I actually waited a few days before writing this review on purpose. Usually, I get them out late because I'm busy, but in the case of this one, I actually waited until I had cooled down, and felt I could talk about it rationally, rather than just flailing and yelling and crying and virtually punching things. Now that I'm in a better frame of mind, let's talk about Supernatural's mid-season finale.
First, the plot. A lot was going on here. Maybe too much, actually, but I'll get to that in a second.
So, the main plot centers around a civil war between the different factions of angels at war on earth. On one side, you've got Bartholomew, and on the other Malachi. Each of these angels are leading a group intent on taking over Heaven. Each side is slaughtering the other, and Sam and Dean pick up a lead. When they get there to investigate, they find Cas already on the case. Ezekiel, unhappy about being around so many angels, and especially Cas, forces Dean to send Cas away, which of course breaks everyone's hearts.
So, Cas is a bit lost and confused and alone, so he tries to pray. Unfamiliar with the process from the human side, at first it doesn't seem to work, but he then receives a visit from Muriel, an angel who is attempting to stay out of everybody's fighting. She's scared to see him, because obviously Castiel could attract a lot of unwanted attention. Turns out, Muriel was right to be afraid - Malachi and some angel named Theo show up and kidnap Cas and Muriel. They attempt to force Cas to give up information about Metatron's spell. Cas is tortured, and Muriel is killed while they are trying to make him talk. Cas of course continually says all he can say - he didn't know what Metatron's plans are, and he's just as clueless as the rest of them as to how to get back into Heaven. When Malachi leaves the room, Theo reveals that he wants to defect from Malachi's side and join Metatron. Cas plays along for a moment, pretending he has pull with Metatron, and thus tricks Theo into letting him go. Cas steals Theo's grace and escapes.
So, while Cas is being tortured, Malachi lets slip that a bunch of angels died when they fell from Heaven, including Ezekiel. Uh oh. But we the audience already know that things are not as they seemed... "Ezekiel" meets with Metatron, and Metatron reveals to the audience that "Ezekiel" is actually some guy named Gadreel, who apparently messed up by letting the serpent in to the garden of Eden all those years ago, and has been imprisoned for his crime. During the fall, he escaped, and Metatron now offers him a place in a new Heaven. Apparently, Metatron is bored of being all alone up there. In order to trust Gadreel's loyalty, however, Metatron asks him to take care of a threat.
Cas warns Dean that Ezekiel is dead, and that whoever is possessing Sam isn't who he says he is. With Kevin's help, Dean creates a spell to knock Gadreel out for a moment so he can talk to Sam without being interfered with. Dean tells Sam the truth about how he got better after the trials, and Sam is of course furious. He punches Dean and then leaves and finds Kevin... only, uh oh... it's not Sam, it was Gadreel that whole time! Gadreel kills Kevin (a la Metatron's orders), tells Dean that Sam's gone, takes the angel tablet, and leaves Dean alone. Like, all alone. The most alone you can imagine.
Alright, so there's the plot... yeesh. Talk about dramatic. Things are pushing forward in a big way, aren't they? At first, after watching this, I felt like the episode lacked focus. There's Bartholomew and Malachi and the two of them are fighting, and then suddenly Metatron is involved, and apparently Ezekiel isn't Ezekiel and wow that's a lot of angel drama. There was a total lack of any demon drama in this episode, though, which makes me excited/nervous for the future. After writing out that plot summary, though, I guess I realize that it all does fit together. Sort of a whirlwind, yeah, but after putting some distance between myself and my emotional response, I guess I do see the logic in introducing us to all of the angles of this angel conflict. The angel angles, if you will.
I'll go through and talk about a few points in more details. I'm not going to split these things up into pros and cons, because actually it's all a bit more complicated than that... I don't know how some of these things are going to pan out, and on other things, I see the reasons for them but I also disagree... you get the idea.
1. Kevin Freakin' Solo Tran is dead. Okay, so this was the primary reason why I needed to cool off for such a long time before even attempting to write this review. When I saw what had happened, I was livid. I started freaking out and I was thinking all about how this is a terrible waste of such a wonderful character and how Kevin, after being virtually ignored by the Winchesters, was now going to just be another way for Dean to feel manly pain and guilt and arggggh. But then I stopped and thought about it for a second. I have no idea how they're going to handle the fallout of Kevin's death. Maybe he will be used as an excuse for Dean's man-pain and nothing more, and if that does happen, then I'll get pissed about it. But we don't know what's going to happen. We don't even know if Kevin's going to stay dead. I mean, main characters on this show have a bajillion lives, right? And now that Cas has his grace - or, someone's grace, I guess - maybe he can bring him back. I'm not going to get angry about the fallout after Kevin's death when I as of yet don't know how they're handling it.
Also, let's talk about the racism. I am in no way qualified to comment on how it must feel for a POC watching Kevin Tran die. I don't get to make these kinds of judgments. I'll just say one thing, and then I'll back off, because it's not really my place... the lack of POC in Supernatural is certainly racist and it's a big problem. And the reason people are freaking out about Kevin's death from the platform of "it's racist!" is because there are so freakin' few characters of color on this show, and when one of them dies off, it's 100% valid to call the writers out on that and be like - uh, excuse me? You're making a shitty level of representation even worse by removing one of the few characters of color you've even bothered to give us in the first place.
But in my opinion, what makes Supernatural racist is that Kevin is such a rarity to begin with. His death isn't inherently racist because he happens to be a person of color and he died on the show. I'd like to point out that everyone dies on this show. Most of the people still alive on this show have died/appeared to be dead multiple times. White or otherwise, living in the world of Supernatural is almost guaranteed to get you into trouble - trouble of the fatal type. Now, just to reiterate - Kevin Tran's death is racist because there isn't accurate representation of people of color on the show. However, every time Supernatural kills off a character of color, that does not inherently make them racist. It's racist because we don't have enough representation as it is. Does that make sense? I've been giving this a lot of thought. I'm not sure if my thoughts make sense. I'm not saying not to get upset about Kevin's death. Hell, I'm upset. I'm really upset. But I am saying that the issue of racism on Supernatural goes beyond simply "they kill everyone who isn't white!" There's more to the issue than that, and I think that maybe focusing on Kevin's death as the reason that the show is racist is perhaps oversimplifying?
Especially - especially - if they bring Kevin back, which I think there's a good chance they're going to do. He's simply way too popular of a character, and there's simply much more that they can do with him in terms of the plot this season. Whew. Rant over. I really hope that this made sense and that I'm not stepping on toes or sticking my foot in my mouth. Feel free to talk to me about it.
2. Castiel Angel of the Lo - Angel with Someone Else's Grace - Half-Human-Half-Ange - Castiel... huh? Castiel's role in this episode was the part that gave me the most pause. I loved seeing him again, truly, but he didn't get to spend much time with the Winchesters, for one, and now suddenly he has his grace back? I just don't know where they're going with this. Misha is obviously going to be in a lot of the episodes in the second half, due to his contract, and all that. That bodes well for the character. What I'm thinking - what I'm hoping, I guess - is that Cas' borrowed grace is a temporary thing. That he has power right now, and that he can use it to help Dean get Sam and/or Kevin back. But then it's fleeting. I don't want us to be done learning about human!Cas, and I think honestly there needs to be a moment late in this season or even Season 10 where Cas has to choose between being an angel again and staying with Dean (okay, and Sam...) and that he then chooses humanity, reaffirming his position in life and with our boys. If Cas keeps this new grace, it feels like a cheap way to give us back our convenient Deus Ex Machina. I don't know.
But then we've got evidence of Cas' awesomeness and intelligence in this episode, which I'm always a big fan of. He's so brave, too, to go in and investigate a case involving angels, when he knows they're all after him. When being tortured, he uses his cunning to trick Theo and get out of a bad situation, which was pretty darn bad ass. I also liked the conversation with Dean, where we again reaffirm that these two men want to be together, whether that's romantic or not, but that it's crappy situations that are getting in the way of things. I think it bodes well for the future, and I hope Cas can actually stay with Dean for a few episodes after this Hellatus, and help him through the loss of everyone else.
3. Ezekiel is not Ezekiel. Am I the only one who thought that the twist was unnecessary? It would be one thing if Ezekiel were a character we had known previously to the whole possessing Sam thing. But we didn't, so he was already a blank slate. Couldn't the big secret have been that Ezekiel was hiding his true intentions, rather than having it be that Ezekiel was hiding his identity and his intentions? We don't know anything about Ezekiel, so there's no real shock value in telling us suddenly that it wasn't Ezekiel all along. The episode would have worked just as well if Metatron said - I know what you really want, Ezekiel, and I can help you get it! Why throw in the Gadreel thing in the first place? The only thing I can think of is that they were trying to suggest that Dean only went ahead with the possession because Cas gave the thumbs up about Ezekiel. But at the same time, couldn't Cas just be wrong about Zeke? He could learn some new unsettling piece of information about Zeke from Malachi, warn Dean about that, and then things could continue from there. I guess the twist just didn't work for me because we had no real emotional investment in Ezekiel as a character. Changing his name doesn't really do much for us, because Ezekiel was already an uncertainty.
4. Jared's acting. All of that being said, Jared blew me away with his performance. First of all, the transitions between Sam and Gadreel-pretending-to-be-Ezekiel are flawless, as they've always been. I loved the bitch faces Gadreel/Zeke kept leveling at Dean in this episode. Those were cracking me up. The most amazing thing was the scene between Dean and Gadreel/Zeke pretending to be Sam. When the scene began, I was getting all excited because I've been waiting for Sam to find out about this all season. But then, as I watched, I found myself disappointed. It didn't seem... enough. I wanted Sam to rage and cry and scream and tell Dean "you should have let me die!" or something dramatic like that. I wanted Dean to break down, Sam to break down, I wanted... more. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but Sam just wasn't quite... Sam. And then, mere seconds later, I learned that Sam actually wasn't Sam. That, my friends, was Jared playing Gadreel playing Sam, and it was awesome. Even before I knew for sure that it wasn't Sam talking, I could feel something off. I honestly don't know how Jared can be this amazing. I just don't know.
5. Dean's ultimate fate at the end of this episode. Do you realize, in that moment, that he's just lost 2/3 of his remaining family? Cas is still out there somewhere, yeah, and now that he doesn't have to worry about what "Zeke" wants, Cas can probably come back and be with Dean, but... Kevin's dead. Like, lying there with his brains burned out through his eye sockets. And Sam? Well, I can see from the promo (and also using common sense) that there's still a way to get Sam back, but for the moment, Gadreel has taken over, and Sam is No More. God, Dean. You poor thing. And this is pretty much all your fault, too, which only makes it worse. I was just feeling for Dean majorly in these final moments. I think that's a good thing for the show - Dean is our protagonist, and at this point he's basically isolated from everyone he cares about. I cannot imagine what that must be like for him, but I'm excited to watch him unravel!
6. Our bad guys. I mentioned this earlier on, but the bad guy lineup is getting a tad bit confusing. On the demon side of things, there's Abaddon and Crowley. They're both evil, but Crowley is preferable as a ruler of Hell. I think. They weren't even mentioned in this one. Then there's the angels. Metatron, Malachi, and Bartholomew all seem pretty unambiguously evil. Then there's Gadreel, who is now working with Metatron from inside of Sam's body. That's a lot! There are so many different angles from which bad stuff is coming that I'm having a bit of a hard time keeping it straight. At the moment, I'm undecided as to whether I think that's a good thing or not.
Alright, I'll spare you any more of my ramblings. Overall, this mid-season finale got a lot of people talking and freaking out and making noise, which is ultimately the goal of such things. I'm not sure where I stand yet on the issue of Kevin Tran, as that will largely depend on how the fallout is handled, and on whether or not he'll be coming back. I'm curious as to how this will all shake out, of course, and the episode ultimately left me feeling very anxious for January, when I can get the next installment. Ultimately, that's the writers' goal, isn't it?
8/10
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