in the Winchester world, which makes sense, since it seems like to a certain extent picking a vessel has an element of convenience/chance to it, for most angels. Although I'm willing to accept that maybe they just felt like the audience wouldn't be happy about Cas that didn't seem like Cas.

And hey, I just thought of this: maybe Jack can wake up Gabriel in the Empty like he did with Cas. I bet Gabriel would be really great at pissing off that nebulous cosmic entity.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:34 PM on May 13, 2018

And going back to the Lucifer thing, again, I get that Lucifer is the worst, but poor Jack never will get to meet his mother, so I can understand him wanting to get to know his father a bit. And I know Jack has seemed to really want to be good, but maybe don't try to actively antagonize the antichrist? Especially in a way that might lead him to side with Lucifer?

I will say that I loved seeing Gabriel call out Lucifer on his own self serving version of their past history.
posted by litera scripta manet at 6:37 PM on May 13, 2018

Why was AU Cas a Nazi?

Is Gabe dead? I think at this point, if Richard Speight Jr. actually died, fans would just say "yeah okay whatever not buying it Gabriel"

I didn't like the ending of the episode and I hope that Dean reams Sam next episode for leaving Lucifer to Michael and giving him the ability to shunt to Prime Universe. I guess they didn't know that Lucifer knew the spell but still.

Curious about the rules of AU world magic, why the irons didn't work on Lucifer
and especially why he expected them to fail.

If I was Lucifer I would shunt Michael to a third dimension and then keep Apocalypse World for myself, then go back for Jack a later time.

I don't know if this season was bad really, but it has been just all over the place. It feels like 2-3 mini seasons wrapped into one.

Wayward Sisters not picked up, sad times.
posted by Query at 7:08 PM on May 13, 2018

Yeah, I was really bummed about Wayward Sisters. I was looking forward to seeing it come to life as its own show. I had thought it was a done deal, so I was surprised to hear it got cancelled before it ever even got off the ground.

I agree about this season being all over the place. I thought the first 5 or so episodes were really, really great, and there have been some other really enjoyable episodes, but it definitely hasn't felt cohesive. I don't mind them focusing more on MOW-type episodes and less on the big picture, except it felt like they spent a lot of the season focusing on the big picture, except no one was really sure what the big picture was.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:16 PM on May 13, 2018

Anyone want to make predictions for the finale? It seems like there has to be some sort of confrontation with apocalypse world Michael, but I guess the question is which universe it happens in.

And now that Gabriel is probably dead (at least for now), and Lucifer is in the other world scheming with alt-Michael, does that mean the only remaining archangel in the boys' world is original Michael whose still trapped in the cage? Are the boys finally desperate enough to drag him back out of the cage and presumably use Dean as the vessel since I can't imagine Adam is in any shape to be a vessel after all these years?

It does seem like at least every other season the boys and/or Cas majorly screw up and then spend the next season cleaning up that mess (the hell gate opening, releasing Lucifer from the cage, Leviathans, kicking the angels out of heaven, releasing the darkness), so it's about time for them to do something phenomenally dumb like letting Michael out of the cage to fight back against alt-Michael and Lucifer.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:28 PM on May 13, 2018

One weird thing is, the angels in the alternate world seem to all be eviler versions of the angels from our universe, but the humans seem like the same people we know but just maybe a little more broken from the endless war. Like Bobby is still Bobby and Charlie is still Charlie, but Michael is a supervillain and Castiel is a twitchy Gestapo guy. (That struck me as a rare instance of Misha Collins making a bad acting choice. He was basically Toht from Raiders, and he was so over-the-top and different from the Cas we know it was hard to buy them as aspects of the same guy.)

This has easily been the show's weirdest, randomest season, mostly defined by all the intriguing possibilities raised and then never really dealt with. It seemed like almost every episode had something in it that made you say, "Oh, this could change everything..." but then it never came up again. Individual episodes remain compelling but you get this feeling like they misplaced their whiteboard with the main plot for the season.

It is too bad about Wayward Sisters. This show laid a lot of track for it too, they were obviously convinced it was a go. That's two spin-offs that didn't happen, but I have a feeling that Jody and the gals will at least turn up again on this show. (Unlike that weird spin-off attempt a few seasons back, which is never, ever mentioned by anybody.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:23 PM on May 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

As far as all the alt-world angels being dicks, including Gestapo!Cas, I've seen some fan theories that in alt world the reprogramming of Cas was more succesful/complete than in our world (presumably because alt world Cas didn't have the benefit of saving his true love Dean Winchester from hell the Winchester's positive influence). As to the other angels, Zachariah and Michael are dicks in both worlds, and I'm guessing any other decent angels were either killed or reprogrammed too. I do think it would have been better if they hadn't made alt world Cas quite so cartoonishly evil.

But this brings me to another question: Is God aka Chuck from our world the same God in apocalypse world? If so, I know he likes to be hands off, but seriously, he didn't decide to do something to help out apocalypse world before it became a complete garbage fire?

And if you die in apocalypse world, do you go to the same afterlife as in our world? Because if there's only one heaven, how does it make sense to have multiple versions of these angels? What if they run into each other? And how could our heaven be dying out when there are plenty of angels in apocalypse world (it seems)? Are there multiple iterations of reapers like Billie?

I mean, I don't actually expect these questions to get answered, but it's something I've been thinking about, especially after Sam died in apocalypse world in the previous episode.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:22 PM on May 14, 2018

Zachariah and Michael are dicks in both worlds

Well, MOST of the angels we've ever seen have been jerks, but the ones in the alt world aren't just jerks, they're full-on homicidal villain types. It would've been interesting to spend more time with an evil Castiel and find out how he got that way, but that's just another cool thing this show hinted at but then discarded. The idea of an alt-God and an alt-heaven is also fascinating, but... nope.

I can't remember if they've dealt with demons over there. Did Michael seal off hell or something?

I think they made a mistake killing off Asmodeus and making Michael the last-minute big bad. Michael may actually be far more powerful and have a clear plan compared to whatever Asmodeus was up to, but we'd spent a lot more time with Asmodeus and the actor had chops. Michael hasn't made much of an impression. It feels like they dropped a kind of middling A-plot and suddenly switched to a B-plot we'd hardly seen all season. I know I'm carping a lot in these threads, but the weird thing is that despite all these problems it's still been a fun show to watch! I just hope they head into next season with more of a plan.

Sometimes this show really makes me miss the glory days of the Buffyverse. People are pissed at Joss now, but that was a guy who really knew how to give his supernatural soap operas momentum and make his big bads big and bad!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:14 PM on May 14, 2018

They did say something about the demons right in the beginning of the alt universe plotline. I half-remember that they're all or mostly dead from the apocalypse war with the angels. But I'm not totally sure that's right. With the quantity of humans being killed in that universe, you'd think there'd be plenty of new junior demons getting churned out as people go to hell (unless you're right that it's sealed, in which case, are people going to purgatory? Everyone goes to heaven? Tons of ghosts with everyone in the veil?). But, alas, another unresolved plot issue.

You all are very right that there are so many potentially interesting plotlines the writers are abandoning in favor of Sam making extremely bad decisions to set up a way for Michael to finally get into the main universe.
posted by snaw at 8:46 AM on May 15, 2018

I remember at the end of S12, when the boys first visited Apocalypse world, they encountered a "tempter demon" (or something like that?) which I think Bobby then killed, but I don't know if we're heard anything else about demons beyond that. I could see Michael deciding to shut down hell, so he didn't have to worry about dealing with demons and could just focus on annihilating all the humans.

I do agree that they would have been better off sticking with Asmodeus as the big bad, rather than Michael. Alternatively, if we had just spent more time in Apocalypse world this season, and if they had built up the mythology and history of that world, that would have been another great option.

In fact, when Mary said during this episode that she wouldn't leave those people behind, I was hoping the boys would have been like, cool, guess we're staying here too. (I understand there are logistical reasons not to do that, like the rift getting ready to close, but still.) If we had more than one episode left this season, then maybe there would have been time to explore this history more from the bunker, but alas, I doubt we'll have much time for that.

This is one of the (many) reasons I'm bummed about them ditching the Wayward Sisters spin off. Based on the backdoor pilot, it seemed like they were possibly setting up that show as a place to explore these alternate universes more, which would have been cool (although with not-evil Kaia dead, maybe that wouldn't have worked either).
posted by litera scripta manet at 2:28 PM on May 15, 2018

Another thing I wonder: If the alt world angels are all homicidal killing machines because of some angel programming that Michael and his crew did, maybe someone with experience in angel programming (like, say, our universe's Naomi), could de-program them into more run of the mill angels again if they got dragged back to our world? That could be one way to deal with the angel shortage, at least until the new angels get killed.

Or maybe they could get over their anti-nephilim thing, and just start a nephilim breeding program or something horrifying like that. After all, they don't know how to build angels, but they do know how to breed nephilim. That's assuming Nephilim grace would work to power heaven.

Of course, the Winchesters would probably have to be against this, because of the whole "mother dies giving birth" thing, if nothing else.

Which actually brings up another question: We know from S12 that for a human, birthing a nephilim is always fatal. But what if you have a case where the angel is in a female vessel, and the human is the male? Would it still be fatal then?

And on another note, I wonder if they'll ever check back in with Sister Jo? They really seemed to drop that whole Lucifer in heaven storyline way too quickly.

Although this has been a fairly enjoyable season to watch, I think it had the makings of being a really great season, like one of the best since the Kripke era (S1-S5) if they had just planned it out a bit better from the beginning.
posted by litera scripta manet at 2:36 PM on May 15, 2018

I have a hunch the angels from the bad universe will come through but for some reason they'll decide not to just destroy everything, and maybe they'll make a pact with the angels from our universe to make more angels. But this show has a way of defying all expectations. Sometimes I think they don't plot it out in the conventional sense so much as they sit down and say, "Which way can we take this plot that people will NEVER expect?"

Dropping that detail about ALL the ghosts escaping heaven does make me wonder if maybe they do have plans to do that. It sounds like a huge shift of the status quo, but they might find some way to make it kind of low-key and low-budget. Maybe the ghosts will be escaping a little at a time, and every third episode they go, "Oh, yeah, there's a report about another pesky ghost. This one is a cowboy from 1882." It definitely won't be a whole season of apocalyptic mayhem with ghosts all over the place, no matter how cool that might be.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:07 PM on May 15, 2018

I doubt Gabe will stay dead, too, but I don't see how they're going to write him back in again.

I'm mostly ok with how everything played out, because we know the brothers always make emotionally satisfying decisions without thinking about consequences, and then producing more problems while cleaning up said consequences. That's the pattern, and even though it's frustrating, it's still entertaining. At least they're learning not to make the same bad decisions again.

So yeah, in the moment I get why Sam did that. I mean, Lucifer was straight up egging him on with that "you just gotta know how to talk to kids!" comment.
posted by numaner at 3:10 PM on May 18, 2018

Quotes

Lucifer: That's your Uncle Gabe.
Jack: We sort of met.
Lucifer: Let's go say hi. So... thing about Gabe -- class clown.
Gabriel: And you're an assclown.
Lucifer: Ha! You hear that? He's such a cut-up.

Gabriel: Okay, you think dad was a "bad guy", and you were the victim? You were not a victim. That was just your excuse.
Lucifer: My excuse for what?
Gabriel: For it all, Lucifer. For it all.

Alt-Castiel: You align yourself with the h-humans.
Castiel: I vastly prefer them to angels.
Alt-Castiel: Don't think you are better than me. Well, we are the same.
Castiel: Yes. We are. [kills AU Castiel]

Bobby: Mary said you wanna take a bunch of our people back to this "Other Earth?"
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, that's the idea.
Bobby: Well, no offense, but that may be the dumbest friggin' idea in a landfill of dumb ideas.

Sam: Creeps me out. You know?
Dean: Yeah, but it's not Sioux Falls.
Bobby: Why should it look like Sioux Falls?
Sam: Uh, just our, uh, Bobby back in our world, he, um...
Bobby: He liked to freeze his ass off every winter? Yeah, well, this Bobby's gonna pass on that.

Trivia

When Ketch is being tortured by an angel for the location of the resistance base he gives him locations from Monopoly.
posted by orange swan at 12:17 PM on February 26, 2022

Rowena gets Outlander-type bagpipe theme music, heh.

It was not entirely honest of Sam and Dean to promise the other worlders that they'd be able to come back again once they'd done some research in the bunker library. They didn't have a way of opening up a rift again.

Oh, Gabriel. I wish they hadn't killed him off. I liked him. He had an interesting, complex character: while he pretended to be only an amoral playboy who didn't care about anything, and he did in fact have a certain love of chaos and hedonism, deep down he cared too much about the world, and let his anger over things get the best of him.

Why would Michael kill Gabriel immediately, but not Lucifer? I know Lucifer had something to offer him, but the thing is, Michael didn't spend any time listening to anything Gabriel had to say.

I definitely didn't care for Alt-Castiel's Hogan's Heroes accent. How would Jimmy Novak have had that accent?
posted by orange swan at 12:23 PM on February 26, 2022