Nihilism
Written by: Steve Yockey
Directed by: Amanda Tapping
Air date: January 17, 2019
Sam, Cas, and Jack manage to capture Michael and transport him back to the bunker, with some Reaper aid. Michael's plan remains in force. He is still firmly in control of Dean's body, with Dean not even aware. Upgraded monsters continue to attack Kansas city until they turn their sights on the Winchesters. Team Free Will faces long odds, without even a full team.
Tropes
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Michael's monster army assault the bunker in an attempt to kill all the Hunters and free him.
- Brought Down to Badass: When Team Free Will realize that Michael can't use his powers in Dean's Mental World, he responds that he doesn't need magic to kill them, he'll just do it with his bare hands. He's very nearly correct.
- The Bus Came Back: Pamela Barnes, if only as an illusion. Her last appearance was in "Dark Side of the Moon", more than eight years ago.
- Captured Super-Entity: Team Free Will are able to capture Michael by dousing him with holy fire, distracting him long enough for Castiel to restrain him with an enchanted pair of angel-proof handcuffs.
- Caught in the Ripple: The episode opens with Dean managing a bar with Pamela Barnes (who's inexplicably alive again), before the two dispatch two vampires looking for a fight. When the scene repeats, it becomes clear that Dean is trapped inside a dream.
- Divine Intervention: When they're cornered by Michael's monsters, Sam asks the Reaper guarding him and Dean for help. She refuses, but then they're teleported to the bunker anyway. Billie (aka Death) later reveals that she actually intervened to save them from certain death.
- Hannibal Lecture: While Michael is in chains he does his best to get into the heads of both Jack and Cas.
- Invisible to Normals: Zigzagged with the Reaper called forth by Sam. Jack and Castiel just see him talking to thin air, but Michael can see her as well.
- Keystone Army: When Michael is sealed away and no longer able to directly control his monsters, those still alive disband their army and go their separate ways.
- Kill the God: Claimed by Michael as his ultimate goal. If he keeps destroying God's universes then God himself can be lured out to be killed. In the meantime he's satisfied with wanton destruction, remarkably similar to Lucifer's.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Michael traps Dean in a looped dream where he and a still-living, still-sighted Pamela Barnes run a bar and easily fend off the occasional monster attack. Sam is the first to figure out that if Michael were to lock Dean away, it wouldn't be in traumatic memories but rather in imagined contentment.
- Million to One Chance: Billie tells Dean that all contents of his possible futures now point to Michael breaking out and using his body to destroy the world. All except one, that is.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Billie is usually stringent on maintaining the "clean hands" rule regarding mortals' lives. The fact that she helps the Winchesters directly by teleporting them from Kansas City to Lebanon, then personally appearing to Dean to give him his future note containing instructions on how to defeat Michael, signals that things have gone very bad.
- Playing Drunk: The "drunk" passed out in Dean and Pamela's bar is actually a vampire laying in wait for an attack.
- Power at a Price: Jack uses his soul to briefly activate his Nephilim power. Castiel scolds him for this, since it chipped away his soul.
- Rage Against the Heavens: After realizing upon arriving at the main universe that Chuck considers all universes he created to be disposable scripts, Michael has made his goal to destroy them, partly out of spite, partly so he can get back at Chuck and kill him.
- Redshirt Army: Both the good guys and the bad guys have them. Jack regains his powers at the cost of part of his soul in time to vanquish the monsters breaking into the bunker. But while he's able to save Maggie, it's too late for most of the unnamed Hunters fighting alongside her.
- The Reveal: Those dizzy spells Dean's been suffering from for the past few episodes? Turns out that they're not some kind of PTSD or side effect of being possessed, they were Michael remotely spying on Team Free Will through Dean's eyes.
- Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Unable to eject Michael from his body, Dean instead locks him away inside his mind (represented by locking him in the storage room of his illusional bar). As he puts it, he's the Cage now.
- Slave Race: Michael reveals that in the Apocalypse World, Death is locked away and reapers are slaves of angels.
- Straw Nihilist: Michael tells Castiel his opinion that if Chuck merely sees everything he created as failed scripts, there is no point keeping them intact. Destroyed or not, Chuck could not care less.
- The Unreveal: Billie shows Dean the single volume of his future life that doesn't end with Michael using him to destroy the universe. The audience, however, doesn't get to see what's in it.
- Villainous Breakdown: Michael furiously bangs on the door and screams to be let out.
- Written-In Absence: Jessica's absence is handwaved by the reaper Violet as a result of Billie's decree that the reapers take shift watching the Winchesters, instead of having one do the job 24/7.
