SPN season finale thoughts
Ooooh, I liked it. Episode deaths were well-handled - anyone could be dead or come back as needed next season. (There will be a next season! yay!) Dean and Cas will be saved at some point; Kevin and Meg could be. I also think there's a lot of potential for future fallout to make sense because the episode handled alliances better than the show in the past. They know Crawley's scheming, but they know they need to use him anyway. And that gets them where they need to go, but it has ramifications. And hahahaha, Crawley and Dick negotiating/flirting was deeply amusing.
Awww, Cas, baby. It's a punishment, resurrection. Does he mean his own, or resurrections generally? I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to be reading into Castiel's wackiness (ON MY CAR NAKED COVERED IN BEES, AHAHAHA), because I'm simply not sure how much of it is really random, or how much of it is Dru-speak? He's inhuman and his screws are all kinds of loose, and so he might really intend on some level to be communicating, or at least responding to what's going on around him.
That scene between Dean and Castiel wrung out my heart in the best possible way, even if I think we're approaching the point where the nod-and-wink dance gets insulting to everyone, GOD, JUST LET THEM BE GAY. #eternal laments. I'm still really invested in this pairing, and it's not so much despite my issues with Dean, as it is because I think Castiel always challenges Dean on the things I find most frustrating about him. Over the last few years, Dean's gotten used to getting his way by going on the offensive with that belligerent attitude, particularly as Sam has lost all of his trust in himself and therefore his willingness to challenge Dean on it. And Cas just won't do it. He doesn't like conflict, he didn't come to fight. He's probably the only one left - or maybe ever - that's able to get Dean to engage productively, rather than falling back into that (understandable, but damaging) violently reactive defensiveness.
Really, really bugged by the "donkey-punch" reference. We can't have one episode without rape imagery? Just one?
Bobby's final words of wisdom were, go figure, actually wise. Don't do it because you think it'll scratch the itch. Do it 'cause it's your job. Bobby's story ended up being resolved really well, and I liked the way it complicates a lot of the very early episodes of the show without destroying them. It ended up being a lovely look at how we grieve, and how we let people go.
Excellent use of the return of the car, I laughed at Born to Be Wild. And then it was Meg driving! MEG! LATER, HOME-NUGGETS. You know, if I were Crawley, the last place I'd want Meg is in hell where she could find other malcontents and Lucifer loyalists. Just a thought. (Be funny if that's who they meant by King of Hell, instead of Crawley.) I just really hope she hasn't been killed off for real too, like every other female character with more than six minutes of screen time.
So when Crawley said Sam was alone, I was all set for Hallucifer to jump out and say "not really." I really hope this means he'll team up with Garth and/or Jodi at some point. Sam's story kind of petered out toward the end of the season there - understandably, for in-story and backstage reasons, of course - but this is a place that can get really interesting for him. Because we know how Sam gets when he is really left to his own devices. Will this time be different? He's grown up a lot, and one hopes he learned his lesson; it's also quite a different thing to lose Dean in a situation where he's not going to be struggling with culpability for it, and where (unlike the situations with the Trickster and Lilith) they did, after all, succeed in taking down the bad guy.
OMG CAS AND DEAN IN PURGATORY. SPN picks and chooses on the mythological terms it uses (not finding fault, it's effectively necessary and the show generally does a good job deciding), so I'm not sure how much I should read into this. But purgatory, at least in Catholic tradition, isn't worse than hell, as such. It's an in-between place, where unbaptized infants go (burdened by original sin, but unable to have sinned by their own volition). It's not a prison like hell, but an eternal holding cell. In other words, Dean is back at the crossroads.
Anyway, THEY BONED DICK. HAHAHAHA.