Ending a TV show can be a hard decision and an even harder job to write, and we’ve all definitely seen our fair share of bad TV show endings. Everyone remembers the dumpster fire that was last year’s “Game of Thrones” finale, a finale nobody expected to be that bad by any means.
However, if you’ve been keeping up with what’s trending online, you’ve likely seen “Supernatural” trending a few times over the course of its final season. A few episodes before the finale, “Supernatural” was trending because one of its most popular fan “ships,” Destiel, became canon before almost immediately killing off one of the key players in said ship.
Now, I haven’t watched “Supernatural” since season eight because of personal issues I had with the plot’s direction. The show made a shift from two brothers fighting tons of genuinely interesting monsters to fighting solely angels, demons and God himself? That whole plotline was honestly just very confusing.
I decided to give the show one last try though, to honor a fifteen-year legacy and a cast of actors who I still have a lot of genuine respect for because of how much they give back to a multitude of charities and their fans. I’d seen the trending tags and accusations of eleven seasons of Destiel queerbaiting just to end with a major character death, but I honestly just wanted to see how badly this would crash and burn if I’m being totally honest. Let’s face it, there was no way this show was going to have a good ending given the downhill slope it’s supposedly been on for years.
The first ten minutes of the 42-minute finale were spent following Sam and Dean through their new domestic lifestyle making breakfast, going out for a morning jog, doing the dishes and even a montage of them making their respective beds. Once that’s over, however, we go to a pie-eating contest where Sam brings up the recent and, up until now, unaddressed death of Castiel which Dean brushes off.
At this point, I’d like to remind you that Dean was the only one present for Castiel’s death. Said death involved a love confession to Dean where he didn’t have a chance to reply before Castiel died.
While we’re on the subject of major character death though, let’s talk about the one that takes place in the finale. The one true enemy of the Winchester brothers, seasoned hunters who have both died and come back to life on numerous occasions throughout the show’s fifteen seasons, tetanus.
You have no idea how much I wish I was joking.
During the raid of a minor vampire nest to save two children that we’ve never seen before on the show, Dean gets impaled Olaf-style on a rusty, old spike sticking out of the barn walls. His instructions to Sam, to leave him there and let him die for good this time around.
Dean’s death felt as though it was supposed to be an emotional and impactful scene, but it fell incredibly short for me and felt, frankly, avoidable. The Winchester brothers have survived far worse injuries and attacks in their lives. I’m not a doctor and I’m sure a rusty spike through the back could absolutely kill someone, but the death just feels incredibly like a cop-out considering everything Sam and Dean have been through.
The whole scene is roughly five to ten minutes of Dean recapping his love and favorite memories of his brother while Sam struggles to grant his brother’s final wish. I’ll give Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles credit for this scene though, as it’s very clearly not just a goodbye between brothers, but also a personal goodbye to the characters they’ve loved playing for fifteen years. Their dedication to their roles is heartwarming, to say the least, and they’ve done a phenomenal job with all they’ve been given to work with over the years.
The ending of the show explores Sam and Dean’s lives after Dean’s death. Dean discovers a new Heaven created for him by Castiel and the new God, Jack, where he spends his days with the spirits of all those he loved in his life (basically a lot of fan-favorite characters and locations that I’ll admit made me emotional to see again).
Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Sam raises a family with a wife we never actually get to see (can anybody say blatant misogyny?) until he grows old and gray in the world’s worst Party City old people costume in existence. Eventually, Sam joins Dean in this new specialized Heaven made for them and their loved ones where they spend the rest of their days with the Impala and never see or mention Castiel ever again.
Can you tell I’m upset about the whole queerbaiting Destiel thing?
I think the hardest part of this finale for me was the fact that I was able to watch it so easily despite having not seen seven seasons of the show aside from whatever happened to make its way onto my Tumblr dashboard. There was no real culmination of fifteen season’s worth of content aside from a few one-off characters from the show’s earliest seasons. The finale honestly felt far more like an epilogue rather than a final chapter, discussing very little of what happened in the final pages of the book and opting to instead look back on the events of the first few chapters.
I can certainly appreciate all that the actors behind “Supernatural” have given to this show and to their fans. They are a group of highly dedicated and talented individuals with a passion for using their platform to help others and raise money for a large number of charities. However, this finale genuinely didn’t feel like a finale to me. Do I regret not watching the past seven seasons of “Supernatural”? Do I feel as though I need to go back and watch them to understand the finale? No and no. I feel like that gives a pretty basic summation of this finale.