Supernatural Talk

Tarts talk about 8.16: "Remember the Titans"

By Suzette Chan
April 29, 2013

Sam and Dean investigate a what seems like a zombie case. However, they soon learn that they're dealing with Prometheus, the Titan that Zeus cursed with dying every day as punishment for stealing fire to help humans. Now Zeus is on Earth hunting him down with the help of his daughter, Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Despite their natural suspicion of supernatural beings, Sam and Dean help Prometheus, whose situation is complicated when he learns that he has a child who also carries the curse.

How did the show deal with the Greek legends?

Suzette Chan, Features Editrix: They did a better job than they have in the past. First, the gods were depicted to be much closer to lore than, for example, Osiris was in 7.04 "Defending Your Life." Second, after Sam realized who they were dealing with, he acknowledged the debt he and Dean owed to Prometheus for stealing fire and to Artemis, goddess of the hunt.

Going back to the premise of the show, familiar myths are placed into the Supernatural world of everyday joes-as-hunters. Right now, there is a great deal of interest in updating folk tales, as Once Upon a Time, Grimm and the spate of fairy tale redux movies over the last couple of years has proven. On Supernatural, Prometheus's actions led to lighting up the world to keep it safe from monsters, a clever ret-con.

Keeping a closer relationship with lore also lends an in-universe credibility to the three trials Sam has undertaken: they might literally be Herculean tasks. The conversation Sam had with Prometheus as they were digging up graves was interesting. Here were two individuals who made great sacrifices to save the world without any fanfare. Instead they were met with eternal torture (until they were rescued, Sam by Castiel, Prometheus by Sam and Dean via Artemis). No wonder Sam made the leap to compare his fate to Prometheus's.

The characterization of Artemis was interesting, especially if you put together the ideas that the world was a monster's paradise and that Artemis was the first hunter. It's easy to imagine that she was out there slaying monsters with no end in sight until Prometheus stole fire to light up the world and keep the monsters at bay. Perhaps that's how she met and came to admire Prometheus. In any case, there seem to be a wealth of possibilities there that are supported by both the Supernatural universe and enough key pieces of ancient Greek lore.

However, with that history unexplored, we have Artemis undone by a Juliet-type crush on her Romeo, Prometheus. Similarly, the brave Hayley lost her cool when her son was in danger, allowing Zeus to escape. Thus, the final complication of the the present day plot and the backstory plot both relied on female "weaknesses": defaulting to male-dependent roles that overrode their own accomplishments. Artemis was defeated by the love of a man; Hayley weakened in her role of mother to a male heir.

At least Hayley now gets to forge ahead with her son, who no longer bears his father's curse.

Oh, and Zeus was great. The very model of a modern megalomaniac, and not unlike the way John Glover looked and played Lionel Luther on Smallville.

Katherine Keller, Culture Vultures Editrix: I don't know whether to feel relieved or shocked that the depiction of the Greek pantheon managed to not reach the levels of epic fail that characterized their take on the Egyptian, Norse, and Hindu gods.

What I did like about the handling is that they managed to capture the level of capriciousness and pettiness that the gods display in Greek Mythology. The world sucks and is unfair because the gods suck and are themselves unfair. Oh, the gods can be kind and just, but they can also be just as rotten and mean as humans ... only, they're a lot more powerful than humans.

I disagree with Suzette's take on the actions of Artemis and Hayley. In Hayley's case, what mother wouldn't risk everything for her son? Zeus said he would cure her son if he was released from the trap. I can see Linda Tran doing the same thing. (Only, Linda Tran would have had a back-up plan to make Zeus stick to his word.) Also, the men around her, Sam, Dean, Prometheus, didn't explain the back-up plan to her, how did they planned to compel or cajole Zeus. I understand why she didn't view them as taking this seriously or seeming to care. To her, it looked more like a prideful pissing match than what was good for a little boy.

I found Artemis's actions earth shakingly awesome. She rebelled against her father. That doesn't happen in Greco-Roman mythology without huge repercussions. By taking a stand against Zeus, Artemis gained agency. She stayed silent once, and saw her beloved punished cruelly for eternity. Love for Prometheus, love for a man who would stand up for what was right, was her path to that agency. It was worth more to her to love him and stand up for him than it was to stand by and continue being daddy's (obedient) little girl. She's her own woman now.

(Unfortunately, since she killed Zeus, she's probably going to spend the rest of her existence dodging the mercies of the kindly ones, because Greco-Roman mythos is very clear that kinslaying is the unforgivable act, and not even the gods are exempt from them. Artemis knows the price of her actions, and she still chose to kill Zeus.)

At any rate, it was nice to see a deity from the non-Abrahamic pantheon turn out to be capable of reason and compassion. I liked that Artemis wasn't jealous of Hayley and bitter about Oliver. (She didn't immediately fly into a berserker rage and try to kill them.) That last look she gave Hayley was one of understanding and mutuality.

Anita Olin, Staff Writer: I was also pleased and surprised with the treatment of the Greek mythos in this episode. Prometheus lying on the road with the eagle nibbling on his liver was enough to tell me who he was, and Zeus was more than sufficiently petty. Sam making the connection to Artemis being the goddess of hunters was a stroke of genius, and I love the way she was modified to fit the Supernatural-verse. I'm a bit torn on the subject of Artemis's affection for Prometheus, as the goddess of mythology had forsworn men, but people change, and Artemis had to have witnessed enough of Zeus's crap to empathize with his victims. Traditionally, yet also contradictorily, Artemis is a protector of children and childbirth, which plays into her sympathies for Hayley and her son.

Now that she has both released her love from his curse and killed her father (as Katherine mentioned, that will have repercussions for her -- although she may get off on a technicality, since Prometheus was the one who forced the arrow through his own body to kill Zeus), what will she do? I would love to see her again, since she broke two longstanding Supernatural traditions; she's female and had agency, yet survived, and she's a pagan god who was not deemed evil and survived.

What story did the family's struggles tell?

Suzette: Family for these folks was made up of equal parts perseverance and dumb luck. Sam and Dean may be born brothers, but they can still make the choice to hang together or put some distance between each other. They also made the decision to stick together no matter what the fates tossed at them.

Supernatural usually deals with one individual victim, but in this episode, Sam and Dean split up to work separately with Prometheus and Hayley. That's how we got the parallel between Sam and Prometheus that I mentioned above. Dean being aligned with Hayley makes perfect sense: they are the individuals in their families who tried most to keep the family unit together.

Katherine: Which family? We've got three of them here: the Winchesters, the Titans, and the Olympians.

Each family has a secret with the potential to tear them apart. Sam is hiding the fact that he's coughing and spitting blood from Dean, saying that he's fine and can take on the trials. Hayley has kept the identity of the father of her son a secret. Artemis hid her love for Prometheus from Zeus. In two of those cases, the revelation of the secret caused as much pain as it did relief. I can't imagine that Dean's going to be happy when he discovers what Sam has hidden.

But also, in looking at these families, we see that love conquers all. Love is what enables people to hold together under great stress. It enables them to make the right choices, and it enables them to move forward.

Anita: Secrets, pain, and love are what these three families have in common. That we see it in the gods, in a titan and his half-human son, and in the human (if extraordinarily resilient) Winchesters seems to say: "This is the definition of family. What you choose to focus on is up to you."

The Winchester part of the episode opened with Sam's secret and closed with Dean's prayer. What is each brother's state of mind?

Suzette: Sam carries a lot of knowledge in his head, but he also worked on intuition. He has either naturally developed great mental agility, or he's feeling a bit reckless with the trials on his mind. In any case, he's still trying to hide his true physical situation from Dean.

Meanwhile, Dean seems to have gotten past his obsession with trusting only himself and is more focused on the welfare of his brother as he goes through the trials. The prayer to Castiel is a Hail Mary (Hail Castiel?) pass that Dean is not too proud to throw.

Ultimately, Sam is hiding physical problems. Dean is hiding emotional concerns.

Katherine: They are both worried. Sam is worried that maybe sealing the gates of hell is one way trip. He's also worried about the origin of whatever is causing him to spit blood. He knows that the minute Dean finds out about that, Dean will insist on summoning a hellhound.

Dean is worried about Sam, of course. It says a lot that he's worried enough about Sam that he'll try to trust somebody else (Castiel) with Sam's well-being.

Anita: Especially since Castiel has been acting so sketchy!

I agree with Katherine that they are both worried, but I see it going beyond that into pure freakout mode -- especially on Dean's part -- if they don't get a handle on what these trials mean. Was Sam's intuitive improvisation part of the result of the spell after the first trial? Or has he just been reading a lot in the Batcave?

Any other thoughts?

Suzette: I loved the zombie-obsessed state trooper. I wonder if he watches The Walking Dead and imagines himself as Rick.

I take it the rock star aliases are back for good: the boys posed as Agents (John) Bonham and (John Paul) Jones this week.

Is Sam a Steven Soderbergh fan? Oceans 11 is the second Soderbergh movie he's referenced this season, and he doesn't reference many movies.

I was surprised to see Sam and Dean bring the family to the Batcave. If they keep that up -- particularly with extra vehicles parked in front -- the location will not remain secret for long.

Dean is chuffed to be a legacy! It makes sense: he has a love/hate relationship with authority.

Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus�Sam is a classicist. Add 10 nerd points!

Prometheus tricked Zeus to help humans. In this episode, humans tricked Zeus to help Prometheus.

Appropriately, Sam and Dean gave Prometheus the biggest hunter's funeral pyre ever.

Katherine: I LOL'd when I saw the sign for Great Falls, Montana, a city I have been to many times in my childhood, set in terrain that looked a lot more like Missoula, Montana. (But hey, I'm just happy to see a story set in Montana!)

I also enjoyed the zombie-obsessed state trooper.

I was a bit surprised when Sam mentioned to Artemis that since they're hunters and she's a patroness of hunters, she should be on their side. It made me wonder if, when Zeus denied fire to humanity, she was the one hunting the things that go bump in the night, trying to protect people. At any rate, I'd like to see more of her in the goddess of the hunt(ers) role.

Anita: It was really nice, actually, to have the boys encounter a cop who had a taste for the paranormal.

Dean seems to be really enjoying that robe he found in the bunker.

Dean to Prometheus: "What, like a real-life Kenny?" Hee-heee!

Dean is making computer metaphors. Should we be scared? I mean, he was sniggering about the guy named "Dragon Penis" two minutes later.

Hayley got to live, too. And she got to tell Dean how easy it really is to get fulgurite!

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