What if the Apocalypse world isn't real but created by Jack using Castiel's memories? That's why Bobby is the first inhabitant every member of TFW meets. That's why there's Charlie. That's why Mary and John are mentioned (and why Mary's deal, wanted by Heaven and Hell, is so important). The scenario of this world follows the first Apocalypse TFW faced. A broken version of Cas is here. Kevin, as a prophet. Only angels we already know are showed on screen (and Raphael is suspiciously absent).
Zachariah created Endverse, and he's way weaker than Jack.
Maybe none of the rifts leads to a true other universes, but only simulations. This is one of the main power of Heaven, having every human trapped in their little caged world, with what they think are people but are only illusions.
I always thought in 12x19 Jack did something to Cas and Kelly at first, but not consciously. It was more like his powers instinctively acted to save his life. (When Cas asked him: "Do you remember that?" Jack said: "I remember feeling safe".) Because we've seen his powers react to danger several times (when Dean tried to kill him or when he was tattooed).
Besides, the scene when Cas put Dean and Sam to sleep, then turned around and left with Kelly without looking back was very disturbing. I think that if he were fully himself, he wouldn't have left them defenseless right next to the sandbox, next to Joshua's dead body. After all, angels could have felt the power blasts during the fight with Dagon right next to the portal and could have killed the Winchesters.
But Cas has long been so unstable and in such a bad mental state that he was an easy target for brainwashing/manipulation. We know Jack can do this: he forced Derek to continue dreamwalking against his will, and later even Lucifer: "Tell me the truth!"
Also the scene in the car when Cas said: "I wish I had your faith" and Kelly replied: "You will". I think that at that moment Jack, who "was" Kelly, looked into his heart and mind, and when he needed his help the most, he did this "whatever it takes" thing.
Usually, parents "force" a child to be born, but this child (or his powers) forced Cas and Kelly to become his parents. (Kelly's situation was different than Cas' but I won't analyze it here.)
After all, Jack explicitly said he chose Cas as his father. So in my opinion Cas was initially influenced by Jack's power, and this lasted until the immediate danger passed. The Winchesters were also dangerous because they wanted to take away Jack's grace.
This theme was later redirected, so that even Dean didn't talk about Cas' brainwashing by Jack anymore. Cas himself mentioned several times his promise to Kelly to raise Jack, his gratitude to Jack for rescuing him from the Empty and that he should repay him for it.
And there's one more small thing. I noticed that in the next episode, 12x20 "Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes" (the second episode in a row about brainwashing), which deals with brainwashing to the point of losing one's personality and completely stripping free will (Mary, Tasha, and other people made of willow twigs, and eventually even Alicia), there's a picture on the wall in the hotel. It shows the bench Cas sat on in 6x20 during his big monologue. But now the bench is empty, he's not there, just like the real Mary, Tasha and Alicia are gone. Cas and Mary only temporarily, Tasha and Alicia forever.
What I've written here isn't "the only truth", it's just my interpretation.
When going up against Mars Neto—John overdid it, displaying the "overkill" signature of a disrupted psyche.
But his anger saved Carlos. Carlos knows this, and thanks him, but he's unsettled. Perhaps he senses that this experience... injured John terribly.
Carlos just doesn't want to see it... or his part in it.
He tentatively offers this:
CARLOS: Thank you for what you did back there.
JOHN: You're welcome.
CARLOS: If you ever... want to talk. You let me know, okay?
JOHN (an uncomfortable smile): Yeah. I wi—I will.
///
What a difference from the flippant pressure Carlos put on John to talk earlier in the episode—the very thing that triggered John and left him feeling cornered!
After delivering a somewhat more philosophical take—not a specific personal trauma—Carlos bailed to do the investigation. He spoke about how they’re all the same, but it wasn’t rooted in an intensely personal grief or loss.
It was about the shape of his life, mostly.
And then he left John to sit in the fallout zone.
Anyway, I’m just saying that why on earth would John want to talk to Carlos now? Carlos accidentally made himself an unsafe figure in John's world of emotional vulnerabilities:
CARLOS: My friend would actually love to go next, right John?
spnwin 1x04
(This is... a little analogous to how Sam Winchester operates with respect to talking it out with his own loved ones.)
///
With respect to John's overkill, I can't help but be reminded of Mary seeing Jack's overkill signature in Game Night.
Both Carlos and Mary are "big heart" characters, who sometimes unintentionally lean on others too hard in service of The Cause and The Need to Protect—until those they lean on break wide open.
(NOTE: We see Mary also do this with Cas in First Blood.)
There’s just something so crunchy about circumstances where someone’s so useful, so powerful that you never bench them—because you just need them too damn much. (But well…that kind of weight is way too heavy for anyone to carry.)
14x17
BONUS:
“You left them!” she shouts. John’s not around for her to be mad at, so she takes it out on Cas. (But also, she realizes that she left them too. Sees the error of her ways and apologizes.)
///
Sam does this on occasion:
DEAN: Oh, what? You think he's ready? He's had a pretty rough go of it lately.
SAM: Which one of us hasn't? Seems insane to leave our one and only angel friend on the bench.
DEAN (resigned): I'll call him.
SAM: Thank you.
11x06
///
So, ofc, does Dean.
(x) (x) (x) (x)
Dean wants Cas to be invincible to both keep them safe as a family... and also to be strong enough to take care of himself.
Jack-Dean-Mary all tend to trade in having great expectations for Cas in particular.
When Dean marshals the forces, Cas often ends up with the heavy burdens—partly because of tragic circumstances of the narrative, and partly because he’s so often physically the strongest.
//
And so. The "courage" characters often get revved into overdrive:
//
Even Cas has an "overkill" signature on occasion
Godstiel is the obvious example, but the moments in 15x03 and 15x06 often go unnoticed. Respectively, they’re signs of Cas rising to the occasion—but also, like Jack and John, of a worsening psyche. We’ll see how his resilience sometimes slips into something else: the dreaded “destiny.”
Above: Cas overkills Belphegor, destroying Lilith’s Crook and Jack’s vessel in the process—cutting off any chance of getting Jack back, at least for the time being. It’s a decisive move, yes, but also a glimpse of his fraying resilience.
&
How Cas kills the sheriff in 15x05 is also... disturbing. Angry. "Savage."
And the “Take who you want, when you want”shows us Cas’s anger at Chuck. It connects to his later words to Dean: "When God took [Jack] from us…"
We get so locked in and amazed by the strength of certain characters that sometimes we miss these signs.
///
No one is unbreakable.
Sometimes, with certain people... we just forget.
///
Like:
BELPHAGOR: Funny— they didn't seem to think twice about it—
//
Just like The Cause keeps winning out over care in SPN prime, the truth is that the Core Four in SPNwin don’t really hesitate to send John into danger—whether it’s taking on a monster in episode one or facing off against a god:
MILLIE: You sent John into battle against a god who's immortal?
(She didn’t know that, Millie. But it’s true that she sent him into that minefield. That's how soldiers operate... and it's tragic.)
Above: Like Dean, Mary can at times be prone to a mission-oriented (or safety-oriented) insensitivity. She runs hot and cold—tender one moment, tough the next.
..
Mary's hypocrisy and immaturity is every bit as delicious as John's grief- and fear- induced anger:
Later in 1x06, Mary will accuse John of throwing himself into danger, and it never occurs to her that her own hypocrisy might be what chafes. "Everyone's worried about you!" she says.
Then she accuses him of "running towards danger." She says, "this isn't a game; this is life or death." But is he the one who doesn't know that... or is SHE? (See above.)
The bottom line is this: she feels that she can put him in danger, no problems. Because she trusts her own judgment. Her own judgment gives her the illusion of control.
As for John, she wants him to be strong and to be resilient and take on what she determines to be the acceptable level of danger. He should slow down when she says slow down, and most importantly... he should make sure not to actually be in danger, even when and especially when she's sending him into that danger.
//
In 1x06, she asks to be let into his head, but she turns cold the minute he does. "I don't need you using me as an excuse to avoid your issues," she says, even as she verbally minimizes his anger and fear, and sidesteps that the root of his running is loss. (Loss of his father and the terrible fear of losing her too.) That's an approach that shuts down conversation, even if she is right.
Best part? She's doing all this while avoiding her own hypocrisy re: John's safety and her role as his battle commander.
Far from a warning sign, this is actually a sign of the maturing love between John and Mary: namely, that it's scary to care about each other. They want to be stronger for and more cautious with each other’s safety.
(SEE: Dean and Cas in Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets: -> "Wow, this Benjamin seems like he's pretty cool, you know. Like he wouldn't make any half-cocked, knee-jerk choices.")
It's an impossible tightrope. The pot and the kettle!
It's the duality of being a comrade-in-arms with him and the burgeoning desire to be his lover. She wants to be protected by him and protect him from harm.
///
John the weapon
Eventually, in SPNwin, they’ll have to reckon with how they use John (and they will, in 1x06 The Art of Dying). It's about the fact that they know John’s struggling, but they lean on him anyway because he's strong and they need him. (Ironically, they do this even though John's the newest to the hunting world!)
It's so interesting to me that in SPN prime, John starts out as an innocent civilian—lied to, unarmed, and unprepared to protect himself or his family. Afterwards, he overcorrects, becoming the hardened, cruel father we know so well.
But in SPNwin, he steps into the life and becomes John the weapon almost immediately. And right away, Mary starts to lean on him in ways that echo how her Season 12 prime counterpart instinctively tried to lean on Cas.
Like Henry before him, John seems unbreakable—like "nothing can kill the guy" (SEE: Larry in 8x12: "So, Henry is dead. I was so sure that—that he had survived.")
In SPN, characters like John—and especially Cas and Jack, sometimes Dean—are often lost to that same sense of duty. Not because they aren’t loved, but because they were so often needed too much to be protected. It's an agony, really.
DEAN: So you're always thinking to yourself, he's indestructible. He'll always be around, nothing can kill [him]. (2x03)
///
JACK: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed I would be this special person who goes on forever. (14x07)
After 1401 do you think Jack will regain his powers?
Yes.
End of 13 I thought we hadn’t seen the last of Jack’s power. If it wasn’t meant to recover, they would’ve just drained him. I think he’ll get his powers back for several reasons:
1. Alex loves playing villains and Jack was originally meant to be the big bad of season 13.
2. He’s currently feeling useless. As a TFW parallel, all of them went big bad after feeling helpless and they justified their power creep by giving them the ability to save their loved ones. I can easily see him doing something dark to get his powers back in order to save his loved ones.
3. Supernatural revolves around love, bad choices made out of love, and redemption arcs for those bad choices. Jack hasn’t made any really bad choices and there’s nothing for him to be redeemed from. He can’t really go that path without powers. Everyone else took on powers in their dark arc in order to be threatening as villains.
4. Alex is needed in part to give J2 time off. He’s likely too expensive to have in every episode. They need a reason to separate him from Sam and Dean. He could go off with the other human characters–Mary and Bobby and the AU people. He can go off with Castiel. Or they can separate him by having him go big bad. And/or he can work the save heaven storyline, but only if he has powers.
Arguments against him getting his powers back:
1. He could go big bad by saying yes to Michael and then Alex could play the big bad, give J2 time off, and have a redemption arc for his bad decision without actually having Jack go big bad. I can also see this happening too, although I personally find it less satisfying on a narrative level.
2. Supernatural doesn’t know how to write characters with powers. Look at how Castiel is all over the place. They took away most of his powers and can’t seem to settle on what he can do. I don’t expect to see Sam’s powers back except for the last season, if that, for a similar reason. If the characters are too powerful, they can solve Monster of the Week hunts and Sam & Dean’s problems too easily. Ultimately, the audience is interested in Jack’s relationship with TFW. That can’t happen if he’s away all the time due to his powers. Last year, they stuck him in the AU. I suppose they could stick him with the Empty or in Heaven, but I suspect he’ll need to have powers to be in those storylines.
Because of both of those sets of arguments, in the end, I think he will get his powers back at some point, but it will be towards the end of the show, or he’s going to also lose most/all of them, and/or die. After all, he can’t be a member of TFW without dying!
[Sorry for the delay in posting. Couldn’t figure out how to post on mobile.]
Anyway, simulations are one of the most used angelic/heavenly power (billions of souls are trapped in their own simulations, angels create simulations to manipulate people or to keep a too rebellious vessel complacent) and Jack should have done that.
I think Jack will regain his powers gradually as his Grace recharge. Or maybe they'll do it like Castiel in Season 9; being powerless for 7 or 8 episodes, then regain them in episode 8 or 9.
Yeah, I don't expect it to happen in the first part of the season.
I was just thinking that Sam and Castiel powered up through consumption (demon blood and souls). I hope they don't have Jack get powerful through consumption of an angel's Grace, even a 'bad' one.
Jack bestows faith: A theory (now irrelevant, since Jack has lost his powers.)
Spoilers for Supernatural seasons 12 and 13 below the cut
Like you, I am frustrated that Jack's mind-control/manipulative/what were they anyway? powers are no more -- and without us ever really knowing what those powers were. (Or maybe you're not frustrated that Berens introduced this intriguing plot only for bucklemming and Dabb to ignore it in favor of resurrecting dead stunt angel No. 557 from Season 4 for no goddamn reason, but you definitely should be.) There was a debate about glowy-golden eyes and mind-whammying all last hiatus. There was discussion as to whether Jack was "brainwashing" Cas or just "influencing" him and what the differences between those two things would be. There was suggestion that the yellow eyes proved the Four Princes of Hell had all been nephilims. There was fierce debate as to whether all or any of that made Jack good or evil.
So we were all pretty disappointed that the only person who seemed to even remember that fetus!Jack used some sort of power on Cas to convince Cas to save him and ditch the Winchesters with Kelly was Berens Dean. In fact, Dean seems to have been the only person who ever cared at all.
Dean says near the end of Season 12 that Jack "sock-puppetted" Cas. In Season 13, Episode 3, he explodes at Sam, screaming that Jack "manipulated,” promising him paradise but only getting him killed. Then I think he spoke for most of the fandom when he finished the rant with "You may be able to forget about that, but I can't!"
But was Dean actually right? Did Jack use his powers to "sock-puppet" Cas or Kelly or any other character? We only see Jack use this power on five people. Each time he uses it, it causes the person he's influencing to immediately reverse course and do something that, at first glance, seems out of character, but is actually something that, I think, they really want to do -- or rather, hope is the right thing to do.
In other words, he gives them faith. Or, tunnel vision. Dealer's choice.
Faith vs. tunnel vision
Faith is a major theme in Supernatural, and it's particularly associated with God and angels. So it's natural that Jack, being related to both, could have some natural affinity toward bestowing faith on the people he cares about -- certainly the more his allies see of his powers, the more faith they have in him.
But that's not always a good thing.
In his book "Still Life With Woodpecker," Tom Robbins defined tunnel-vision the following way:
"Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended." p. 86 (Bold emphasis mine.)
Faith is belief working in tandem with logic and hope. Tunnel vision is when the logic, and sometimes hope, are no longer involved. I explain these to say that when Jack "mind-whammies" someone, he's bestowing faith, but jamming it through so fast that the logic and hope don't have time to catch up before the character has time to do something, well, out of character.
WTF actually happened?
The first time we actually see Jack's powers in the wild (other than the time they set the Gideon Bible on fire, a bucklemming gag that didn't make any sense at the time and makes even less sense now) is in Robert Berens' and Meredith Glynn's episode "The Future..” Kelly has just learned that she will die giving birth to Satan's baby and that she will never be able to influence him to use whatever powers he has for good. Instead, she's afraid he'll be left to the devices of the archangel who raped her and the demon who is currently keeping her chained in a basement -- two sources of extreme evil planning to turn young Skywalker to the Dark Side. When Dagon unchains Kelly so Kelly can take a bath, Kelly fills the tub with water, gets in and slits her wrist.
But instead of dying -- or at least instead of staying dead -- Kelly is healed and/or brought back to life by her child. (I still don't know why he couldn't have done that after he was born, wtf Jack?) This gives her hope that he's actually good, even though Dagon and later Cas try to convince her Jack was acting out of self-interest. Later in the episode, after Cas has captured her and she's trying to convince him her baby can be good, her eyes glow yellow -- the baby's giving her a vision, and maybe adding some brainwashing to go with it.
While Kelly had thus far simply appeared to want to have and raise her baby in peace, she's now a mission to make sure the baby's powers are intact when he's born. Even when Sam and Dean offer to remove the baby's powers, she turns them down, kidnaps Cas and tells him to take her to the gate to Heaven, assuring him that the baby showed her if she just goes with him, everything will turn out okay.
Let's break down Kelly's thought process here. First of all, she gets pregnant with the devil's baby and appears to just want to have it in safety. Not an outlandish or grand goal by any means. And while I don't remember her ever expressly saying it, I think she's reasonably confident the baby won't be born inherently evil, like Cas seems to think. This is an act of faith -- deciding to become a parent is essentially that -- but it's tempered with logic and caution.
When she learns she'll die giving birth and that Dagon will most likely end up with her baby, her faith and hope are gone so suddenly that she tries to end her own and her baby’s lives -- the ultimate act of despair.
She changes her mind after the baby brings her back and gives her a vision telling her to follow Cas to Heaven. And when I say changes her mind, I don't mean, just decides to not attempt suicide again -- she goes from, presumably, wanting to be a single mom to wanting to Make Sure Baby Is Powerful Enough To Save The World. While Sam's plan to strip the baby of his powers has the potential to save her life (and is objectively a good idea anyway), she tells Sam and Dean that the baby being born with powers is "the only thing that matters." It's a complete 180 from that moment of despair when she tried to end her own and her child's lives.
Now let's look at the episode from Cas' point of view. Cas starts out in a pretty dark place. He's been working with Heaven -- always a bummer -- and is now going to have to betray the Winchesters, all to kill someone he doesn't believe deserves death. He steals the Colt from under Dean's pillow and heads to where Dagon is hiding Kelly.
At the critical moment, he can't bring himself to shoot Kelly. Instead, he takes her to a motel, and the rest of their scenes that episode are the debate about whether the baby's powers can be used for good.
You can tell Cas wants to believe Kelly -- he's looking for a reason not to kill her and the baby. I think if all the shit hadn't hit the fan at the end of the episode, Cas would have come around on his own -- certainly he was willing to consider Sam's plan.
Instead, he gets mind-whammied by the baby too, who gives him a "vision" of "paradise" and he does something completely out of character -- puts Sam and Dean to sleep, leaves them unconscious next to the gates of heaven and drives off into the night with a delighted Kelly.
Those are two sudden, bizarre shifts in behavior. Kelly went from suicidal to drank-the-Koolaid hopeful, while Cas' end demeanor is almost robotic. Those are two people who have clearly been affected by some strong BabyGodMagicJuice.
But they don't stay that way. The next time we see them, in the season finale, they're in Parents Preparing for Baby mode, which is to say they're hopeful and happy, but also stressed out, afraid and able to listen to Sam, Dean and Mary when they show up.
We're back to the difference between faith and tunnel-vision. If Jack had given them faith, it would explain why they made sudden course corrections from a point of hopelessness to where they were able to do something they wanted to do anyway -- in Kelly's case, have her baby, and in Cas' case, save the baby (and Kelly. Kelly is the sacrificial lamb in all this. RIP Kelly. I'm so sorry your useless son didn't resurrect you a second time like he did Cas.) But if it's slammed into them quickly by a self-interested, all-powerful fetus of limited understanding and who really, really just wants to not die, the logic and caution don't have time to catch up, so it becomes tunnel vision. Course correction from their path of despair is the only thing they can think of, so Kelly's willing to turn down Sam's plan and Cas is willing to leave the Winchesters unconscious outside Heaven where angels could find them.
It makes what Jack did not evil, as much as just something natural -- again, faith is a theme with God and angels, which Jack is a product of -- without quite having the control to know how much is too much.
It happens to Dean and Kaia too
Dabb may have forgotten about "The Future" but since Berens wrote it, he didn't forget it, and he used that same thing again in "The Bad Place" in Season 13. In that one, Jack uses his powers to show Dean and Sam a vision of Mary in Apocalypse World.
The next thing Dean does is profess he'll "get Mom back, no matter what." And he means it -- when Kaia says she won't help them, he pulls a gun on her and tells her to "get in the damn car." It's a terrifying moment and fabulous acting on Jensen Ackles' part -- I'm legitimately scared of him right there. To be fair, Dean has done similar things -- remember he pulled a gun on a bunch of LARPing nerds when he thought they were refusing to tell him where Charlie was in Season 8 -- but this scene is meant to give the viewer chills.
Again, it's tunnel vision. Dean has spent the entire season telling himself Mary is dead, but we know he doesn't quite believe it -- he tells Sam to keep the faith for both of them and starts to ask Billie if she knows whether Mary's alive. But he can't make himself believe. When Jack gives him the vision, it not only offers Dean proof, it gives him faith. But again, the logic and caution haven't had time to catch up when he pulls the gun on Kaia -- he's like a religious fanatic threatening heretics.
Likewise, Kaia has a change of heart in the episode after Jack shows her a vision. Kaia has spent her life thinking her powers are a curse. While we don't know for sure based on this episode, there's every reason to believe that at one point, she hoped to control her powers. She obviously wanted to know about it enough that she had a relationship with Derek, who loved using his Dreamwalking powers if his art is anything to go by. After Jack shows her a vision, she's willing to help the Winchesters.
Again, they sort of follow the pattern started in "The Future." Characters who start out in a bad place get a vision from Jack and suddenly have faith to do what they said at the beginning of the episode they wouldn't do.
But as countless historical examples have shown, faith can turn to tunnel vision in a hurry. As Robbins said, a good idea subjected to tunnel vision can have drastic consequences, as these episodes show.
The one that got away
None of this explains Sam.
No, I didn't forget about Sam. Jack showed him the vision of Mary too, and Sam was trying to STOP Dean from forcing Kaia to Dreamwalk at gunpoint. In fact, of these five characters who get a vision from Jack, Sam is the only one who doesn't seem affected by it at all.
You could say it's a by-product of Sam being the Evil Chosen One with some leftover Lucifer grace, but that wouldn't explain how all of Jack's other powers work on Sam. More likely, I think Sam already has faith. Of the three main characters, Sam has always been the most hopeful, the most optimistic. He was the one who believed in faith healers and angels before Season 4, and he was the one who thought God could help fight Amara. And of course, he was the one who thought Mary could still be alive and that Jack could help find her. Sam didn't need Jack's powers -- he's had faith all along.
So what?
I agree. So what? Nobody bothered to explain this and Jack's powers are gone now. We have an hour until the new season airs and I highly doubt even Berens will try to address this again -- there's too many other problems the characters are trying to solve, too many other dropped plots from the mess that was the second half of Season 13.
But it's a good idea if it's what Berens was going for, and another example of this show coming up with intriguing plots that tie so well with theme and character development. Without his powers, Jack may need to find some faith this season, so the potential to continue this theme is definitely there.
