WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Season 15, Episode 9 of Supernatural, "The Trap."
The first half of Supernatural's final season has been almost entirely devoted to the Winchester's war with God/Chuck. In "The Trap," the midseason premiere, the evened-out playing field the two sides have been on tips back in Chuck's favor as he's finally able to sever his connection to Sam through their shared Equalizer wound. He also destroys Dean and Castiel's spell that would have caged him for good.
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Even worse, "Team Free Will" discover that, not only is killing the deity out of the question, but locking him away is, too. If Chuck dies, all of reality -- his divine creation -- dies with him. If Chuck is imprisoned and his powers suppressed, darkness will reign and monsters will take over Earth, much like what happens when the Force becomes imbalanced in the Star Wars universe. This depressing revelation now leaves the Winchesters and Castiel with no workable solution to their problem, while Chuck, back to full power with the strength-sapping Equalizer wound seemingly healed, is free to ensure the Cain and Abel-style ending he has planned for Sam and Dean plays out the way he wants it to.
However, the closing minutes of the episode remind us that there are still some other key cosmic players left on the board -- and they're now ready to make their move. One of them is Jack, the son of Lucifer who Chuck snapped out of existence in the Season 14 finale and sent to the The Empty. The Empty, as the name suggests, is an endless, primordial void where dead angels and demons end up. At the end of the finale, Jack was met by the welcome party of Billie (Death) and the mysterious being who rules over the Empty, the Shadow, who tells the fallen Nephilim they "need to talk about what happened." At the end of "The Trap," Billie reappears to Jack once more to announce that, "It's time."
Time for what, we don't know. But it's highly probable that Billie has beef with, well, probably everyone at this point. We already know that she's not a huge fan of the Winchesters, who treat her line of work like an opt-in-opt-out policy rather than a base law of nature and frequently disobey her. She especially has it in for Dean, who was responsible for killing her predecessor with his own scythe. But it's more likely that her and the Shadow's plan for Jack will be directed more towards Chuck, who she also has issues with. The feeling is mutual: in the same episode that Chuck killed Jack, he mentioned his dislike for the new Grim Reaper, particularly her habit of "sticking her scythe in where it doesn't belong."
In Supernatural, Death is the only primordial being, other than his sister, The Darkness, that can rival Chuck in raw power. Even God has an expiration date, and when his time is up, Death will come for him just like all living things. Death's job also concerns keeping the universe Chuck created in balance. If Chuck's meddling with the Winchesters is disrupting the natural order of things, Billie will do what she sees fit to correct it. The wild card in all this is the Shadow, a chaotic being of unknown form that's older than both Death and God. Its main objective in life seems to just be being able to sleep undisturbed, forever -- something it went after Castiel for with a vengeance when he accidentally woke it up. Its involvement in whatever Billie is using Jack for should put the fear of, well, himself in Chuck.
Jack is also an unknown factor at this point, too. Half-human and half-angel, Nephilims are incredibly powerful creatures; Jack even more so with the Devil, a corrupted archangel, for a father. He was no match for Chuck before but with Billie and the Shadow empowering his return to the fray, we could be dealing with Jack 2.0, ready and willing to get his own back on his murderous grandfather.
Airing Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, the final season of Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins and Alexander Calvert.