Can a demon king in Constantine’s body improve his personality?
What They Say:
The Saint of Last Resorts Part 2 – John summons a demon into himself to help fend off an attack; Chas, Zed and Anne Mari rush to save John
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Though we’ve only got thirteen episodes for this season, the show still had a midseason break in it due to the holidays and the split was definitely a cliffhanger as we had the events with Anne Marie and her essentially sacrificing Constantine for her and the child’s survival. The series has definitely grown a lot from the start and hit its stride, making it a pretty solid show with engaging characters and a growing lore and mythology to work with. The introduction of Anne Marie gave it a really neat feeling as it added more depth to the kinds of relationships that Constantine has had over the years and any additional touches to his past just show more and more layers to him.
With the threat of the demons down in the sewers, and the additional threat of the barrier between hell and earth weakening, it’s a pretty intense sequence down there as the creature goes and gnaws at Constantine, giving us a kind of really creepy horror aspect and design that doesn’t feel like we get often in shows like this. But what’s really neat is seeing Constantine face it down with his magic and energy, which has him straddling both sides in a difficult way as he basically draws the demon into his body. Having Manny show up amid all of this, chewing him out for working with the demon, just makes it into quite the conflict between the two as what Constantine has done goes against pretty much everything he’s about. And it just widens the rift that exists between the two even more.
Now that Constantine has shuffled off his protections to take the demon in, he’s intent on finishing off the job, though he’s also making sure that if he can’t get it done in time before the demon takes over that Chas will be the one to kill him. Suffice to say, Constantine is going to have a fair bit of a struggle to cope with demon inside of him as it’s refusing to be cast out since taking control of Constantine gives it a real in with the world. And now that it’s there, it’s causing quite a lot of trouble as we see just what kind of chaos it’s causing down in the area as the body count is going to rise steadily. And even Chas calling in Zed to try and help may not be enough.
Zed’s storyline in this two parter was a bit less interesting as it goes back to things with her father some now that she’s been kidnapped to be taken back to him. Her visions are still intense but her desire to flee is even more so as she wants nothing to do with any of that anymore. It’s good to see she’s picked up some additional resourcefulness since working with Constantine and we get to see her dealing with her situation well enough and getting away from it all, at least for awhile. Her getting down to Mexico isn’t badly done, but it feels like it’s seriously cut short from what she might have gone through with her escape. But since that storyline doesn’t seem interesting so far, it’s not a big loss.
There’s a lot of fun in seeing how Constantine has to navigate being in a Mexican jail for the moment while having Pazuzu inside of him. He’s always looking for a way to move forward and the time with Manny does some good stuff as we see that he’s not afraid of dying and his fate there, having earned it, but he doesn’t want to get to that point until he finishes the work he has ahead of him. His attempts to find useful things in the chapel to help self exorcise don’t go very well, but it gets even worse when more of the gang members show up that want revenge for their friends death. Since he’s full of a demon king, and it wants its host to survive, it all goes pretty dark and grisly in a big way very quickly. The blood flows freely and easily when Pazuzu is around.
While Constantine struggles with this, it’s fun to see how Zed and Chas manage to make their way into the prison as well so they can help him with what he needs to do. Even Annie ends up realizing that Constantine isn’t quite the man that he was before and she’s willing to try and help him in this time. Their complicated relationship remains so, but it’s facing a real challenge considering what’s inside of Constantine. While external threats are involved here as well, the exorcism itself is a pretty fun moment as when Annie begins it, we see that there’s no real reaction, which shows that Constantine may be too far gone. What really takes it up a few notches is that the original sin snake has shown up here to end Constantine’s life. That’s another ancient threat to be sure, but the game has changed since he realizes that Constantine is about to be completely taken over by Pazuzu.
It’s an amusing turn as it goes about quickly and the tools they have end up being used to deal with the snake instead. The quirky chaos of it all is just hilarious even when it’s as serious as it is. The plan is a decent one overall to try the exorcism again in that they want to get back to Mill House with what it can present to them. But to do so, they have to drug him out pretty hard on heroin to keep Pazuzu down for the count since it’s a significant drive to get back to Mill House. It’s a lightly convoluted plan overall, but it’s done with a good bit of style and effort as they get him through all of this and out of the place. Seeing what Anne Marie does to take one for the team to try and get this taken care of is hilarious.
The exorcism itself has its moments, especially with how Constantine essentially begs Anne Marie to perform the ritual because of the growing need involved. There’s an old school kind of aspect to it with modern technology mixed in with how its presented which makes it rather compelling. The more Pazuzu takes over, the more we see just how great Matt Ryan is at playing this kind of role and committing to it wholly amid the exorcism. There’s some really good aspects to this as it gets more intense and we see again how Zed’s able to read things better than others and reaches through to Annie in order to get her to really take control of the situation. It speaks well of the relationship and complications Anne Marie and Constantine have and how we get her to really deal with it in a big way here as the exorcism finally succeeds.
In Summary:
Though it’s been about a month since the last episode, the second half of this storyline all comes back quickly and in a good way to get you to invest in it again. The big part of this two part storyline was getting us to see another shade of Constantine through Anne Marie’s eyes and that helps to expand our understanding of him. Though he’s spent time with over the years illuminate him in really good ways that makes him a more nuanced character overall than one might first think. While we may be getting back to some more traditional stories going forward, we had some fantastic ones before this two part storyline that have built up the overall narrative and I’m hopeful for that. This season had a rough start, though I enjoyed the pilot, but it’s been doing really good stuff for several episodes now and making it a Friday night highlight.
Grade: A-