Constantine season 1, episode 7, “Blessed Are the Damned,” just finished airing. This week, John and Zed got up close and personal with some angels.
Praise the Lord
The episode begins with a preacher named Zachary using a poisonous rattlesnake to prove God will protect him from evil. His plan goes awry when he’s bitten, but things quickly become strange when he comes back to life moments later, stuffing a strange object in his pocket, and subsequently healing a man named Nate who had lost his leg.
Zed returns tonight, and she’s in an art class drawing a nude male model. When she sees a vision of snakes wrapped around her ankles, she high-tails it out of there, but not before the handsome man, Eddie, convinces her to have dinner with him.
Back at the lair, Zed tells John of her vision, and he points out the latest news (from a conspiracy website, no less) of a Kentucky preacher who has been creating miracles. Zed once again refuses to answer questions about her past, and John once again reveals the inner workings of his sexual prowess by throwing a ream of condoms in his bag despite the fact he’ll be going to church for their next mission. Chas, it seems, is visiting his daughter.
God is Great
Zed and John visit the church of the now-famous preacher, which is packed full of people waiting to be healed. As the duo sees him work his “divine” power, they realize something more is going on. When the preacher starts chanting in Enochian, the language of angels, John knows something is seriously off: “Nobody wields that kind of power without consequences.”
At the hospital, Nate is getting examined by a doctor, who is understandably perplexed by his fully-healed leg. Nate begins to sweat profusely, and when the doctor examines his eyes, we see the irises change. The man attacks and brutally murders the doctor before strolling out of the room nonchalantly.
Zed and John jump in line to speak with the preacher, and when Zed takes the man’s hands, she sees a bright light and what looks like angel wings. John, who refuses to take his hands, asks him where he learned the Enochian, but he doesn’t get any answers.
Nate walks down the road when a cop pulls over to talk to him. He brutally attacks the cop, then runs off on all fours.
A nice touch
Zed tries to convince John the preacher’s heart is in the right place, but Constantine is still sure that magic is somehow involved. This is proven when they find an entire pond full of dead fish.
John gets fed up asking Manny to join them, so he summons him instead. “Your will be done… please,” he says. It works, but Manny isn’t much help. John wants him to translate the Enochian, but all the angel says is, “It would only make sense if you stand facing the sun.”
Then, naturally, he disappears. John has Zed hum the Enochian they heard earlier, while facing the sun, and the two hear chanting in the distance.
The Ugly One
The two find a fallen angel named Imogen. She says she was taking a dying mortal to heaven when he pulled a feather from her wing and was revived, sending Imogen to earth in physical form.
Manny shows up to ask Imogen if she’s okay. He says a mortal has never been able to remove a feather before and that Imogen will cease to exist if they don’t get that feather back.
Zed is fascinated by the angels, even though she can’t see Manny. She wants to know where her powers come from — whether they’re from God, or from something much worse. “Doesn’t matter where they came from,” John tells her while he sets up a spell to keep evil away from the angel. “What matters is what you do with them. And what it costs ya.”
Gone wrong
The preacher’s sister returns to him with news that Nate is a suspect in two murders. Zachary doesn’t believe it, or so he says. When his sister coughs up blood, he tries to heal her, but she refuses, not trusting him. Zachary kicks her out of the church for being a non-believer.
That night, John tells Zach he knows about the angel feather, but when he tries to take it, he gets blown off his feet. Zachary says John’s the only evil there and kicks him out.
Zed is attacked in the tent she erected on the front lawn alongside the believers. It’s Nate, and he seems ready to kill her when John shows up and puts him down. He was a ghoul, which is formed when magic goes wrong. Zed was attacked because she took some of Zachary’s power when she touched him. They need to get the feather back before more people turn.
Convincing Zachary she wants to be baptized, Zed gets dunked and steals the feather. People start turning right then and there, so John saves the preacher and Zed runs to get the feather back to Imogen.
Like Hell
Manny asks Imogen what pain is like, and she describes it as if it’s both wonderful and horrible at the same time. She and Manny talk about how humans have thrown away the gift God gave them, and while Manny feels guilty for his thoughts, Imogen does not.
Meanwhile, the preacher admits to John that this entire situation was because he’s being punished for killing a man while driving drunk. John realizes Zachary was on his way to hell and that Imogen is not exactly what she seems.
Zed replaces the feather, and Imogen’s wings turn black. Imogen had been cast out of heaven for killing a mortal to see how easy it would be. She put the feather in Zachary’s hands to break through from Hell to earth.
Imogen tries to escape, but John’s spell keeps her from leaving. She threatens Zed’s life, and John begs Manny to stop her. Manny seemingly refuses and disappears, but immediately shows up in Zed and rips Imogen’s heart out.
Consequences
Zachary returns to his church and begins preaching again, hoping he’s not too late to change his fate. Manny draws an obvious comparison to John, but Constantine is having none of that. As he stores the still-beating heart of Imogen in a jar on his shelf, Manny tells him the barrier between Hell and earth is thinner than it’s ever been. There will be consequences for Manny’s actions, and the Rising Darkness is still going strong.
Washing away the blood under her fingernails, Zed gets a call from Eddie, the model. She completely forgot about their date, and while he seemingly takes it nicely, there’s more going on here than we first realized.
In the back of Eddie’s car is a man. They discuss the fact that Zed won’t be arriving that night, but the man is still hopeful. “Soon then,” he says. We notice he’s wearing a cross with blue stones around his neck, just like Zed has.