'Supernatural' Season 8, Episode 16: 'Remember the Titans' Recap

‘Supernatural’, season 8, episode 16, ‘Remember the Titans’

A man drives down the road, drinking some beer and falling asleep. He manages to swerve off the road and hit a pedestrian who was walking. He gets out to check on him, and finds him dead. Making sure no one saw him hit the man, he gets back in his truck and drives away.

The next morning, as an eagle eats his liver, the police find his body. The officer calls it in, after checking to make sure he was dead. He heads back to his car, but turns around to find the body has vanished. The cop follows the footprints in the snow.

In the Batcave, Sam drinks water, but quickly spits it back out as he realizes his mouth is bleeding. Dean oversees him panicking, and asks what’s wrong. Sam shrugs it off. Dean asks if he’s heard from Kevin, but he hasn’t. Dean says the need to find a case before he goes stir crazy, so Sam offers him a zombie case.

Sam and Dean, playing federal agents, pay a visit to the officer. He says it was a zombie, and that there was only one set of prints, so it wasn’t an animal. He’s interrupted by his assistant who says they just got a John Doe in the morgue. The officer immediately says it’s their zombie. Sam and Dean offer to go check it out for him. He tells them to aim for the head.

In the morgue, in Livingston, Montana, they find the man, mauled by a bear. The mortician says there’s no fingerprint records for him. He also says the man’s liver was eaten by an eagle.

Outside, Dean says he’s disappointed. He wanted to shoot zombies. They think the trooper just mistakenly declared him dead. Sam asks why he would run, though, if he was so badly injured.

Inside the morgue, the man comes back to life. Sam and Dean look inside, to see him missing.

Dean and Sam hunt him down, and pin him to a table at gunpoint. The man doesn’t know who or what he is, but that he can never die. He says he dies once a day, for as long as he can remember, but he always comes back.

“What, like a real life Kenny?”

“Who?”

He says that the man, apparently named Shane, needs to come with them for them to run some tests.

In a motel room, they cut him with silver and has him drink holy water. Nothing happens. He says that someone gave him the name of Shane because he can’t remember the rest of his life. He says he was pulled from an avalanche, and realized he wasn’t normal, so he tried to hole up in a cabin someone, but people were uneasy with him, so they shot him. He decided to move on, and ended up getting hit by the truck.

He asks if he can clean up. Dean and Sam try and figure out what he is. They suggest it could be a witch’s curse. They’ll get a room next door until they can figure it out.

That night, a figure looms over him as he sleeps. She climbs into his bed and strokes his hair. He wakes up and asks who she is. She seems upset that he doesn’t remember. She draws a knife, and he stops her with some kung-fu moves. Sam and Dean rush in and the woman knocks them out quickly. The man manages to subdue her and then questions her again. She says that she’s now his worst enemy.

Sam and Dean question him again, and he says he has no idea who she was, but she wasn’t too happy that he didn’t remember her. He falls to the ground, and has a heart attack. The brother debate whether to call 911 or not. They don’t.

They sit by his corpse and ponder what he could be.

“What do we know that has Jason Bourne fighting skills, dies a lot, and has a taste for violent women?”

“I don’t know… you?”

There’s a knock at the door, and Dean goes the answer it. A woman and her son wait outside the door and tell Dean they’re looking for a corpse… named Shane. Hayley pushes her way inside when she sees him lying on the bed. She tells Oliver to stay with the nice FBI agents.

Outside, she tells Sam and Dean how she met Shane, at the mountain. She says she found him seemingly dead, but somehow he was still alive. And he saved her life. And once they got out of the mountain, he had a heart attack that night. The ambulance came and declared him dead. She had to go ID the body, and he came back to life. And 9 months later, she had Oliver.

Shane walks out of the motel room, and Hayley introduces him to his son, Oliver.

Sam and Dean leave them alone to talk, and Sam says they were right about the curse… He believes that Shane is a Titan. One of the proto-gods, that ruled Greece before the Greek gods took over. He believes Shane is Prometheus, the titan who stole fire for humankind, and incurred the wrath of Zeus.

Zeus, not too happy, strapped Shane/Prometheus to that mountain where Hayley found him, doomed to have to relive death every day.

Dean asks about the Xena-wannabe, and Sam says that she was likely Zeus’ daughter, Artemis. Dean says they haven’t dealt with a god-curse before, and he hopes they can break it.

Sam and Dean break the news to Shane, and he says that it’s probably best that he leave Hayley and Shane, since he’s being hunted by Zeus and Artemis. Dean isn’t too happy that he’s willing to abandon his 7-year-old son, but Shane feels it’s what’s best. Hayley bursts into the room with Oliver in her hands, obviously dead. But she tells them not to worry. They all realize then that Oliver has inherited Shane’s curse. And Hayley asks what curse it is.

In the Batcave, Dean has Shane put Oliver in a bed, and Hayley says that it started happening when Oliver turned 7 and that he stopped talking. Sam says that 7 marks one of the first rite of manhood to the Greeks. Hayley begs Shane to explain the curse, and that they have to stop the curse.

They explain things to Hayley, and she doesn’t buy it, despite her son dying every day. She says it sounds crazy. Dean says that they usually summon the one responsible and work them over until the reverse it… She seems to believe that summoning Zeus isn’t a great idea, and asks what happens if he doesn’t cooperate. And they say they’ll kill Zeus. Oliver wakes up, and she goes to look after him.

Dean tells Shane that they’re going after Zeus with or without his help. He agrees to help.

Sam and Dean hit the books and try to find a summoning spell.

Dean says he found it. Dragon penis. Dracopolis (meaning dragon penis, apparently) was an ancient hunter who fought with Zeus, and recorded it all in a journal, later translated by the Men of Letters.

They say that in order to summon him, they need some frozen energy from the hand of Zeus, and the bone of a worshipper. And they can kill him with the wood from a tree struck by lightning.

Hayley points out that the journal just ends after that, so how do they know that Dracopolis survived. Dean says the books are good and to trust it.

Sam finds an obituary for the local Greek pagans, and they have their own graveyard. He and Shane go to dig up a bone, while Dean and Hayley are in charge of the frozen energy, which is fulgurite. Dean says the last time they needed it, they needed to steal it from a rich person. Hayley points out that they can find fulgurite in almost any new-age shop, since they use it for cheap jewelry. Dean doesn’t look too happy.

In the graveyard, Sam and Shane are digging, and Shane asks why Sam is doing this for him. He says they needed help, so he’s helping. He asks why Prometheus stole fire for mankind.

Dean reassures Hayley that they do this stuff all the time. Hayley is just worried about having to ask Zeus, the god, to help her son. He tells her that she shouldn’t ask for help, but to tell him to do what’s right.

They complete the spell and successfully summon Zeus into a trap. Zeus isn’t too pleased to be trapped, asking why they can’t be civilized about it. Dean tells him the break the curse on the kid, and they’ll be nice.

Zeus turns his attention to Prometheus/Shane, saying he’s been looking for him. Then he realizes that Oliver is Shane’s child, which he finds interesting. Dean asks what he’s gonna do, and reveals the weapon he can kill him with. Zeus says that if he breaks the trap, he’ll heal the kid, but Dean doesn’t buy it..

They have a stare down, but Dean doesn’t budge. He tells Zeus that they’ll just leave him in there to rot. Zeus points out that the child will continue to suffer. Dean doesn’t care, and tells everyone to leave. As they walk off, Hayley panics and frees Zeus from the trap, and tells him to fix Oliver.

Zeus laughs, and attacks the Winchesters and Shane. He tells Hayley to bring him the child. Dean and Sam try to sneak up on him and stake him, but Artemis appears and pins them to a wall.

Zeus asks if Shane witnessed Oliver die yet, and Hayley says he did. Then he asks how Shane took it, and she says he hurt. Zeus seems pleased, and says that that’s only a fraction of the pain that Prometheus caused him.

Zeus mutes Hayley, and tells Oliver that he has special plans for him. He orders Artemis to take care of Sam and Dean.

She walks them out, and Sam points out that she’s the goddess of hunters, but that she’s not really worship worthy anymore. She slams Sam and Dean against a wall, and Dean asks Sam why he’s trash-talking a god.

Zeus attacks Prometheus, hoping to make up for the 7 years since he left the mountain.

Sam continues to provoke Artemis, pointing out that it took the goddess of hunters a whole 7 years to find Prometheus, hiding in a shack in Montana. He suspects she didn’t want to find him. Dean tells Sam he’s doing great. Sam tells Artemis that Prometheus admitted to them that he’s in love with her. She seems happy.

Zeus continues to attack Prometheus, and he cries out in pain.

Artemis presses Sam for what Prometheus said. He tells her that Prometheus said it wasn’t the first time he escaped, and that Artemis let him go so long as he didn’t tell Zeus about their fling. She says he’s lying, but Sam asks how he would know if he didn’t tell him. He says that if Zeus found out that his daughter was in love with the thing he hated most in the world, he wouldn’t be too happy… but since the news about the ‘zombie’ got out, she had to take action, against her will. And now Zeus is going to kill Oliver over and over again to make Prometheus suffer.

Zeus tells Oliver that he’s going to kill him, and that it’s okay because he’s immortal. As he charges to attack, Artemis draws her bow and tells him to stop. Zeus says that he’s doing it for them, and that Prometheus needs to pay, because he caused humans to forget about the Greek gods. She doesn’t care, and demands he let them go.

He says he’s her father, and she must obey, but she says he’s no longer his father, and fires an arrow at him. He grabs Prometheus, who takes the arrow instead. Zeus laughs, but Prometheus shoves the arrow deeper into himself, so it stabs Zeus. He cries out in pain and collapses to the ground, dead.

Artemis removes the bow, and vanishes, taking Zeus with her.

In the woods, Dean ignites Prometheus’ now-dead body, giving him a proper funeral. He comforts Hayley. Sam talks to Oliver and suggests they get ice cream. Oliver says no, signifying that his curse is now broken.

The brothers drive away and celebrate with some burgers. Dean asks how Sam knew Artemis was in love with Prometheus, and he says it was just intuition. Prometheus’ death has Sam worried, though, about coming out of the trials alive. Dean tells him that he promised to live through it, and if he dies, it will be from something normal, like a heart attack. Not Supernatural.

Back in the Batcave, Dean goes into his room and begins to pray to the angel Castiel. He prays that Castiel keep an eye on Sam for him.

“Where the hell are you, man?”