Constantine’s fourth episode, “A Feast of Friends,†starts with a man coming off of an airplane. It’s never a good sign when someone that sweaty and nervous looking is trying to get through US Customs. Luckily, we, as the audience, were not the only ones to notice. He gets questioned by a TSA agent. They find a strange bottle in his bag. Unfortunately for the agent, there is a very powerful hunger demon inside. When the agent drops the bottle, the demon is released and find its way into the man.
The demon takes the form of a swarm of bugs, so this episode is not for the squeamish. The man from the plane, Gary Lester, breaks into Constantine’s house and gets trapped in a zero gravity trap. Constantine explains to Zed (and the audience) that Gary is an old friend. Gary comes to Constantine for help with the demon that was accidentally released. Gary suffers from addiction to heroin which is the biggest rift in his relationship with Constantine.
It seems that Gary is only trying to atone for Newcastle. From previous episodes, we learned that Newcastle is where the debacle with Astra happened.  Clearly, Constantine doesn’t want to keep remembering this. Throughout the episode we learn that Gary as well as others helped Constantine, and they all looked up to him. However, Constantine usually wants to go it alone.
They track the demon to Atlanta where the news is reporting a viral outbreak where people are gorging on any food they can get their hands on and then mysteriously dying. Constantine goes to Atlanta alone and leaves Zed behind to keep an eye on Gary. While they are hiding out in Constantine’s bunker, Zed grabs Gary’s arm and sees his heroin addiction up close and personal. This vision gives Zed some withdrawal symptoms from Gary; as Constantine says it gave her “none of the high and all of the lows.â€
When Constantine can’t contain the demon in a different bottle, he locks it inside of a freezer at a meat delivery shop. Sooner or later, the demon will get out, so Constantine must find a way to stop it. Constantine ends up asking for help from a man called Nommo. In order to figure out the origin of this demon, Nommo and Constantine must “travel†together. In other words, they must share a vision together. This vision shows how the demon got into the boy before Gary exorcised it and trapped it in the bottle. The man that trapped the demon into the boy knew that the demon could only be held in a live body. The demon would feed off of the body, and then it would eat itself thus killing itself.
Gary begins to feel useless and only wants to help. If he can get past Zed, then he can go hunt the demon by himself. He holds onto Zed long enough to incapacitate her giving her much more of his withdrawal symptoms. When Constantine gets back, she’s lying on the couch and Gary is gone. Zed truly believes that Gary only wants to help, but Constantine knows better. He finds Gary being beaten by a couple of drug dealers after Gary’s deal for heroin went south. Constantine helps Gary out of the mess and tells him that he believes that everyone can change. Gary is over the moon when he finds out that Constantine wants to work together to take down the hunger demon once and for all.
When they find the demon, Constantine finally lets the ball drop. He tells Gary that the demon needs a live body to be able to destroy itself. Gary realizes that this was Constantine’s plan all along, but he’s willing to do what it takes to make Constantine proud. He believes that this is the best way for him to go out, and he lets himself be sacrificed. Constantine brings Gary, with the demon trapped inside, back to the house where Zed confronts him. She yells at Constantine that Gary only wanted to make him proud and how could Constantine do this. Constantine reminds Zed that she knew what she was getting herself into. The episode ends with Constantine by Gary’s bedside while he suffers with the demon inside of him.
The Verdict
(8.5/10)
Constantine shows some more emotion in this episode. He knows that Gary can’t find a way to atone for his sins, but he does give him closure. Gary admitted to Constantine that he was high in Newcastle, and he was hiding when Astra was dragged to hell. Constantine doesn’t blame Gary, and he gave his life meaning by sacrificing him to kill the hunger demon. Constantine’s line of work is never pretty, and this episode proved it. Zed is still sticking around, but she is realizing that she is not always going to agree with the way Constantine works. The humor is always present and is a welcome sign in this show of constant darkness.
+Â More personal episode for Constantine
+ Manny is back and as elusive as ever
+ Creepy good effects with the bugs
– No Papa Midnite
– No Chas again
