I am so glad that Lucifer revealed that any inclinations toward redemption were only a farce, that he was still evil, dangerous, and self-aggrandizing. And I’m glad he’s dead, burnt wings and all. Part of me acknowledges that Sam deserved the kill, but I also like how the Winchesters defeated him together.
1) a face on Sam we’d never seen before: that bewildered joyous relief. A contender for my favourite thing of the season.
2) a face on Dean we’d never seen before, his transition.
3) some of Pellegrino’s deliveries
4) some of Calvert’s deliveries
please don’t talk to me about the rest of it until I’ve had a chance to reincarnate a couple of times.
thank you for confirming, haha. I know I beat a dead horse with them but they just make me so, so mad. Like we’re barely-functioning morons. It’s all over the place. Like, with Sam praying this episode — I thought the prayer itself could have been better written, but whatever: to then immediately cut to Jack and make us listen to it again in like tinny Sam ghost voice, over Jack reacting: why? Why trample your actors like that? Is it a network thing? You know that one of the cuts tried a version without the prayer. Who looked at that and said no, it’s just not clear enough? I want answers! I want heads to roll! Oh, my goodness. I’m so MAD about it!!
It betrays a lack of faith – and also … just points out that everyone “over there” doesn’t seem to “get” the show they’re working on anymore. They themselves don’t know the history. (The “callback” to “Member that time you were Polish?” is a particularly horrifying example) . It’s like they’re reminding themSELVES what all the callbacks are – whereas we don’t need any of that.
Oh man, I know! I was SO angry with the whole thing. And seriously, they showed us the guy Jack killed 2 weeks in a row. I felt insulted. Just because THEY’re not following what’s happening in their own show doesn’t mean WE don’t, godammit!
I liked the moment where Jack says “I love you” to Sam. It felt honest and vulnerable, and that’s due to Alexander. And yes, thank god Lucifer is finally dead.
He really is a wonderful young actor. Has a total handle on playing the other-ness of Jack – but also his blunt human emotions. It’s not an easy thing – ‘Jack’ could be just terrible in another actor’s hands.
Overall, I liked it. As several of us have mentioned in the comments, we will have to rewatch a few time to get all the meanings and nuances, but overall, I think that this was one of the better finales. In my opinion, it follows the trend of several SPN finales, because this felt like a trilogy that started with “Beat the Devil” ( talk about foreshadowing), continued with Exodus and ended with Let the Good Times Roll. As Dean said, “get in, get jack and mom and get out”. So I’m going to watch all three episodes again together as a three hour mini series. I think it might be interesting.
And yes, I agree, much as I love Mark Pellegrino, I’m glad Lucifer is done with.
Dean grabbing Sam’s hand like he was 5 years old when they were running out of the convenience store. That small, subtle moment made my heart crack more than any of the we’re family, we save the world, we get things done, speeches that these writers have been bludgeoning us over the head with the past few seasons.
The look of pure unfettered joy that crossed Sam’s face as the realization hit him that Lucifer was really dead and the 15 seconds of happiness (was it even that long?) that the brothers got to share together.
Lucifer lying dead on the ground.
Dean standing there with wings gloriously spread behind him. As far as being in the liked category…I’m strictly talking the visual…that was awesome.
Agree on the Calvert and Pellegrino deliveries…they both had some really good moments.
As you have all mentioned, Jack, Sam, Dean, Lucifer, Michaelean – all were amazing, so satisfying! Who mentioned 2 weeks ago that they missed the potential psychopath in Jack? How awesome that we got a peak at that conflicting side of him here! And we only had to wait 9 years for the Michael Sword to be unsheathed, so to speak. I completely agree that it was very satisfying to see Lucifer return to true form. I love the final defeat of Lucifer and that it didn’t involve redheaded witches, alt universe characters brought back for old times sake, freaking Mary Winchester, Cass, or Chuck! Or wayward daughters…
Please, CW, if you are going to commit to renewing this show forever, please also commit to some decent effects. I love a good fight on Supernatural (usually so good) and I was really enjoying the first few seconds of the Michaelean/Lucifer rumble until…tinker bell catfight!
What I was hoping for:
* Mary Winchester dies a gut wrenching death that will haunt Sam & Dean for the rest of their lives – again. Or maybe a pitiful, meaningless death that no one could possibly idealize (in flagrante’ with Ketch?) – yeah, that one!
* Rift/Alt world would explode sucking everyone back in and there’s no possibility of ever going back – even memory wiping everyone (including me) of its existence.
* Since Rowena is STILL alive, I hoped she would use her all powerful book to reopen the cage and retrieve the real Michael! Ok, I really was thinking this was a possibility and I am secretly nursing this fantasy for next season!
The thing I kept thinking was: “They’re angels. Shouldn’t they be USED to being airborne? Why do they look like The Greatest American Hero?”
They have a hard time envisioning now what a “clash” would even look like – it’s basically a fist fight with more powerful fists so people go flipping through the air. Sigh.
Once upon a time, just the THREAT of an angel fight was enough to make Sam and Dean tremble and want to get out of the way. We didn’t even need to see it.
// Mary Winchester dies a gut wrenching death that will haunt Sam & Dean for the rest of their lives – again. //
She’s such a bummer. The problem is that Dabb doesn’t seem to recognize she IS a problem and that they’ve handled her so poorly she has zero resonance in the story at all. Even the whole “we have to get Mom back” thing – the engine of the season … there was no payoff. She’s a cold fish. I’m pissed about how badly they’ve bungled her return. The myth of Mary was such a powerful symbol for the characters – and now? They’ve lost that source of power in the show.
Sheila,
Aside from everything else, I need your assessment of the final toes-to-nose reveal of Michael/Dean walking down the street. I got a very Saturday night fever vibe, but that music wasn’t the Bee Gees. It feels like a reference especially with the collar pins and newsboy cap, but I can’t place it. Is this just more velveeta or is it a meaningful reference?
Yeah, Melanie, I was thinking about this actually. There was definitely a Saturday Night Fever nod in the walk … but the freeze-frame is what got me. Butch Cassidy/Sundance ends with a freeze frame – but I feel like there’s another reference I might be missing. Since Robert Singer was at the helm, I have no doubt he was thinking of something – I will keep pondering it.
Was there a freeze frame at the end of season 9 on Dean’s black demon eyes? I thought that was the clear reference here – Michael’s angel blue eyes evoking memories of Demon!Dean. Unfortunately that comparison also makes Meredith’s point painfully obvious! Compare your shock and surprise at seeing Demon!Dean’s black eyes to the ho-hum, we-all-knew-this-was-coming-because-you-wouldn’t-shut-your-pie-hole reaction to Michaelean’s eyes!
The walk and the costume choice are the puzzle to me. Amara’s walk scene clearly evoked Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore, bygone innocence and wonder. The more I think about it the more I think my first instinct was right. John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever is walking down the street with the attitude that he owns his world. He is cocky and confident. It has been a really long time since I’ve seen that movie, but it seems that in his other world – home, work – he struggles & fights, but not the world of strobing lights, thrumming beats, and form fitting bellbottoms. His dominance is an illusion soon to be cut down by the next big thing or dare I say the death of disco. I can certainly see parallels with Michael’s new situation. The sinister music totally kills the SNF vibe, though. Maybe the costume choice is meant just to look hot without looking like various other characters – demon or angel. (Jensen always looks extra hot in period attire!) Awhile back Sheila and I had a wonderful conversation about SNF and the influence of disco on our respective lives. I should go back and look for it.
I had the same thought. PB takes place between WWI and WWII – I’m wondering if that’s kinda the reference – a power struggle in an interbellum? Plus, Michaelean (Deanchael?) just looks cool with the cap. I don’t have a pointer for the freeze frame.
Just popping in here to say that Jensen Ackles has expressed his love and admiration for the Netflix series “Peaky Blinders” many times, and at a recent convention, he said the wardrobe head at SPN contacted him and asked for his thoughts on the new character’s “look”…and voila! 1920s Michael!Dean was born.
We all wish there had been more behind it than that, but…
What is onscreen always has its own meaning though – something beyond the creator’s control (even though they try to control it, understandably) and once it’s “out there” – it’s OURS, not theirs. That image of JA in the cap on the street is ours now, not his. That final moment was cinematic in a very unique way – which is why we’re all talking about it! and it calls to mind lots of different things – even a silent film like The Crowd (1928) – which has some of the greatest crowd scenes ever, urban crowd scenes, with lead characters “found” in the middle of it. all wearing caps like Angel Dean! :) The “feel” of it also reminded me (slightly) of the famous moment in Tootsie, when you see Hoffman in the midst of a crowded street, coming towards the camera – surrounded by anonymous crowd – although the SPN moment had a dark Cockney vibe, as opposed to a modern-day bustling New York vibe. It was striking.
You are so good at this Sheila! The Crowd: certainly conveys the idea that Michael has “disappeared” into the huge impersonal metropolis, ie: the world who has no idea who this guy is and doesn’t care. I was trying to get a place clue, but I think now it is meant to be un-placeable.
As for Tootsie, yes, yes, yes! It has the added layer of being about a character inside another character like Michael inside of Dean. Is it a portent of good that the external character of Tootsie ultimately changes the inner man for the better?
I’ve seen some suggestion that what it’s really calling to is the last frame of Thriller — intentional, surely?!
I think if my tolerance for cheese was not so overcome and exhausted by all that had come before I could probably have a laugh about it — might even have laughed as it happened — but as it was I was just hiding my eyes!! D-:
Isn’t every shocking eye thing in Supernatural from episode 6, “Skin”, with the first shifter lens flare to the Yellow Eyed Demon up to Jack’s glowing eyes at the end of the Season 12 finale a callback to MJ’s Thriller? At least they
didn’t flash back to all those glowing colored eyes, right?! Honestly I really like Sheila’s point that once it’s out there it becomes ours – mine! For me it can be Saturday Night Fever and Star Trek Original series and for others, Peaky Blinders. That’s the beauty of it!
Unfortunately that team takedown of the Werewolves feels like a Super Friends setup for next season. As much as I love Jack, now we have Sam & Dean + flightless angel + powered down nephilim.
So it…didn’t completely suck? First, the parts that just made me sigh aloud.
I felt they wasted a lot of time in the beginning (a *lot* of time) what with the whole werewolf hunt thing and Mary and Bobby conversing and Maggie being murdered by Lucifer, plus…there’s still so many people in the bunker and that just personally makes me claustrophobic. I am very particular about who comes into my home and when so this whole idea that there are 20 plus strangers just hanging out in the bunker gives me hives. My nose is (more than a bit) out of joint that in order to prove that Mary is a Strong Independent Woman TM they continued to have her completely ignore her sons’ stated emotional needs all the way up through the last episode, but the minute Bobby comes back they seem pretty quick to jump on the “romance between Mary and Bobby” train. It seems literally every other man in the show is worthy of Mary’s attentions and affections but Sam, Dean, and Lucifer. And when you’ve got Sam and Dean in the same category as Lucifer – well, that’s not a good look.
Also not a good look: sticking a revival of Peter Pan at the end of the episode and having Jensen and Mark P. playing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. I’m glad for their sakes the air fighting was brief because 1) it was laughable and 2) those harnesses are really not comfortable, especially for men. And the freeze frame at the very end. Freeze frames were literally a joke in The French Mistake. Singer’s character is the one that makes the call to use it as he wearily says “Season 6.” I can only hope this was some kind of inside “wink wink, nudge nudge, who thought we’d be on air this long” to the fans since Singer directed this episode, but if it was it was very out of place.
Finally, really disappointed in the lack of creativity in having Dean say “yes” to Michael. Not surprised, just disappointed. When they first teased Jensen was going to play a new character it was wide open and hugely exciting, and then Dabb couldn’t shut his trap about it and said something about “Someone we haven’t seen in years” and how it was a “long time coming.” That’s obviously either our Michael or AU!Michael, and it may have been a shock if Dabb had just kept his mouth shut instead of running around to everyone willing to interview him saying, “Giggle – I had this GREAT idea to have Jensen play someone else that hasn’t been around for a long time and it’s going to be really great and you’re just going to have to wait and see who it is giggle!!!!!” He really narrowed the list of possibilities by talking too much about it beforehand and it took out a lot of the punch.
What I *did* like was Mark P’s acting. Lucifer has been wearing on me for a while, but he sincerely knocked this episode out of the park. When Jack compelled him to tell the truth I had a “holy shit!” moment, because how awesome is it that Jack can compel people to tell the truth? It was also a relief to see him drop the whole, “Daddy just didn’t love me enough” victim routine and be straight-up-stab-you-in-the-face (or crush-your-skull) evil. The writers have been using Lucifer as a crutch for far too long, so I’m really glad that he’s dead, and really pleased with how he went out.
I also liked Alex’s acting. That kid can handle some weighty material, and it’s a shame they sidelined him in the AU so much this season. I was pleased at how they powered him down so that him being able to do things like compel people to tell them the truth doesn’t become problematic and require him to be sidelined again next season (because otherwise things would just be too easy), and I really didn’t see it coming that Lucifer would just straight out slit his throat for his grace. I also felt like he bought into the whole “Jack has nightmares about the people he can’t save and feels really bad about it,” even though that storyline, in my opinion, wasn’t particularly earned because he spent so much time in the AU with random red shirts.
Having Rowena and Charlie be off somewhere together having fun was also a really nice touch. Clearly they needed the two of them to be far, far, far away when Dean had to save Sam or Rowena could have helped figure out some other way to fight Lucifer, but for once this kind of “necessary plot device” did not seem forced to me. Rowena loves partying, Charlie just got to a shiny new world that hasn’t been decimated, it really felt natural that Rowena would show her the sights.
I loved that Dean brought up retiring to Sam, and that Sam was surprised that Dean would think they could retire, but also openly pleased. Dean has always said the only way they would make it out of their life is bloody, while Sam has always thought they could actually have a post-hunting life. That little moment in the hallway where Dean was willing to express that he wants out of this life, and Sam smiling that there was a light for both of them at the end of the tunnel was just…really nice. I LOVED that Dean did not include Mary in his dream of living on a beach, and that Sam didn’t say, “What about mom?” Like after her “I’m staying behind in this alternate universe” bombshell when Sam had *just* died was enough to finally get them both to realize she’s just not that into them. No matter how many times she says, “I love you boys,” it’s always going to be followed by a “but…” and they just don’t need her to really be in their lives in any kind of active way. In fact, it might be better if she’s not. A huge weight felt like it was lifted off of both of them in that scene. It was lovely.
I appreciated tremendously that they had Dean be the one to talk to Jack about his dreams, instead of Sam, even though Jack is closest to Sam. The writers so often forget that Dean’s got boatloads of trauma and just shove it aside in an effort to highlight Sam’s trauma from the cage (as if it’s some sort of twisted competition – who’s had it worse – and they’ve decided that Sam won), so the moment with Jack was refreshing. Also because it showed the actual growth in the relationship between Jack and Dean, and that Jack has earned Dean’s respect through his actions, and they’ve come a long way from Dean shooting him in the season premiere. (I also laughed at the little callback to the season premiere where Dean shot him just to get his attention because he was acting like a psycho.)
I loved that Sam said, “I love you, I love you all” to Sam, because people just don’t tell the boys they love them enough! Or they do, but it’s with a qualifier (“I love you both, but…”). It was honestly heartwarming to just see Jack tell Sam he loves him, in front of his dick of a father, and be willing to die so Sam doesn’t have to.
I loved the little 10 seconds of joy both boys got after Dean killed Lucifer. It was genuine happiness that they just don’t get to have that often. Of course it all went to shit immediately, but those 10 seconds of joy were wonderful.
I looooooooooved that Dean killed Lucifer, instead of Sam. There are a lot of people who are upset about it because “Sam should have killed him!!!!” but it was a direct callback to when Sam killed Alastair. Plus in “The End” Dean promised Lucifer he would kill him and he would never stop. Murdery Dean gets me all tingly. Every time the writers remember that there actually are previous seasons to this one and manage to weave in little bits of canon, rather than forgetting them or trampling all over them, it makes me all warm and fuzzy. Plus the idea that if you are a Big Bad who hurts one of the brothers, the other brother will murder you until you are dead has been tradition in this show that goes all the way back to Azazel in season 2. I really just love that when one brother needs to have a Big, Powerful Villain murdered to death and isn’t able to do it himself, the other brother says, “Be right back” and murders whatever needs to be murdered.
What I liked most of all is the way they set up next season for some potentially Very Good Things, if they can get some writers on staff who care about more than getting from point A to point B to point C in the quickest way possible, or if they (please lord, oh please!!!!!) bring in a new showrunner to replace Dabb. You’ve got Jensen playing an entirely new character, which could be thrilling if we’ve got Dean fighting internally against Michael, and if they keep him possessed for more than three episodes. Demon Dean was a huge letdown, and I’m hoping they don’t repeat the (imho) mistake of doing away with the alternate character too quickly. I know the point of the show is the brothers, and I’m as hugely invested in their relationship as anyone else, but for the first time in the show’s history there is no need to rush getting Dean back. It’s the first time anything major has happened to Dean that Sam actually has a support system in place to keep him from going off the rails and ending the world, spiraling into depression and abandoning hunting all together, barging around getting innocent people to sell their souls because no demon will talk to him, or unleashing the Darkness upon the world. Jack will have something active to do in helping Sam find and fix Dean. So will Rowena, Charlie, and Bobby. Even Mary has a shot at redemption now because this could finally be the tipping point to make her go, “Oh. I actually DO care about these boys. I didn’t realize how much I wanted them in my life until one of them is possessed by the villain I spent the last few months fighting.” OR it can give the writers a way to just get rid of her entirely if she falls into the “It’s pointless, Dean’s gone” camp and Sam tells her that if she’s not going to help with Dean they don’t need her (my personal wish). Really it’s time for Mary to shit or get off the pot in her relationship with her sons, and this could spark it.
Finally, with the whole “heaven is powering down” thing that is still hanging out there, Castiel could at long last have a storyline that matters. If instead of going the obvious route and have him on “team Save!Dean!” they build a conflict in him between being on “team Save!Dean!” and “team Save!Heaven!” it could be really interesting. Being Cas, he could see the benefit in keeping Michael!Dean and shipping him off to Heaven, instead of getting Michael out of Dean and then having to figure out how to stop Michael from roasting half the planet like he did in the AU. It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice.
If they do keep Dabb (which…it would be a terrible mistake, the show has lost half its audience, they really need to heed the mistakes of The Walking Dead and replace their very bad showrunner rather than doubling down on his “vision”), hopefully now that Wayward Sisters has not been picked up he will actually focus on Supernatural and maybe next year will be somewhat more coherent. It seems glaringly obvious to me that he just did not care about the Mother Ship this year, because he was hoping to go off with hew New and Sparkly Baby Ship next season. I am cautiously optimistic for where next season goes with all the potential that has been set up, but at the same time I’m terrified for all the ways it could got horribly, dreadfully wrong.
///Also not a good look: sticking a revival of Peter Pan at the end of the episode and having Jensen and Mark P. playing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell///
When I saw that it took me out of the story, and in my head I heard and pictured the “Rewrite the Stars” number from Greatest Showman!
// My nose is (more than a bit) out of joint that in order to prove that Mary is a Strong Independent Woman TM they continued to have her completely ignore her sons’ stated emotional needs all the way up through the last episode, but the minute Bobby comes back they seem pretty quick to jump on the “romance between Mary and Bobby” train. It seems literally every other man in the show is worthy of Mary’s attentions and affections but Sam, Dean, and Lucifer. And when you’ve got Sam and Dean in the same category as Lucifer – well, that’s not a good look. //
Mary – ugh. Yes. Mary is just a nonentity. If that’s what Strong Independent Woman (TM) looks like – and increasingly it does – no thank you!
// Freeze frames were literally a joke in The French Mistake. Singer’s character is the one that makes the call to use it as he wearily says “Season 6.” I can only hope this was some kind of inside “wink wink, nudge nudge, who thought we’d be on air this long” to the fans since Singer directed this episode, but if it was it was very out of place. //
I totally see what you’re saying here.
It also felt more like the real END – as opposed to … moving us into the next season … with Dean vanishing from the screen.
// I also liked Alex’s acting. That kid can handle some weighty material, and it’s a shame they sidelined him in the AU so much this season. //
he’s such a wonderful young actor. I really love what he’s done overall. I resisted him at first, but he won me over. It’s kind of a Blast From the Past type thing – a person unfamiliar with the world trying to understand – and he didn’t overplay it. He had a really good line on the tone that needed to be taken – and he could also be funny! I jsut re-watched the “grief counselor” ep (I’m horrible with title names) and he’s very amusing in it. Hard to hold your own with JA and Jp – and he did wonderfully well.
Sorry, I’m breaking up my responses here to your wonderful comment so I can go back and forth:
// It was also a relief to see him drop the whole, “Daddy just didn’t love me enough” victim routine and be straight-up-stab-you-in-the-face (or crush-your-skull) evil. The writers have been using Lucifer as a crutch for far too long, so I’m really glad that he’s dead, and really pleased with how he went out. //
Yes! Re-casting Lucifer as a whiny self-pitying victim was the least interesting choice for him (a similar thing happened with Crowley) – and powering him down as a Big Bad just didn’t work overall. Again, there’s a problem with the conception – it happened with Crowley, it happened with Lucifer, and boy has it happened with Rowena – these people were wonderful FOILS once upon a time, and now they’ve just become The Expected. Jared helped up the ante by quivering with anger/trauma every time Lucifer was mentioned (in this season, at any rate) – which connected us to past seasons and the cage. But Jared can’t do all that work by himself.
The digression with Danneel just went nowheresville and I was disappointed about that. It had potential. Dabb doesn’t recognize potential (especially when it comes to female characters.)
// Dean has always said the only way they would make it out of their life is bloody, while Sam has always thought they could actually have a post-hunting life. That little moment in the hallway where Dean was willing to express that he wants out of this life, and Sam smiling that there was a light for both of them at the end of the tunnel was just…really nice. //
Interesting. Yes.
I keep thinking back mournfully to the “retirement home episode” with Dee Wallace and the conversations the brothers had about retirement there – with Dean getting drawn into the vision of a nice life like this, and Sam being like “what? Retire?” – and yet at the same time Sam finds himself drawn to Eileen – which could be a sign that he too is maybe looking outside “the life” for something else. God, that episode really had potential – potential to pay off BIG in the future. It would have been nice if there had been callbacks to it along the way – didn’t one of them keep the brochure?
I mean, there it all is – GOLD that you’ve set up in a past episode, WAITING to be developed further. Of course they killed Eileen so there goes that idea.
// Every time the writers remember that there actually are previous seasons to this one and manage to weave in little bits of canon, rather than forgetting them or trampling all over them, it makes me all warm and fuzzy. //
// Really it’s time for Mary to shit or get off the pot in her relationship with her sons, and this could spark it. //
My fear is that Dabb et al. are PROUD of what they’ve done with Mary. My fear is that they don’t see the problem at ALL with what they’ve done. They’re feeling all good and feminist-y about it. They don’t get how much they’ve ruined one of the main sources of emotional power in the show.
But I agree: either have Mary invest in her sons or get rid of her.
I just don’t trust that anyone “over there” really realizes that Mary is a huge problem.
// It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice. //
I really like where you’re going with this! This would be a really tormenting Arc for Castiel, and could set up some great tension – and yes, activate him. Also, I’m on Team Naomi now. I hope she’ll play a part in this too.
// It seems glaringly obvious to me that he just did not care about the Mother Ship this year, because he was hoping to go off with hew New and Sparkly Baby Ship next season. //
// It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice. //
I would consider paying real money for Castiel to have a decent storyline again, or even to be allowed to interact with the Winchesters on a more regular basis. However, I actually hope they don’t go this route, or if they do, that they do it in a way we didn’t see in Season 6 (defeat Raphael while protecting Sam and Dean). And season 8 (brainwashed sleeper agent for Heaven while trying to work with Sam and Dean). And Season 9 (be leader of a heavenly army, or, as Metatron put it, “give it all up for one man”). And season 10 (whatever the hell was going on there with Hannah). And, whatever they go with, could the showrunners just please allow it to work out for him for once?
I hesitate to make comments about the actor vs the storyline, but MC’s performance has really not worked for me lately. I don’t know if it’s me or if he’s really started struggling with the sadsack repetitiveness/confusion of his storylines — is he gravely Doing a Joke? is he gravely Insisting someone is Family? or is he gravely being Gloomy? As you say Kirinleaf this is an ossified aspect of his characterisation/purpose by now but I’m just not feeling like there’s anything behind it anymore.
Yes, I don’t like saying those things either, but I’ve had trouble with a lot of things about Castiel – acting being one of them. I feel like there is not much texture to it most of the time. And then, listen, I admire MC for making bold choices and sticking to them, but for me the Empty Castiel and the (russian-ish?) doppelganger did NOT work. I thought it was embarrassing.
But then again, his storylines do NOT make a lick of sense, and haven’t since the Trout Angels.
What’s the general sense of this season as a whole? I’d say it was better than 12, but that’s mostly down to, I think, a few strong moments at the beginning and end, some bright spots in the middle, and the delightful presence of Jack.
Overall, in my opinion, another whole season that misused and warped the best things about the show. I think the new universe business was a huuuuuuge waste of time — it brought us Sam and Lucifer in the cave-Dean grieving (<3) but that could have happened anywhere — and treating it so cavalierly threatens to break parts of the show as severely as BMoL-in-America broke the show's conception of hunters.* I also don't understand the point of any of the Death-Billie plots. Still and all, Scooby was fun, and most of the Donna's niece (?) episode. Sam and Rowena talking in the car. A few extremely lovely shots in that second episode are personal highlights! I’m sure I’m forgetting some other bits I enjoyed.
*Not only the vibe of hunters, but of monsters too. I can’t get my heart around this Buffy-ish “complex societies of hundreds of thousands of monsters” thing. Did it begin with Dabb-and-Singer’s Bloodlines? and continued with the Frankensteins. Maybe I’m just being unrealistic about how many plots they could continue to generate without expanding the universe more but between this, Fuller Bunker, the Waywards, and “let’s go shoot a bunch of werewolves at the start of the episode”, at what point does the show just become NCIS: Monster Hunters?
I’ve been sitting with the end of s13 for several days now, and the longer I sit with it, the sadder I get.
I don’t know how exactly to quantify this sadness. It’s mainly about the ossification of Kelly Kline into St. Mary II, as St. Mary I continues to turn away from us. Also about Jack’s purehearted determination to listen to Lucifer and make his own choices: Lucifer is every fuckup dad rolling up and promising the world.
This is the kind of storyline with which I can’t engage critically. I can only experience it as an abandoned child, always, always waiting for someone to come and put everything right. I don’t know if watching Sam and Dean stand in the rubble of the Myth of Mary and determinedly build up the Myth of Kelly makes good television. I just know that it makes me sad, in a slow dying sort of way.
I was engaged by Castiel in a way I hadn’t been in a while. While I didn’t suspect he was Empty!Cas, I did think he had returned to s6 form: a Castiel who is too preoccupied with loftier things to be a decent or honest friend and ally. First with his ephemeral belief that he was returned to Earth to build an army to fight altMichael, then with his concern about Heaven burning out (and then the relatively minor but utterly outrageous speech about how they all let Lucifer out of the cage and how being relatively ignored while Lucifer drove was equivalent to two centuries of personalized torture!!!!), I kept waiting for him to sink the knife in. I was half convinced that he had helped orchestrate Michael’s and Lucifer’s return to Sam and Dean’s world purely to repower Heaven. I was intrigued. I even kind of figured this was why we were getting all those family and Team Free Will (because otherwise, what does that even mean in this context?) speeches, to give his eventual heelturn some emotional weight. But I guess not?
This season had so many joyful bright spots in it. In the second half, Scoobynatural, the Kill Bill episode, and the one with the skull of St. Peter all delighted me. Sleipnir chomping on his carrot made me laugh out loud. Sam’s dream helped me connect with the bunker not so much as a space, but as a symbol of longing, which I haven’t really felt since the heaviness of Sam and Dean’s different conceptions of its meaning in s9. The Dean Cave! A perfect shrine to longing!
Now I’m thinking about how Sam’s dream filled the bunker enough that Mary was content to be there. Turns out it wasn’t nearly enough; Mary wouldn’t come back to live with her sons for anything less than a full refugee camp. She’ll always promise things are going to be different, but she’ll always find something else that’s more important to her.
i can’t give up on her or wish her off the show. Her lack of engagement is awful, again, a constant slow death. But you always wait, you always hope. This is the story we got, rather than the one that pushed Sam into the back seat of the Impala. Maybe not good television, but it feels real, and that is one of the hooks the show has in me.
In the altworld, only Maggie and Kevin really hit for me. I’m numb to old favorites coming back now. Sam’s death, on the other hand, still makes me queasy. The rest of it was kind of a wash, though I did enjoy Missouri as a blasted wasteland riddled with spikes.
Anyway. My favorite things: Jack. Rowena and Sam’s relationship. Dean’s ridiculous hideaway for him and Sam (hideaway from what??? even in their top secret underground lair, he still wants to build clubhouses and forts just for them <3) The grief counsellor: conscious mythbuilding as a survival strategy in direct conflict with Dean and Sam's own crumbling myths. The Bettie Page undertaker. The safecracker who reminded me of my old friend Ariel. Wendy Hanscum. Sam's face when Lucifer died.
I'm not super enthusiastic about Michael driving Dean. We'll see!
I saw elsewhere here about your mother. I'm sorry. That sucks. Hope you're all doing as well as you can.
congrats Jenny, you’ve made me want to watch s13 again! You describe a quality of mourning that I saw but could rarely hook in to (Dean at the start and Sam in the counsellor’s room being the two exceptions I can remember) and I appreciate the way you link Kelly and Mary, even though not everyone comes out clean in the comparison.
Maybe not good television, but it feels real, and that is one of the hooks the show has in me.
I’m not glad for your sadness, but I am so glad to read that the show still has this power. Thank you for sharing. And thank you for your well wishes with my own mum. You know, it’s funny, about seasons and mothers — for me, I can’t divorce season 3 from when my mum was sick the first time, not because they were concurrent (they weren’t) but because, after I noticed it, I could not escape the similarity between Dean’s deal and a terminal prognosis. For me season three is less about love and death and more about love and TIME.
I would have loved to see something like that driving Cas’s story. Give him something.
The Dean Cave – I’m so mad we only saw it once! Sam’s face when Lucifer died! I am with you all the way.
I hope 14 brings you the same feeling of depth and enjoyment!
congrats Jenny, you’ve made me want to watch s13 again!
o crap, don’t listen to me, please, I’m full of it. Pam would warn you against that strenuously.
In earlier seasons, I felt that this was almost a post-fic show, in that the show was willing to Go There, that the story happening onscreen was almost always deeper, more shocking and more resonant than any transformative exploration of it. That’s rare! I came to the show fic first, actual episodes a grudging afterthought, but it took nearly no time for me to abandon the fic side almost entirely.*
I don’t feel that’s the case anymore, that from the end of s11 on, the show has required some heavy lifting
on the part of the viewer. The elements are still there, but I don’t always believe that the show is aware that they’re there, that they’ll choose the tough story over the gimmick. You know all this, obviously. Anyway, as a person of a fannish/ficcish background, the inclination is always there for me to flesh out and extrapolate. So don’t listen to me (or at least if you do, please don’t hold it against me if it all still falls flat for you).
For me season three is less about love and death and more about love and TIME.
Oh, man. My heart to you, Jessie. It’s always about time. Thank you for sharing this, but I am just so god damn sorry your family is going through it.
s5 is that season for me. In my personal filing system
(and here I’m only dealing with Dean’s perspective), it’s the season Dean realized Sam wasn’t in love with him. For me, it’s entirely about my dad, about the constant mathematics, tabulating the evidence and reaching the inevitable conclusion, tearing it up and starting again because the answer is unthinkable. The rest of the series hits those notes regularly — it’s explictly a show about abused, neglected, and abandoned children — obviously s13 with Mary swinging between the extremes of Kelly and Lucifer hit those notes for me too. But s5 is its own symphony of being left behind.
Which is one of the things about this show! I suspect it means something painful and personal to maybe most of its viewers, something more than just beautiful men with pretty guns (tho the men are beautiful and the guns are pretty).
Anyway, about time. I don’t mean to be making claims upon yours by constantly word vomiting all over you. Thanks for being so generous to me and don’t feel obligated to reply any faster than you like.
*s8 brought me back, after they decided to drop their side pieces to save the marriage. genuine what am i even seeing here???? moment. i had to check in.
I chuckled at the idea of you coming back to fic all wtf during s8. I love hearing about peoples’ journeys with this cuckoo bananas show.
I felt that this was almost a post-fic show, in that the show was willing to Go There, that the story happening onscreen was almost always deeper, more shocking and more resonant than any transformative exploration of it.
there’s a lot to this, imo! As a person of the same background, I was subsumed by the fic side of things right at the start and I kept on in that vein; in one sense, spn was a fairly natural extension of other big fandom duos of the time, the buddy shows and those other homoerotic pairs in ensemble shows that dominated media fandom. So that paradigm made it natural, BUT. Obviously the buddy-cop is not the only or the most important constitutive genre. There’s so much else packed in there each bringing its own iconographic and emotional charge, keeping the surface rich and compelling while detonating bombs underneath. The show is steeped in the unthinkable, the unspeakable. My fic interest remains rather narrow. I want to see the bombs detonate but beyond that the show mostly contents me. I’ve seen it talked about as a show like Smallville, fertile for transformative fandom because it’s shoddily built, because logic gaps and emotional bizarrities leave so much space for play. I don’t relate to that view of SPN. (Post s11 is, ba-dum, another story).
Thank you for your kind words — I hope you guys are safe at home and that the squirrels did not triumph!
So so so disappointed! Damn we finally have another a finale that on paper should have topped season’s 5 swan song, but somehow it felt so much less than….again!!!
Why was the fight between dean-Michael and lucifer so short and so minimal in terms of damage?! I mean this was the 2 big bad archangels FINALLY having it out. It’s the stuff that gets you all tingling with excitement, instead we get this weird 5 second Ariel like dance thing with the occasional punch. They could have slow motioned the punches, had them breaking concrete , windows shattering from the force of the punches… just something to prove how powerful / dangerous the fight was!
Yet again the cliff hanger is a main character being possessed or has an unatural change in character . Done so many times , with slight variances ( sigh)
And seriously the freeze frame bit right at the end. ( (corny much) …we all know he’s Michael thank you!!! What happened to subltey in this show? It was that kind of thing that used to set it apart from anything else despite the shows theme!
It has been said but I will say it again, nothing has come close to season 5 in terms of quality and concistency! There were so many moments in that season that had me hooked. Anyone remember the first time we were introduced to death….that walk….the music that went with it….the acting , the writing the sound production it was all on top form!!!!!
Having said all that I will be watching season 14 lol I’ve got this far with boys can’t let em down now! All I’ll say is it feels like hanging out with an old friend that you don’t really click with anymore but you just can’t quite break it of off with.
//All I’ll say is it feels like hanging out with an old friend that you don’t really click with anymore but you just can’t quite break it of off with.//
Wow, that’s a very good description, and that breaks my heart.
Hey, Sheila, it’s madfashionista! Mind if I rant a tad?
I’ve only watched this season in fits and starts, but I made certain to watch the finale today. I feel incredibly boned that Sam didn’t kill Lucifer! Yeah, okay Dean Angel (I can hear “Teen Angel” crooning through my head) could do it, but it if was an archangel blade, why couldn’t Sam kill Lucifer? The triumph should have been Sam’s. Come on, it’s been 8 seasons since Lucifer showed up and first started wrecking Sam’s (already wrecked) life. Grrr.
The world is ending and now it’s time for–a werewolf hunt? WTF? Was that stuck in there so that they could find Maggie dead? Couldn’t they have used the screentime for something else? And why bother with Lucifer killing Maggie if the only point was to show what an evil bastard he is? Couldn’t they do something a bit more, um, interesting? He’s the devil, why not have him destroy a strip mall? “That Raymour and Flanigan sold me a crappy couch! For that they must DIE!”
The effects in this episode were C-movie cheese. Could the actors have looked any more awkward than that ridiculous angel fight? And when Lucifer lay on the ground dead, why on earth did they go for real wings, instead of the burned soot silhouettes? When dead Lucifer was in the background, I was painfully aware of an actor pretending to be dead lying on a big-ass pair of fake wings. Remember when angels were interesting, sociopathic and scary as hell? (Zachariah! Come back! All is forgiven!) Bobby and Mary? Ew! She’s out of his league. And doesn’t anybody die on this show? I honestly can’t get invested because nobody really dies. Trust me, Lucifer’s going to show up when they need another Big Bad and the store’s out of stock.
And what is Castiel’s reason for being there? Misha Collins isn’t the world’s greatest actor. When he’s in a scene where all he has to do is go snarly-face, I am again acutely aware I am watching an actor, not a character. There’s too many characters. If they’re not careful it’s going to look like “The Walking Dead” and they’ll have to kill Carl.
And what’s with the “getting rid of all the evil in the world”? What kind of flat-earther idiocy is that? At best it’s lazy writing, at worst it’s because they just think we’re only hear for the pretty and the punching. For some reason the first thing that comes to mind is even when all of the evil has left the world, you’ll still have really shitty customer service.
I adored Demon Dean. Dean Angel, yeah, he has a slightly different expression on his face. Demon Dean had real juice, and was funny and scary. (Demon Dean! Come back! All is forgiven!) Jared is much better than Jensen at assuming different personas.
Alexander Calvert is an excellent actor and Jack is a sweet little nougat. He was the best thing in the episode. One thing I’m not clear on. Is he now without his powers since Lucifer took them? If he has them back, how did he get them back?
Things I liked… 1) Dean with those dope black wings, 2) Lucifer is dead.
I am so glad that Lucifer revealed that any inclinations toward redemption were only a farce, that he was still evil, dangerous, and self-aggrandizing. And I’m glad he’s dead, burnt wings and all. Part of me acknowledges that Sam deserved the kill, but I also like how the Winchesters defeated him together.
The wings were awesome!
The wings were awesome. The high school-quality Peter Pan wire works for the fights was ridiculous.
good thinking Pat. Things I liked:
1) a face on Sam we’d never seen before: that bewildered joyous relief. A contender for my favourite thing of the season.
2) a face on Dean we’d never seen before, his transition.
3) some of Pellegrino’s deliveries
4) some of Calvert’s deliveries
please don’t talk to me about the rest of it until I’ve had a chance to reincarnate a couple of times.
Things I loved: the flashbacks we had already seen the previous week.
//please don’t talk to me about the rest of it until I’ve had a chance to reincarnate a couple of times.//
Ha ha, ok.
is this terminal flashback affliction restricted to the last two seasons or is my overwhelming bias messing with my head?
It is, and I think it’s been much worse this season.
thank you for confirming, haha. I know I beat a dead horse with them but they just make me so, so mad. Like we’re barely-functioning morons. It’s all over the place. Like, with Sam praying this episode — I thought the prayer itself could have been better written, but whatever: to then immediately cut to Jack and make us listen to it again in like tinny Sam ghost voice, over Jack reacting: why? Why trample your actors like that? Is it a network thing? You know that one of the cuts tried a version without the prayer. Who looked at that and said no, it’s just not clear enough? I want answers! I want heads to roll! Oh, my goodness. I’m so MAD about it!!
Definitely something new.
It betrays a lack of faith – and also … just points out that everyone “over there” doesn’t seem to “get” the show they’re working on anymore. They themselves don’t know the history. (The “callback” to “Member that time you were Polish?” is a particularly horrifying example) . It’s like they’re reminding themSELVES what all the callbacks are – whereas we don’t need any of that.
Dabb is not good.
Oh man, I know! I was SO angry with the whole thing. And seriously, they showed us the guy Jack killed 2 weeks in a row. I felt insulted. Just because THEY’re not following what’s happening in their own show doesn’t mean WE don’t, godammit!
?
Loved Dean’s wings!
I liked the moment where Jack says “I love you” to Sam. It felt honest and vulnerable, and that’s due to Alexander. And yes, thank god Lucifer is finally dead.
that was a great delivery <3
He really is a wonderful young actor. Has a total handle on playing the other-ness of Jack – but also his blunt human emotions. It’s not an easy thing – ‘Jack’ could be just terrible in another actor’s hands.
Overall, I liked it. As several of us have mentioned in the comments, we will have to rewatch a few time to get all the meanings and nuances, but overall, I think that this was one of the better finales. In my opinion, it follows the trend of several SPN finales, because this felt like a trilogy that started with “Beat the Devil” ( talk about foreshadowing), continued with Exodus and ended with Let the Good Times Roll. As Dean said, “get in, get jack and mom and get out”. So I’m going to watch all three episodes again together as a three hour mini series. I think it might be interesting.
And yes, I agree, much as I love Mark Pellegrino, I’m glad Lucifer is done with.
Oh, wow! Where to start?!? I’m still trying to reset my brain. I had such hopes. Why do I do this to myself?!?
It was definitely time for Pellegrino to go. Time for Rowena to go too. Or, the time for that was like 3, 4 seasons ago.
Things I liked:
Dean grabbing Sam’s hand like he was 5 years old when they were running out of the convenience store. That small, subtle moment made my heart crack more than any of the we’re family, we save the world, we get things done, speeches that these writers have been bludgeoning us over the head with the past few seasons.
The look of pure unfettered joy that crossed Sam’s face as the realization hit him that Lucifer was really dead and the 15 seconds of happiness (was it even that long?) that the brothers got to share together.
Lucifer lying dead on the ground.
Dean standing there with wings gloriously spread behind him. As far as being in the liked category…I’m strictly talking the visual…that was awesome.
Agree on the Calvert and Pellegrino deliveries…they both had some really good moments.
The rest of it? Sigh.
Michelle – I’ll have to go back and look for the hand grabbing moment – I missed it.
So agree about the bludgeoning of “we save the world” nonsense. My God, why can’t they HEAR it?
// The look of pure unfettered joy that crossed Sam’s face as the realization hit him that Lucifer was really dead //
Yes. That was very moving.
As you have all mentioned, Jack, Sam, Dean, Lucifer, Michaelean – all were amazing, so satisfying! Who mentioned 2 weeks ago that they missed the potential psychopath in Jack? How awesome that we got a peak at that conflicting side of him here! And we only had to wait 9 years for the Michael Sword to be unsheathed, so to speak. I completely agree that it was very satisfying to see Lucifer return to true form. I love the final defeat of Lucifer and that it didn’t involve redheaded witches, alt universe characters brought back for old times sake, freaking Mary Winchester, Cass, or Chuck! Or wayward daughters…
Please, CW, if you are going to commit to renewing this show forever, please also commit to some decent effects. I love a good fight on Supernatural (usually so good) and I was really enjoying the first few seconds of the Michaelean/Lucifer rumble until…tinker bell catfight!
What I was hoping for:
* Mary Winchester dies a gut wrenching death that will haunt Sam & Dean for the rest of their lives – again. Or maybe a pitiful, meaningless death that no one could possibly idealize (in flagrante’ with Ketch?) – yeah, that one!
* Rift/Alt world would explode sucking everyone back in and there’s no possibility of ever going back – even memory wiping everyone (including me) of its existence.
* Since Rowena is STILL alive, I hoped she would use her all powerful book to reopen the cage and retrieve the real Michael! Ok, I really was thinking this was a possibility and I am secretly nursing this fantasy for next season!
// tinker bell catfight! //
hahahaha Oh man it was so silly.
The thing I kept thinking was: “They’re angels. Shouldn’t they be USED to being airborne? Why do they look like The Greatest American Hero?”
They have a hard time envisioning now what a “clash” would even look like – it’s basically a fist fight with more powerful fists so people go flipping through the air. Sigh.
Once upon a time, just the THREAT of an angel fight was enough to make Sam and Dean tremble and want to get out of the way. We didn’t even need to see it.
// Mary Winchester dies a gut wrenching death that will haunt Sam & Dean for the rest of their lives – again. //
She’s such a bummer. The problem is that Dabb doesn’t seem to recognize she IS a problem and that they’ve handled her so poorly she has zero resonance in the story at all. Even the whole “we have to get Mom back” thing – the engine of the season … there was no payoff. She’s a cold fish. I’m pissed about how badly they’ve bungled her return. The myth of Mary was such a powerful symbol for the characters – and now? They’ve lost that source of power in the show.
Sheila,
Aside from everything else, I need your assessment of the final toes-to-nose reveal of Michael/Dean walking down the street. I got a very Saturday night fever vibe, but that music wasn’t the Bee Gees. It feels like a reference especially with the collar pins and newsboy cap, but I can’t place it. Is this just more velveeta or is it a meaningful reference?
Yeah, Melanie, I was thinking about this actually. There was definitely a Saturday Night Fever nod in the walk … but the freeze-frame is what got me. Butch Cassidy/Sundance ends with a freeze frame – but I feel like there’s another reference I might be missing. Since Robert Singer was at the helm, I have no doubt he was thinking of something – I will keep pondering it.
Was there a freeze frame at the end of season 9 on Dean’s black demon eyes? I thought that was the clear reference here – Michael’s angel blue eyes evoking memories of Demon!Dean. Unfortunately that comparison also makes Meredith’s point painfully obvious! Compare your shock and surprise at seeing Demon!Dean’s black eyes to the ho-hum, we-all-knew-this-was-coming-because-you-wouldn’t-shut-your-pie-hole reaction to Michaelean’s eyes!
The walk and the costume choice are the puzzle to me. Amara’s walk scene clearly evoked Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore, bygone innocence and wonder. The more I think about it the more I think my first instinct was right. John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever is walking down the street with the attitude that he owns his world. He is cocky and confident. It has been a really long time since I’ve seen that movie, but it seems that in his other world – home, work – he struggles & fights, but not the world of strobing lights, thrumming beats, and form fitting bellbottoms. His dominance is an illusion soon to be cut down by the next big thing or dare I say the death of disco. I can certainly see parallels with Michael’s new situation. The sinister music totally kills the SNF vibe, though. Maybe the costume choice is meant just to look hot without looking like various other characters – demon or angel. (Jensen always looks extra hot in period attire!) Awhile back Sheila and I had a wonderful conversation about SNF and the influence of disco on our respective lives. I should go back and look for it.
Dean!Angel! I like that!
The whole outfit reminded me overwhelmingly of Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders (which is A-OK by me, but probably not deliberate!).
Kirinleaf –
I had the same thought. PB takes place between WWI and WWII – I’m wondering if that’s kinda the reference – a power struggle in an interbellum? Plus, Michaelean (Deanchael?) just looks cool with the cap. I don’t have a pointer for the freeze frame.
My vote is for Dean!Angel. Sad that I did not come up with that myself.
And Angel!Dean sounds like the name of some harassed kid on Dance Moms. Paula Deen’s daughter, if she were on the show.
Lol, mutecypher. My vote is for Michael!Dean, like we had Lucifer!Sam. I’m sure there is probably a name convention somewhere.
Just popping in here to say that Jensen Ackles has expressed his love and admiration for the Netflix series “Peaky Blinders” many times, and at a recent convention, he said the wardrobe head at SPN contacted him and asked for his thoughts on the new character’s “look”…and voila! 1920s Michael!Dean was born.
We all wish there had been more behind it than that, but…
Nice catch!
What is onscreen always has its own meaning though – something beyond the creator’s control (even though they try to control it, understandably) and once it’s “out there” – it’s OURS, not theirs. That image of JA in the cap on the street is ours now, not his. That final moment was cinematic in a very unique way – which is why we’re all talking about it! and it calls to mind lots of different things – even a silent film like The Crowd (1928) – which has some of the greatest crowd scenes ever, urban crowd scenes, with lead characters “found” in the middle of it. all wearing caps like Angel Dean! :) The “feel” of it also reminded me (slightly) of the famous moment in Tootsie, when you see Hoffman in the midst of a crowded street, coming towards the camera – surrounded by anonymous crowd – although the SPN moment had a dark Cockney vibe, as opposed to a modern-day bustling New York vibe. It was striking.
You are so good at this Sheila! The Crowd: certainly conveys the idea that Michael has “disappeared” into the huge impersonal metropolis, ie: the world who has no idea who this guy is and doesn’t care. I was trying to get a place clue, but I think now it is meant to be un-placeable.
As for Tootsie, yes, yes, yes! It has the added layer of being about a character inside another character like Michael inside of Dean. Is it a portent of good that the external character of Tootsie ultimately changes the inner man for the better?
I’ve seen some suggestion that what it’s really calling to is the last frame of Thriller — intentional, surely?!
I think if my tolerance for cheese was not so overcome and exhausted by all that had come before I could probably have a laugh about it — might even have laughed as it happened — but as it was I was just hiding my eyes!! D-:
Isn’t every shocking eye thing in Supernatural from episode 6, “Skin”, with the first shifter lens flare to the Yellow Eyed Demon up to Jack’s glowing eyes at the end of the Season 12 finale a callback to MJ’s Thriller? At least they
didn’t flash back to all those glowing colored eyes, right?! Honestly I really like Sheila’s point that once it’s out there it becomes ours – mine! For me it can be Saturday Night Fever and Star Trek Original series and for others, Peaky Blinders. That’s the beauty of it!
BTW: I am so binging Peaky Blinders!
He looks so hot in period clothes. I love it when he doesn’t dress like “some farmer clown.” hahaha
Sorry! I thought that last comment would pop in here.
Also I’m terrible with links, but I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Maybe Sheila can fix it for me.
Wait – let me figure it out.
That’s stunning, Melanie.
Thank you! And can Sam be the Lion-ram-eagle seraphim creature spitting water? Please?!?
Yes! So gorgeous, Melanie!
Unfortunately that team takedown of the Werewolves feels like a Super Friends setup for next season. As much as I love Jack, now we have Sam & Dean + flightless angel + powered down nephilim.
To quote Michelle, “sigh!”
So it…didn’t completely suck? First, the parts that just made me sigh aloud.
I felt they wasted a lot of time in the beginning (a *lot* of time) what with the whole werewolf hunt thing and Mary and Bobby conversing and Maggie being murdered by Lucifer, plus…there’s still so many people in the bunker and that just personally makes me claustrophobic. I am very particular about who comes into my home and when so this whole idea that there are 20 plus strangers just hanging out in the bunker gives me hives. My nose is (more than a bit) out of joint that in order to prove that Mary is a Strong Independent Woman TM they continued to have her completely ignore her sons’ stated emotional needs all the way up through the last episode, but the minute Bobby comes back they seem pretty quick to jump on the “romance between Mary and Bobby” train. It seems literally every other man in the show is worthy of Mary’s attentions and affections but Sam, Dean, and Lucifer. And when you’ve got Sam and Dean in the same category as Lucifer – well, that’s not a good look.
Also not a good look: sticking a revival of Peter Pan at the end of the episode and having Jensen and Mark P. playing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. I’m glad for their sakes the air fighting was brief because 1) it was laughable and 2) those harnesses are really not comfortable, especially for men. And the freeze frame at the very end. Freeze frames were literally a joke in The French Mistake. Singer’s character is the one that makes the call to use it as he wearily says “Season 6.” I can only hope this was some kind of inside “wink wink, nudge nudge, who thought we’d be on air this long” to the fans since Singer directed this episode, but if it was it was very out of place.
Finally, really disappointed in the lack of creativity in having Dean say “yes” to Michael. Not surprised, just disappointed. When they first teased Jensen was going to play a new character it was wide open and hugely exciting, and then Dabb couldn’t shut his trap about it and said something about “Someone we haven’t seen in years” and how it was a “long time coming.” That’s obviously either our Michael or AU!Michael, and it may have been a shock if Dabb had just kept his mouth shut instead of running around to everyone willing to interview him saying, “Giggle – I had this GREAT idea to have Jensen play someone else that hasn’t been around for a long time and it’s going to be really great and you’re just going to have to wait and see who it is giggle!!!!!” He really narrowed the list of possibilities by talking too much about it beforehand and it took out a lot of the punch.
What I *did* like was Mark P’s acting. Lucifer has been wearing on me for a while, but he sincerely knocked this episode out of the park. When Jack compelled him to tell the truth I had a “holy shit!” moment, because how awesome is it that Jack can compel people to tell the truth? It was also a relief to see him drop the whole, “Daddy just didn’t love me enough” victim routine and be straight-up-stab-you-in-the-face (or crush-your-skull) evil. The writers have been using Lucifer as a crutch for far too long, so I’m really glad that he’s dead, and really pleased with how he went out.
I also liked Alex’s acting. That kid can handle some weighty material, and it’s a shame they sidelined him in the AU so much this season. I was pleased at how they powered him down so that him being able to do things like compel people to tell them the truth doesn’t become problematic and require him to be sidelined again next season (because otherwise things would just be too easy), and I really didn’t see it coming that Lucifer would just straight out slit his throat for his grace. I also felt like he bought into the whole “Jack has nightmares about the people he can’t save and feels really bad about it,” even though that storyline, in my opinion, wasn’t particularly earned because he spent so much time in the AU with random red shirts.
Having Rowena and Charlie be off somewhere together having fun was also a really nice touch. Clearly they needed the two of them to be far, far, far away when Dean had to save Sam or Rowena could have helped figure out some other way to fight Lucifer, but for once this kind of “necessary plot device” did not seem forced to me. Rowena loves partying, Charlie just got to a shiny new world that hasn’t been decimated, it really felt natural that Rowena would show her the sights.
I loved that Dean brought up retiring to Sam, and that Sam was surprised that Dean would think they could retire, but also openly pleased. Dean has always said the only way they would make it out of their life is bloody, while Sam has always thought they could actually have a post-hunting life. That little moment in the hallway where Dean was willing to express that he wants out of this life, and Sam smiling that there was a light for both of them at the end of the tunnel was just…really nice. I LOVED that Dean did not include Mary in his dream of living on a beach, and that Sam didn’t say, “What about mom?” Like after her “I’m staying behind in this alternate universe” bombshell when Sam had *just* died was enough to finally get them both to realize she’s just not that into them. No matter how many times she says, “I love you boys,” it’s always going to be followed by a “but…” and they just don’t need her to really be in their lives in any kind of active way. In fact, it might be better if she’s not. A huge weight felt like it was lifted off of both of them in that scene. It was lovely.
I appreciated tremendously that they had Dean be the one to talk to Jack about his dreams, instead of Sam, even though Jack is closest to Sam. The writers so often forget that Dean’s got boatloads of trauma and just shove it aside in an effort to highlight Sam’s trauma from the cage (as if it’s some sort of twisted competition – who’s had it worse – and they’ve decided that Sam won), so the moment with Jack was refreshing. Also because it showed the actual growth in the relationship between Jack and Dean, and that Jack has earned Dean’s respect through his actions, and they’ve come a long way from Dean shooting him in the season premiere. (I also laughed at the little callback to the season premiere where Dean shot him just to get his attention because he was acting like a psycho.)
I loved that Sam said, “I love you, I love you all” to Sam, because people just don’t tell the boys they love them enough! Or they do, but it’s with a qualifier (“I love you both, but…”). It was honestly heartwarming to just see Jack tell Sam he loves him, in front of his dick of a father, and be willing to die so Sam doesn’t have to.
I loved the little 10 seconds of joy both boys got after Dean killed Lucifer. It was genuine happiness that they just don’t get to have that often. Of course it all went to shit immediately, but those 10 seconds of joy were wonderful.
I looooooooooved that Dean killed Lucifer, instead of Sam. There are a lot of people who are upset about it because “Sam should have killed him!!!!” but it was a direct callback to when Sam killed Alastair. Plus in “The End” Dean promised Lucifer he would kill him and he would never stop. Murdery Dean gets me all tingly. Every time the writers remember that there actually are previous seasons to this one and manage to weave in little bits of canon, rather than forgetting them or trampling all over them, it makes me all warm and fuzzy. Plus the idea that if you are a Big Bad who hurts one of the brothers, the other brother will murder you until you are dead has been tradition in this show that goes all the way back to Azazel in season 2. I really just love that when one brother needs to have a Big, Powerful Villain murdered to death and isn’t able to do it himself, the other brother says, “Be right back” and murders whatever needs to be murdered.
What I liked most of all is the way they set up next season for some potentially Very Good Things, if they can get some writers on staff who care about more than getting from point A to point B to point C in the quickest way possible, or if they (please lord, oh please!!!!!) bring in a new showrunner to replace Dabb. You’ve got Jensen playing an entirely new character, which could be thrilling if we’ve got Dean fighting internally against Michael, and if they keep him possessed for more than three episodes. Demon Dean was a huge letdown, and I’m hoping they don’t repeat the (imho) mistake of doing away with the alternate character too quickly. I know the point of the show is the brothers, and I’m as hugely invested in their relationship as anyone else, but for the first time in the show’s history there is no need to rush getting Dean back. It’s the first time anything major has happened to Dean that Sam actually has a support system in place to keep him from going off the rails and ending the world, spiraling into depression and abandoning hunting all together, barging around getting innocent people to sell their souls because no demon will talk to him, or unleashing the Darkness upon the world. Jack will have something active to do in helping Sam find and fix Dean. So will Rowena, Charlie, and Bobby. Even Mary has a shot at redemption now because this could finally be the tipping point to make her go, “Oh. I actually DO care about these boys. I didn’t realize how much I wanted them in my life until one of them is possessed by the villain I spent the last few months fighting.” OR it can give the writers a way to just get rid of her entirely if she falls into the “It’s pointless, Dean’s gone” camp and Sam tells her that if she’s not going to help with Dean they don’t need her (my personal wish). Really it’s time for Mary to shit or get off the pot in her relationship with her sons, and this could spark it.
Finally, with the whole “heaven is powering down” thing that is still hanging out there, Castiel could at long last have a storyline that matters. If instead of going the obvious route and have him on “team Save!Dean!” they build a conflict in him between being on “team Save!Dean!” and “team Save!Heaven!” it could be really interesting. Being Cas, he could see the benefit in keeping Michael!Dean and shipping him off to Heaven, instead of getting Michael out of Dean and then having to figure out how to stop Michael from roasting half the planet like he did in the AU. It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice.
If they do keep Dabb (which…it would be a terrible mistake, the show has lost half its audience, they really need to heed the mistakes of The Walking Dead and replace their very bad showrunner rather than doubling down on his “vision”), hopefully now that Wayward Sisters has not been picked up he will actually focus on Supernatural and maybe next year will be somewhat more coherent. It seems glaringly obvious to me that he just did not care about the Mother Ship this year, because he was hoping to go off with hew New and Sparkly Baby Ship next season. I am cautiously optimistic for where next season goes with all the potential that has been set up, but at the same time I’m terrified for all the ways it could got horribly, dreadfully wrong.
///Also not a good look: sticking a revival of Peter Pan at the end of the episode and having Jensen and Mark P. playing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell///
When I saw that it took me out of the story, and in my head I heard and pictured the “Rewrite the Stars” number from Greatest Showman!
It was very Rewrite the Stars – hahaha
// My nose is (more than a bit) out of joint that in order to prove that Mary is a Strong Independent Woman TM they continued to have her completely ignore her sons’ stated emotional needs all the way up through the last episode, but the minute Bobby comes back they seem pretty quick to jump on the “romance between Mary and Bobby” train. It seems literally every other man in the show is worthy of Mary’s attentions and affections but Sam, Dean, and Lucifer. And when you’ve got Sam and Dean in the same category as Lucifer – well, that’s not a good look. //
Mary – ugh. Yes. Mary is just a nonentity. If that’s what Strong Independent Woman (TM) looks like – and increasingly it does – no thank you!
// Freeze frames were literally a joke in The French Mistake. Singer’s character is the one that makes the call to use it as he wearily says “Season 6.” I can only hope this was some kind of inside “wink wink, nudge nudge, who thought we’d be on air this long” to the fans since Singer directed this episode, but if it was it was very out of place. //
I totally see what you’re saying here.
It also felt more like the real END – as opposed to … moving us into the next season … with Dean vanishing from the screen.
// I also liked Alex’s acting. That kid can handle some weighty material, and it’s a shame they sidelined him in the AU so much this season. //
he’s such a wonderful young actor. I really love what he’s done overall. I resisted him at first, but he won me over. It’s kind of a Blast From the Past type thing – a person unfamiliar with the world trying to understand – and he didn’t overplay it. He had a really good line on the tone that needed to be taken – and he could also be funny! I jsut re-watched the “grief counselor” ep (I’m horrible with title names) and he’s very amusing in it. Hard to hold your own with JA and Jp – and he did wonderfully well.
Sorry, I’m breaking up my responses here to your wonderful comment so I can go back and forth:
// It was also a relief to see him drop the whole, “Daddy just didn’t love me enough” victim routine and be straight-up-stab-you-in-the-face (or crush-your-skull) evil. The writers have been using Lucifer as a crutch for far too long, so I’m really glad that he’s dead, and really pleased with how he went out. //
Yes! Re-casting Lucifer as a whiny self-pitying victim was the least interesting choice for him (a similar thing happened with Crowley) – and powering him down as a Big Bad just didn’t work overall. Again, there’s a problem with the conception – it happened with Crowley, it happened with Lucifer, and boy has it happened with Rowena – these people were wonderful FOILS once upon a time, and now they’ve just become The Expected. Jared helped up the ante by quivering with anger/trauma every time Lucifer was mentioned (in this season, at any rate) – which connected us to past seasons and the cage. But Jared can’t do all that work by himself.
The digression with Danneel just went nowheresville and I was disappointed about that. It had potential. Dabb doesn’t recognize potential (especially when it comes to female characters.)
// Dean has always said the only way they would make it out of their life is bloody, while Sam has always thought they could actually have a post-hunting life. That little moment in the hallway where Dean was willing to express that he wants out of this life, and Sam smiling that there was a light for both of them at the end of the tunnel was just…really nice. //
Interesting. Yes.
I keep thinking back mournfully to the “retirement home episode” with Dee Wallace and the conversations the brothers had about retirement there – with Dean getting drawn into the vision of a nice life like this, and Sam being like “what? Retire?” – and yet at the same time Sam finds himself drawn to Eileen – which could be a sign that he too is maybe looking outside “the life” for something else. God, that episode really had potential – potential to pay off BIG in the future. It would have been nice if there had been callbacks to it along the way – didn’t one of them keep the brochure?
I mean, there it all is – GOLD that you’ve set up in a past episode, WAITING to be developed further. Of course they killed Eileen so there goes that idea.
// Every time the writers remember that there actually are previous seasons to this one and manage to weave in little bits of canon, rather than forgetting them or trampling all over them, it makes me all warm and fuzzy. //
Me too! See above comment about Into the Mystic.
// Really it’s time for Mary to shit or get off the pot in her relationship with her sons, and this could spark it. //
My fear is that Dabb et al. are PROUD of what they’ve done with Mary. My fear is that they don’t see the problem at ALL with what they’ve done. They’re feeling all good and feminist-y about it. They don’t get how much they’ve ruined one of the main sources of emotional power in the show.
But I agree: either have Mary invest in her sons or get rid of her.
I just don’t trust that anyone “over there” really realizes that Mary is a huge problem.
// It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice. //
I really like where you’re going with this! This would be a really tormenting Arc for Castiel, and could set up some great tension – and yes, activate him. Also, I’m on Team Naomi now. I hope she’ll play a part in this too.
// It seems glaringly obvious to me that he just did not care about the Mother Ship this year, because he was hoping to go off with hew New and Sparkly Baby Ship next season. //
This is a very good (and depressing) point.
// It would be a killing two birds with one stone solution that would give Cas a real dilemma to have to deal with next season and an actual point to keeping him around beyond fanservice. //
I would consider paying real money for Castiel to have a decent storyline again, or even to be allowed to interact with the Winchesters on a more regular basis. However, I actually hope they don’t go this route, or if they do, that they do it in a way we didn’t see in Season 6 (defeat Raphael while protecting Sam and Dean). And season 8 (brainwashed sleeper agent for Heaven while trying to work with Sam and Dean). And Season 9 (be leader of a heavenly army, or, as Metatron put it, “give it all up for one man”). And season 10 (whatever the hell was going on there with Hannah). And, whatever they go with, could the showrunners just please allow it to work out for him for once?
I hesitate to make comments about the actor vs the storyline, but MC’s performance has really not worked for me lately. I don’t know if it’s me or if he’s really started struggling with the sadsack repetitiveness/confusion of his storylines — is he gravely Doing a Joke? is he gravely Insisting someone is Family? or is he gravely being Gloomy? As you say Kirinleaf this is an ossified aspect of his characterisation/purpose by now but I’m just not feeling like there’s anything behind it anymore.
Yes, I don’t like saying those things either, but I’ve had trouble with a lot of things about Castiel – acting being one of them. I feel like there is not much texture to it most of the time. And then, listen, I admire MC for making bold choices and sticking to them, but for me the Empty Castiel and the (russian-ish?) doppelganger did NOT work. I thought it was embarrassing.
But then again, his storylines do NOT make a lick of sense, and haven’t since the Trout Angels.
The way you put this Kirinleaf really points up the issues with Castiel and how peripheral he has been.
What’s the general sense of this season as a whole? I’d say it was better than 12, but that’s mostly down to, I think, a few strong moments at the beginning and end, some bright spots in the middle, and the delightful presence of Jack.
Overall, in my opinion, another whole season that misused and warped the best things about the show. I think the new universe business was a huuuuuuge waste of time — it brought us Sam and Lucifer in the cave-Dean grieving (<3) but that could have happened anywhere — and treating it so cavalierly threatens to break parts of the show as severely as BMoL-in-America broke the show's conception of hunters.* I also don't understand the point of any of the Death-Billie plots. Still and all, Scooby was fun, and most of the Donna's niece (?) episode. Sam and Rowena talking in the car. A few extremely lovely shots in that second episode are personal highlights! I’m sure I’m forgetting some other bits I enjoyed.
*Not only the vibe of hunters, but of monsters too. I can’t get my heart around this Buffy-ish “complex societies of hundreds of thousands of monsters” thing. Did it begin with Dabb-and-Singer’s Bloodlines? and continued with the Frankensteins. Maybe I’m just being unrealistic about how many plots they could continue to generate without expanding the universe more but between this, Fuller Bunker, the Waywards, and “let’s go shoot a bunch of werewolves at the start of the episode”, at what point does the show just become NCIS: Monster Hunters?
I’ve been sitting with the end of s13 for several days now, and the longer I sit with it, the sadder I get.
I don’t know how exactly to quantify this sadness. It’s mainly about the ossification of Kelly Kline into St. Mary II, as St. Mary I continues to turn away from us. Also about Jack’s purehearted determination to listen to Lucifer and make his own choices: Lucifer is every fuckup dad rolling up and promising the world.
This is the kind of storyline with which I can’t engage critically. I can only experience it as an abandoned child, always, always waiting for someone to come and put everything right. I don’t know if watching Sam and Dean stand in the rubble of the Myth of Mary and determinedly build up the Myth of Kelly makes good television. I just know that it makes me sad, in a slow dying sort of way.
I was engaged by Castiel in a way I hadn’t been in a while. While I didn’t suspect he was Empty!Cas, I did think he had returned to s6 form: a Castiel who is too preoccupied with loftier things to be a decent or honest friend and ally. First with his ephemeral belief that he was returned to Earth to build an army to fight altMichael, then with his concern about Heaven burning out (and then the relatively minor but utterly outrageous speech about how they all let Lucifer out of the cage and how being relatively ignored while Lucifer drove was equivalent to two centuries of personalized torture!!!!), I kept waiting for him to sink the knife in. I was half convinced that he had helped orchestrate Michael’s and Lucifer’s return to Sam and Dean’s world purely to repower Heaven. I was intrigued. I even kind of figured this was why we were getting all those family and Team Free Will (because otherwise, what does that even mean in this context?) speeches, to give his eventual heelturn some emotional weight. But I guess not?
This season had so many joyful bright spots in it. In the second half, Scoobynatural, the Kill Bill episode, and the one with the skull of St. Peter all delighted me. Sleipnir chomping on his carrot made me laugh out loud. Sam’s dream helped me connect with the bunker not so much as a space, but as a symbol of longing, which I haven’t really felt since the heaviness of Sam and Dean’s different conceptions of its meaning in s9. The Dean Cave! A perfect shrine to longing!
Now I’m thinking about how Sam’s dream filled the bunker enough that Mary was content to be there. Turns out it wasn’t nearly enough; Mary wouldn’t come back to live with her sons for anything less than a full refugee camp. She’ll always promise things are going to be different, but she’ll always find something else that’s more important to her.
i can’t give up on her or wish her off the show. Her lack of engagement is awful, again, a constant slow death. But you always wait, you always hope. This is the story we got, rather than the one that pushed Sam into the back seat of the Impala. Maybe not good television, but it feels real, and that is one of the hooks the show has in me.
In the altworld, only Maggie and Kevin really hit for me. I’m numb to old favorites coming back now. Sam’s death, on the other hand, still makes me queasy. The rest of it was kind of a wash, though I did enjoy Missouri as a blasted wasteland riddled with spikes.
Anyway. My favorite things: Jack. Rowena and Sam’s relationship. Dean’s ridiculous hideaway for him and Sam (hideaway from what??? even in their top secret underground lair, he still wants to build clubhouses and forts just for them <3) The grief counsellor: conscious mythbuilding as a survival strategy in direct conflict with Dean and Sam's own crumbling myths. The Bettie Page undertaker. The safecracker who reminded me of my old friend Ariel. Wendy Hanscum. Sam's face when Lucifer died.
I'm not super enthusiastic about Michael driving Dean. We'll see!
I saw elsewhere here about your mother. I'm sorry. That sucks. Hope you're all doing as well as you can.
congrats Jenny, you’ve made me want to watch s13 again! You describe a quality of mourning that I saw but could rarely hook in to (Dean at the start and Sam in the counsellor’s room being the two exceptions I can remember) and I appreciate the way you link Kelly and Mary, even though not everyone comes out clean in the comparison.
Maybe not good television, but it feels real, and that is one of the hooks the show has in me.
I’m not glad for your sadness, but I am so glad to read that the show still has this power. Thank you for sharing. And thank you for your well wishes with my own mum. You know, it’s funny, about seasons and mothers — for me, I can’t divorce season 3 from when my mum was sick the first time, not because they were concurrent (they weren’t) but because, after I noticed it, I could not escape the similarity between Dean’s deal and a terminal prognosis. For me season three is less about love and death and more about love and TIME.
I would have loved to see something like that driving Cas’s story. Give him something.
The Dean Cave – I’m so mad we only saw it once! Sam’s face when Lucifer died! I am with you all the way.
I hope 14 brings you the same feeling of depth and enjoyment!
congrats Jenny, you’ve made me want to watch s13 again!
o crap, don’t listen to me, please, I’m full of it. Pam would warn you against that strenuously.
In earlier seasons, I felt that this was almost a post-fic show, in that the show was willing to Go There, that the story happening onscreen was almost always deeper, more shocking and more resonant than any transformative exploration of it. That’s rare! I came to the show fic first, actual episodes a grudging afterthought, but it took nearly no time for me to abandon the fic side almost entirely.*
I don’t feel that’s the case anymore, that from the end of s11 on, the show has required some heavy lifting
on the part of the viewer. The elements are still there, but I don’t always believe that the show is aware that they’re there, that they’ll choose the tough story over the gimmick. You know all this, obviously. Anyway, as a person of a fannish/ficcish background, the inclination is always there for me to flesh out and extrapolate. So don’t listen to me (or at least if you do, please don’t hold it against me if it all still falls flat for you).
For me season three is less about love and death and more about love and TIME.
Oh, man. My heart to you, Jessie. It’s always about time. Thank you for sharing this, but I am just so god damn sorry your family is going through it.
s5 is that season for me. In my personal filing system
(and here I’m only dealing with Dean’s perspective), it’s the season Dean realized Sam wasn’t in love with him. For me, it’s entirely about my dad, about the constant mathematics, tabulating the evidence and reaching the inevitable conclusion, tearing it up and starting again because the answer is unthinkable. The rest of the series hits those notes regularly — it’s explictly a show about abused, neglected, and abandoned children — obviously s13 with Mary swinging between the extremes of Kelly and Lucifer hit those notes for me too. But s5 is its own symphony of being left behind.
Which is one of the things about this show! I suspect it means something painful and personal to maybe most of its viewers, something more than just beautiful men with pretty guns (tho the men are beautiful and the guns are pretty).
Anyway, about time. I don’t mean to be making claims upon yours by constantly word vomiting all over you. Thanks for being so generous to me and don’t feel obligated to reply any faster than you like.
*s8 brought me back, after they decided to drop their side pieces to save the marriage. genuine what am i even seeing here???? moment. i had to check in.
I chuckled at the idea of you coming back to fic all wtf during s8. I love hearing about peoples’ journeys with this cuckoo bananas show.
I felt that this was almost a post-fic show, in that the show was willing to Go There, that the story happening onscreen was almost always deeper, more shocking and more resonant than any transformative exploration of it.
there’s a lot to this, imo! As a person of the same background, I was subsumed by the fic side of things right at the start and I kept on in that vein; in one sense, spn was a fairly natural extension of other big fandom duos of the time, the buddy shows and those other homoerotic pairs in ensemble shows that dominated media fandom. So that paradigm made it natural, BUT. Obviously the buddy-cop is not the only or the most important constitutive genre. There’s so much else packed in there each bringing its own iconographic and emotional charge, keeping the surface rich and compelling while detonating bombs underneath. The show is steeped in the unthinkable, the unspeakable. My fic interest remains rather narrow. I want to see the bombs detonate but beyond that the show mostly contents me. I’ve seen it talked about as a show like Smallville, fertile for transformative fandom because it’s shoddily built, because logic gaps and emotional bizarrities leave so much space for play. I don’t relate to that view of SPN. (Post s11 is, ba-dum, another story).
Thank you for your kind words — I hope you guys are safe at home and that the squirrels did not triumph!
So so so disappointed! Damn we finally have another a finale that on paper should have topped season’s 5 swan song, but somehow it felt so much less than….again!!!
Why was the fight between dean-Michael and lucifer so short and so minimal in terms of damage?! I mean this was the 2 big bad archangels FINALLY having it out. It’s the stuff that gets you all tingling with excitement, instead we get this weird 5 second Ariel like dance thing with the occasional punch. They could have slow motioned the punches, had them breaking concrete , windows shattering from the force of the punches… just something to prove how powerful / dangerous the fight was!
Yet again the cliff hanger is a main character being possessed or has an unatural change in character . Done so many times , with slight variances ( sigh)
And seriously the freeze frame bit right at the end. ( (corny much) …we all know he’s Michael thank you!!! What happened to subltey in this show? It was that kind of thing that used to set it apart from anything else despite the shows theme!
It has been said but I will say it again, nothing has come close to season 5 in terms of quality and concistency! There were so many moments in that season that had me hooked. Anyone remember the first time we were introduced to death….that walk….the music that went with it….the acting , the writing the sound production it was all on top form!!!!!
Having said all that I will be watching season 14 lol I’ve got this far with boys can’t let em down now! All I’ll say is it feels like hanging out with an old friend that you don’t really click with anymore but you just can’t quite break it of off with.
//All I’ll say is it feels like hanging out with an old friend that you don’t really click with anymore but you just can’t quite break it of off with.//
Wow, that’s a very good description, and that breaks my heart.
Hey, Sheila, it’s madfashionista! Mind if I rant a tad?
I’ve only watched this season in fits and starts, but I made certain to watch the finale today. I feel incredibly boned that Sam didn’t kill Lucifer! Yeah, okay Dean Angel (I can hear “Teen Angel” crooning through my head) could do it, but it if was an archangel blade, why couldn’t Sam kill Lucifer? The triumph should have been Sam’s. Come on, it’s been 8 seasons since Lucifer showed up and first started wrecking Sam’s (already wrecked) life. Grrr.
The world is ending and now it’s time for–a werewolf hunt? WTF? Was that stuck in there so that they could find Maggie dead? Couldn’t they have used the screentime for something else? And why bother with Lucifer killing Maggie if the only point was to show what an evil bastard he is? Couldn’t they do something a bit more, um, interesting? He’s the devil, why not have him destroy a strip mall? “That Raymour and Flanigan sold me a crappy couch! For that they must DIE!”
The effects in this episode were C-movie cheese. Could the actors have looked any more awkward than that ridiculous angel fight? And when Lucifer lay on the ground dead, why on earth did they go for real wings, instead of the burned soot silhouettes? When dead Lucifer was in the background, I was painfully aware of an actor pretending to be dead lying on a big-ass pair of fake wings. Remember when angels were interesting, sociopathic and scary as hell? (Zachariah! Come back! All is forgiven!) Bobby and Mary? Ew! She’s out of his league. And doesn’t anybody die on this show? I honestly can’t get invested because nobody really dies. Trust me, Lucifer’s going to show up when they need another Big Bad and the store’s out of stock.
And what is Castiel’s reason for being there? Misha Collins isn’t the world’s greatest actor. When he’s in a scene where all he has to do is go snarly-face, I am again acutely aware I am watching an actor, not a character. There’s too many characters. If they’re not careful it’s going to look like “The Walking Dead” and they’ll have to kill Carl.
And what’s with the “getting rid of all the evil in the world”? What kind of flat-earther idiocy is that? At best it’s lazy writing, at worst it’s because they just think we’re only hear for the pretty and the punching. For some reason the first thing that comes to mind is even when all of the evil has left the world, you’ll still have really shitty customer service.
I adored Demon Dean. Dean Angel, yeah, he has a slightly different expression on his face. Demon Dean had real juice, and was funny and scary. (Demon Dean! Come back! All is forgiven!) Jared is much better than Jensen at assuming different personas.
Alexander Calvert is an excellent actor and Jack is a sweet little nougat. He was the best thing in the episode. One thing I’m not clear on. Is he now without his powers since Lucifer took them? If he has them back, how did he get them back?
I feel better now. Thanks for letting me splat