“ | If anyone gets to end this world, it's me. | ” |
Kali is a Hindu Goddess and was one of many Deities who met to try to work out a way to stop the Apocalypse. Along with Baldur, she appeared to be one of the most - if not the most - powerful and oldest of the deities. She had previously been in a relationship with Gabriel when she thought he was the Trickster god Loki.
She escapes certain death thanks to the help of Sam and Dean. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
Season 5[]
Kali, along with Baldur, organized a meeting of various deities at Elysian Fields Hotel, so they could discuss about The Apocalypse. Dean first encounters her at the buffet area and attempts to hit on her, to which Kali simply responds, "No."
She employs Mercury to collect blood samples from both Sam and Dean, so they would be bound to her by a spell. She later obtained blood from Gabriel as well. At the meeting, Kali suggests that the deities take violent actions against the archangels.
When Gabriel attempts to flirt with her in order to retrieve his and the Winchesters' blood, the plan fails. Kali reveals that she had discovered that Gabriel was an archangel for some time, and she uses what she thinks is an archangel blade to kill him, to prove to the remaining deities that with the blade, the deities can ultimately defeat Lucifer.
However, little did she know that both the blade and Gabriel were fakes, which Dean would later tell her. She was shocked that Gabriel deceived her but that increases as Mercury would also betray the rest of the deities and sell their location to Lucifer himself.
When Lucifer begins a killing spree, Kali is the only surviving deity, she tries to attack Lucifer but is easily tossed aside. Lucifer nearly killed Kali until the real Gabriel showed up and instructed Sam and Dean to get Kali outside, leaving the two archangels to confront each other.
Kali's current status and whereabouts are unknown.
Personality[]
Kali is vain, ill-tempered, and easily offended. She favors violence and bloodshed and has no problems bullying others into agreeing with her. She has been shown to enjoy playing with the emotions of the men bound to her and be content and even flirtatious in their presence. She has great pride in herself and the other deities, who are numerous and old, and therefore believe they should have been the ones to decide the fate of the world - not Lucifer or the archangels.
However, her pride has caused her to overestimate her own powers, and underestimate that of the others, as demonstrated when she realized this after Lucifer casually slaughtered the other pagan deities and easily took her down.
Kali always demands a certain level of respect as shown when she silenced Mercury for doubting her plans.
Kali also proves herself to be hypocritical and delusional, when she criticized Gabriel and other "westerners" (celestials and followers of the Christian faith) for their "sheer arrogance" and killing people in "their god's name" when she and the other pagans used voluntary and involuntary sacrifices to gain power and showed little respect for human life, and while Gabriel had taken many lives before he never did so in his father's name.
Physical Appearance[]
Kali appears as a South Asian woman with brown hair and eyes. She was dressed in a red blouse and black skirt. She had a silver chain belt with skulls on it (symbolic of her true Hindu form) and a gold bracelet on her right hand.
Powers and Abilities[]
As "The Destroyer", Kali is an incredibly powerful deity. Also, she was one of the strongest pagan deities, as she was able to scratch Gabriel an Archangel with her super strength and bind him to her presence but to an extremely limited degree, and she could casually overpower Mercury who was also a very powerful deity. However, despite being able to bind an Archangel, she was powerless against them as Lucifer overpowered her with no effort and could of effortlessly killed her.
- Invincibility (formerly) - At transcendent power, The Destroyer could possibly annihilate all of existence.
- Pyrokinesis - She can summon powerful flames at will and use them offensively like a flamethrower. When she used this power against Lucifer it slightly pushed him back but had no damaging effects on him.
- Telekinesis - She was able to move and drop the ceiling lamps when the Winchesters tried to leave the room just by looking at it, and at the moment of Baldur's death she became angry and caused the room to shake slightly.
- Biokinesis - She choked Mercury with her mind until he coughed up blood.
- Blood Spell - She was able to bind humans, and even the Archangel Gabriel to her presence. Kali can bind whatever being to her just by having their blood not specifically humans as she was able to bind Gabriel to her by having a sample of his blood, it appears when the Archangel takes over a vessel the very fabric of their cells changes to that of the Archangel’s until the archangel leaves the vessel because when Fenrir injured Gabriel with his claws the blood spilled on the floor was thicker than human blood then after wards when Narfi tasted it he said “that’s Archangel blood”.
- Shapeshifting - Kali has the power to shapeshift into her deity like form of four hands as well as blue skin and frightening demonic face as implied by Gabriel when he confessed his love for Kali to Dean by saying that the chick was all hands.
- Immortality - Like all deities, Kali is ancient, does not age or get sick, and can potentially live forever. She claimed that she and her fellow Pagans have been on the Earth longer than God and the Archangels, which, although untrue, indicates she is thousands of years old.
- Invulnerability - As a deity, Kali cannot be killed by conventional means. However, more powerful beings are able to harm or kill her, as Lucifer was able to effortlessly overpower her and would of easily killed her if Gabriel had not intervened.
- Teleportation - She is able to travel from place to place by thought and can even travel to other planets. However, she was unable to use this ability on herself or the Winchesters because Lucifer was blocking her power.
- Super Strength - Kali implied that she has this power when she told Sam breaking his ribs would be easier than squeezing them. When Gabriel was kissing Kali she slashed his neck with her bare hands and the blood was on her fingers so that she could bind him to her then after she tried to burn Lucifer with her pyrokinetic abilities she approached him while her arms still burning and was going to punch Lucifer only to be overpowered by him first.
- Telepathy - Kali contacted Gabriel to the meeting of the gods, when he was flirting with her in the room he told “You’re the one who called me here” and she answered, “Because I thought you might take things seriously”.
- Cosmic Awareness - Along with Baldur, Kali knew that the Apocalypse had already started, and she already knew that Sam and Dean were the vessels for the two archangels before Heaven and Hell knew.
Weaknesses[]
- Archangels - Archangels can effortlessly kill Kali as proven by Lucifer easily overpowering her and was completely immune to her attacks as well as being able to nullify her powers. He would have easily annhilated her, if not for Gabriel's intervention. Gabriel was also able to trick Kali into thinking he had died, a trick that later would be revealed to have worked on Lucifer as well. [1]
Lore[]
In Hindu beliefs, Kali is both Creator and Destroyer of the universe. She has existed before time and will continue to do so after the dissolution of the universe. Kali is regarded as the ultimate form of the one true God. She is the first of the ten Great Cosmic Powers and spins the wheel of time. At the end of the universe, Time ("Kala") devours everything, including the astral plane. In turn, Kali devours Kala – time itself – and is the ultimate destroyer of the universe. From the outside, Kali may appear to be a demonic deity; she is portrayed in art as a frightening figure, a drinker of blood with a garland of human heads. She is far from a demon herself – in fact, in the most popular story of her origins, it is she who is brought forth in order to kill the demons who have usurped the thrones of the deities.
Contrary to Western beliefs, Kali is not prideful but the destroyer of ego and pride.
Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. She is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. She is often depicted naked, which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure.
The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, night, consciousness and death.
Appearances[]
Trivia[]
- Kali was the only Pagan deity to escape from Lucifer during the events of Hammer of the Gods.
- The depiction of Kali among other lesser deities was received negatively by critics, who saw the "erroneous" portrayal of Kali as both offensive and bias towards modern day Christianity. Kali is traditionally noted as being vegan, whereas in the show it is seen that she dines on meat (as with the other deities). She is also called the "Maker and Destroyer of Worlds" in lore, whereas in the show it is obvious that her adversary Lucifer could kill all the other deities with relative ease.[2][3]
- Kali is considered the goddess of time and change.
- When Kali uses what she believes to be an archangel blade against Gabriel to "kill" him, she is unaware that its a fake. However, even if she'd had the real archangel blade she never could've used it to kill Gabriel as only an archangel can kill another archangel with the blade.
- Kali's line to Gabriel "If anyone gets to end this world, it's me", is a reference to her mythological counterpart who, as the Goddess of Destruction, can destroy the entire Universe with her dance. She was responsible for annihilating Asuras (the Hindu demonic counterparts) in the Hindu mythology, which would explain her presence in this episode.
- Gabriel's line "But me and Kali, we had a thing. Chick was all hands" is a reference to Kali counterpart in lore, who is depicted as having multiple arms, ranging from 4 to 10 depending on which portrayal. It also indicated that Supernatural's Kali version has the power of changing her shape.
- In Hinduism, Kali is one of the forms of Parvati, who is Ganesh's mother. This could explain why he joined her to help to stop The Apocalypse in Hammer of the Gods.
- In Hammer of the Gods, Kali claims that there are billions of deites, the vality of this statement is dubious, as she also claims that the deities have existed for longer than archangels, which is not true according to The Gamblers, in which Fortuna mentions that they were created after even humans.
- Fortuna also says that most deities are "forgotten" about God shunning them away and diminishing their religions, it's unclear if it was figure of speech or they literaly forgot their origins, which would explain Kali being mislead about existing before archangels.
- In real world, Hinduism is the world's third-largest religion, with approximately 1.2 billion followers, which would make Kali next to invincible in the terms of the show. However she seems to lack worship, which implies Hinduism does not enjoy much widespread in Supernatural Universe. Even so, Kali appears to be one of the most powerful deities in the show, which indicates that, far from being extinguished, there is still significant number Hinduism suppoters.