CARRY ON MY WAYWARD
SON, THERE’LL BE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE, DON’T YOU CRY NO MORE
This song now creates
a pavlovian response in me. It also makes watching the finale hard since I keep
rewinding every 5 seconds to hear the opening scene.
Anyway, opening scene
aside, everyone is enjoying the new world. Sam gives everyone an update on the
state of the world and Bobby sums it up with “Damn fool idjit from the
apprentice is president”. Bobby is a wise man.
Dean and Sam call in
Castiel and Jack to kill some werewolves arguing about the Kardassians which
seems a little overkill. But it’s filling Dean with something alien and new:
hope. Our super angsty boy is talking retirement - retirement they’ve earned,
retirement they can take because with Jack’s power they can probably commit
utter genocide against creatures which while inclined to do evil have plenty of
outliers and capacity for good.
Sorry, Supernatural,
you can’t have several episodes expanding the humanity and morality of monsters
and then casually consider killing them all as a morally neutral or good act.
Hey those werewolves weren’t even doing anything expressly evil beyond enjoying
reality TV. Ok… maybe they did deserve it.
Jack has some
nightmares about the terrible things he’s seen and the people he’s been unable
to save - but Dean is awesome in comforting him here. He mentions his own
nightmares casually as something everyone has all the time (I imagine with what
he’s been through, nightmares are pretty normal for him which again is one of
the ways this show subtly reinforces how traumatised and mentally ill Dean
actually is - nightmares every night is his normal).
Dean is a perfect
father to Jack at this moment
Bobby and Mary are
taking a totally platonic and not romantic honest walk summing up everyone else
- apparently Charlie and Rowena have gone on a road trip and WOULD WATCH THIS
SHOW. Ketch is off doing Ketch things.
And then they find of
a body of Maggie, an apocalyptic world person - apparently murdered by mundane means.
Well that puts a damper on things
They try to figure
out who killed her and learned she had a crush on a local shop assistant so
Jack charges off to do some murdering, only stopped by Sam, Dean and Castiel -
Dean actually shooting Jack to get his attention. The point out the obviously
innocence of the man in front of him and Jack goes on another spiral of self
hate and rage because he always hurts people
Points to Castiel
claiming they’re Agents Knowles, Williams and Rowland. Because shout out to
Destiny’s Child
He’s found in his
self-flagellation by Lucifer who is there to offer him a new path. Staying with
humans is bad, humans are bad, things always go wrong and you end up hurting
them - instead let’s explore and remake the galaxy like Star Wars and leave the
humans to it!
It’s not exactly a
well thought out plan but let’s remember Jack is like, 2, at the moment so has
no real grounding in maturity to see the glaring holes in this plan and he is
also all torn up about the fact he does have a habit of hurting all those
squishy squishy humans.
Jack asks him for
something in exchange: Maggie to be resurrected. Lucifer warns that this can
often go wrong and often does (Sam is a special case on account of him being
awfully weird anyway) but goes ahead to keep Sam on side
Meanwhile Michael
drops in on Sam, Dean and Castiel - thankfully Dean keeps a big vat of holy oil
in the boot of his car for just such emergencies and it buys them some time to
escape to the Winchester cave. When they arrive they find that Lucifer and Jack
are gone and Maggie is back and everything is screwed
They do take time to
ask Maggie who killed her - unsurprisingly it’s a man with glowing red eyes.
That would be Lucifer.
They have more
pressing business though because Michael attacks the bunker. The wards fail.
And fighting him just fails completely and utterly on account of Archangel
Michael being a Big Deal. Thankfully he’s read the villain playbook and doesn’t
just kill Dean in a second like he can because villains have to slowly kill the
protagonists so they can be rescued
Which happens - Sam
prays to Jack who can actually hear prayers now and he buzzes in to throw
Michael across the room. Michael doesn’t even have chance to fight - Jack
glares at him and Michael bleeds from his eyes and ears, utterly defeated in
the face of Jack’s completely unassailable power. This episode makes a point of
just how impossibly powerful Jack is - he doesn’t even struggle fighting the
Archangel Michael. He’s that powerful. All Michael can do is gasp “we had a deal”
Oh Lucifer you’re
rumbled. Lucifer is exposed for selling the whole planet to Michael in exchange
for him getting Jack. Oh and murdering Maggie who is only human so who cares…
and loJack is Not amused by Lucifer. Lucifer has now shown just how terrible he
is and Jack wants nothing to do with him any more, rejecting him as his father.
To which Lucifer responds that he doesn’t actually need the kid - just his
power, and slashes Jacks throat to steal his grace
Y’know I’m pretty
sure stealing grace used to be much harder than this? How have the angels and
archangels actually managed to have existed as long as they have? How was
Lucifer not killed several times over?
He teleports the now
weakened Jack away, with Sam clinging on because teleportation hijacking is a
thing. There they have a super powered Lucifer declaring that he’s the most
powerful thing ever, that family is awful and his family hates him and making a
big thing of the fact that Jack clearly sees Sam as more of a father than him
(there’s some definite jealousy there). And he decides rather than killing them
he wants them to kill each other with the Archangel blade
Why? See above.
Villains have to kill their protagonists slowly so we can have the rescue
Dean, we need a
rescue. Dean turns to Michael and asks why he can’t just fry Lucifer since he
did it in his world - but Michael can’t he’s too powerful. Besides, his meat
suit he’s possessing has been fried by Jack…
So Dean asks if he
could win if he had “his sword”
For those not remembering
the last thirteen seasons of apocalypses the Winchesters have almost called:
Archangels like Michael and Lucifer can’t possess any normal person as they
tend to vaporise their vessels. Not only do they need special strong vessels
but there are people expressly created to be their uber vessels. Lucifer’s
special vessel is Sam. And Michael’s vessel, his sword, is Dean.
Dean is offering
himself for possession. But with dean in charge, Michael just provides the
power
Uh-huh… this is
totally not going to backfire. But it does give us Dean with big dramatic wings
and admit it, you’ve always wanted to see Dean with Angel wings and Angel eyes
So we have a
confrontation between Michael/Dean and Lucifer… and it is almost awesome. I
mean as far as two archangels fighting, two blokes smacking each other while
hovering is still a bit dull. But hovering I guess
Dean loses… because
Jack powered Lucifer is incredibly powerful - but Sam manages to throw Dean the
Archangel Blade and he manages to give Lucifer a good stabbing.
And finally, finally
it appears Lucifer is dead. Lucifer dies, complete with charred black dramatic
wings. He’s had a long run but he has finally been defeated.
Shocking no-one,
Michael doesn’t leave Dean’s body - and takes over. We have next season’s big
bad guys! And let’s see if Jensen Ackles can pull off Michael or if he’s just
wearing that daft hat
Ok…. so that was the
end of season 13 and I’m kind of… meh about the whole thing? I mean it wasn’t
objectively terrible and I can’t point to any one thing that was awful but the
whole thing felt a little bland
There were great
moments - I think the show has continued to do some excellent exploration of
Dean, his pathologies and the sheer brokenness of him are really well laid out
- though in a way that continues to make Sam feel more sidekick than
co-protagonist. And Rowena and her role was just perfect when she appeared and
I’ve kind of gone from liking her to loving this character
But bland. Jack is
supposed to be the whole woo-woo of the world thing. We’ve had battles between
three archangels, Lucifer running amok, Heaven nearing sheer collapse, an
apocalypse world. I mean, all of these storylines should have been epic:
there’s no excuse, the ideas were THERE. You had a couple of seasons of epic
storylines. But the delivery just feels… again… bland. The archangels fighting
was severely underplayed. The apocalypse world pulled out some nice weather
effects but didn’t even touch on the horror there. Bland bland bland bland.
It’s like being given the most beautiful piece of beef to cook and then just
boiling it without seasoning (or covering it with mayonnaise and canned soup
and calling it cooking). You could have done a lot more with this Supernatural
and I’m confused why you didn’t.
I am intrigued where
we go from here, especially with all these characters - because they can’t all
stand without either dying or being dropped in the plot box. I’m especially
interested in Charlie and Bobby because both need more. And her and Mary means
more female representation who hopefully won’t be fridge occupying. But it
doesn’t make the season less white - and this has been a very very white season
and with Michael ditching his Black host for Jack and Kevin Tran not surviving
this season means it continues to be so.
I am curious as to
Michael as a big bad mainly because of Jack. Yes he’s had his grace drained -
but we’ve already established that grace is a rejuvenating resource. So it’s
only a matter of time before Jack is all powerful again.
