Unhuman Nature
Written by: Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming
Directed by: John F. Showalter
Air date: November 29th, 2018
Sam and Castiel track down a Shaman (guest star Dimitri Vantis), who may be able to help a friend. Nick continues to spiral down a dark path as he looks for answers surrounding the deaths of his wife and son. Jack turns to Dean for help enjoying the human experience.
Tropes
- Apologetic Attacker: Nick apologizes to Frank Kelloq before beating him to death with a hammer. He realizes that Frank was possessed by a demon the night Nick's wife and child were killed, but he still wants revenge.
- Call-Back: Rowena again says "bollocks" when she decides to help Jack, fighting the urge to leave him due to being a son of Lucifer. She previously said this in "Beat the Devil" when she ultimately decided to side with the Winchesters and help them escape the Apocalypse World.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jack mentions Rowena's contribution in helping the Winchesters and others escape from the Apocalypse World in "Exodus".
- Gabriel's time with porn stars in Monte Carlo, first told in "Bring 'em Back Alive" is recounted by Sergei and Castiel. In exchange for a spell to hide his tracks, Gabriel gave Sergei a sliver of his grace.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Rowena is at first livid when Sam reveals that she is going to help a son of Lucifer. However, she mellows out throughout the episode, to the point that she is genuinely saddened upon learning that Jack's illness is untreatable, only managing to advise the others to take care of him during his final days.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Nick is shown with several empty bottles of liquor after murdering Frank Kelloq.
- Evil Feels Good: Nick acknowledges that he genuinely enjoys killing and that avenging the murders of his wife and son was nothing more than an excuse for what he already felt driven to do.
- Face Death with Dignity: Jack doesn't seem to worry that he is going to die within weeks. It's his caretakers (Dean, Sam, and Castiel) who are restless.
- Freedom from Choice: Nick realizes that his existence feels empty without Lucifer controlling him, and actually wants to be possessed again so he won't have to deal with the grief over his family's death... which was orchestrated by Lucifer to begin with.
- Hope Spot: The combination of Gabriel's grace and Sergei's spell initially seem to heal Jack: his eyes glow gold and he himself states that he feels better. Then he collapses and starts bleeding again. The cure is not definitive; it is experimental.
- Impairment Shot: In two separate cases, Dean's vision is briefly impaired, possibly a side effect of Michael's possession.
- Like a Son to Me: Castiel speculates that Dean is taking Jack's declining health particularly hard because it feels like losing a son.
- Manipulative Bastard:
- As it turns out, the person who killed Nick's wife and son was being possessed by Abraxas, who, as a demon, likely answered to Lucifer. It is likely that Lucifer had orchestrated Sarah and Teddy's deaths so he could gain Nick's permission to host him.
- Sergey the Shaman also gives Castiel a possible cure for Jack's illness, consisting of Gabriel's grace combined with an Enochian spell, but it doesn't work. When a livid Castiel calls him up, Sergey admits that it was really an experiment, not a guaranteed solution.
- My Greatest Failure: Sam speculates that Dean has never forgiven himself for being cold and verbally abusive towards Jack.
- Prayer of Malice: After realizing that he enjoyed his Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Nick prays not to God, but to Lucifer, asking for him to be reborn and reunited with his vessel.
- Properly Paranoid: Sergei keeps Angel traps hidden around his trailer. Considering the way he screws over Team Free Will, he's going to need protection.
- Revenge by Proxy: Nick suspects retired cop Frank Kellogg of killing his family. After a torturous bout of questioning, Kellogg is revealed to be an innocent victim who'd been possessed by the real killer, a demon. Despite his personal understanding of the nature of possession, Nick beats Frank to death simply because Frank's body was the tool used to kill Nick's wife and son.
- The Reveal: Sarah and Teddy were killed by a demon named Abraxas.
- Shout-Out: To SCP-231 (procedure 110-Montauk).
- Wham Shot:
- Nick appears to be confessing his sins to a priest and seeking absolution or counseling. The camera then pans to reveal the priest has been dead for the entirety of the scene, his throat slit and his body posed in a macabre facsimile of the crucifixion.
- Lucifer wakes up in the Empty, his body slowly rising from the formless black mass before his red eyes flicker open.
