Supernatural: Lucifer Rising
August 3, 2021 6:18 AM - Season 4, Episode 22 - Subscribe

When all but the last of the remaining 66 seals are broken by Lilith's minions, Sam and Dean prepare for the breaking of the 66th in very different ways: Sam joins Ruby on a final attempt to kill Lilith before Lucifer rises, while Castiel and Zachariah tell Dean that it's time to play his part in stopping Lucifer.

Quotes:

Dean: Well, how 'bout this... "The Suite Life of Zach and Cas".
Castiel & Zachariah: ...
Dean: It's a.... Never mind.

Zachariah: Try a burger. They're your favourite. From that seaside shack in Delaware. You were 11, I think.
Dean: I'm not hungry.
Zachariah: No? How about Ginger from season 2 of Gilligan's Island? You do have a thing for her, don't you?
Dean: Tempting. Weird.
Zachariah: We'll throw in Mary Ann for free.

Bobby: You stupid, stupid son of a bitch! Well, boo hoo! I am so sorry your feelings are hurt, princess! Are you under the impression that family's supposed to make you feel good, make you an apple pie, maybe? They're supposed to make you miserable! That's why they're family!
Dean: I told him, "You walk out that door, don't come back," and he walked out anyway! That was his choice!
Bobby: You sound like a whiny brat. No, you sound like your dad. Well, let me tell you something... your dad was a coward.
Dean: My dad was a lot of things, Bobby, but a coward?
Bobby: He'd rather push Sam away than reach out to him. That don't strike me as brave. You are a better man than your daddy ever was. So you do both of us a favour. Don't be him.

Sam: [after opening the door for Lucifer] Oh my God!
Ruby: Guess again.

Zachariah: Sam, Sam, Sam. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!

Ruby: [to Sam] You didn't need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo.

Trivia:

This season finale is called "Lucifer Rising", which mirrors the title of the season premiere, "Lazarus Rising".

Father Lehne, a priest possessed by Azazel, is named after Fredric Lehne, who played Azazel during the show's second season.

When the bells are heard chiming in the convent, the melody they chime is the traditional plainsong melody of "Dies Irae" the start of a Latin poem that translates as "day of wrath". This same melody is also used in the opening credits of Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining.

When Dean says, "Now it's like déjà vu all over again," he is quoting the legendary baseball player, coach, and manager, Yogi Berra.

Dean makes a reference to the Disney channel show The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Kim Rhodes, who will come into the show in season 5 and play Sheriff Jody Mills, played the mother in the show.

When Lucifer's cage opens, it opens with bright white light, and even the end credits have a white background rather than the usual black background. This is fitting as Lucifer's name literally means "bringer of light".

In the room where Dean is being kept by the angels, there is a painting of the Archangel Michael, for whom Dean is destined to be a vessel.

This is the last appearance of Genevieve Cortese, now Genevieve Padalecki, as the demon Ruby until S15:13 where she is seen in a flashback with Sister Jo (Danneel Ackles, wife of Jensen Ackles).

Zachariah, speaking to Dean, "You're going to stop Lucifer. You're our own little Russell Crowe, complete with surly attitude." In the movie Gladiator, an evil despot rises to the throne of Rome and, after much struggle, Crowe's gladiator character kills the despot in the combat arena. Note that in the movie a lot of very powerful people, who did nothing to stop the despot, watch this fight to the death, considering gladiatorial matches to be entertainment.
posted by orange swan (6 comments total)
 
I notice that Ruby's boots have wedge heels. Of course they were going to put Genevieve in heels to take a few inches off the one-foot height differential between her and Jared, but the difference was still so substantial she probably had to stand on boxes some of the time.

Eight months after this episode aired, Genevieve Cortese became Genevieve Padalecki and retired from acting. The only acting jobs she's done since are one more episode of Supernatural in season 15, and seven episodes of Walker, in which she plays the lead character's/Jared's dead wife, Emily Walker. She and Jared have three kids and he was in Vancouver most of the time shooting Supernatural from 2010-2020. The fandom drools over Ackles and Padalecki for being such supposedly great husbands and fathers, but the truth is they're not home most of the time and it's their wives who are managing the homefront. Jared has said there were months during Supernatural's run when he'd only see his wife and children three or four days out of the month.

Did those burgers on the table in that baroque heavenly waiting room make anyone else think of Cheeto's McDonald's banquet at the White House? In both cases, they were going to taste like shit given that they weren't kept heated.

In fairness to Sam... who would have thought killing Lillith was going to be a bad thing.

I do love this show's humanist perspective that people matter more than any abstract concept of good and evil, as bluntly put by Dean.

Dean is so all or nothing when it comes to his relationships. Throughout the series he declares people family, and then declares them not family when they let him down, as in this episode when he said he wasn't even sure Sam was his brother. He has such a need for family, for commitment, for loyalty, for togetherness, but at the same time he's so threatened by any serious lapse on anyone's part that he is ready to turn his back on them. I suppose that after growing up the way he did, he does not have a realistic or normal idea of what family bonds should be. Bobby's lecture was good for him.
posted by orange swan at 6:31 AM on August 3, 2021


I loved Bobby's lecture to him. It is exactly what he needed to hear. Sadly, he doesn't take it to heart as he keeps throwing away family members who disappoint him or who don't fall into his (shifting) view of what family is.

It's funny you mention Genevieve Padalecki's height. I hadn't really noticed the extreme difference between her and Jared until the other day. I'm up to season six, and just hit the French Mistake, which she is in and wow, was the height difference noticeable in that one!

We all know that Zachariah is an ass, but offering up Ginger and Mary Ann was just...words are failing me for how terrible this is: he is either offering Dean physical manifestations of fictional characters (was he going to take over the bodies of the actresses and replace their minds with fictional constructs?) or compel the actresses to obey or have angels impersonate the characters--none of which are remotely ethical actions. It's just more of the disposal women thinking that is so prevalent in this series. Essentially women are the equivalent of hamburgers. (And speaking of a certain occupant of the White House...)
posted by sardonyx at 6:49 AM on August 3, 2021


This extended recap set to 'Carry on Wayward Son' was hair-raisingly well done.

I feel that the show has achieved the inflection point of "power creep" (I don't know what the term of art for the phenomenon is, maybe tvtropes knows) - they can't really back down from the high drama and high power that the Winchesters wield and are up against.

The ante has constantly been upped, going back to playing penny ante is going to be a letdown unless there are other considerations are brought in.
posted by porpoise at 7:39 AM on August 3, 2021


I love Zachariah and I'm not sure how much of it is that I really enjoy Kurt Fuller and Zachariah is, like, one of the canonical Slimy Middle Management Scumbags that Kurt Fuller specializes in.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:02 PM on August 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


Oh, he's an ass, but he's a watchable, necessary to the plot, engaging ass. I don't know if it's just the character or the actor but he makes for good TV.
posted by sardonyx at 5:54 PM on August 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


There's no version of Heaven pimping out Gilligan's Island characters that isn't at least a 7 on the skeeviness scale. But that whole display is pretty revealing of what Zachariah/the angels think Dean would find compelling: baroque and opulent to the point of being showy (...was someone going to play that harp?), beer and burgers But Fancy, women Zachariah can apparently provide like they're burgers, and when none of that works, he falls back pretty quick to demanding obeisance. I don't even think that's a personal commentary on Dean (much), I think that's some version of what Zachariah thinks motivates most humans.

It's a nice touch that while Zachariah's explaining the big plan to Dean, the Beautiful Room sloooowly desaturates the way it did when he zapped him out of the angels' weird Dean Smith fantasy where they met. There are a few other nice flourishes too, like when they hard cut from the priest being possessed to him smiling, or the transitions when Dean goes from Chuck's house to the convent, or Lilith appearing behind the beam of a flashlight.

I think Azazel is at his best when he comes across as, sure, an evil demon, but also just an absolute scoundrel.

Man I really could not come up with too many scenes from the entire run of this show as unpleasant and difficult to watch as Sam forcing a screaming woman into the trunk of a car. (And most of the ones I can think of are unintentionally unpleasant because, you know, Supernatural.)

This show leaves some giant loose ends, there are bigger ones than this and arguably bigger ones from this episode, but I don't think you ever find out if they sort out the voicemail thing, or if for the rest of the show Sam thinks Dean called him a monster past salvaging and threatened to kill him, and Dean thinks he tried to make peace at about the last moment things could be turned around and Sam ignored him.

I never gave it a really close read, but watching Ruby's arc in S3-4 knowing the entire thing is an elaborate set piece of manipulation, I gotta say, Ruby IS awesome.

I don't care if he really is God, bullshit would Chuck Shurley know what to do with twenty call girls for a night.
posted by jameaterblues at 8:34 PM on August 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


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