Constantine Ep. 9: Ancient Covens and Demon Possessions

Constantine, Episode 9: The Saint of Last Resorts, Part 2

In part two of this two-parter… we don’t really get much connection between the two beyond sharing Anne-Marie and Pazuzu as guest stars. None of the themes brought up in the first part of this two-parter is relevant here – not the Rising Darkness, not Zed’s Papa’s organization, not Lamasthu or the babynapping rituals, and the Invunche only features for like three minutes… the plot this time around revolves around Constantine slowly being possessed and taken over by a demon, and his desperate attempts to exorcise it while (a) another supernatural member of La Brujeria is lawyering it up, (b) he’s trapped in a Mexican prison and (c) Sister Anne-Marie is struggling with her own problems. Yet the character arcs that Constantine and Anne-Marie went through this episode really makes the two episodes feel like a mini-arc of itself, so kudos for that.

The Invunche cliffhanger from the previous episode was downright disappointing as all Constantine did was pull out the Pazuzu amulet, disable all protective enchantments and shit and allow Pazuzu to possess him and scare the Invunche off. This apparently causes Pazuzu to infect Constantine ‘like a cold’, as Constantine puts it, where there’s an incubation period before full possession happens. Apparently.

We see Constantine go from a range of emotions which mostly is just acceptance – he accepts that if he fails at self-exorcism he’s going to hell and he’d rather have Chaz stab him with the pretty golden knife instead of unleashing Pazuzu on the world. He’s angry at Manny for what he views as not giving a shit – when Manny himself notes that Constantine didn’t even bother to ask. He’s apologetic to Anne-Marie, yet has enough faith in his old friend in the end. He’s horrified when he found out he mutilated those Santa Muerte gangsters, yet isn’t afraid of throwing his weight around in the Mexican prison to get what he wants. And, um, he frothes and drools like a total madman when he gets possessed. Kudos for the actor for nailing that possessed version of Constantine.

Also, Pazuzu!Constantine just saying all the dark shit and trash-talking Zed, Chaz and Anne-Marie is great. Anne-Marie undoubtedly worked through her self-esteem issues by the successful exorcism, but bringing out Zed’s father (which is totally a raw wound) and talking shit about Chaz being left by everyone including his mentioned-but-never-seen daughter. And, whoa, Chaz does look angry in that scene. I think that’s the most emotion we ever saw out of Chaz.

Anne-Marie seals her character arc as well, firstly by running away from Constantine like Gary and she did after Newcastle, and eventually embracing that she needs to be at least try to help out when Zed and Chaz confront her, and outright active when she helps to sneak into the Mexican prison and even help smuggle Constantine out by astral-projecting… a naked image of herself. Which is totally a huge distraction, I can tell you that. And her scene in the end, where she fails to exorcise Pazuzu and he apparently takes control… before Zed gets Anne-Marie to accept and forgive herself… it’s cliché, for sure, the whole ‘the problem is within you’ zen thing, but hey, it works for the context of the story.

Pazuzu himself is pretty bland. He’s better than Lamasthu last episode for being scarier both literally and figuratively – a frothing, angry, screaming and cursing possessed Constantine is a lot scarier than a generic hag, and the threat of possessing Constantine and overwriting his entire personality while damning Constantine to hell is considerably higher stakes for our heroes. And what’s to say there isn’t a bit of Pazuzu left in Constantine?

We get a bit more of Manny, too, and he was totally disappointed and pissed off at Constantine in the beginning, but his short appearance in the end hinted that he might’ve helped out unseen. Manny’s weird. But he’s cool. We get a bit more on the Constantine-soul-damned-forever plot thread, but nothing much came out of it because the Pazuzu thing is more prominent.

The Pazuzu plotline really took over the entire storyline, though, and any other side plots really felt like distraction. And honestly I’m not convinced we needed to spend so much time with the Mexican gangster stereotypes in the prison. Why couldn’t we have built up the agent sent by the Rising Darkness more? We get a potentially interesting dude in Vicente, otherwise known as Nahash, who apparently is the original tempter. He… doesn’t get to do much. He gets this creepy scene where his jaws extended like a snake and ate a lawyer, and he shows up and is all Medusa-esque and snakes and “I AM NAHASH” and shit, but really we could’ve had more built-up because after the long speech about who he is, he ends up being taken in less than a minute. There’s a nice little moment where this villain-of-the-week might actually do something as Anne-Marie seemed to be tempted like Nahash’s epithet suggests, but nope, instant knife to the back and he explodes into snakes.

These La Brujeria demon operatives end up really underwhelming, aren’t they? Other than the Invunche, who’s presumably still hanging around writhing all painful-like in the sewers. Why not bring it back as the big threat in the middle of the episode and cut out all the superfluous Mexican prison bits? Julio’s cool, though, as stereotypical and meaningless to the plot as he is.

It’s definitely a great episode for both Constantine and Anne-Marie’s characters, a nice little tense plot with the Pazuzu possession and in those regards it’s definitely a really solid episode. As far as an episode building up to a bigger plot and a climax – for both La Brujeria and the Resurrection Crusade, it doesn’t really do much. But still, I'd still take a solid episode any day. Makes you really wish they cut out all the filler from the earlier parts of the season, don't you?