Constantine Episode Recap, Season 1 Episode 2: The Darkness Beneath

Episode Recap of Constantine, Season 1 Episode 2: The Darkness Beneath

The episode opens in Heddwich, Pennsylvania, a mining town. Apparently the some of the miners have been hearing sounds. The mining boss returns home and takes a shower. But soon, instead of water, fire bursts out of the showerhead, and burns the man to death. Constantine catches wind of this, so he heads to Heddwich, while Chas elects to stay behind.

Meanwhile, the mysterious artist who has been sketching Constantine continues to do so. She wonders who he is. She walks down the street, and is surprised to bump into Constantine. She tells him that she dreams of him, and asks who he is, showing him her latest drawing. He distracts her, and slips away — but she has stolen his wallet.

Constantine grabs a drink in a bar, and asks what happened with Lannis, the mining boss. A man tells him that Lannis’s death and mining accidents that happened to 9 others in the past year were not natural. The miners think they dug too deep, knocking on the door to Hell, and now Hell is knocking back. People literally heard knocking down in the tunnel.

Constantine sneaks into the mine to check it out. He uses a pickaxe to knock on the wall a few times, and then we hear a few knocks in response, and the walls shake, and rocks fall loose. Constantine runs to escape.

Later, Constantine attends Lannis’s funeral reception at his home. He sneaks into the bathroom and examines the showerhead, from which he pours some thick black liquid. Lannis’s wife catches Constantine snooping, and he claims to be a reporter. The wife throws herself at him, but when he rejects her, she gets angry and makes a scene. The mourners realize they don’t recognize him and start to drag him outside. When they try to check his credentials, he fights back. The president of the mining company punches him in the face, and then confronts him. Constantine brings up the “not so natural disaster” down in the mine, and concludes that the president heard the knocking. He doesn’t answer, and just tells Constantine to go home.

Constantine returns to his hotel — to find the artist waiting in his room. It turns out that he has already found out her name — Zed. She tells him she has visions and feelings she can’t control. She grabs his arm, and is able to sense loneliness, pain, desperation, and guilt from him. He tests out her powers, having her sit and listen to his voice. He then has her hold out her hand, and he pours the black liquid he collected from the showerhead into it. She has a vision from the perspective of Lannis in the shower, and begins screaming in agony  from the pain of fire in her hand. Constantine wipes the liquid off her hand, and confirms what she saw. In addition to the shower, she saw a tall cross. He goes into the bathroom and sneaks out the window, leaving her behind.

Constantine finds the cross and goes into an abandoned church. He hears noises, but it turns out to be two teenagers having sex. There’s a dark figure drawn on the wall, supposed to be a tall man that follows you home and peeps in your window, according to the teenage boy. Constantine tells them to go home. Then he gets out a thermos filled with water, spills a few drops of his blood in it, says some Latin words, then pours the water over his head. As the water falls, he sees a dark figure approaching him.

That night, Zed has a drink at the bar. She talks to Ellis, the first guy Constantine had talked to earlier. It turns out he used to be a priest, until lost his son to the mine. When Zed gets home in the morning, she finds Constantine on her couch. He questions her, and why she travels so much. He warns her not to follow him around, and that the things in her paintings are real. However, she says she’s not going anywhere.

Just then, they hear a siren, and realize that the mine collapsed. They run there, and Constantine finds out that the before the mine collapsed, they heard knocking. Constantine gets into a truck with a miner who has just finished talking to the mining president, and warns him that they need to shut down the mine, or else people will keep dying. Suddenly, the doors lock on their own, and the truck begins filling with water. Dark hands come out of the water and begin to strangle each of the men, dragging them under the muddy water. Zed uses a crowbar to open the door, and Constantine falls out unharmed. However, the other guy is dead.

As they walk back to town, Constantine explains to Zed that usually there are spirits of dead miners that knock to warn miners of danger, but they don’t rise to the surface, nor do they murder. But Constantine thinks something is forcing evil to the surface in waves, and he thinks someone is conjuring these demons.

Constantine changes out of his soiled clothes, then they meet at the emergency miners meeting at the bar. There, Zed informs Constantine about the ex-priest, Ellis, and that his son’s death could be a good cause for payback.  He has her sit on Ellis’s usual stool, and try to get a vision. She sees a campground with a waterfall and river nearby. The bartender directs them to the location.

They go there and find Ellis. He starts reciting some Latin, but the priest begins reciting the same phrase with him, which turns out the be the breastplate of St. Patrick. However, when he hears that Constantine thinks he’s the one behind the killings, he points out that you need faith to raise evil, but he doesn’t have any. Ellis also points out that the men killed above ground aren’t miners, but the bosses in charge. Someone is making them pay. There’s only one boss left, the owner of the company, Thad Bowman.

Thad and his son go down into the mine to have a look around to make sure it’s safe to re-open. The get attacked by a demon who comes up from the rocks, who knocks aside Thad’s son, and begins to strangle Thad. Constantine and Zed arrive, and he has her spray paint a symbol on the wall. He says a phrase to the demon, and it disappears. He tells Zed that he reminded it of what it is: a protective spirit. Thad’s son is still breathing, but Thad is dead. Constantine sees the black handprint on the son’s face and remembers seeing such a black smear on Lannis’s wife.

Constantine decides that they need to make sure no one goes down there again. Zed gets Ellis and they have him do the honors of pressing the button to blow up the mine.

Constantine goes to visit Lannis’s wife. She calls forth her “guests” – and several dark figures approach. He explains that he knew because of the coal mark on her arm, and because she had told him she was Romani — and there’s nothing blacker than Gypsy magic. He pleads with her to send the spirits back to where they belong, but she commands them to kill him. However, he reminds her that these are the spirits of dead miners, and her husband was a miner. He summons Lannis, who attacks his wife and pulls her down into the ground. Then the other mining spirits disappear.

When Constantine returns to his hotel room, Zed is laying on his bed, sketching him. It seems that she is determined to work with him. He warns her that everyone who puts their trust in him dies. She tries to get an answer out of him as to whether they’re going to help each other out or not. He doesn’t give an answer, but instead falls to the bed out of exhaustion.

As he sleeps, we see that Ellis has decided to return to his church, and that the mine is now closed. We also see that Zed has decided not to leave, and sits in the chair in Constantine’s hotel room.