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The Winchesters find themselves feeling a little bored, just hanging out at the Lair O' Letters and waiting for Kevin to translate more of the tablet. Luckily, a possible case rolls in and it might involve zombies. Dean is kind of thrilled at the prospect, but the body they find at the morgue seems to be that of an ordinary young man. While they're pouting at this sad turn of events, the young man comes back to life on the slab. He calls himself Shane, even though he knows somehow that's not his real name. All he knows for sure is that he dies every day and then reanimates a few hours later.
Sam and Dean bring Shane back to their motel for a little check-up. He passes all their usual monster tests, but he's clearly something supernatural. While he's sleeping that night, a pretty young lady attacks him with a knife. He fights her off with great skill, even though he's positive he's never fought before. He's so shocked that he drops dead of a heart attack. While he's sprawled out on the bed, waiting to come back to life again, the Winchesters do their research and decide that Shane is actually Prometheus. Zeus cursed him for giving fire to mortals. Shane does remember being found on a mountain some years back and he's not fond of eagles picking at his liver.
The woman who found Shane on that mountain comes looking for him. They shared a night of passion that resulted in her conceiving a son, but she was too freaked out by the whole daily dying thing and ran off. She's come back now that her son Oliver seems to be afflicted by the same deadly curse. After everybody gets used to the idea that Greek gods are real, they realize they need to trap Zeus and get him to lift the curse. Zeus, naturally, is kind of a dick about the whole thing, and plans to put wee Oliver on the mountain to take Prometheus's place.
The lady who attacked Shane earlier is Artemis, goddess of hunters and daughter of Zeus. She also has a crush on Prometheus, which comes in handy when Sam needs to talk her into defying her father. Alas, when she shoots an arrow at her father, he uses Prometheus as a shield. Prometheus, a badass to the end, shoves the arrow through his own heart, out through his back and into Zeus's heart. With Zeus dead, the curse is lifted. Sadly, this means that Prometheus -- now mortal and shot through the heart -- dies of his wounds. But Oliver lives on uncursed, so it's half of a win.
At the end, Dean returns to his room at the Lair O' Letters and prays to Castiel. He knows something is wrong with Sam and fears the trials will kill him. If Castiel hears the prayer, he gives no sign, because Dean is cursed to suffer an eternity of Olympus-sized angst. Stay tuned for the full recap.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!THEN! God's grubbiest little prophet, Kevin Tran, figured out how to close the Gates of Hell. For some unknown reason, God designed a series of three trials that had to be passed before the Gates can be closed. Dean, feeling even more self-sacrificing than usual, decided that he was going to undertake the trials so that Special Sammy could survive to live a long, boring life. Alas, it was Special Sammy who inadvertently passed the first trial when he killed a hellhound to save his and Dean's lives.
NOW! A pickup truck speeds along a dark and icy highway. As if this weren't dangerous enough already, the driver decides to tempt fate even further by taking a swig of beer. He starts to doze off, then jerks awake again. He's like, "Whoo! That was a close one. Better drink more beer!" He drinks even as his eyelids flutter under the strain of maintaining wakefulness. On the road ahead of him walks a rather good-looking young man with tousled hair. He casts a glance over his shoulder, sees the truck not too far behind him, but doesn't move out of the way. Perhaps he's too cold to think? He appears to be wearing only two shirts, which for the Winchesters is beachwear. The trucker nods off again and plows right into our handsome and underdressed stranger. The stranger bounces off the windshield, rolls down the hood and comes to a stop in a patch of snow on the side of the road. The trucker, now wide awake, staggers outside to get a look at his victim. "Oh, God, oh no," he says upon seeing the bloody and broken body before him. He peers up and down the road, sees nobody in either direction, and hops back into his truck. He drives away from the scene of the crime, probably to go buy more beer.
As dawn breaks, our handsome stranger is considerably less handsome. He's frosty and blue everywhere except for where he's bloody. An eagle perches on his hip and picks at a wound in his abdomen. If you have a passing familiarity with Greek mythology, this was probably the point at which you asked yourself, "I wonder if that's supposed to be Prometheus?" A moment later, you probably asked yourself, "I wonder how badly the show's going to screw that up?" As the eagle is enjoying its breakfast, a state trooper drives up. The eagle flaps away in a huff. (I may be projecting a tad; I hate when people interrupt my meals.) Even though the fellow in the road is bluer than a Texas liquor store on Sunday, the trooper does his job and checks for a pulse. While the trooper heads towards his car to call into dispatch, the wounds on the dead body fade away. The skin regains its healthy pink glow. A moment later, the previously dead hit-and-run victim opens his blue, blue eyes and lets out a gasp. By the time the trooper looks at the road again, the body is gone. "What the hell?" he wonders. He spies a set of footprints in the snow, heading into the woods and stares at them in befuddlement. Supernatural!
Lair O' Letters. Sam pours himself a glass of water from the tap, swishes it around his mouth and makes an expression of surprise. With a dainty cough, he spits the water back into the glass, which swirls bright red. Sam looks around, presumably to make sure Dean isn't watching him, and leans over the sink. He spits out a stream of pure blood. He hurries to wash away all evidence of his new illness -- which I shall henceforth be referring to as "trialberculosis" -- just as Dean saunters into the hub. Dean's bare legs make a rare appearance, and it's quite a shock. It's been a while since those gams saw the light of day, but they manage to be just as evenly tanned as the rest of his physique. Dean takes note of Sam scrubbing both the sink and his mouth. "What's up with you?" he asks. Sam, trying not to hemorrhage too blatantly, quickly answers that everything is fine, totally fine and he's absolutely not secretly dying. Dean looks like he knows he's being lied to and is a bit fed up with it, but doesn't push. Instead, he gripes about Kevin taking so long with the part of the translation. Sam sticks up for Kevin a bit, saying it's not easy to translate the tablet without any help. Which, you know, just makes it look weird that Kevin isn't at the Lair O' Letters. The place has to be chock-full of "help," right? I'm certainly not eager to have God's Grubbiest Prophet hanging around the place all the time like Cousin Oliver, but they need to come up with a better excuse.
Dean sums up their current situation: "So, no word from Cass, Kevin's taking his sweet little time and you're acting cagey." Sam goes to his default puppy dog face, but Dean's only mentioning all this in passing, and not as an entree to another bicker match. "We need to leave before I start climbing these walls," Dean says. In those boxer shorts? Please do! "In that case," Sam says, "I can give you zombies." He hands Dean a tabloid paper, open to an article about the eagle-pecked pedestrian from the teaser. Headline: HUMAN ROADKILL TURNS ZOMBIE. Dean is skeptical, but Sam reminds him about the time that Bobby's wife came back to life. Even though Dean is currently reading the article for himself, Sam goes ahead and tells him everything about it. Dean looks a wee bit intrigued...
... so they suit up and drive to Montana, land of gold and silver and possibly zombies. Their first stop is the Great Falls Sheriff's Department, to talk to the trooper who filed the report. "Since when did the feds start tracking zombie activity?" the trooper asks. "We don't track zombie activity," Dean says, "because there's no such thing as zombies." The trooper describes the very dead condition in which he found the body. "People don't walk away from that -- zombies do." Dean rolls his eyes and suggests the possibility that the body was dragged away by something. The trooper says that there was only one set of footprints and no drag marks. "You didn't look for him?" Dean asks. "It's grizzly country," scoffs the trooper. Also maybe zombie country.
A young lady working in the office calls them over to her computer. With impeccable timing, the county morgue has just sent over a report from the coroner. The same man the trooper found has turned up dead of what they presume was an animal attack. "That's the dead guy?" Dean asks. The trooper is all riled up. "Dead my ass! That's a zombie, boys!" The Winchesters offer to head over to the morgue themselves, and ask the trooper to stay behind just in case more zombies start popping up. As Sam and Dean turn to go, the trooper calls after them. "Boys, aim for the head!" They probably would anyway, but thanks for the advice.
stop: Morgue. The body on the table seems pretty normal, but they check his teeth just to be sure. Nothing monstrous there, so Sam pulls down the sheet a bit for more of a look. He sees a ragged wound in the corpse's side. "What's going on over here?" he asks. "Liver was eaten," says the coroner. "Best guess is a bird got at it." The Winchesters head out into the hallway with a sigh. "Gotta say, I'm a little disappointed," Dean says. "Yeah, because you wanted to shoot zombies," Sam says. "Damn straight I wanted to shoot zombies," Dean duhs. While they discuss whether or not there's anything supernatural about the case, the dead guy wakes up. The claw marks all over his body fade and his complexion regains its healthful glow. He sits up, pulls the sheet around him and hops off the table. The Winchesters apparently have terrible peripheral vision, because even though this is all happening through a window off to their side, they see absolutely nothing going on. It's only when they finally turn fully towards the window that they notice that the corpse has done scampered off somewhere.
He doesn't get very far before Dean marches him right back into the autopsy room at gunpoint and pushes his head down onto the exam table. Luckily, the coroner has departed for parts unknown, so they don't have to explain any of this mess. "What are you?" Dean roars at the former corpse. "And if you say 'zombie,' I swear..." The former corpse seems utterly confused. "I'm not anything!" Sam springs into action and shuts the blinds on the window. Nice to know his trialberculosis isn't slowing him down. Dean's not buying the former corpse's plea of ignorance. "Look, two minutes ago you were room temperature. You're something!" The guy doesn't put up a fight or even try to get loose, but he does change his plea just slightly. "I don't know what I am," he says. "I don't know who I am! All I know is, all I do is die! So, if you want to shoot me, shoot me. Just promise me you'll finish the job, because I can't take this anymore." Dean recognizes a fellow sufferer of soul-crushing angst, so he lets the guy up. He keeps his gun out, though, just in case. "All you do is die?" Sam asks. "Once a day, for as long as I can remember," says the intermittent corpse. After a few hours, he comes back to life. Dean's first thought isn't of legend or lore or mythology, but of Kenny from South Park. This just confuses the intermittent corpse, so he says, "No, my name is Shane." Dean says they're going to run some tests on Shane, to make sure he's "kosher," which for just a moment I envisioned as checking to see whether or not he's ever made the acquaintance of a mohel.
Alas, they just take him back to their Motel du Jour to cut his arm and make him sip some holy water. He passes both tests and begins to suspect these guys just might not really be feds. For some reason, they have the same discussion about dying once a day for as long as he can remember that they just had in the morgue. He adds that his memory only goes back a few years. Dean is a bit incredulous. "How do you know your name?" he asks. "My real name isn't Shane," Shane admits. "It was given to me because, I dunno, people had to call me something." And "Shane" was shorter than "you very attractive, slightly scruffy stranger who looks fantastic in a tight henley." Ahem. He goes on to say that people found him on a mountain in Europe after an avalanche. "I don't remember anything from before the rescue," he says. "When I realized my condition, I knew I couldn't be around people." So he built himself a cabin in the woods, which must have taken a long damned time, if he kept dying in the middle of it. Also, how did he get to America from Europe? He says some pot growers in the woods got nervous about him being too close to their crops, so they shot him up a couple of times. No sooner had he decided it was time to move on than he found himself getting mowed down on the highway. So, not only does this guy just die as a matter of course, but he's also very adept at just getting himself killed.
While Shane avails himself of the shower, the brothers talk things over. I'd rather the camera follow Shane, but we're stuck with the Winchesters. "Well, he's definitely something," Dean says. "Maybe he's not the monster," Sam suggests. "Maybe he's the victim." For some reason, they decide to let Shane have their motel room while they book another for themselves. Wouldn't it be smarter to stick with him? Shouldn't they keep an eye on him until they know who or what is victimizing him? But then they would be there to see....
... a young lady standing in the shadows, watching Shane as he sleeps. She has dark hair with heavy bangs and wears an all-leather outfit. She sits on the edge of his bed and tenderly strokes his hair. He grabs her wrist and gives her the once-over. She smiles at him. "Who are you?" he asks. Her smile fades. "You don't remember?" He stares blankly at her, which is all the answer she needs. With her free hand, she raises a dagger. Shane throws her off him and rolls off the bed. They circle each other. Dean opens the door just as they come to blows again. Dean goes after the lady attacker. She sweeps the leg and Dean goes down, hard. Sam starts to join in, but doesn't get past the threshold before flings him out of the room with a wave of her hand. During the scuffle, the mystery lady drops her dagger. She lunges across the floor for it, but Shane flips her over and plucks it from her fingers. He shoves her up against a wall and touches the top of the blade to her cheek. "Who are you?" he asks again. "Now I'm your worst enemy," she says. She grabs her dagger by the blade and disappears in a puff of black smoke.
Sam and Dean right themselves just in time to gape at her departure. "Who the hell was that?" Dean asks. "She said she knew me," Shane says. "I could have sworn that she was upset I didn't know her back." Shane is a bit out of breath and rubs his left arm. He drops to his knees. "I just need a minute," he gasps. "I've never been in a fight my whole life." He seems genuinely confused, as do the Winchesters, having just witnessed his crazy good fighting skills. Suddenly, Shane grabs his chest and falls to the floor. "Do we call 911?" Sam asks. "And tell them what?" Dean asks back. "That the dead guy we stole from the morgue is alive and having a coronary?" Shane writhes around on the floor some more, but chooses to have his death scene during the commercial break.
Later, the Winchesters keep vigil over Shane's temporarily dead body. They were considerate enough to pick him up off the floor and lay him out on the bed. "I feel like I'm sitting shiva," Dean grumps. Now, where was this Dean when they met the golem? Sam starts to correct him, then perhaps realizes he's being a pedant and decides there are more important matters at hand. "What do we know of that has Jason Bourne fighting skills, dies a lot and has a history when violent women?" he asks. Dean thinks for a second and asks, "I dunno... you?" Ha! That's hysterical. Sam doesn't have Jason Bourne fighting skills.
Before they can discuss it further, a knock comes at the door. Dean peeks through the curtains and sees a young woman. He cocks his gun and keeps the barrel pointed at the inside of the door as he opens it. "Can I help you?" The woman has a blond boy with her. "Agent Bonham?" she asks. He doesn't cop to the name, but doesn't deny it, either. She goes on, "This is going to sound really strange, but I'm looking for a corpse that went missing today." She shows him the tabloid paper with the zombie story and says the coroner told her where to find the feds. "I'm Haley," she says. She says she's looking for Shane. "I'm the mother of his son." Dean surreptitiously stuffs the gun down the back of pants, but is less than surreptitious when he opens the door so he can make friends with the kid. This leaves the still-dead Shane in full view, but Haley isn't surprised by his condition and rushes in to see him. "Stay with the nice FBI agents, Oliver," she says to her son.
After Haley's had some time with the corpse, she joins the Winchesters outside. "When I was younger, I had friends who wanted to climb this mountain in Europe," she says. Why are they being all vague? Both she and Shane described it as being "in Europe." Why not just say Mount Kazbek? Is it because it would eliminate the need for thrilling exposition later? She says the avalanche killed her friends. She says she found Shane, frozen solid but still alive. "I just knew there was something off about him, the way he would --" "Die every day?" Dean finishes for her. She says she thought it was a symptom of the exposure or shock, and thought he was just unconscious. Like, really unconscious. They celebrated reaching the bottom of the mountain by having sex, during which he died. "I called 911, but they couldn't save him," she says. He came back to life when she went to ID the body. Would you have to ID the body if the person died while they were doing you? I mean, that seems like ID enough. Anyway, she says she freaked out and ran. "Nine months later, I had Oliver." She looked for Shane, but gave up until a couple of months ago. Sam wonders why she resumed her search, but she doesn't get a chance to answer before Shane comes back to life and joins them. Haley calls Oliver over and introduces them. She doesn't have to say the kid is his son for Shane to do the math and figure it out for himself.
While Shane gets to know his kid, the Winchesters take the opportunity to stand around and talk out the plot details. "Turns out we were right about the curse thing," Sam says, having just finished up with his laptop. "From what I can tell, we're looking at a Titan." Because Dean is situationally ignorant of these things, Sam has to explain that the Titans were "proto gods." "Best I can tell, he's Prometheus," Sam says. "Didn't he steal fire or something?" Dean asks, back to knowing something about something. Alas, he just as quickly regains his ignorance, because he has no idea why Prometheus stole the fire from Olympus. Sam explains that it was to help humanity. "And in return, Zeus decided to strap him to that mountain and make him relive death every day." Why didn't they just follow the actual story of Prometheus living in eternal torment? Is it because they couldn't train an eagle to follow this guy around, eating his liver all day? Anyway, Dean figures all the dying is why Shane's memory is shot. "Did you figure out who the Xena wannabe was?" he asks. "I'm guessing Artemis," Sam says. "Zeus's daughter, she's been known to carry around weapons like that dagger." He says it like Artemis is the only one of the gods who'd carry a weapon, which would make her easy to identify. Even if that were so, it wouldn't be a dagger, but a bow and arrow. Or possibly a spear. Unlike Sam, I have no qualms about appearing the pedant.
Later, Sam and Dean sit down with Prometheus and the Internet to break the titanic news to him. He doesn't remember eagles eating at his innards for thousands of years, but he seems to take everything in stride. He thinks it would be best if he stayed as far away as possible from Haley and Oliver, lest they become collateral damage. Sam and Dean promise to help him, but first they have to tend to Oliver, whose mother has just brought him inside. He's bleeding and unconscious, and Prometheus realizes he's dying. "Wait a second, he has your curse?" Sam asks. Haley's like, "What curse?"
They bring the boy to Dean's room at the Lair O' Letters, which is one thousand miles from their motel room in Montana. Oliver is still dead. Everyone's rushing around like this just happened, even though it's been at least a 12-hour drive. During this time, nobody has explained to Haley about the curse. What the hell, show? No, seriously, what the hell? If they want to have a hub they can zip to in the course of an episode, they need to start setting their cases a lot closer to home. Haley says Oliver started his daily dying when he turned seven, a couple of months ago. "Age seven marks one of the first Greek rites of manhood," Sam says off the top of his head. "How do you know that?" Dean asks. Sam looks... embarrassed? Uncomfortable? He's also looking really pale. Haley pleads with Shane to tell her about the curse.
Thankfully, they cut out the part where they explain everything to her and pick up with the aftermath. "You have to realize this sounds crazy," she says. For some reason, they're having this conversation in the library instead of waiting at Oliver's bedside for him to come back to life. "The faster you wrap your brain around this, the faster we can solve the problem," Dean says. Speaking of the problem, are they even safe at the Lair O' Letters? It's warded against evil, but is Zeus technically evil? He's an asshole, to be sure, but whose moral code are they going by? For that matter, is Artemis evil? Sam and Dean plot to summon Zeus and either convince him to lift the curse, or kill him. Haley's still not quite on Team Believers yet, and excuses herself to go tend to Oliver.
Sam, Dean and Prometheus pore over the books while the soundtrack goes off and does its own thing. It sounds like some old-school Depeche Mode bass line or something with, like, an electronic banshee howling in the background. Dean suddenly pipes up with, "Dragon penis!" Sam and Prometheus are like, "Buh?" Dean explains that there was a hunter in Ancient Greece named Drakopoolos (that's what my CC says), which translates to "dragon penis." I'll take the show's word for it, because after struggling through last week's bestiality fest, I don't think I could handle what the Internet would show me if I were to look that up. Haley rejoins them just in time to hear Dean exposit about how Mr. Dragon Penis fought Zeus back in the day. The Men of Letters, he says, translated his journal. Dean very proudly announces to everyone in the room that he and Sam belong to this hush-hush secret society. Sam goes on to read that Mr. Dragon Penis summoned Zeus and figured out he could kill him with wood from a tree struck by lightning. He apparently didn't actually use this knowledge to kill Zeus, or maybe he tried and just failed, because scorched wood seems like kind of a lame way to kill a major god like Zeus.
They'll also need bones from a worshiper and some fulgurite. Luckily, there are pagans living nearby for the former and new age crystal shops for the latter. Of course, Dean only finds out about the fulgurite from Haley because he was dumb enough to think it was some super rare mineral they were going to have to steal. If dying so often caused Prometheus to lose his memory, can we assume the same for Dean? Because damn.
Prometheus and Sam head over to a local cemetery to dig up a pagan worshiper. Sam very generously assists in the digging. If it were me, I'd be like, "Get to work, Titan!" "Why are you doing this?" Prometheus asks. He wonders why Sam would risk his life to help. "Why did you risk yours to steal that fire?" Sam asks. If he's hoping Prometheus will recognize the parallels, he's out of luck, because the guy still doesn't remember. Sam tells him it was worth it. "You pretty much saved the whole world." Why doesn't anyone in the episode float the idea that the fire was a metaphor? I mean, fire exists in the natural world. You don't need gods for that. Bringing fire to people is a metaphor for knowledge, but they're treating it literally. Prometheus remains modest. "None of that means anything unless I can save my son."
Meanwhile, Dean, Haley and Oliver pile into Haley's minivan and drive toward the Abandoned Warehouse of the Week. For some reason, Dean is driving while Haley rides shotgun in her own car. Does Dean get motion sick in the passenger seat or something? Haley's still trying to absorb everything. She says she can't believe she's about to ask Zeus to cure her son. Dean reminds her they won't be asking.
Soon after, everyone meets up on the factory floor, where a symbol has been painted on the ground. Dean mixes up some summoning brew and lights it with a match. You might think there'd be some Greek chanting involved, but you'd be wrong. Almost instantly, the lights flicker and a bolt of lightning delivers a man into the center of the symbol. He's wearing a nice suit and looks kind of like The Most Interesting Man in the World. (Narrator's voice over: He gives birth to his own children... with his forehead.) He flashes everyone a sly smile. "Come now, can't we do this civilized?" he purrs. Dean has either been designated as the one to confront Zeus or has just naturally fallen into this role. "All we need is to break a curse you put on a little kid." Zeus glances over at Oliver, but ignores Dean's demands. He turns to Prometheus. "Nice to see you again, Prometheus." Prometheus has a sharpened stick in one hand. It doesn't look especially charred, but whatever. "Break the curse," he says. Zeus realizes that the boy is Prometheus's son, which rather delights him.
Dean walks right up to the outer edge of the symbol. "So what's gonna be? The easy way, or we can do this the hard way." Dean, too, has a sharpened stick at the ready. Zeus should have taken one look at him, turned into an eagle and flown away with him. I mean, Dean makes Ganymede look like the Elephant Man. Zeus offers to cure the child, if they free him from the trap. Dean doesn't take the deal, and walks off like he's going to leave. Prometheus and Sam follow after him, but Haley has a moment of weakness and rubs out part of the symbol with the sole of her boot. Of course, the moment Zeus is free, he zaps the guys with lightning. Instead of being burnt to crisps, they go flying across the floor. "Shall we try this the hard way?" Zeus asks with a menacing chuckle.
While Zeus turns his attention to Oliver, Sam and Dean try to sneak up behind him with their pointy sticks. Artemis pops up and shoves them both back with a wave of her hand. Artemis and Prometheus trade looks. Sam notices this, even though he's behind a corner and the staging wouldn't seem to allow it, but whatever. Zeus again focuses on Oliver. "I must admit, I could never have conceived such a horrible fate for such a beautiful child," he says. "Just goes to show we must all leave room for happy accidents!" Haley really isn't catching on to what's going on here, and doesn't realize that Zeus has malevolent intentions even when he practically starts twirling his mustache. He holds Haley and Prometheus in place with his godly powers and kneels down in front of little Oliver. "I have a special job for you, my little friend." Zeus calls to Artemis, who then releases Sam and Dean from her grip.
Inexplicably, she walks them out of the factory instead of just killing them on the spot. This gives everybody more time for talking, of course. "You know who this is, Dean, walking us to our deaths?" Sam asks. "It's our god, Artemis, the goddess of hunters. See, she's who we pray to for courage when hunting the gorgon or the minotaur." Sam is trying to get under her skin. They don't actually pray to her, but Dean looks mighty confused. Sam goes on, "Of course, she's not really worship-worthy anymore, having lost a step and all." It works, and Artemis flings them against the nearest wall. "Like hell I have," she scoffs. Shouldn't that be, "Like Tartarus I have."? Sam continues to taunt her for not being able to find Prometheus in the last seven years. He makes the leap that maybe she didn't want to find him. "He was in love with you, you know, he told us," Sam says. Artemis, who'd been just about ready to filet Sam with her uncharacteristic dagger, pauses.
Back on the factory floor, Zeus is having some fun with torturing Prometheus, first with lightning hands to the gut, and then with some good old-fashioned beating.
Meanwhile, Artemis the staunch virgin goddess has turned into an insecure schoolgirl. "What did he say to you?" she asks. "That it wasn't the first time he escaped that mountain," Sam says, "and that you let him go free as long as you'd hide your little trysts from the old man." He's making more leaps than a kangaroo in the mating season. He goes on to say that it wasn't until Zeus saw the zombie article that Artemis had to look for Prometheus again. He got all that from those two glancing at each other? And Dean doesn't even know where to get a common crystal? "Go ahead, kills us, and let your father slaughter that boy," Sam says. Artemis is having major feels and she doesn't know what to do about it.
So I'll take this time to explore why it's so silly for Artemis to be in this story. They could have gone with Britomartis, also a virgin goddess of hunting and daughter of Zeus, but not as widely known as Artemis. Even people like me, who aren't especially well-versed in Greek mythology, know about Artemis's storied refusal of physical love. (I only remembered Britomartis because she was the inspiration for a knitting pattern I rather like.) How did they even settle on Artemis? She has to be one of the least logical choices the show could have made.
Or the show could have left goddesses out of it entirely, and chosen Heracles, since that would fit in nicely with existing stories about him rescuing Prometheus. Heracles even had quite the eye (and other organs) for attractive and heroic men, so there would be no need to ditch the romance angle. Heracles and Prometheus having a tryst would make more sense than Artemis and Prometheus. At least Heracles wasn't an adamant virgin! Then again, given this show's history with depicting same-sex attraction, it's probably just as well they didn't go that route. Dean's resulting gay panic probably would have had him speeding away from the scene like the Road Runner, leaving only a Dean-shaped cloud of dust in his wake.
Now, where were we? Oh right -- the show we actually got. The World's Most Interesting Man is talking up the fun aspects of being immortal, like how dying can't keep you down for long. "It's just like taking a little nap," he says to Oliver. His hands crackle with lightning as he prepares to zap the boy into his daily nap. Prometheus, gravely injured for the time being, lies helplessly on the ground. "This has to stop, Father," Artemis says behind them. At last, she has her trademark bow and arrow, and she's trained them on Zeus. "I'm only just getting started," Zeus says, brushing crumbs of scenery from his beard. "I'm doing this for our kind," he goes on. He points to Prometheus and says, "He is the reason we're here, and not ruling the world. He is the reason they have forgotten all about us!" That... doesn't make sense. Sure, people have fire now, and iPods and underarm deodorant and other wonderful inventions of the modern age. But they're always looking for someone to worship. If Oprah can do it without lightning hands and immortality, then what are the gods' excuses? What's stopping them from retaking their lofty position with the Judeo-Christian god on walkabout? And anyway, if people had really forgotten about the Greek gods, I wouldn't be here right now, nitpicking about which of them really don't belong in this episode.
"Let them go -- all of them," Artemis says. Zeus isn't down with that, so Artemis looses an arrow at him. Zeus pulls Prometheus off the floor with threads of lightning from his fingers, using him as a shield. The arrow pierces Prometheus's chest and crackles with energy. "I never get tired of watching you die," Zeus whispers in Prometheus's ear. "Your boy is going on the mountain." Determined to save his son, Prometheus takes a deep breath and grabs the arrow. He shoves it the rest of the way through his body and into Zeus. He's kind of a badass, and it's a pity he's being wasted on this one-off episode. Zeus wails in agony as lightning encircles him. He falls to the floor with Prometheus stilled pinned to him like a tail on a paper donkey. He dies rather easily, considering he was pretty much the "it" god of old. At the very least, he should exploded and taken out a few city blocks with him, don't you think?
Artemis runs over to pull the arrow from their bodies, but it's too late. She holds both her father's and Prometheus's hands, then looks up at Haley. After a while, she lets go of Prometheus's hand. She disappears with her father, but leaves the Titan behind, leaving him to his survivors.
Somewhere in the night, the Winchesters have constructed a funeral pyre for Prometheus. One of Dean's main jobs has always been to light whatever fires need lighting, and so it is here. As Prometheus's shrouded body burns, Dean goes to stand beside Haley. "I'm sorry," she says, for screwing up their plans. There are a lot of things Dean could say, but doesn't, because he's generally a decent person. Instead, he puts an arm around her shoulder and offers her comfort. This leaves Sam to comfort Oliver, who's sitting in the open back of the minivan. "How about we go get some ice cream sundaes?" Sam asks. Yes, what kid doesn't have a raging appetite after not only watching his father die, but smelling his corpse burn? Oliver, who's been mute until now, finds his voice. "No, I'd like to stay," he says. He looks surprisingly wise and weary for one of such a tender age. The young actor has a very natural delivery, not stilted or overdone at all. Good job, kiddo.
The Winchesters haven't lost their appetites, though, and munch on burgers as they head back to the Lair O' Letters. "How'd you know Artemis had the hots for Prometheus?" Dean asks. "Intuition?" Sam says, but it sounds like a question. "Luck?" he guesses again. Maybe this, along with the trialberculosis, is some side effect of undertaking God's tests? Additionally, Sam is feeling pretty self-reflective. "I'm starting to think maybe I was being naïve," he says, "when I said that could just will myself into coming out of these trials unscathed." Dean tells him to stow the emo crap. "You're not gonna die like Prometheus," he says. "If you die, it's gonna be because of something normal." That gets him a little smile. "Like a heart attack?" Sam asks. "Yeah," Dean says, and tells him to eat his burger. Hee. Also: aww.
But, as usual, Dean's confidence is for Sam's sake. When they get back to the Lair O' Letters, Dean heads for his room and sinks down onto the edge of his bed like a two-ton weight is on his shoulders. He cases his gaze heavenward. "Cass, you got your ears on?" He gets only silence in return, but goes on anyway. "Listen, you know I'm not one for praying, because in my book it's the same as begging. But this is about Sam, so I need you to hear me." Quiet guitar music plays in the background, and even as soft as it is, it feels like an intrusion here. "We are going into this deal blind, and I don't know what's ahead, or what it's gonna bring for Sam. Now, he's covering pretty good, but he is hurting, and this one was supposed to be on me." Which means we should start steeling ourselves now for the monumental, self-loathing guilt Dean will feel by season's end, even though Sam practically begged to be allowed to do the trials himself. "So for all that we have been through," Dean says to his absent angel, "I'm asking you... keep a lookout for my little brother, okay?" He closes his eyes for a moment, then looks around, hoping to see Castiel standing there behind him, as he often has. But there's no angel there, and perhaps none can hear him through the Lair's walls. It's warded against all evil, and maybe that includes angels who've been under Naomi's control. Dean despairs. "Where the hell are you, man?"
Looks like he'll have to wait until at least March 20 to find out.
Tippi Blevins has been possessed by a recapping demon. Send holy water to b_tippi@yahoo.com, or chant spells at her on Twitter: @TippiB.