Constantine season 1, episode 2, “The Darkness Beneath,” introduces us to a new demon and a new character. Read our recap here!
Extra crispy
Constantine opens episode 2, “The Darkness Beneath,” with a miner, Lannis, coming home to his wife after a tough day at work. It’s obvious he’s both an alcoholic and abusive. When he jumps into the shower, we see a shadow pass behind him. The water begins to turn muddy and then flames erupt from the spout. The man is burned to a crisp, and the only evidence of foul play is a black hand print on the wall.
John decides to head to Pennsylvania because one of the drops on the map Liv left for him is wet. He’s going to a tiny mining town where a miner was charbroiled in his own shower. Chas, however, won’t be joining him. It seems that chasing a succubus way back when led him to derail a train and there’s still a warrant out for his arrest.
Meanwhile, Zed continues to sketch John, and it’s starting to piss her off that she has no idea who he is.
Luckily, as she leaves her apartment, she bumps into John on the street. She tells him she dreams about him, but he doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her. He promises her answers but makes a quick getaway, leaving her hanging. Unbeknownst to him, though, she picked his pocket and now she knows his real name.
Knock, knock
At the local bar, John finds out a lot of people have died in the last year or so. They’ve all been accidents, but some people believe something is down in the mine. A few people have even heard knocking.
Knowing there’s more going on than meets the eye, John enters the mine, knocks on the wall, and hears knocking back. There’s definitely something down there.
Constantine invites himself to the house of the widow as the town gathers to pay their respects. He sneaks into the bathroom to check out the crime scene, and collects the gunk inside the shower head. The wife catches him and kicks him out, but not before he tells the owner of the mine he knows about the demon and a few of the guys knock John around a little bit.
Chica bonita
When Constantine gets back to the hotel, Zed is waiting for him. It seems they’ve dug around in each other’s garbage bins. John says he’s starting to like her, but not enough to keep her around. When Zed grabs his arm, she tells him that pain and desperation motivate him and wonders what kind of person he is.
John realizes Zed is the real deal and makes her close her eyes and concentrate on a white dove lost in a snowstorm. When she’s in a trance, he pours a little bit of the black goo into her hand and she sees a stone cross before witnessing the fire coming out of the shower head.
Under the guise of changing his clothes before they head off, John sneaks out the window and Zed angrily yells her first — but probably not her last — “Constantine!”
Constantine goes to the church from Zed’s vision and performs a spell, pouring water over his head, allowing him to see the demon.
Faith no more
Zed goes to a bar looking for Constantine, but finds a former priest instead. He left the church when the mine killed his son. Zed then returns to her apartment, only to find Constantine napping on her couch. She tries to kick him out, but he says he had to verify what she told him as a security precaution. Yeah, right.
Constantine has been doing some digging on Zed Martin, however, and comes to conclusion that she’s running from something. She admits it, saying she knows exactly what she’s running from, and asks him if he knows the same. Constantine says she can stick with him, but only if she’s tough enough to face down the demons he fights every day.
An alarm sounds, and Zed tells John the mine has collapsed. They go to the mine to find out what happened, and John confronts the son of the mine owner in his car. They’ve been digging unauthorized tunnels in untapped earth, and they found something down there. Before they can get much further, the car begins to fill up with muddy water, and hands drag the two men under. Zed pries the door open and saves John, but the other man isn’t so lucky.
Even after what she saw, Zed isn’t going anywhere. John tells her coblynau are spirits of dead miners, knocking on walls to warn the men of danger. But they don’t usually come to the surface like the creatures in the car. John thinks it’s the rising darkness, something forcing evil into the open, changing the rules. They both come to the conclusion that someone is calling these monsters forward.
Boom
Zed and John return to the bar, where the miners have gathered for an emergency meeting. Zed tells John about the priest, and they decide he’s the perfect suspect — a man who’s turned his back on faith and is bitter and angry about his son’s death. Constantine leads Zed in another vision, and she sees a campsite next to a river.
When they confront the priest at his campsite, the man tells them you need faith to raise evil, and he’s fresh out. All of the people who’ve died above ground have been the bosses, and therein lies their biggest clue.
The owner of the mine goes underground with his other son, and they’re instantly attacked by the demons. Constantine reminds the coblynau its a protector spirit, and Zed draws a symbol on the wall with some of her paint. The owner has died, but the son survives.
Then Constantine blows up the whole mine to make sure no one ever goes down there again.
The rising darkness
But who summoned the spirits? It was Lannis’ wife, a Romani gypsy who was tired with her lot in life. When John confronts her at her house, she summons the spirits to kill him, but he raises her husband, who drags her underground. The spirits disappear when she’s taken away, and Constantine returns to his hotel room.
Zed’s waiting for him, wanting to make sure he was okay — and wanting to make sure he didn’t run off on her again. He tells her that every person who puts their trust in him dies, but she can’t leave. Not before she figures out what what connects them.
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