Constantine Episode 1.07 Blessed Are the Damned

John and Zed head to rural Kentucky to investigate a preacher named Zachary rumored to have come back to life after nearly dying from a poisonous snakebite. But it's not his near death experience that piques their interest - it's the fact that afterwards he managed to perform miracles, including the restoration of an amputee's leg and a woman's crippling arthritis. Once they slip into the church, Zed and John remain skeptical... until they witness Zachary make burn scars disappear. The tipping point arrives when John hears the preacher (unknowingly) speak Enochian, the language of angels.

Meanwhile, the first person Zachary healed, the former amputee, transforms into a murderous demon, brutally killing his doctor and then a police officer, clearly possessed by something otherworldly. What exactly is going on in this town?

Still curious about the preacher, Zed waits in a long line to meet Zachary and they touch - the transference results in the vision of an angel, and Zed can feel that Zachary's intentions are pure. John, on the other hand, warns that blind faith can be dangerous, and Zachary's powers go far beyond miracles - something (or someone) is using the church as a front for evil. They confirm John's intuition at a nearby lake where hundreds of dead fish float on the surface. This calls for specialized advice - John beckons Manny and informs him of Zachary's use of Enochian. With Manny's guidance, they use echolocation to track a voice to a vacant field... and discover a dying angel.

John and Zed take her to an abandoned barn, and the angel identifies herself as Imogen and states that Zachary pulled a feather from her wing, causing her to fall back to Earth. Manny shows up and warns that unless they retrieve the plucked feather, Imogen will die. He offers to stay with Imogen, and John casts a spell on the barn to keep out evil while he heads off to pay a visit to Zachary.

At Zachary's house, John makes a move to take back the feather by force, but the feather's power rejects his attempt to tear it away. When John returns to the camp for Zed, he finds her in a vicious struggle with the possessed former amputee. John rescues Zed, wrestles the former amputee to the ground and ends his life seconds before he nearly loses his own. This was not a run-of-the-mill possession - the amputee was a ghoul looking for the feather's owner.

This time it's Zed turn to try her hand at retrieving the feather from Zachary. She attends a group baptism and as he dunks her into the lake, she steals the feather from around his neck. This attracts all the "healed" ghouls, and they chase them to the church. Zed rushes the feather back to Manny and Imogen, while John holds back the ghouls... only he learns from a guilt-ridden Zachary that the preacher accidentally killed a man in his past, which means when he died from the snakebite he wasn't headed to heaven. Zachary was headed to hell.

And that means Imogen's not a heavenly angel. She's a fallen angel.

When Zed returns the feather, she and Manny witness Imogen's transformation from weak and pale to dark and powerful. John arrives just in time to see his earlier spell to keep evil out, keep Imogen in. Imogen reacts by seizing Zed by the throat, eager to kill her second mortal (the original reason for her fall from Heaven), and John pleads with Manny to save her. Manny reminds him that he cannot alter Earthly events - then surprises Imogen by taking over Zed's body and ripping out Imogen's black heart... a heart made from pure concentrated evil. John bottles it up for safekeeping. Could come in handy later.

Zed returns to her apartment and receives a call from Eddie, a model she met in an art class that asked her out on a date. She totally forgot about their plans, and they agree to reschedule. But when Eddie hangs up, behind him in his car sits another, more imposing man who confirms the change. It seems that Eddie's attraction to Zed may not be so innocent after all...