Airdate: April 30th, 2003.

Guest Starring:
Gina Torres
Stephanie Romanov

Written by: David Fury

Directed by: Jefferson Kibbee

Teaser

Picking up where we left off, Wesley, Gunn, Fred and Lorne are fighting for their lives against Connor and Jasmine’s National Guard. Hand to hand or blunt or blunt objects mostly. But they are hopelessly outnumbered, as one by one they are taken out. Wesley is the last to fall, thrown to the wall by Connor. Connor only wants one thing: Angel.

At the Messenger’s world, Angel is standing on a Cliffside surrounded by quadrupod creatures, similar to the Messenger. They shriek, Angel raises the key, they shriek some more and disperse. Angel look around and see an ornate temple at the top of a peak. He walks to it.

ACT I

The A.I. team has been rounded up and surrounded, not far from the body of the Messenger. Connor is furious, what did they think they could do, poison the city with their hate? For all their talk of saving the world, now someone has done it for them, and he thinks they can’t stand it because they’re so full of themselves. They’re the ones who are left out, who don’t belong. Gunn is glad if it means they don’t have to follow some false god and kill in her name. Wesley tells Connor that he has no idea what Jasmine is, Connor says he does, she’s his. He lifts the sword to kill Wesley when Jasmine, through a Guardsmen, tell his to wait. She wants them brought to her alive and intact. Connor wonders why but Jasmine shouldn’t have to explain her wishes to him. He relents. She thanks him.

Angel is scaling the rock face barehanded, with some tremendous effort. As we pull back we see he’s only halfway there.

Jasmine is thanking a group of people for the sacrifice they’ve made when Connor and the soldiers come in with the prisoners. She has the followers wait for her in the banquet hall. The A.I. team is lined up in front of Jasmine, she starts on how they are, Gunn cuts her off, it’s not the worst beating they’ve taken. She mean the pain they’ve cost themselves, letting go of her. It’s not in her power to bring them back to the fold, Fred states bluntly that nobody asked. Jasmine asks Wes where’s Angel, he says they’re not sure but she should know; Connor hits him. Jasmine doesn’t want to see any more outbursts from Connor. Wesley, nursing his jaw, thinks that Jasmine recognized the Messenger, She does. A zealot Wesley surmises. She recounts how a few millennia ago the Messenger’s world wasn’t unlike this one: full of hatred and fear, war scarring the planet. Until, Gunn says sarcastically, she came along and made it a paradise. As much of a paradise a she could with a bunch of insects to work with. She helped them along, brought their evolution a few notches up. But it didn’t quite work out, it was more of a trial run, to work out one of the kinks. She won’t make the same mistake again. She knows where Angel is and what he’s looking for but he’s wasting his time. Wes points out that if she believed that, they’d all be dead by now. She summons her assistant Patience, and has the arriving news teams set up in the lobby, she’ll join them after she’s eaten. Wesley says it must have been trouble conquering the other world without the benefit of satellites to beam her message to the rest of the world. He’s not wrong she says. Fred pleads with Connor to not le this happen, Jasmine won’t free the world, she’ll enslave it. She’s a monster Gunn continues, Fred finishes that ebony babe is not what Jasmine looks like. Connor replies that he knows what she looks like and from his POV we see Jasmine, maggot face. She’s beautiful he say. Jasmine has them shown to their cell. Wes says that they’re only bargaining chips to keep Angel silent. When Jasmine and Connor are alone, she tells him that her address will be draining and while she feasts, she’ll be out of touch with everyone including him. She wants him to stand guard over the prisoners. When he asks what Angel is after she just says: “The Unattainable”

We see the inside of the temple with a big stone statue of human Jasmine, Angel walks in, the torches are lit but nobody’s home. A voice tells him he’s come a long way in for nothing. Angel turns around and faces the diminutive High Priest, Guardian of the Word, Caretaker of Her Most Blessed Temple. But it’s empty; centuries of waiting for her return have caused most to doubt, but not him. He sees her as the light, the way. Angel says she’s not coming back. The High Priest says she will, once she’s done with our world. Angel feigns innocence: maybe they’re not talking about the same person, what’s her name? The High Priest doesn’t fall for it, that’s the reason why Angel’s here. Angel grabs him by the throat, but the High Priest says that he can take away her power, but he’ll lose everything.

Connor locks the A.I. team in the same cell that kept Angelus. Lorne asks Connor why the ritual didn’t work on him and comes to the realization that he has seen her true face. Gunn’s incredulous, he’s seen the maggots and he still worships her? Connor reminds them that he grew up in the Quor’Toht, a hell dimension with things of unimaginable horrors, beauty is not that important to him. Fred asks him then what is important to him: Cordelia is in a debilitating coma and who knows what it’s doing to her. How can he be sure if he hasn’t seen her, even if Jasmine told him? Wesley asks him what does Jasmine eats, if she’s the devourer? Connor says he doesn’t know. Wes connects the dots, it’s people, which disgust Gunn even more: the people in the banquet hall are the banquet. And they have no way of knowing if she devoured Cordy. Doubt flashes on Connor’s face.

The High Priest sees Angel’s purpose in his mind and heart, Angel tightens his grip, he also knows he’s in a hurry. He wants her name, the High Priest screams “Keeper!” which leaves Angel confused and he sets the priest down. Only the Keeper of the Word knows her true name, he’s the Guardian of the Word. He points at the keeper but says he won’t be forthcoming, he’ll only say it on his dying breath. Angel goes to the kneeling demon, which’s very much in shape, ripping muscles. The demon turns to Angel, the mouth stitched shut. They won’t be doing this the easy way.

ACT II

As Jasmine followers disrobe in the banquet hall, Connor walks in: He needs to talk to Jasmine, alone. They step aside, but Connor has trouble forming his question, what did she do with Cordelia. She repeats that she’s where she needs her to be and out of harm’s way. He still wants to know, she picks it out that he thinks she ate Cordy. But she could never hurt her or Connor. her parents are her tethers to this world. She had her faithful move her to a secure location. He asks Jasmine who took her, she says it doesn’t matter only that he knows that she’s well and under constant guard. He leaves, shutting the door for her.

Angel is now fighting the Keeper of the Word. The High priest wonders what’s he fighting for: valour? Justice? His friends are likely dead. That distracts Angel as a punch knocks him across the room. He’s trying to save his world, he says, a world that doesn’t want, doesn’t care for Jasmine. The High Priest tells him that he may be right, but that’s not why he’s here. Angel gets the upper hand long enough, throwing his adversary aside, to ask the demon what he’s fighting for. His son, the High Priest replies, he’s already lost Cordelia and he’ll lose Connor as well. The Keeper grabs Angel.

Connor is prowling the lobby of the hotel as techies are setting up feeds for different parts of the world. He smells Cordy on a girl who’s wearing her perfume. Connor spots a guy with her scent but is delayed by a pesky news anchor. He reaches the where Jeremy and the other are, picking up jasmines. They recognize him, but he just needs to know where Cordy is. They deny it; he says Jasmine told him, they say to ask her then. He beats them up and picks up Luke: he can smell her on them.

The High Priest tell angel, who’s in a chokehold, about all the effort he’s done for his son and how it’s never enough. Why bother anyway, he was just a device to bring forth Jasmine. Angel frees himself, he replies that people get born for all sorts of reasons. Angel stabs the Keeper and it recoils, then lunges at him with a club. Angel duck and it hits the High Priest sending him flying, just as he’s telling Angel that Connor will never love him. The High Priest lands on a spike, killing him. Angel is once more picked up.

Gunn is furiously kicking the cell door and not stopping unless someone has a better plan. But by then the whole world will be pro-Jasmine. Fred finds it weird that Connor left them unguarded, maybe they were getting to him. Wes wonders why Jasmine had Cordy moved when they were on the run. He believes that Cordy has power over Jasmine, if Jasmine can’t kill her. But they have to find her first.

Connor arrives to a church (where a sign says God is nowhere, Jasmine is the way!), he walks past the first set of doors only to find the second set barricaded. Two jolly police officers find him there. No one is supposed to be inside the church, Jasmine’s request/orders. He needs to get in there , they try to communicate the request again to have him leave, or they’ll have to get rough. Connor flings them through the barricaded doors. He takes out the conscious one. Cordy is lying on a slab at the altar, covered in a thin sheet.

Jasmine, tentacles retracting and green glow fading, has finished feasting: time for her close-up.

ACT III

Connor is next to the comatose Cordelia at the altar. He’s speaking softly to her, he had to know she was still there, he just wishes she’d wake up and see the new beginning. He asks her, himself really, protecting Jasmine so she give birth to her and make the world she wanted. He gets upset, the world is a better place, not like Angel and others want it, so that they can always have a reason to fight, the only thing that gives their lives meaning. Out of frustration he smashes the lectern. He’s not like them, he just wants to stop fighting and rest, but he can’t. It’s not working, he tried and wanted to believe in Jasmine. She’s bringing peace and ridding everyone of their anger, except him. He knows Jasmine is a lie, his whole life was built on them, but this one was better than the others.

In the Hyperion lobby, reporters are listing the virtues of Jasmine. Jeremy tells Jasmine in the hallway that Connor forced the location of Cordelia from him, but she can’t deal with that right now, her press conference is starting. She arrives on the upper level balcony. The faithful bow down, but she’ll have none of that, she wants all to share and cherish the moment. She welcomes the people of the world on international television. She’s a partner among them to make the best of all possible worlds, a peace’n’love world with no borders, misery or hunger, filled with respect and understanding. They clap. In the cell below they can hear the applause. They’re alone and it’s their fault. Back at the conference, Jasmine opens the floor to questions. The first reporter she asks is so surprised that she knows her name that she just trails off and forgets her question. The second wants to know how they can show their love for her. All they have to do is love one another she says. However she’d like temple, nice, massive yet warm. As she’s describing it a vortex opens in the middle of the reporters, they all back off, Angel emerges and drops the key. She orders all of them to kill him, he raises the severed Keeper’s head and they back away. He’s sorry and with a knife slices opens its mouth. It says her name, a whisper really, in it’s dying breath. Jasmines glows and the ugly maggot truth is revealed to everyone and on camera. The reporters scream and runs, and she reverts to her more human self, though with sores and facial scarring. She pleads with all to ignore the “illusion” Angel has forced on them, but it’s no use. As the lobby empties she leaves from the upper level, Angel follows.

In the cell, they don’t like what they’re hearing upstairs and Gunn keeps kicking the door, thinking that the devourer must have eaten a snack. Gunn knocks the door open, saying “never give up, never surrender.” They get out to see what’s happening.

L.A. is in chaos: riots, looting, fires. Jasmine is walking through all of this dazed. Some recognize her and either scream in terror or throw things at her. She calls for Connor. At the church, Connor is sitting on the floor next to Cordelia and hears Jasmine’s call, through one of the downed policemen. He rushes to her.

Jasmine is walking in the middle of a road (overpass), cars swerving to avoid her. Angel is not far behind on foot, he says to her that it’s over: she’s lost and he did what he had to. She says that there are no absolutes, right or wrong, only choices: she offered the world paradise. Angel says that they chose this because they could, that’s what she took away from them. She makes him look, that choice resulted in the current chaos. he didn’t say it was perfect, but it’s their mistake to make, their right. It’s what makes them human, even if he isn’t. She walks away, only wanting to be left alone. He can’t let her do that, not after all she’s done. But even if he’s already stripped her of her powers and he can’t kill her, he’ll die before she kills someone else. She retorts that he’s killed many too, she may have eaten thousands, but millions will die in the world as it is; She could have stopped it all. He says that: “the price was too high. Our fate has to be our own, or it’s not worth living.” Angel walks to her, it may not have been the world that she wanted, but she can still make it a better place, even without her powers. She ponders it for a second before hitting him, sending him clear across the overpass and on a car on the level below.

ACT IV

Angel, on the hood of the car, tells the occupant to run as Jasmine picks up an abandoned vehicle. She screams to him that he hasn’t begun to pay for that high price. She tosses the station wagon over, Angel rolls to the side. The wagon snags wires, ignites and crashes on the empty car. Both explode. Jasmine jumps to his level, and tosses Angel near some live wires. Maybe she can make this world a better place, one body at a time. She loved this world and sacrificed everything to be in it. She cared, the other powers didn’t. Angel hits her with a live wire, the bolt of electricity sending her flying to a fence. But she was forged in the fires of creation, so an electric jolt won’t do much to her. They fight, he’s sent careening to a lamppost, smashing it. She reminds him of the prophecy, about his role in the coming apocalypse, about how he wasn’t sure on which side he was. She now has just enough strength to wipe out humanity and it’s all on his hands. He tries to break away from her grip, she breaks his arm and kisses him. Connor is right behind them, with a sense of déjà vu: Angel stealing his girl.

Wesley and the gang have searched the hotel, no signs of anyone but them and TV stations are off the air. Something big happened while they were locked up and Gunn picks up the Keeper’s head, Angel must have done this. They have to find him before Jasmine does. As they exit they are all stunned by what they see.

Jasmine still has Connor, Angel can’t defeat both of them. She asks Connor if he still loves her and believes in her: he still does. Then he puts his fist through her head, killing her instantly. Angel looks at him: Connor is expressionless. Angel tells him it’s over and he’s just glad that his son is alive. Connor runs away, Angel is too weak to run after him.

At the hotel the gang is cleaned and refresh as Angel painfully drags himself in. He’s happy to see them alive and tells them that Connor killed Jasmine. He cuts them off as he tells them that Connor wasn’t hurt or angry when he killed her, just blank. He’s afraid he’s going to do something. “Like end world peace?” Lilah asks him. She looks very much alive and well and goes on: “You already took care of that. Congratulations.”



Summary by Dannyboy