After “Advanced Thanatology” and “Tombstone,” and knowing who the writers for “War of the Worlds” were going to be, my expectations for the Thanksgiving episode were pretty low. Nevertheless, somehow the episode slithered right under the bar. Time to dig into the nonsensical twenty pounds of shit stuffed into the five pound bag of “War of the Worlds”. Rather than go beat by beat, let’s see how each character fared.

Lucifer

We start with Lucifer being tortured which, I’m not going to lie, is probably my favorite part of this episode. If you have read any of my reviews and recaps, you’ll know where I stand on the entire Lucifer storyline. So, he’s being tortured by Alt!Michael, who wants to come to our world and I guess destroy it, because his toy is broken and not fun anymore. So Michael calls his resident prophet Kevin (yes that Kevin), a hyped up math geek with a dash of meth head, to create a spell powerful enough to tear into the fabric of the multiverse, allowing Michael to come through, leaving a weakened Lucifer behind. Sounds fucking great to me. Lucifer tries to, I don’t know, reason with Kevin? Play on their long history of camaraderie? Who knows. Either way, he tries to get Kevin to not do the thing, but when Kevin does do the thing, Lucifer (who inexplicably isn’t even chained up at this point) throws some punches and jumps through the rift, which closes behind him. Lucifer is wandering through Some City, USA, with a seriously drained stock of Grace. Poor guy can’t even kill some generic snobby women who throw money at “those people” and bitch about their ex-husbands. Eventually Lucifer finds Cas (who is in a fight, which we’ll get to later), and drags the angel to a local dive bar to get the skinny on his son, and try to convince Cas to help “save the world” from Michael. Because suddenly Lucifer cares about saving the world. Sure.

Castiel

After Jack vanishes and there is no sign of him anywhere, Castiel tells Dean and Sam that it’s his job to protect the nephilim and that to start, he’s going to go to Heaven’s Sandbox and ask an angel source if the angels have him. Since this is Supernatural and we can’t have nice things (like TFW together for ten minutes), Cas tells Dean that he and Sam (who are both crawling up the walls with boredom) can’t go, because the source is “skittish” around strangers. I’m not sure how Dean and Sam Winchester would be strangers to angels, what with one being the Righteous Man and the other being Lucifer’s vessel (not to mention the “Winchester Gospels”), but for the sake of avoiding headaches, let’s make like BuckLeming and pretend continuity doesn’t exist.

Cas goes to meet his angel source who, after telling Cas the angels’ plans for Jack, betrays him. Turns it the angels are going extinct and without Chuck, Jack is the only hope for creating more celestial beings. Cas refuses to help them and a badass fight ensues. Just when it looks as though Cas will be defeated and taken prisoner in Heaven (again), Lucifer shows up, scaring the holy ghost out of the angels, who flee back to Heaven.

Cas and Lucifer are surprised to see each other, which is understandable since one killed the other before being locked in an alternate universe, but hey it’s nothing that can’t be solved over some brewskis.

While Lucifer gives his “save the world” pitch to Cas, all the angel wants to do is call Dean to let him and Sam know that the actual devil is back, but his plans get foiled when Lucifer overhears him and takes Cas’s phone. Lucifer tries to wheedle information about his son’s powers and whereabouts out of Cas, but our favorite Seraph is having none of it. One of the biggest fears I had for this episode which, somehow didn’t happen, was that Cas would allow himself to be manipulated into working with Lucifer again. Cas may be in the bar with him, but he’s certainly not Lucifer’s “lap angel” as Asmodeus calls him when he and his minions join the party.

Lucifer tries to bluster and power play the Kentucky Fried Knight of Hell, but with his powers depleted and his… attitude shift, Asmodeus easily defeats him and Cas. Like, ridiculously easily. Literally the flick of his fingers is all it takes to defeat the ONLY archangel immune to the Colt and angel blades. This goes to show either just how depleted Lucifer’s grace is or just how poorly this scene was written.

Winchesters

After Cas leaves to find Jack and the boys are stuck in the bunker bored to tears, Dean tells Sam they should work a case while waiting for word on the rogue nephilim. Sam agrees and the two head out to solve a mystery involving witches being hunted by a serial killer. While on the job, the boys look at some surveillance video and hot damn, it’s Ketch! Dean’s sure of it, but before they can bicker more about it, a woman comes to them asking for protection from the serial killer. She says she escaped and when she saw Sam and Dean, she knew to go to them. They may hunt her kind, but they also protect and help those who need it. Dean thinks they should use her as bait and sure enough, the killer falls for the trap. After lifting the mysterious attacker’s mask, they see it is Ketch and bundle him off to the bunker.

Once in the bunker, the doppelganger says that while he is a Ketch, he’s not the Ketch. He’s Alexander, Arty’s underachieving twin and Hunter for hire. Dean’s not buying it, but Sam says all the info checks out and lets Alex wander the bunker in chains. Seems legit. After Dean gets that weird call from Cas, he and Sam decide to lock Alex up again and head to the bar to see what’s up with the angel.

When they get there however, there is nary a soul to be found… that is until dark and twisty demon souls pop out to fight them. If there is one thing this episode had going for it, it’s the fight scenes. The demons have the brothers on the rope until Ketch part deux shows up and the three of them defeat the demons. Alex tells them that he escaped because neither guy wanted to do a cavity search to find his lock picks. Ew.

Dean pulls his gun on Ketch saying he knows he’s Arthur because of their history and Ketch’s fighting style. Ketch admits that he didn’t fully die, but now is under the radar of the BMoL, and working as a mercenary. He tells them that several years ago the British Men of Letters captured Rowena and he struck a deal to release her in exchange for casting the spell for the whole “back from the dead doohicky” she had,so he’s spending his time torturing witches in his attempt to track her down. Dean tells him Rowena is dead and Ketchup makes a cryptic “is she?” remark. Dean’s done listening though and shoots. Ketch uses some super basic magic trick and vanishes in a puff of smoke (but we can see him running away), and rides off on a motorcycle.

Dean calls Cas, who tells him he’s fine and following a very interesting lead. But wait! It’s not Cas! It’s Asmodeus!

He has Lucifer and Cas imprisoned in Hell: Lucifer because he might be useful, and Cas as a bargaining chip to use against Dean and Sam. He tells the room at large that, should Michael indeed be coming, he’s gonna need that nephilim, to which KETCH replies that it shouldn’t be a problem. Fuck.

Okay so. Of all the characters to bring back, they chose Ketch? And I’m sorry but it was sloppily done. With all of their knowledge and history with baddies and goodies not staying dead, Dean and Sam just dumped his body? They didn’t salt and burn him? Okay.

Seeing Kevin was good but I couldn’t believe the choice to have Lucifer somehow trying to reason with the prophet as if they had any kind of relationship. Asmodeus is such caricature and I can’t help but miss Crowley’s sarcasm and salt. We lost Mark Sheppard for this?

Now. To Lucifer. If you were to ask me (and most fans) whether or not they want to see fucking LUCIFER have a redemption arc, which I seriously hope I’m wrong about, I think the resounding response would be a “Hell no.” It’s too late to unring the Devil Bell rung waaaaaaaay back in season 5. This is not a misunderstood character acting out. This is not the “Angel With a Duty to Punish the Wicked” portrayal of Lucifer. When I want that, I tune into Fox. This is the fire and brimstone pure evil portrayal, and has been from the beginning. And frankly, this devil doesn’t deserve redemption.

What did you think of War of Worlds? Am I being too harsh?

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