Skip to main content

Supernatural: It's Over, Or At Least It Should Be


Let me just get it out of the way that I loved every second of Supernatural to date, it had wit, humor, cleverness, action, drama, and of course, the supernatural. All in pretty consistently enjoyable proportions.

This last week, the finale of the most recent season aired. There be spoilers comin' so avert yer eyes if you've not seen it and you want to be surprised.

During the previous season the brothers unwittingly kicked off the apocalypse, and set Lucifer free from his prison. This last season mostly dealt with them trying to thwart the full on apocalypse, and trying to find a way to kill the devil without having to wipe out half the planet. It's further revealed that the brothers are both destined to be the vessels for Lucifer and Michael to possess and do battle to determine who wins. The eventual scheme that could succeed is to collect a ring from each of the four horseman, which when used together, form the key to the prison where Lucifer was confined, Sam lures him in, says "use me like the meat puppet I am" and then hopefully has enough control left of himself to jump into the trap.

After a false start, this plan eventually succeeds, although Sam and Satan aren't the only ones trapped, Michael gets trapped as well (using the stand in vessel of Adam, the recently discovered, murdered and resurrected, bastard Winchester brother). Apocalypse averted, Castiel, by far my favorite character on the show, shows up with newly acquired super angel powers, and states that he's going to ascend to Heaven and set things in order, now that Michael's not around to be top dog. Dean makes good on his last promise to Sam, which is to hook up with a woman he'd left behind, and make a normal life for himself.

I like this as an end to the series, there's a monologue from the prophet, a fiction author named Chuck who's published the Winchesters' life stories as a series of urban fantasy novels, where he says that endings are hard, you're supposed to bring as many of your stories to a close, and somehow make it all mean something. This story doesn't really have a meaning, other than the Winchesters making a choice, for family over death. I don't know how much I agree with that, but I don't really need the ending to mean anything, other than two brothers deciding that the world shouldn't end, and doing whatever it takes to make that happen, even if that means locking one of them up in a vault with Lucifer for eternity, or long enough that it might as well be.

Sadly, the story doesn't end here, it turns out that they've been renewed for another season, despite a couple of interviews I've read with the creators where they more or less said that this was it, the story is over. There are a few more additions to the end of the finale that leave it open for another season.

One, the prophet, Chuck, after finishing the story, lifts his hands from the keyboard, and just disappears in a puff of smoke, leading me to believe that he wasn't just a prophet, but God himself, either knowingly, or unknowingly. God's been absent for the entire series, there were a few inexplicable miracles that are blamed on God's will, but there's never really much of a confirmation, at one point, Castiel even sets out to find God, since that's the only way to avert the end of days.

Two, as Dean enters the home of his lost love, to have a beer, the camera pans back to show Sam standing under a tree watching him. Did God just snap his omnipotent fingers in order to reward Sam? Is the Devil free again? Maybe Sam's just capable of seeing his brother be happy as a reward?

The bottom line is that the story is now set to go on, when it really felt finished, and let's face it, how is anything going to seem tense and like something important's at risk after we've already faced the forces of Heaven and Hell, and averted the apocalypse? I suppose I'll give it a try, but I dunno, I kind of feel like I should just not watch the next season, since I'm already so happy with how the story ended.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What It's Like To Get Pipebombed

Well, I'm going to break with my rule of not actually mentioning anything about having a pipe thrown at you, but in celebration of the 6 month anniversary, I really wanted to write it up. So, without further ado, here's what happened on my Fourth of July 2009, and the six months since: So, it's the Fourth of July, 2009, about ten-ish or so at night. Being that we live in a condo, and our homeowner's association has prohibited fireworks being let off in our complex, we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood in order to better see the fireworks everyone else was letting off. We walked straight out the front gate, got about maybe 50 feet down the street, and a dark car with it's headlights on pulled out onto the street, about a block ahead of us a man with a white shirt was walking in the same direction as us, nothing noteworthy about either of those. However, upon passing us, something was tossed out of the passenger window and bounced off my chest, upon the g...

The Shadowline Saga: Before It's Time

A good friend of mine got me back into comics a few years ago, and after going to conventions with him and seeing his sketchbook of Punisher drawings by various artists, I started thinking that I might like a character sketchbook as well, but who to pick? I didn't have a favorite character really, I'd been a fan of Deadpool, but as he was on the rise in popularity, there were going to be a lot of sketches of him out there. Then I remembered an old Marvel character from the 90s named Terror. Terror had the unusual ability of being able to graft various limbs onto his body, and gain their memories and abilities. A frequent application of his abilities was to take the ear and the eye of someone who was recently deceased, which would grant him the ability to see and hear the person's memories. Additionally he could use the hands of a locksmith to gain the ability to pick locks, or a helicopter pilot, and so on. His gimmick was interesting, but even better for the purpose...

Machine Wars Optimus Prime: Bastard Stepchild of the Primes

I'm going to skip the backstory of the Machine Wars and this particular toy, and save it for the end. This Prime toy was released a little before I started collecting toys, and it's not been reissued since, so I never picked it up. I saw that someone had one on ebay only missing one missile for not too bad a price. He's surprisingly small for an Optimus Prime with trailer toy, normally they're a bit larger than this (see the GI Joe figure for a scale comparison). Also odd is that the trailer isn't capable of swiveling on the hitch, on account of how closely the trailer fits to the cab. It also doesn't really have any kind of cargo capacity, the Fansproject commander armors seem to bear a surprising similarity to this now that I've seen it. The transformation is very simple, and the finished bot bears very few similarities to the iconic Prime toys, although it does have the same joined feet as the generation 1 Prime, oddly. The articulation on this guy is...