Characters / Supernatural Nephilim

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Nephilim in Supernatural

Nephilim in Supernatural

"The father has wings, the mother is a primate, and this child has a human soul mixed with angelic grace."

The Nephilim are the offspring of humans and angels who possessed human vessels at the time of the conception. They inherit both their angelic parent's grace and human parent's soul. Merely conceiving a Nephilim has been one of the oldest restrictions in the celestial law and is considered an ultimate act of transgression any angel can do, because angels are not supposed to have emotions, let alone urges of procreation. They are thus considered abominations for most angels and hunters, so for this reason, any Nephilim that are conceived are disposed of immediately, alongside their angelic parents, the moment they are discovered.

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• Aura Vision: They are able to recognize angelic halos and thus identify angels easily. By contrast, most angels can't identify a Nephilim's heritage and must be told manually, possibly because they are indistinguishable from humans if not displaying their power.
• Death by Childbirth: The mothers of Nephilim always die after giving birth to them.
• Eye Lights Out: Their glowing eyes fade and return to human eyes when they are killed, instead of the typical angel Throat Light.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Though compared to angels, their eyes are much dimmer, to indicate that they're not fully divine. Their colors also vary; Jane's eyes are silver, while Jack's are gold.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: They are considered abominations by the angels (especially Metatron), as angels producing offspring with humans is forbidden.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half-human and half-angel.
• Hybrid Power: They are physically stronger than lower-ranking angels and even a higher-ranked one, as shown when Jane is able to toss around Metatron and Castiel by herself. Justified in that angels are able to draw great power from the souls of their vessels, while Nephilim are born with souls; they basically have a permanent source of supercharge. It's said that Nephilim can grow to greater power than their angelic parent.
• Kryptonite Factor: They are able to be killed by an angel blade. Children of archangels, however, have no such weakness.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Creating a Nephilim will result in its and its angelic parent's immediate death sentences, as per the celestial law.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Nephilim only have to spend 5 months in their mothers' wombs before being delivered to this world.
• Nephilim: Duh. Here, they aren't giants, at least not in the physical sense. However, thanks to having angel grace and a human soul, they will grow more powerful than the angel who sired them.
• Semi-Divine: Nephilim are beings who inherit a human soul and an angelic grace. They have powers greater than an angel and at the same time are capable of blending in with humans, as their souls make it easier to relate to them.
• Special Person, Normal Name: The nephilim named so far have completely ordinary names (even by humans' standards). This is contrast to their angelic parents, most of whom have outlandish names.
• Superior Successor: In a way, nephilim are like upgraded angels. Like angels they have grace and even wings and tend to posses all of the same powers as their angelic parent. But they have their own bodies made for them so unlike angels and especially arch-angels, they don't need to worry about finding a compatible vessel to inhabit nor a perfect match like the archangels to use their full power. Additionally, while angels gain power from souls, a nephilim's grace is bonded and woven completely into their soul so the charge is far greater making them much more powerful then their angelic parent and, given that they have only one soul, gain greater and more efficient power from said soul.
• Super-Strength: Able to hold their own against two angels and stronger then a seraph (though the seraph in question, Castiel, was still recovering from being near fatally wounded and weaker than normal).
• Too Powerful to Live: The reason that God forbid the birth of Nephilim under penalty of termination is specifically because of how powerful they are in general. One birthed from an Archangel was powerful enough to be equated to God Himself and could casually destroy the world by accident.

Jane

Portrayed by Linda Tomassone.

First appearance: "Clip Show" (S08, Ep22).

"I'll show you an abomination."

Jane is a waitress at a restaurant in Ojai, California. At the time of her introduction, she was also the only Nephilim on Earth. It is not explained how she came to exist, and which of her parents is an angel. She has some supernatural powers greater than an ordinary angel.

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• Action Girl: Enough so at least to hold her own in a fight against an angel for a while and deliver a beat down until In the Back was resorted to. Had that not happened, the fight would very likely have gone on longer.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Quite justified when you're trying to convince two angels not to murder you.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Nice as she is, she's still a nephilim and fully willing to make use of the advantages that gives her if it comes to it.
• Fiery Redhead: Not most of the time, at least not externally, but when threatened she becomes this.
• Glamour Failure: Her eyes turn silver when she makes use of her powers.
• Hidden Depths: On the surface, she seems like a regular barista but that is definitely not the case. For just one example, she's so good at putting on the human act even angel Castiel is surprised when her identity is revealed.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: Castiel stabs her through the neck from behind with his angel blade.
• Killed Off for Real: Killed by Castiel in the same episode in which she was introduced.
• Last of Her Kind: In Season 8, she is described as the only Nephilim left on Earth, being the sole survivor after the rest were wiped out. That is, until Lucifer decides to create a new one.
• Mysterious Past: Not much is known about her past or how she even managed to survive as long as she did while the rest of her kind was wiped out.
• Nice Girl: Seems very friendly and polite from what we do get to see of her, although her specific compliments to Castiel may have been her already trying to find a way to get him to not try kill her.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Let's just say she's not as unaware of the supernatural world or as unable to defend herself from it as she seems.
• Organ Theft: Castiel cuts out her heart as Metatron tells him this is the first trial to close the Gates of Heaven, but it is actually one of the items Metatron needs to expel the angels from Heaven.
• Properly Paranoid: Her assumption on why the Angels are there is unfortunately correct.
• Significant Green Eyed Red Head: She's the last nephilim on Earth and has the appearance of a red-haired woman with blue/green eyes.
• Stepford Smiler: Seemed very cheery when we first see he but considering the revelation that she already knew what Cas was likely planning to do...
• Then Let Me Be Evil: She was genuinely just trying to live her life until Castiel and Metaton approach her to kill her upon which she fights back.
• Vague Age: We know later from Jack that nephilims don't age normally like humans do, so while Jane appears to be in her 20s she could in fact be anything from quite a bit younger or much older.

Jack Kline

Portrayed by Alexander Calvert

First appearance: "All Along The Watchtower" (S12, Ep23)

While possessing the current President of the United States, Lucifer impregnates his secret lover, Kelly Kline, with a Nephilim. Kelly chooses to keep the baby, whom she names Jack, until its birth, despite every indication that Jack will grow to be a menace due to having an archangel father.

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• The Antichrist: Actually no. In the Supernatural universe, Antichrists are the children of demons (e.g. Jesse Turner from Season 5). Jack is simply "Lucifer's son".
• Anti-Anti-Christ: Played with. He is firmly on the side of good, but he actually gets along well with Lucifer, despite people's (including the fanbase) expectations, at least initially.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Of Team Free Will, he is the youngest physically and mentally.
• Bad Liar: A result of Jack being Literal-Minded and unworldly. He's either bluntly honest or his lies are paper thin.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Normally nice, but threaten his loved ones (or people he swore to protect) and your ass is grass.
• Big Good: After becoming the new God when he absorbs Chuck's power.
• Born as an Adult: In Season 12 finale. This is because he overheard his mother talking about how dangerous the world is, so he decided he couldn't remain a child when born.
• Brainy Baby: Asmodeus believes him to be capable of accessing special knowledge and he's at least aware enough as a fetus to exercise his powers to preserve his life and learn English from listening to his mother.
• Brought Down to Normal: In "Let the Good Times Roll", Lucifer steals all of Jack's grace, leaving him a mortal. Castiel notes that he would regenerate it eventually (as other angels would), but presumably after a long time. Jack starts using Black Magic that requires siphoning off parts of his soul, until he uses it to defeat the Archangel Michael for good and devour his grace, restoring Jack's powers and then some.
• Broken Pedestal: Rejects Lucifer upon finding out that he has been whitewashing many of his crimes.
• But Now I Must Go: He leaves almost immediately after becoming the new God and tells them he'll never directly interact with them again.
• Child by Rape: Downplayed. He was conceived of consensual sex, but his mother was unaware that her lover was actually Lucifer possessing his body at the time. Kelly is shown to be baleful at Lucifer for using her as nothing more than a petri dish for his offspring after she finds out, but it doesn't stop her from loving her unborn child.
• Children Are Innocent: Jack is very friendly, polite, easily influenced by what people say, and terrified of his potentially deadly powers. Sam reasons that it is better to help Jack learn to control his powers rather than skip to killing him because of this innocence.
• The Chosen One: While Jack was still in the womb his mother Kelly Kline believed that he would do great good for the world after he saved her life from a suicide attempt. Later on Castiel came to believe the same thing after seeing a vision of a better world with Jack in it and thus decided to protect him. By the end of the series, this was firmly cermented when Jack stole Chuck's powers and became a new, better God than the cruel, capricious previous one.
• The Cutie: Very much so. Here's hoping his optimism and idealism last longer than that of most characters.
• Dead Guy Junior: Averted. Jack visits Kelly's parents in "Gods and Monsters" and learns that he was named after his (very much still alive) maternal grandfather.
• Defends Against Their Own Kind: Even though he's half-angel, Jack considers Sam, Dean, and Cas his only family and he will kill all comers who threaten his family's safety. This means he usually kills a handful of angels in any episode in which he appears.
• Deity of Human Origin: Downplayed. He's already a Nephil, but that does make him half-human and mortal. By the series end, he absorbs God's powers, becoming the new Lord. He decides to be more hands-off than his grandfather was.
• Demonic Possession: While still in Kelly's womb, he does this to Castiel to free Kelly from Dagon's grasp by killing the latter.
• Disappeared Dad: Jack's biological father is not there for most of his life. They finally meet in "Exodus" and form a bond, so everything seems fine. Then words of Lucifer's crimes come out in one fell swoop. At the end of the episode where it happens, Lucifer dies for good.
• The Dreaded: Even before he is born, most angels are in fear of what he would have become if he does get born, as a Nephil’s power is measured by how strong their angelic parent is, and Jack is fathered by Lucifer.
• Easily Impressed: Being less than a year old in Season 13, everything Jack encounters is new and fascinating. He likes the clothes he got from lost and found, loves the stale chocolate out of the vending machine, thinks the rundown motel the brothers stay in is really nice, and loves watching old cartoons on an old box set television.
• Energy Absorption: After exploding in The Empty he becomes a “power vacuum” allowing him to absorb all types of power-even God’s.
• Family of Choice: As of "The Bad Place," Jack thinks of Earth as his home and Sam, Dean and Cas as his family, later extending Mary into this as well.
• Fetus Terrible: Most angels are in no way tired of stressing the fact that he is an abomination and they will do anything to dispose of him before he is born into this world.
• Good Feels Good: Jack initially wants to be a force for good because it's what his mother wanted for him, but his experiences teach him how great it feels to save people.
• God: He becomes the new one after stealing his powers.
• God Is Good: After becoming the new God Jack tells Sam and Dean that people won't have to worship or sacrifice to him-they just need to know that he will always be with them. He also sets about undoing some of the injustices of the world so that humans can have a true afterlife.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: Showed signs of his incredible power from even before he was born, managing to completely destroy a Prince of Hell from the womb, and he will only get Stronger with Age — to the point that it is said that he will eventually surpass Lucifer.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Jack has sandy blond hair, and is a gentle kid who wants to do good for the sake of it.
• Healing Hands: Resurrects Kelly when she attempts a Bath Suicide. Kelly says this is proof that he is not the abomination he is made out to be, while Dagon dismisses it as just wanting to protect his receptacle.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: After he lost his grace, which is the source of his power, Jack constantly blames himself, thinking that not being able to find Dean or fight Alternate Michael make him a useless member of Team Free Will.
• Heel Realization: After killing Sam and Dean's mother in an accident.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Doesn't consciously understand his powers or how to activate them. So far, he's only ever used them on instinct.
• I Am a Monster: After losing his soul, killing Sam and Dean's mother in an accident and realising that he (because he's soulless) doesn't feel guilt for his role in her death, he comes to believe that Dean was right all along and he is a monster.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Although Sam is kind to him and Asmodeus promised him the world, Jack really wants Dean's approval.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Jack has amazing powers, but he's been told repeatedly that they are inherently evil and he's accidentally hurt people. He just wants to be normal and not worry about destroying everything and everyone around him. Unfortunately, this comes back to bite him in the ass, as he realizes that without his powers and with no training, he's of no help to the hunters in the field.
• Last of His Kind: The only living nephilim in the universe.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Jack's awkwardness with social graces, well-meaning earnestness, and fascination with mundane things like junk food and television make him very similar to Castiel, his chosen father.
• Living MacGuffin: Most angels want a piece of him, or more accurately, his powers.
• The Load: In Season 14 because he neither has self-defense skills nor supernatural powers. He strives to change this, however.
• Messianic Archetype: He's probably the closest thing the series has to the real deal. However, instead of being God's son, he's His grandson through Satan himself no less. Before he is even born, his mother Kelly, and later Castiel, say that he will do good things and change the world for the better. Due to his status as the Devil's son, he is often persecuted by those around him, most notably Dean, and the survivors of Apocalypse World because of his angelic heritage. Fortunately, he begins to turn people's view of him by consistently proving himself to be a genuinely good person. He dies and is resurrected (twice actually) and upon stealing Chuck's powers and becoming the new God, Jack shows himself to be a better God than Chuck could ever hope to be by undoing all of the wrong things Chuck has done, and even remaking Heaven from a place where people are restricted into their personal paradise, reliving their memories for eternity, into a place where the souls can reunite with their loved ones.
• Missing Mom: The mothers of nephilim always die in childbirth, so Kelly dies just as Jack is born.
• Morality Pet: To Lucifer. Until the truth about him comes out. Upon the obvious rejection, Lucifer has one of his infamous apocalyptic hissy fits.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • He felt really guilty after he accidentally killed a bank security guard while fighting a ghoul. Dean even tells him that the guard had a family. Ouch.
  • After having his soul restored, Jack is overwhelmed with guilt at having killed Mary and begs Sam and Dean for forgiveness.
  • After impulsively attempting to strangle an innocent Gas’n’Sip clerk whom he believed had killed his friend, Jack runs away into the woods behind the gas station and has a meltdown over the fact that he keeps continuously hurting people no matter what his true intentions are all while repeatedly self harming by hitting himself with his fist out of sheer self hatred.
• Nice Guy: Jack is a very sweet, kind young man who wants to see the best in everyone and is even willing to give his father Lucifer a chance to prove he's not a scumbag.
• No-Sell: Can't be killed by angel blades.
• No Social Skills: Despite having the physical appearance and development of a teenager, Jack is chronologically three years old and “otherworldly” due to being half human. This means he doesn't understand slang or pop culture references and responds very literally to questions. He often mimics the behavior of those around him, sometimes to comical effect.
  Clark: (assuming Jack is on drugs) What are you on?
  Jack: I'm on a chair. On the floor. On Earth. (smiles brightly)
• The Omnipresent: After absorbing all of God's power, he states that he is now everywhere. In every drop of rain, every grain of sand that the wind blows, everywhere that is.
• Omniscient Morality License: After becoming the new God, he puts all of the horrific monsters and demons who torture and murder back on Earth after Chuck removed them. Considering many of them are just evil, or have to eat souls or people to survive, this is a pretty awful thing to do. Dean dies one episode later because Jack decided to put vampires back, and no one seems to care it could have been easily avoided at least a dozen different ways.
• Parental Abandonment: His mother dies giving birth to him. As of Season 13, his father dies, too.
• Playing with Fire: Uses this power to immolate Dagon.
• Power Incontinence: Jack is the Nephil offspring of Lucifer who is an archangel and one of the most powerful beings in existence. Since all nephilim have Hybrid Power and eventually become more powerful than their angelic sire, Jack at his full potential will be pretty much The Omnipotent. However since he is only a year old, though matured to adulthood, he combines both Does Not Know His Own Strength with How Do I Shot Web? to often terrifying Person of Mass Destruction levels.
  • Lashes out with telekinesis when scared, harmed, or confused often to devastating effect to whatever or whoever is around him at the time. This had tragic consequences on Mary Winchester.
  • Involuntarily heals tattooed wards along with other injuries.
  • Accidentally stabs someone trying to use telekinesis to fly his angel blade around.
  • Accidentally deflects a bullet that ends up killing an innocent guard.
  • Rips open a hole to a parallel universe where an even more powerful Ax-Crazy version of the archangel Michael lives.
  • His subconscious mind manifests itself as his deceased father Lucifer because he accidentally killed Mary Winchester and didn't know how to cope, so his conscience manifested as Lucifer also tapping into the implied omniscience Jack has but cannot yet access consciously as a spirit guide to help him.
• Reality Warper: Just before he is born, he creates a portal to an alternate universe where Azazel never resurrected John after he killed him in "In The Beginning", and thus, Dean and Sam were never born and the Apocalypse went unabated.
• The Woobie: Jack’s initial innocence, immense kindness and polite demeanor have been beloved by the fandom since his debut, and as such the trials and tribulations he experiences are met with the same cry of “poor baby who doesn’t deserve that.” This characterization is highly popular but often removes the more negative or complex aspects of his character and story arcs. Despite him being shown to exhibit extreme anger, hatred—and even cruelty—he is still often regarded as an innocent and infantile ray of sunshine who is always happy.
• Woobie Destroyerof Worlds: Because Jack is so caring for others, especially those he considers family or friends, he has a tendency to be extremely overprotective and defensive of them. This overprotectiveness often leads to bouts of impulsive violence or a determination to kill any perceived threat—such as a Gas’n’Sip employee he believed responsible for murdering a friend and the alternate Archangel Michael, whom he not only tortured briefly with enough internal pressure to cause bleeding in Michael’s ears, eyes and nose for “hurting his friends, hurting his family” but also later killed and absorbed the grace of.
• Redeeming Replacement: By the end of the series Jack has absorbed Chuck's powers and become the new God. Unlike Chuck, who was a Control Freak who manipulated all of creation for his own amusement, Jack is a genuinely good person and decides to leave Earth for good so that humanity can thrive. He also makes sure to revamp Heaven, turning it into an actual paradise, and gets Bobby out of Heaven's dungeon so he can enjoy it.
• The Soulless: After using his powers to kill Michael at the expense of a lot of his soul. At first, it was unclear whether or not his soul is completely gone, but his change in behavior made it apparent that there's not much of his soul left. The fact that he went to The Empty when God killed him means that his soul really is completely gone, because if he even had a sliver of his soul left, he would've gone to either Heaven or Hell as shown with Lily Sunder earlier. However, it's restored when he visits Eden, the place where God created the first human beings.
• Soul Power: He is given this power after dying from an incurable illness brought about by the loss of his Nephilim powers and being brought back. Using a little bit of his soul, he would be able to keep himself alive and healthy, but him using his powers to protect his loved ones at the expense of his soul led to him becoming The Soulless.
• Slasher Smile: Flashes this to Sam when the latter first discovers him. Subverted in that he has no malicious intent and was smiling because he thought Sam was his (adoptive) father.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: When displaying his powers. Their source is his grace, as Lucifer sports these too when he takes it.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He’s very similar to Jesse. Both are extremely powerful, both are thought to be evil by nature, and both hold a significant connection to Lucifer.
• There Is Another: Jane was said to be the last Nephilim, prior to Jack being introduced. Although this is justified, since Jack was only born after Jane's death.
• Training from Hell: Since Jack never had to learn self-defense skills before (being a Nephilim, he could just "zap everything", as Bobby puts it), after he lost his powers, he has to learn the hunter life from square one.
• Villainous Lineage: The question of whether he will turn out evil like his villainous parent is a major plot point in Season 12. Bitter, jaded Dean thinks so and the only reason Dean doesn't kill him is that so far nothing is powerful enough to kill Jack. However, Sam remains as hopeful and determined as ever that Jack, as a thinking, breathing person, can be the Big Good Jack's other parent had believed he would be.
• You Are Not My Father: Says this to Lucifer in the Season 13 finale, fully embracing his Family of Choice.
• Younger Than He Looks: See Born as an Adult above. By Season 14, he is chronologically barely a year old, but still functions and is considered as a teenager/young adult otherwise; much as Castiel is older than he looks physically.

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