Initial Thoughts on 5.22
I'll admit that I had low expectations, and felt more than a little nervous when I noticed that Kripke only got teleplay credits. The last time that happened was in Heaven and Hell, if I am recalling correctly and what an absolute trainwreck that ended up being.
So yes, lower expectations. I also figured this would very much be a "can't always get what you want, get what you need" ending so that factored in too.
As a finale... I'm not very satisfied* even though I do see what they were going for. It was very brother-centric, which was the whole point, and followed the same pattern that the last three finales have done. Little Epic Action, mostly small, personal scenes where characters interact and come to some sort of resolution, but the resolution may / may not click with their journey through the rest of the season.
And actually, that part is a little difficult for me to explain. I was dubious on the Sam Redemption arc because character arcs tend to fall by the wayside when watching this week by week and introducing new plot points.
While Sam quite literally conquered the darkness inside of him, metaphorically he failed. The last scene we get with him before the final resolution was him either taking part in, or at least giving consent to a slaughter of demon-possessed people for Screwing Up His Life. He didn't conquer his anger, and while it took a lot of guts to consent to being trapped with the devil for eternity, when compared to letting loose hell on earth, I tend to think just about any good person would take the former option. Which means that to me, Sam's choice didn't stand out at all.
So what, if anything, did I gain from Sam's story? Nothing outside of that his life still sucks, as always, and his redemption was less redemption (because Sam has always been a good, if not misguided person) and more finally cleaning up the mess that he'd made. As a minor aside, why go through all the bother of Drinking Demon Blood is Bad only for them to shove it in to a final Hail Mary?
As much as I enjoy Sam, I do think that his story, viewed as a whole, isn't very satisfying for me.
As for Dean, he had to indeed make the difficult choice of finally, finally letting his brother go... at least for now. I had always thought that Dean was more in love with the idea of normal than the reality, and it was more than a little forced for the Lisa Solution to come into play. At the very least, I don't expect the two to last for long, not only because Dean clearly isn't happy or even trying to be happy.
Dean's arc, I believe, was trying to come to terms with his brother being an adult (which he did do) and I always, foolishly, hold the mild hope that Dean is actually going to progress. Problem is - he doesn't. Whenever he seems to be getting back on his feet, such as what was happening in 5.09, the story shifts and leads Dean once again into a deep, dark depressing and state of perpetual angst. He didn't escape it for the second half of the season and this dragged the whole shebang down. Even now, Dean is denied happiness and once again stuck drowning his angst in alcohol.
Castiel... is actually the only character who FOR THE FINALE I feel relatively satisfied by. I was downright annoyed when he became full-on human, because the worst story turn I'd seen this season was him choosing to be a messy, smelly, complicated human. Castiel was happy being an angel, and he did, despite everything, love God (at least until his own angst kicked in). I expected that by the end of the season, such an important part of his character would be sacrificed in order to keep him around next season, or that he'd go back to Heaven with newfound knowledge and be at peace with himself and his "dad." I'm glad it's the second option, even though I wouldn't be surprised if they kept Misha Collins around.
As for the meta aspects of this episode, I didn't particularly like them, especially the railing against fans. For whatever reason, it really did feel like Eric Kripke was the one checking out here, and I do think it ended up showing.
Good things? I was very, very happy to see Jared Padalecki get to play against himself using what I like to call the Mirror Trick. I've been hoping both he and Jensen would get the chance to dual-act themselves this season, and Jared definitely did a great job separating Sam from Lucifer.
* For the record I am hard to please on finales anyway, my favorite close for a story happened in Cowboy Bebop and, I believe it was Utena and there is a definite storytelling difference when going for Anime. Trigun was certainly a very good example of Brotherly Conflict as well.