11.18 Hell's Angel

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Title Hell's Angel
Episode # Season 11, Episode 18
First aired April 6, 2016
Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Written by Brad Buckner
Eugenie Ross-Leming
On IMDB Hell's Angel
Outline As Lucifer attempts to assert himself into a position of power in Heaven, Crowley locates the Horn of Joshua and calls on Sam and Dean to help take down both Amara and Lucifer.
Monster Amara
Lucifer
Timeline
Location(s) An-Nafud Desert, Saudi Arabia
Lebanon, Kansas
St. Louis, Missouri
Hell
Heaven
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Synopsis

In the An-Nafud Desert of Saudi Arabia, Crowley meets a dying man, Noel, who had previously sold his soul to him. The man offers him the Horn of Joshua, a "Hand of God," in exchange for tearing up his contract. Crowley agrees and the man feels a sense of relief as Crowley destroys his contract, before Crowley snaps his neck. Horn of Joshua in hand, Crowley is confronted by Noel's guards, and with a simple gesture causes the four men to shoot each other. Back in America, Crowley contacts Dean to tell him he has a Hand of God, a weapon powerful enough to defeat Lucifer. As he’s walking down the street while on the phone, demons are watching him from all angles. He gives Dean an address to meet at and hangs up.

Meanwhile, Rowena is back from the dead and attending to Amara, healing her. As they are talking, Amara realizes that Rowena is Crowley’s mother and becomes concerned, questioning why Rowena is helping her. Rowena says that Amara will win, and that she wants to be there when she does, to exact her own revenge on Lucifer for killing her. She explains that she is only alive thanks to a spell that she had embedded in her body that was activated upon sensing her life force draining.

Sam and Dean meet up with Crowley in an abandoned factory/warehouse in St. Louis to discuss what to do next. Crowley informs them that he will give them the Horn after they exorcise Lucifer out of Castiel's vessel and send him back to the Cage. Sam and Dean balk as they feel only Lucifer is powerful enough to handle a Hand of God and defeat Amara. They also explain that they need Rowena and the Book of the Damned to deal with Lucifer, at which Crowley informs that that Rowena is dead. Dean then says that he wants Lucifer out of Castiel and in another body before going up against Amara, causing Sam to question Dean, saying that they need a vessel as strong as Castiel's to go up against Amara and that it was Castiel’s wish to do so. In the end, Crowley stands firm on his requirements before he will hand over the Horn of Joshua.

As she starts to feel better, Amara decides to run a "little test." She leans her head back, flings her arms out at her sides and yells "Hear Me!" sending a concussive force of darkness to Heaven where Lucifer is coercing the angels to join him. Black smoke pours down the hallways like a tornado, knocking the angels to the floor. On Earth, as the ground rumbles, the sky darkens, and lightning crackles, Dean looks to the sky and says, "I think that's her." Rowena watches Amara fearfully, wondering if she made a wise choice in siding with her. After Amara’s display of power Rowena eavesdrops on Sam, Dean, and Crowley via a spell. They are talking about how to take out Lucifer and Amara. When Amara asks what the Winchesters are up to Rowena replies, "nothing, they’re paralyzed with fear."

Dean, Sam, and Crowley are still arguing over when to trap Lucifer when Sam sees a message burned into a rusted cabinet that reads "BACK FROM THE DEAD, FERGUS!" Soon they are in an abandoned church with Rowena, preparing to summon Lucifer and expel him out of Castiel. They set up angel suppressing sigils inside an angel trap with a ring of holy oil around it and Dean recites a spell, summoning Lucifer. When Lucifer appears in the center of the sigil, Sam lights the holy oil, creating a ring of holy fire around Lucifer and trapping him. Dean slices his hand and activates the sigil drawn on the table, causing Lucifer to temporarily lose control of the vessel. Castiel converses briefly with Dean, but he fades away again before Dean can convince him to expel Lucifer.

As the warding starts to fail, Crowley smokes out of his body and into Lucifer / Castiel. Once inside, he finds Castiel contentedly watching TV in a simulacrum of the kitchen in the Bunker. Crowley tries to convince Castiel to push Lucifer out, but Castiel is fairly ambivalent, believing Lucifer is their best bet in the fight against Amara. Lucifer then enters the room and starts throwing Crowley around. Out in the church, the words "HELP ME" appear burned into Crowley’s forehead. Sam and Dean perform an exorcism, pulling Crowley back out. The holy fire goes out, prompting Crowley to disappear and allowing Lucifer to take the Horn. As he starts to hurt Sam and Dean, Amara explodes through the church doors and confronts Lucifer. The Horn of Joshua starts to glow in Lucifer’s hand as he begins to absorb its power. He raises the other hand to Amara, a stream of energy flowing from him to her, engulfing Amara in a white light. When the Horn's power is depleted, Amara is still standing. She pulls Lucifer towards her and places his face in her hands. As Dean calls out one last time to Castiel, Amara looks on him with concern and releases them from Lucifer's binding before the two disappear.

Back at the Bunker, Sam and Dean discuss why Lucifer couldn’t beat Amara. They hypothesize that the Hand of God has to be used by "God’s Chosen," thus a cast-out archangel wouldn’t qualify. Sam apologizes for not wanting to pull Lucifer out of Castiel, and Dean says that they agreed to respect each other’s wishes, even if they don’t agree with them. After that, Dean said they will "find that idiot and bring him home." Meanwhile, Amara is tossing Lucifer around. Lucifer suggests that he could be helpful to her in settling her score with God. She expresses distrust for him but agrees he could be useful in getting God to show Himself, as he might be the one thing that God cares about -- that God might show Himself if Lucifer is threatened. As he is explaining that God will not come, Amara says that they will see and turns and points at Lucifer. He screams in agony as his chest and eyes start to glow with a bright light.

Characters

Definitions

Music

None

Quotes

Crowley: What? I just said I'd give you the thing.

Sam / Dean: If?

Crowley: Is this how you say "thank you"? You think these things grow on bloody trees!?
Jofiel: So perfect. Castiel, Heaven's most wanted, possessed by Heaven's most hated.
Angel: You exploded Jofiel.
Lucifer: Or did Jofiel explode himself? Just sayin'.
Amara: What they call "destruction", I call renovation. My blueprints. Not God's.
Lucifer: Don't you think about it too long. You know what they say -- he who hesitates, disintegrates.
Sam: That's it? Doesn't look like much, does it?
Crowley: First impressions can be deceiving, Moose. For instance, I once thought of you as dull and plodding. Oh, never mind. Bad analogy.
Lucifer: As much as I get a giggle out of you two, and I do, there comes a time when every relationship has run its course. So...
Sam: So, Rowena and Crowley -- like mother, like son, huh? They both took exactly one split second to take off when things started going south.

Dean: Yep.
Sam: By the way, wh-what's Rowena doing with Amara?

Dean: My guess is she's playing the odds. When sucking up to Lucifer didn't work out, maybe she thought Amara was the best bet. Then she heard Lucifer had a shot so she switched horses again.
Sam: Listen. Um, I know I came down on the side of wanting Cas to deal with Amara, so-

Dean: Well, that's what he wanted though, right? Besides, didn't we say that we're gonna swear off getting in the way when one person makes a choice the other didn't agree with?
Sam: Yeah, um. Yeah, we did say that.
Dean: So...
Sam: Okay. So, that's our policy.

Dean: Which sounds damn good. Well, let's go find that idiot and bring him home.
Amara: As God's favorite, His first son, you may be the one thing in all of creation that He still cares about, the one thing that could finally make Him show Himself, so that I can confront Him and He can acknowledge the wrongs He's done me. And then He can witness the utter destruction of all His creation before He Himself is swept away.

Lucifer: You're expecting Him? Oh. Well... I wouldn't wait up. I'm pretty sure He caught the last train out.

Amara: Well, we'll see, won't we?

Trivia & References

"Hell's Angels" is the title of a 1933 war film centering around combat pilots during the first World War.
Noel: A shofar. The Horn of Joshua, touched by the hand of God.
A shofar is an ancient musical horn, crafted from the horn of a ram and used in traditional Jewish ceremonies.
Dean: Nice digs. The Crypt Keeper out of town?
The Crypt Keeper is a character from the comics and TV show Tales from the Crypt. "KripKeeper" was the fandom nickname for Eric Kripke.
Crowley: And I have the Horn of Joshua.

Sam: Joshua? As in the Joshua that won the Battle of Jericho?

According to the Hebrew Bible, Joshua was a contemporary of Moses, who helped him free the Israelites from Egypt. He then led the Israelite army to take the city of Jericho. This was achieved by the priests blowing ram's horns until the city's walls collapsed.
Lucifer: Oh, come on! It's not like He invented the Prius, which actually works. I don't have to tell you people what a mess mankind is. The Salem Witch Trials, Third Reich, Twin Towers. And, sure, every once in a while, He'll send down a plague to straighten them out, but it's nothing permanent. Humanity brought us Hiroshima and got a redo. I simply questioned His priorities and I got the boot.
The Toyota Prius is a hybrid electric car that is known for being particularly eco-friendly.
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of prosecutions of people (mostly women) accused of witchcraft between 1692 and 1693.
The Third Reich denotes the German history period from 1933 to 1945 when Germany was under the control of the dictator Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP.
The Twin Towers are metonymically used for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Hiroshima is a city in Japan that was (along with Nagasaki) bombed by the United States with an atomic bomb in 1945. The name of the city frequently stands in for the attack.
Sam: Cas wanted to do this.

Dean: Yeah, well, there's times I wanna get slapped during sex by a girl wearing a Zorro mask. That don't make it a good idea.

Zorro is a swashbuckling masked vigilante from the early 20th century pulp novels of Johnston McCulley.
Sam: Dean, this is exactly how we screw ourselves. We--we make the heart choice instead of the smart choice.

Dean: Oh, okay. Thank you Dr. Phil.

This is a reference to TV personality and relationship advice guru Dr. Phil McGraw.
Rowena: The vessel is healing nicely. Soon you'll be shipshape and Bristol fashion.
Originally an English nautical phrase, it means for something (or someone) to be in excellent working order.
The program Castiel is watching in his subconscious is from a recording by the comedy troupe The Firesign Theater called Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.

Minutiae

Andrew Wheeler, who played Noel, previously played Alastair in 4.15 Death Takes a Holiday.
Graeme Duffy, who played Jofiel, previously played Dave in 2.18 Hollywood Babylon.
The VFX team inserted AKF as a tribute to Always Keep Fighting on the top of a building in one scene.
Building with "AKF" inserted by the VFX crew.

Amara: As God's favorite, His first son, you may be the one thing in all of creation that He still cares about. The one thing that could finally make Him show Himself, so I can confront Him and He can acknowledge the wrongs He's done me.
While Lucifer may have been first in his Father's affection, it has been previously established (5.10 Abandon All Hope..., 5.22 Swan Song) that Michael was the eldest archangel, and Lucifer was his younger brother. Either Amara doesn't realize that Michael is God's first son, or she is strictly referring to God's order of preference.

Sides, Scripts & Transcripts

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