Ethan’s dorm room doesn’t appear to have any windows.

How are the CATS watching what’s happening?

Based on the conversation in the Flashback, I think Stryder was behaving like the others. If he was SENT there, it was to find out what was going on. He’s sullen in attitude, like the other demons, and there’s no sense of him having casually talked to Adrian, based on the way they’re depicted talking. (He may have been interrogated by torture, if you note that they only recently stopped doing that.)

The “you’ve bewitched me” line is the first place where the defenses are breached. But he IS a 700 year old demon at that time. He’s a B class. He knows better than to go get himself bound to a human… except by choice. If he were sent there on purpose or decided to go snoop on his own, he’s still spying on the place, possibly making reports through random cats.

According to the Seal of the Academy (which you can find in the Gallery) we know that they were founded in 1814, and that the process of binding demons was developed (or made reliable) by the two founders. This indicates at most 60 years … so 1874 at the latest … for when child Demons who are VERY recently promoted to self-aware autonomous agents … start being grabbed from a “honeypot” in the void and bound into magical slavery so that their strength and sight are used to painfully, forcibly exorcise their brothers. We don’t know if the soldier and Lurker demons that get exorcised this way are destroyed, or just sent back in tatters to be reassembled on the other side.

We do know that Lucifer is NOT happy about this happening and that the demon activities have been ramped up to make things MUCH worse as a result of this interference. I’m suspicious that there is a reason for Seers, who are the result of a child sired by an Incubus, and that the whole business of sneaking demon blood into human bloodlines is a long-term dirty trick on Lucifer’s part. One of the Founders of the Academy being a Seer, means he may have learned more about what was going on with that plan and this is the result of his actions to block that plan. (If so, then it’s been conveyed to all the human governments as well.)

We know that the decisive destruction of most of the Academy in 1912 was intentional, that it happened because Stryder was there, and that it resulted in greater Demon incursions for a while as the Academy was not creating Exorcists fast enough to make up for the huge losses. This means that for 20 years or so they had a free hand. Betcha if they had a Hitler in this world, he had a Lurker.

We only see one side of this war, and we don’t see all of the human side YET, but we’ve been given hints and tantalizing bits of bait.

We don’t know FOR SURE yet whether the bound baby demons who are shot or beheaded when they’re no longer needed (their humans change jobs or are killed or otherwise die) are returned to hell whole.
We don’t know if it matters whether a human or a demon kills the bound demon body. It’s magic so it might be a deal. Maybe “killed by a human” means ‘maimed horribly’ or ‘destroyed utterly’. Worse, maybe being bound into a human body makes them eligible for “divine judgement” or some other terrifying fate.

We know that the A-Class “hellhounds” killed some of the bound demons, but we don’t know whether that returned them to the Underworld (whether in need of repairs or otherwise) or if it just destroyed them. My intuition says the A-Class demons were invented for just that purpose: to retrieve the bound slaves.

We also know that Malthus murdered Adrian, apparently in front of Al. It’s entirely possible that he was dragged into the Underworld FIRST in order for this to happen. If the Hellhounds can transport the bound babies maybe they can drag off humans as well.

Now one last thing to chew on. After Stryder returned to the Underworld (however he did it) and possibly when his name changed (however that happened) there was a change in the way Al operated in his duties to his role as a commander of legions.

The other guy we’ve seen commanding legions is Malthus. He’s a Collector of Souls. What precisely this means in terms of how demons work in their world hasn’t been explained, and we already know that some of the rules are not the ones we might expect. It’s possible that souls provide energy to the demons, or that they put them in plastic slips in big books and play Soul Card Games with them. (Probably not the game. or Al wouldn’t have unwrapped Ethan’s best card.)

Al commands legions, if he wants to. Is he also a Collector? Or does he hold a different rank, and his soldiers are deployed in different ways?

For that matter, what Lucifer’s goal is for building up these armies … is he creating powerful entities to challenge Heaven?