Friday, May 27, 2016

Supernatural, Season 11, Episode 23: Alpha & Omega







Wayward son time!

Sorry I’m just going to replay the opening scenes 8 or 9 times. Bear with me.

Everyone’s all defeated…. Nah let’s go back to the opening credits again… Carry on my wayward sooon…

Oh wait Castiel’s back. I’ll pay attention again. Chuck’s not doing so well though. And the only one who can fix him is Amarra.

Still god is dying the world I ending (via a dying Sun) and generally things are not going well even if Rowena and Castiel are still here. Dean decides to start drinking. It’s not a bad idea.

Chuck and Rowena enjoy some bonding until Crowley is now joyfully welcoming the end. Castiel and Dean reaffirm their friendship. While Sam is determined to prod everyone into doing stuff because the world ending is such a bad plan

Forced to actually do something, the whole gang brainstorms and Chuck suddenly remembers that Amarra has a weakness. Even Castiel snarking (AT GOD) about his belated mentioning of this doesn’t make this better. Anyway they are planning to kill Amarra because with god dying they now need to redress the balance.

So they need a bomb. A big big bomb. Powered by souls. Easy – they have the King of Hell and Castiel has an in with Heaven so surely they have a gazillion souls? Not so much

The only person who drags up any souls are Dean and Sam who bring in a few ghosts. But they attract the attention of Reaper Billie – who still doesn’t like them (but she does kinda like Crowley) but would rather the world not end. And Reapers have a gajillion souls lying around


This bomb will get close to Amarra by Dean sacrificing. Cue lots of pretty, emotional scenes which didn’t move me despite all the acting skills because we know Dean will not die. The Winchesters are never dying. So long as Supernatural continues to pull in the ratings, every executive in CW will eat their own children before they let Dean die.


So let’s move quickly over that and get to Dean facing Amarra who can see the bomb, but it’s ok because he makes a really bad speech about how vengeance is unsatisfying while family is totally awesome

This goes on for some time before, surprise, Chuck and Amarra make up and are all happy and reunion and she now likes the Earth and blah blah this ending is way too simple and way to twee for me to be invested. Sorry, I don’t think nearly enough development went into Amarra to make this sensible, riveting, a twist or anything but rather dull, twee and predictable.

So time for a couple of twists to get people to tune in for next season

Firstly, Amarra decides to reward Dean by resurrecting Mary Winchester, Sam and Dean’s mother, Supreme Queen of the Fridge.

Secondly, the Men of Letters in London have decided that the Winchesters repeatedly bringing the world to the edge of the apocalypse needs to end Right Now. I’d take this more seriously if their representative wasn’t such an utter caricature of Englishness that I dropped my monocle, spilt my tea and misplaced my top-hat. I think it was stolen by a corgi.



And thus endeth the season and I pronounce it… meh? I mean it had some epic moments, Supernatural always has some epic moments… yet I’m honestly struggling to remember this season. There was Amarra who spent most of the season as a kind of vague, ill-defined menace in the background. We had tiny moments of POC and LGBTQ people not dying – but they still only appeared for one episode, this show still has no recurring minority characters. Rowena was kind of awesome but she was also involved in the Crawley storyline which was just agonisingly painful.