Hi there! I honestly hope it’s not Lucifer, so I’m perfectly content to entertain this speculation. I don’t know how likely it is, or if this sort of speculation is just setting folks up for bitter disappointment, but it’s still interesting.
It’s creepy how this being awoke in the empty more like the Empty Entity itself did, building itself T2 style out of goo, rather than the way Cas just sorta woke up all dressed and ready to go on a shiny black floor. I don’t know what that says about the creature in question, and I’m perfectly willing to wait for the show to please explain. 😛
Hello there! And you’re right, I really don’t like to speculate about specific stuff like this, but what you’re suggesting isn’t entirely implausible. I don’t think it’s likely, but I’m gonna go with “not entirely impossible.”
What could an expert on angels, who learned to use angelic magic that was powered by her own human soul teach to Jack that might help him adapt to living without his own angelic grace? And honestly I’ve been waiting for Lily Sunder to at least garner a mention since s13, because her entire story revolved around the concept of nephilim.
It would be nicely poetic for her, Cas, and Jack to achieve some sort of catharsis over that whole tragedy. Especially if whatever she can teach him might help Jack in the long run.
I mean, there were a few Angsty Dad Random Pacing scenes in the hospital, but whenever there was group talking going on, Dean and Cas were just… unified and all bumping up against each other.
I wish I had the power of screencapping here. But I can’t even resort to my usual “taking pictures of the tv with my phone” screencapping method this week and GAH.
Can you imagine the Empty Entity confronting Lucifer with the truth of himself the way he did Cas? I’d LOVE to see an episode where Luci just… rolls over and goes back to sleep because he can’t face himself that way.
I mean, if we had to have Lucifer in any episode ever again, this is pretty much the only way I could accept it, yeah.
From what I’ve seen of my dash, there’s this theory that the grace Sergei gave to Cas wasn’t Gabriel’s but Michael’s, and that the whole thing is something on the same lines as the enhancements Michael has been doing to various monsters. Being Michael’s protegé would also explain Sergei’s confidence that Cas can’t really do anything to him, I suppose.
What I found most compelling for this kind of direction is the language Sergei uses to refer to the spell and grace ingestion:
Science is sometimes trial and error. Victory through experimentation.
This was an experiment?
It reminds me of the way Michael has been referring to his own operations:
A little of this… a little of that… and… […] Hmm. Too much “that”. How disappointing.
There are ways to enhance your… let’s call them talents.
And these ways are…
Fully tested. There were some misfires early, I will admit to that. But I have cracked the code.
Michael has been doing experiments which have become successful after a period of trial and error. He talks about his work sort of in terms of a scientific operation, and it’s curious that Sergei – who identifies as a shaman – refers to a spell and ingestion of archangel grace in terms of science. You wouldn’t expect a person with the lifestyle (and aesthetic) of Sergei to talk in terms of scientific method, would you? But he does, and I think it’s relevant.
In 14×02 it had also struck me as peculiar that Michael’s language focused on a sort of scientific quality of his experiments. Of course, in the Supernatural universe the ~supernatural~ is part of the observable world and all, so the term science can apply to things involving angel grace and spells, but still… spells are magic, and this very episode emphasizes that medicine (science) can’t help with Jack’s situation so they resort to magic instead.
Of course, it’s possible that Sergei’s language is used for purposes of parallels and is supposed to be evocative of Michael’s without an actual plot connection, but it wouldn’t be so surprising to learn that Sergei was one of the people visited by Michael in his trips “traveling around this world asking all sorts of people – holy men, leaders, killers”.
“I like doing these things, and I don’t want to stop.”
Silence. Nothingness.
“I’m bonded to you, and what you are. That—that’s how you first found me.”
Lucifer. Lucifer is—Lucifer is—
“I don’t know who I am, if I’m not you.”
A ripple in the darkness.
“No consequences, no pain, no sorrow—I want that back. I want it back. I don’t want to feel now what I didn’t feel then.”
A tug at Lucifer’s consciousness.
“Where are you?” Nick’s voice breaks. “Where are you?”
Lucifer opens his eyes.
“H-help me.”
Something walks by—something Lucifer feels rather than sees. Footsteps echoing in the stillness. Lucifer twists and writhes until he takes shape, until he can stand. The Empty throbs around him, an ebb and flow of pure absence. Nonexistence.
Nick is sobbing now. Lucifer can feel it—a heavy thrum of desperation. An endless pulse of want.
“Come back.”
He could do it. He could gather what’s left of his power and use it to tear a hole in reality. To yank himself back to earth.
Or, he could go back to sleep.
“Lucifer, please.”
Yeah, he thinks he’ll do that. Earth is bullshit anyway. The Winchesters can have it.
You ever started a post about Nick and Lucifer and the post escaped your control and went into the Destiel direction? Well, I guess it happens sometimes. Here’s the post. Give it a try.
It makes sense that the reason Nick is able to wake up Lucifer from the Empty is that the two of them acquired Jack’s grace. Jack is already one of a kind because while various nephilim have existed, he has been sired by an archangel instead of a regular angel. An archangel powered up with his own nephilim’s grace is a situation that has never happened before. Archangel with arch-nephilim’s grace, so to speak.
It’s not a plot hole that things that have never occurred before now are occurring around Lucifer. It’s not even really extreme mental acrobatics. From the moment Lucifer ingests Jack’s grace (thus Nick becomes a vessel for that), it’s new territory. It’s a situation we haven’t seen in the story before, because it has never happened before. It can’t contradict ‘past canon’ because there’s no past canon on that specific situation. Of course, it has to be within reasonableness in some extent but I don’t think that what we’ve seen are outside reasonableness. Nick surviving, Nick being able to connect with Lucifer in the Empty – are those really absurd occurrences for a being that has acquired the grace of the most powerful being that’s existed in creation, a being that has connected with an angel in the Empty before?
I don’t know if the show will make this explicit, maybe it’ll be revealed that it’s something else entirely and you can throw tomatoes at me, but with the puzzle pieces we have right now, why wouldn’t this not be the case? The storyline around Jack is all about his grace – well, lack thereof – so Jack’s grace is still the elephant in the room. The ‘then’ segment reminds us of Lucifer stealing it (“I need your power”)… Heck, the Michael plot is about his grace, used to power up monsters. It’s all about the grace, you know?
And it’s all about new things. We’re reminded again that Jack was supposed to be ‘special’ because he was one of a kind. Michael tells Kaia that they both bleed new energy, as they come from other worlds. Archangels have never made plans with monsters before, and the powered-up monsters have new powers they have never had before. There are many things that are being experienced for the first time.
(Buckner and Ross-Leming also wrote this:
What if I said I… I didn’t want to die… yet, you know, that I wasn’t ready? Are you expecting to? Always. You know, the life I live, the work I do… I pretty much just figured that that was all there was to me, you know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran out of gas. I guess I just thought sooner or later, I’d go out the same way that I live – pedal to the metal, and that would be it. But now? Now, um… recent events, uh… make me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And… I don’t know. I mean, you know, there’s – there’s things, there’s… people, feelings that I… I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time.
I’ll just leave this here.)
I might be wrong, but I think that there is a pattern of things that have not happened before, that are happening for the first time. Beings who have acquired powers they never had before. Experiences that are being done for the first time (including Jack’s “non special” activities he wants to try before he dies). Hunters who are doing things for the first time, like Maggie on her ‘first solo hunt’.
And of course, Jody reminds us that Kaia was Claire’s “first love”. Vince was Harper’s first love and that’s what made it special (“It’s first love, Jack. The best kind. Without baggage or compromise”). Can’t be a coincidence.
It seems that everything just brings us back to the things, people and feelings that Dean wanted to experience for the first time, and for which he needed to ~go deeper than with Gina~, you know? (While calling himself Agent Allman. 10×16 was a fucking gem.) “Before my life is over, I want to live it” says Jack. He thought that being the super special nephilim was “all there was” to him, but recent events makes him think that he’s closer to dying than he thought, and he wants to experience getting a tan or a parking ticket for the first time. Experience things and feelings like spending quality time with his dad.
Not a coincidence that Dean suggests going to the bar to find a hookup (Gina) but Jack picks father-son quality time instead (going deeper than random fleeting connections with the inevitable adiós afterwards).
Oh boi. I intended this to be a ‘don’t call plot hole if it doesn’t have to be’ and turned into… this. I love when 10×16 just bursts into a post. Burn the tethers to the toxic relationships that keep you chained to unhealthy mechanisms!
Yeah, that open vessel phone line thing is a killer here. D:
I’m just wondering if Nick was also piggybacking on Jack’s ability to reach out to the Empty there, since he’d housed not only Lucifer, but Jack’s power as well…
Mittens of Sorcery 