Warning: Fullfor the Person of Interest season finale follow...

While I expected an abundance of twists and swerves to take place during POI's season finale, I didn't really have an endgame in mind. I was open to anything. Last season, it was more or less clear that Samaritan would remain on the rise and that our heroes would still have to contend with it in Season 4.

Person of Interest Producers Discuss the Finale/Season 5

Here, I didn't know what was going to go down. Would the Samaritan arc end? Would the Dominic/Elias war extend beyond this year and help shape Season 5? As it turned out, the opposite of those scenarios occurred as Samaritan and its secret army once again sent Team Machine reeling, making another huge leap forward in its quest to dominate the world's surveillance model! Another great, jolting season finale from an increasingly awesome show.So another huge loss for Team Machine - this time accompanied by the almost-utter destruction of the Machine itself, which has now been compressed down into its most basic cyber DNA and crammed inside an impenetrable suitcase. Plus, while it's a given that Reese, Finch, and Root will need to go into hiding, they weren't even out of danger when the episode ended, blasting away at a squadron of Samaritan pawns while Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" accentuated the action. A slo-mo suicide strut into gunfire that sort of reminded me of the series finale of Angel - though I don't expect POI's heroes will meet as morose an ending.Keeping Samaritan in play was a smart move as it really is the apex of threats on this series. I can't imagine anything coming around that would shake up Team Machine's world like it can and so to have our heroes still not be able to topple it after one and a half seasons only works to build up its dominance even more. And I love how the show still keeps the whole "Is Samaritan really what's best for us?" debate brewing. Even though one could totally buy Samaritan faking a terror attack to lure humanity even further into its clutches, the fact that the "Correction" wasn't that was excellent. Sure, some noble operatives like Grice got taken out, but so did (shockingly) notable bad guys like Elias and Dominic.This was Samaritan's smaller scale "Project Insight," if you'll indulge my Winter Solider analogy. Also shocking was the total squashing of Control's mini-rebellion after she'd been built up to feel like Team Machine's secret savior. With Shaw gone and Root and Finch constantly one or two steps behind, Control seemed like someone who could aid from the inside. But everything aside from the Machine's plan to rescue itself via being reduced to its own primitive essence failed here. These were desperate times. So desperate that the Machine had to take even more of an active hand in its own survival. It "got in the game," as Root sternly advised, and helped rescue Reese by putting him in God Mode. So awesome! Especially when he walked out into the street at the end and took on the whole Samaritan army himself."YHWH" (the vowel-less Hebrew name for God) felt sort of similar to last season's finale in that the Machine's multi-episode plan turned out not to be an attack. Just an elaborate defense maneuver. Last year it was to hide Reese and the rest. This year it was to try and save itself. All the errands it had been making Root run were in order to ensure its own survival. And even then it only made it out "alive" by the skin of everyone's teeth. So Team Machine took it on the chin again, this time losing the Machine itself. Which makes for a very interesting Season 5 as, basically, the "case of the week" premise for the show is now gone. For the time being.