Occasionally, I’m known to write a few reviews/theories about the shows I follow and obsess over. I try to offer new ideas on old, forgotten plot lines or theorize on what can happen in the coming episodes based on what happened in the last couple. This is a character study Nick from Supernatural.
Death would have been a kinder fate.
When we think about the angels of Supernatural we don’t picture them. As humans, giant balls of celestial energy can only be understood in vessel form. For most, we are never introduced to their vessels. We don’t get a name other than the angel who’s riding them. We don’t get attached.
We only learn about the vessels when we’re supposed to feel sorry for them, like in the case of Jimmy Novak, or when we’re supposed to become furious with their angel, like in the case of Raphael’s hospitalized vessel, Donnie Finnerman. And even then, we only learn what is necessary. We see Jimmy’s sacrifice to protect his family despite never wanting to be ‘chained to a comet’ like Castiel again. With Donnie we see what becomes of a man used by an unforgiving archangel.
And then we meet Nick.
Nick. I would love to specify, give you a full name and not just half of a given name, but Supernatural doesn’t even give us that. They give us the face of a broken man and then make us recognize that same face as the devil’s for the duration of the show.
We know next to nothing about the Morning Star’s vessel, but what we do know is enough to paint a sad portrait of a man who fell on hard times before the devil started pulling his strings.
- Nick is a recent widower after the murder of his wife, Sarah.
By the state of his Pine Creek, Delaware home, you can assume Nick and Sarah had been married, or at least lived together, for some time. That is not the house of a man who is used to living alone in his own silence. We see him talking to himself when Lucifer messes with his head, but talking to himself seems almost normal now because it fills that silence. He tells himself to “keep it together” as though that’s become a mantra in the recent weeks. - Nick was a new father.
However long he and Sarah were together, they had only just begun to focus on family. They had a child, a little boy by the looks of the toys that remained around the home (blue and green mostly, so presumably a boy). By the way Nick handled the baby things with such care, you know he loved this child, that he and Sarah had planned for him, loved him even before he was in their lives. They were just beginning to build a family, but not anymore. - A man broke into Nick’s home and butchered his family in their beds.
We don’t know more than that. We don’t know motive. We don’t know if his family was tortured or if it was quick. We do know that Nick wasn’t home, probably working late to support the ones he loved, when his family was suddenly taken from him. - Their killer was likely still out there when Nick said yes.
If he couldn’t have his family back, Nick wanted justice. Justice from the man who stole them from him. Justice from the god who sat idly by and watched. So when Lucifer told him it was impossible to bring them back, Nick settled on the next best option. Justice. He said yes because Lucifer promised to set things right against a god who let this happen, all while wearing the face of the woman Nick loved so dearly.
I wish I could provide a bigger list, but this is all we know of Nick before Lucifer started to burn through him. What other hints do they give us beside this? That he drank? He says so clearly when he first meets Lucifer, that he needs to stop drinking before bed, but even that was likely only caused by the depression after the murders. Drinking became a method of coping. He probably drank himself stupid a number of nights, just so he could fall into fitful sleep without thoughts of what was missing from his life. But that wasn’t Nick. That was Nick trying to cope and keep living. We know nothing of the man before.
But there are things we can possibly assume about the events leading up to his deal with Lucifer.
- Nick was tired.
I’d say this is a pretty accurate assumption given what we’ve seen of him so far. He was drinking regularly to cope with the loss. He lived alone and seemed to have little connection with people left living. He and Sarah might have been estranged from their families. There’s no real sign of recent mourning in the home, it’s just quiet. In all likeliness, Nick himself might have been accused of the murders by the Pine Creek PD, adding to the stress of their deaths considerably. At the point Lucifer finds him, Nick is just steps away from giving up, possibly even thinking of taking his own life to return to his family. Which is a little convenient for Lucifer. - Lucifer is known for pulling strings.
Before Lucifer is even out of the cage, he was plotting and planning. He gets messages to Azazel, few and far between, but he makes sure his subjects know their cause. Mary Winchester is murdered years before Lucifer’s release, setting Sam on the perfect path to his Boy King destiny. And Lucifer is calculating. He knows Sam, Sam is his perfect vessel, so Sam is just as stubborn as he is. He knows Sam won’t open his arms wide the moment Lucifer is free. He’s going to have to work to get to Sam, so until he does he’s going to need a back up. He can’t just prepare for the apocalypse on earth as a giant ball of celestial intent, he needs to have the right prom dress for the job.So enter Nick.Nick is likely related to the Winchesters distantly. Angels need to follow the bloodline. Castiel wore Jimmy and his daughter, but couldn’t use the wife. Michael was shown to be able to wear John, making it highly probable that the Winchester line, not the Campbell line, was the more important ingredient in the vessel lineage. So if Lucifer couldn’t have Sam, he’d need to look further up the tree. Perhaps John had an aunt who had a son, and somewhere along the line the family lost touch. Part of the family heads to the east coast, another part remains in Kansas. You get the perfect set up of estranged families, neither too able to help the other when their wives mysteriously die. But this bloodline connection would only be small part of the back up vessel’s plan, if bloodline was the only thing that mattered Lucifer would just use Sam.
What Lucifer needed was a vessel who was willing.
If Lucifer was able to plan with Azazel, what’s to say he couldn’t send a message to Lilith, his first born? Lilith was brutal, she did whatever she had to and killed anyone who even thought about getting in her way, intentionally or not. She already knew her role in her father’s release, that she would have to die if he was to be freed. She certainly would have had no problems taking a few crucial chess pieces with her.
So I ask you to imagine this:
Imagine that Lilith had kept Pine Creek under her watch. She sent demons to possess a number of the locals, just to keep eyes on Nick. She would have found out very quickly that his family was important, that he loved them dearly. And Lilith is a pro, she knows how to break a man on or off the rack. So just before she gives Ruby the orders to bring Sam to her, Lilith makes a personal stop in Pine Creek. She ditches the dental hygienist and picks up a local man, someone no one would suspect of murder, and waits. She might even have worn the man long enough to say hi to Nick, she probably picked someone he knew. And then she appeared outside his home, pushed open the creaky metal gate, and let herself inside. The murder is probably vicious. This isn’t a regular murder, this needs to destroy Nick when he finds them. Imagine Sarah and her boy at home. He starts to cry and Sarah sings to him, walking through the home, bouncing him in her arms, completely unaware of the demon watching them. Lilith doesn’t make it quick for either of them. She makes them suffer, makes Sarah watch her child bleed out before Lilith finishes her off.
It must have taken professionals days to clean to blood out of that house to make it livable for Nick again. And he was the one to find them. He came home, expecting to find his child sleeping and his wife happy to see him and instead he found a slaughter. Imagine how that must have ruined him. We saw his face when he saw the blood in the crib when Lucifer was circling him. He was destroyed by their deaths. And it was probably all part of Lucifer’s plan, even then. He needed someone angry, someone who wanted revenge but couldn’t get it himself. And he got that with Nick. Nick was perfect; capable of holding in his grace, at least temporarily, and ready to trust in a fallen angel, the only one who could possibly understand how betrayed he felt by god.
Nick was toyed with. He was used. And in the end his body was left forgotten somewhere in Detroit, burned out and empty, when Lucifer shed him off in favor of Sam Winchester. That Nick was even alive after that is unlikely. When Castiel was hospitalized he was reported as brain dead because of the strain he put on his proper vessel. Nick was barely able to contain Lucifer. His body was burning from the inside out with Lucifer’s grace. Even if Nick lived through all of that, it was in terrible agony. If he wasn’t dead when Lucifer dropped him, he died very shortly after.
And no one cared. The brothers had other things on their mind. They didn’t see Nick. They just saw the devil’s empty shell. No one was left to mourn Nick. No family. Any friend he had must have thought him dead by then, having been gone from Pine Creek without a word for months.
In the end, we can only hope that his soul was taken by someone like Tessa to heaven, forgiven by god for accepting the devil, so that he can see his family once again.
Inky Musings 