I finished the rewatch just in time! Supernatural tomorrow! Originals tomorrow! I quite expect something terrible to happen to harsh my excitement.
I talked about this so much through my episode recaps that I don’t have as much to add as I thought I did; most of what I want to say pretty much boils down to crowing about how much righter I was/am than the Dinah Doubters and that’s tiresome, so. (Not because I’m a good person, it’s just too easy to be fun.) The fact that I could see the structure of the story so clearly that I could tell this was happening without the perspective of hindsight and was still shocked and thrilled by so much of what happened is in and of itself illustrative of the narrative’s value of The Story. What I do want to add to my first S8 retrospective is the way the angel sub-plot rounds out S8’s focus on perspective.
On the meta-level, while we’re with the Winchesters, we’re operating with no more information than they have. We’re reading the human tablet in real time with them. But with the angels, we know more than Cas does about what’s going on inside his head. He keeps having his mind wiped, but we accumulate knowledge about Naomi. But we’re not in third person omniscient in those scenes, we’re halfway between Castiel’s POV and Naomi’s, and so it puts a neat mirrors-within-mirrors spin on things when we find out in the season finale that Naomi, from her own perspective, wasn’t doing much better than Sam and Dean and even Cas, groping along in the dark with the information she wanted and needed being so far out of her own reach.
This pulls a lot out from underneath us. When we first met Castiel, he was the person who knew a ton more than the Winchesters and the audience and was keeping them in the dark. Now he’s the one who knows the least about his trips back and forth to Naomi. Watching those scenes is disorienting, even invasive.
The introduction of Naomi’s chair further complicates the childish vision of autonomy as “free will!!11!” It seems fairly clear that there isn’t any fatalistic grand plan controlling Heaven as a whole. The members of the Host do, in a strict ontological sense, have free will. But that doesn’t make them free. Many of the angels choose to use their free will to violate the autonomy of other angels. A critical mass of them has formed an infrastructure by which to do so, against which no decent individual angel stands half a chance. The existence of free will doesn’t mean people are weak and stupid and just making excuses if they say they can’t do something. Sometimes they really can’t, sometimes they don’t have a choice. Having the painful, adult understanding of that and doing the hard work of picking through what you can do - that’s true. It’s real. It’s human.
And it sucks. Oh, Cas.
and some general thoughts:
- I think S8 is the single best-structured season of SPN so far. S4 is my favorite and it did amazing things, but it’s standing on three seasons of build-up; I like S6 as much as S8 but I love it for the collection of concepts and noir-feel and brutal Chasian cynicism. S8 was meticulous and meta and somehow managed to be both clear-eyed and hopeful.
- that finale is breathtaking, still, five months and more than one rewatch later.
- putting those first two comments together, I love how relentlessly the finale was set up from the very beginning of the season. From the season premiere, where Sam says he realizes it’s not up to him to save everyone and Dean makes it clear that THIS IS WRONG, which Sam has completely absorbed by “so?”; 8x2, with the god of greed’s comment that “it’s not the quantity [of souls], it’s the sacrifice”; Sam’s moody, morbid identification with Brick’s sucidality in 8x3; the vicious commentary on narrators with agendas in Bitten; right up through Sam’s parallels to Prometheus and his willingness to take Zeus down with him (as Sam eventually will plan to do with Crowley).
- I also really loved how those mid-season episodes exploded the idea that some people get what they deserve? Like, there’s no question that they should do away with the hellhound and help save Ellie from her “chosen” fate if they can. But what, James “got himself into” the occult and therefore has it coming? Not all dogs are hellhounds; not all witches are wicked. And after all, you can’t argue that Prometheus didn’t know exactly what he was getting himself into when he took on Zeus.
- also refreshing: by SPN standards (which, yes, are low, well-spotted, you genius social justicers, you! lol), there were a lot of recurring female characters who (1) either survived or were ambiguously killed off (a la Naomi’s lack of wingprints, which may or may not mean Metatron only incapacitated her) and (2) were not Female For A Reason (to be Mommy substitutes/romantic interests/both).
- it’s likely you’re underestimating just how wild I am about Henry and his hate-on for alpha male douchebaggery. BBY.
- This is such a subtle thing, but I loved that the cupids were there to get involved in setting up a gay couple! Not just because it was an explicit holy blessing on a THE GAY, but also because the cupids were previously implied to be invested in human relationships only insofar as they could breed. this was making the really explicit point that love is not just about procreation. love is love.
- OH so I don’t know how likely this is, but it’s an outside possibility that Kevin did know what the final test entailed and didn’t tell them about it. I wouldn’t bet on it, but IT’D BE COOL.
- rme@ fandom’s crying that THE RITURRRZZZ are HURTING DEAN’S CHARACTER by showing him to be the violent, cruel, controlling asshole he has always been. As much as I want to swoop in and save Sam and Cas from him, and as much the massive victim-blaming among some of his fans gives me fits, I found myself almost liking him more than I have for a very long time because the season did a really good job (a) making that point absolutely unmissable unless you’re actually trying to duck it and (b) connecting those traits to the stuff that I initially loved so much about him. IMO a show doesn’t love a character when it rushes around to put the best spin on him possible (since it’s a tacit admission that the spin is necessary), it loves a character when it puts his flaws on unmistakeable display because it believes we will remain invested in him warts and all. that was a really bold risk to take, to be this true to Dean’s character, and I really admire it.
- SAM SAM THE SUNSHINE MAN, I COULD CRY AND CRY
- I DID NOT THOUGH
- SHUT UP JUDGY NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU THINK
- Underrated moment of Sam-based bitchery: when he says “thank you” when Dean saves him from a demon in 8x10. Like, “it was in the air whether you were going to save me or not! You’ve been such a pain in the ass I am pleasantly surprised you didn’t let me die over it!”
- There was a neat motif of the big- and mediocre-bads being able to disempower them in a really literal way. I think it was Crowley? in the early episodes who could make the blade too hot to hold. In two of the more meta-y episodes, Hunteri Heroici and LARP and the Real Girl, the villain was able to force Fred and Glinda to turn the boys' weapons to prank guns and feathers. I...don't know where to go with that but it was neat.
in conclusion:
the angels.
they’re falling.
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