Here we are at the season finale! To start, here’s a limerick for Carol B., for backing my Kickstarter recap campaign:

There once was an Impala by Chevy,

She drove Rte 666 to the Levee.

Dean handling the wheel,

You might start to feel

More than just a wee bit of envy.



Previously on Supernatural:

Season 10 was a rocking two-minute music video instead of so many hours of plot holes, inconsistency and uneven pacing!

Currently on Supernatural:

Sam is making some fancy bullets when Castiel comes in to help him exposit about not being able to track down Dean. Castiel is having doubts about using the Book of the Damned. “What of the consequences?” he wonders. “Which are what?” Sam asks. “Well, Dean said,” Castiel starts to say, but Sam cuts him off.

Sam says nobody even knows what the consequences are. Well, Rowena did say curing one curse meant starting another, didn’t she?

Meanwhile, Dean is just waking up on the floor of a seedy motel, hungover and drooling into the carpet. Ugh. Do you know how many dust mites and other assorted gross things are probably crawling in and around his mouth right now?

Man, how much alcohol does Dean Winchester have to drink to get that hungover? He’s already basically a human pickle. He takes a swig of beer and reassures himself, “I’m good.. I’m good.” He doesn’t look too reassured, though. Cue this particular title card’s last appearance.

Dean, in his fake FBI duds, flexes his scabby fist to remind us of his fight with Castiel because it’s not like they’re going to have any scenes together. He’s staring down at a dead teenaged girl, her body lying broken in a ditch, bleeding from the neck. “Her parents are good, God-fearing folk,” the local sheriff tells him. “They let her leave the house lookin’ like a whore?” Dean asks.

Heretofore-unseen hunter Rudy is also on the scene, much to Dean’s annoyed surprise. Rudy looks like he got dressed out of the Lost and Found bin at a liquor store. Dean tells Rudy to take a hike and let him handle the vampire perpetrators on his own.

**********



Sam and Castiel take a trip to visit Rowena in the makeshift prison and show her their fancy new witch-killing bullets. Wait. She’s been alone since Castiel went to the bunker? And yet he couldn’t leave her alone for the 15 minutes it would have taken him to go after Charlie? Oh, Show. Do you even try anymore?

Ro-Ro calls them on their bluff. After all, who else would work the spell for them? I kind of feel like Crowley should be able do it, but it’s like Sam and Cas are stuck in an HOV lane of stupidity with no exit in sight.

Rowena says she wants her freedom guaranteed, as well as ownership of the codex, in exchange for casting the spell.



**************

Dean talks to the dead girl’s parents and is a complete dick about it. He pushes the dad’s buttons with the skank this and skank that. The dad punches him a few times, then breaks down crying. Dean remains unsympathetic.

The girl’s brother admits he dropped off his sister and a friend of hers to meet some guys at a cabin in the woods, because that always goes well.

**************

Meanwhile, at Sam’s Book Club and Mistake-a-palooza, Rowena rattles off the recipe needed for the spell. She needs the fresh-from-Eden forbidden fruit which is apparently a literal thing, a piece of the Golden Calf, and something that the spell caster loves but sacrifices. “The problem is, I don’t love anything,” she says. “Everyone loves something,” Castiel says, and does a Vulcan mind-meld on her to peep her true thoughts. He finds a little boy named Oskar.

Unfortunately, Oskar was alive hundreds of years ago, the son of a nice Polish family that took her in when she was on the run.

**************

Dean finds the vamp cabin and kills one vamp on the porch before he even has time to finish baring his chompers. When he kicks down the door, he finds the dead girl’s friend, still alive, and Rudy in the clutches of another vamp. Okay, Rudy must be a special kind of idiot to try to hunt down vampires alone. He’s not a Winchester; he doesn’t have job security!

Dean dares the vamp to kill Rudy, all, “You don’t have the guts because he’s your only insurance out of here!” But the vamp DOES kill Rudy and Dean is completely unmoved by it. So am I, though, so I might be evil, too!

Later, he returns to his motel room to continue his weird, ongoing relationship with mirrors.

Overcome with rage at his guilt reflections, he proceeds to trash the room. Goodbye lamp. Goodbye, crappy TV. Goodbye, underpowered hair dryer! Screw you most of all! In case you needed another sign Dean is really not feeling like his old self now, he’s also only wearing one shirt.

*************



So, before Rudy unwisely took on the vamps, he called Sam, who is now finding the late hunter’s corpse. The soundtrack goes “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” as Sam mostly tunes out what the sheriff is telling him.

Meanwhile, Castiel has summoned Crowley instead of just calling him. “You’re not in my contacts list,” Cas explains. Okay, but Sam couldn’t have given him the number?

Crowley, who had just last episode seemed back to his evil old self, happily agrees to help Castiel, so long as the angel begs him. Castiel barely even half-asses it. It’s quarter-ass at best, but Crowley flits off to find the ingredients needed for the spell.

Sam finds the Impala parked outside the motel, but Dean is nowhere to be seen. Instead, he finds the keys to the car and a note from his brother.

*********

Dean somehow finds a semi-abandoned Mexican restaurant called Juanita’s, but some of the neon letters are burned out so now it just says “Juan’s.” Like, even female SIGNS on this show don’t survive.

He then summons Death for a nosh, having cooked an entire feast by himself. “Don’t tell me that’s queso,” Death says by way of greeting. Cheese is always the first thing that grabs my attention in a restaurant, too. Dean shows off the spread. “Yes! Queso and taquitos, and tamales homemade by yours truly, all with the bad fat!”

“I want you to kill me,” Dean says as Death crunches into a perfectly fried taquito. Death is suspicious. “You and I both know I’ve been burned by you Winchesters before,” he says. Dean assures him that’s not the case this time. He can’t fight the Mark anymore and wants to put an end to himself. “I got no moves left, except you,” he says.

Nobody brings any of that up, though. “Nothing can kill you,” Death says. Did… they just forget about the First Blade? Because apparently that toothy sucker killed Cain.

Death proceeds to ramble on about the creation of the universe for a really long time. It is now, over halfway through the SEASON FINALE, that we learn the true nature of the Mark. “Before there was light, before there was God and the archangels, there was… the Darkness,” he says, “a horribly destructive, amoral force that was beaten back by God and His archangels in a terrible war.”

“God locked the Darkness away where it could do no harm,” he goes on, “and he created a Mark that would serve as both lock and key which he entrusted…to Lucifer.”

“The Mark began to assert its own will,” Death continues to exposit. It corrupted Lucifer…“

We’re just learning this NOW? NOW?? In the last half of the season 10 FINALE? Imagine how much higher the stakes would have felt if we’d known FROM THE START of the season that something like this was possible. Obviously, the characters couldn’t know the EXACT details, because not even the Winchesters would knowingly unleash an entire universe of chaos on the world to save one brother. (Well, hell, maybe they would, although one hopes not.) But there should have been SOME hint along the way.

Instead of Dean dreaming about killing a handful of people or hearing the occasional random unintelligible whisper, what if his nightmares had been something much more ominous? What if he (and we!) had known he were fighting back not just DEMON EYES, but something else MUCH MUCH bigger?

Instead, it just looks like this ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF PRIMORDIAL CHAOS made him SING KARAOKE and hang out with Crowley and have CASUAL SEX. This thing that God and the archangels had to FIGHT OFF to save the WHOLE DAMN ENTIRETY OF EXISTENCE made Dean realize he’s TOO SEXY FOR HIS GODDAMN SHIRT. This unfathomable universe-eating DARKNESS that corrupted God’s favorite angel into becoming EVER-LOVIN’ SATAN made Dean Winchester GROW HIS HAIR OUT.

WHAT THE HOT STEAMING PILE IS THIS? Why did any of this only get revealed RIGHT NOW?!

I could go on about how this retcons the show’s own backstory for Lucifer and makes God even into a bigger dick for basically screwing up his own angel and then casting him out, but whatever. WHATEVER. We’d be here all day if I pointed out all the problems with this revelation.

So now with Cain dead in a very anticlimactic way, Dean is now the only thing holding back the Darkness. "I could remove the Mark, but only if you share it with another,” Death says. “I’m not doing that,” Dean says.

Death offers to send him to another planet. Then Dean would be an astronaut and “Destiel” could become “Castronaut.” "You will no longer be a danger to yourself or others,“ he says. Dean imagines what that might mean for Season 11…

He calls Sam and tells him he’s done fighting. "Grab a pen. It’s time to say goodbye.”

***********

Meanwhile, Crowley has returned to that diner where the nice fry cook works. Everyone but the fry cook drops dead. Or possibly just super unconscious, depending on how evil Crowley is right now. Long story short, this guy is actually Oskar from Poland, whose life Rowena saved by making him immortal.

So, obviously Crowley learned about this guy from Olivette the enchanted hamster. If Olivette and the rest if the coven had been hunting for Rowena all this time, why didn’t they use him to trap her? Am I seriously a better schemer than a coven of centuries-old black-magic witches?



************

When Sam gets to the restaurant and sees Dean standing there with Death, he’s a wee bit freaked out. “There’s another way! You don’t need to die,” Sam says. “I thought the only way out WAS my death,” Dean says, “but I was wrong, Sam–it’s yours.”

Death explains that he can’t remove the Mark of Cain without the Darkness becoming a crazy-ass plot next season. “But even if I remove Dean from the playing field, we’re still left with you: Loyal, dogged Sam, who I suspect will never rest until he sets his brother free.”

Okay, first of all, did Death not see Season 8? Give loyal, dogged Sam a loyal dogged dog! Second of all, what exactly could Sam do if Dean’s on another PLANET? What if he’s in another solar system? How could he possibly go looking for him?

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sam says. “Stop with the commentary on the script,” Dean says. He and Death tell Sam to think of the greater good. Shouldn’t Sam mention at some point that he never actually shut down the book club and Rowena is still working on the Mark spell?

There is much talking about how the world would be a better place without the Winchesters. The CW disagrees with that until they can find another long-running series to take their place. “We are not evil,” Sam says. “I let Rudy die,” Dean says. He points out Sam getting Lester to sell his soul, and getting Charlie killed. I’ll give you Lester, but Charlie was crushed under fifty metric tons of horse flop also known as the script.

Sam tries punching some sense into Dean. But let’s interrupt things just when they’re starting to move along!

Crowley brings Oskar and the other ingredients to Rowena at the makeshift prison. “Even for you, Fergus, this is a new low,” she cries. “It’s only cruel if you actually go through with it,” Crowley says.



Back to the fisticuffs. Sam’s hair goes flying every which way. Dean doesn’t even break a sweat. Sam ends up on the floor, begging him to stop.

“You’ll never hear me say that the real you is anything but good,” Sam says. Well, not counting that speech at the end of “The Purge,” anyway. “But you’re right,” he goes on. “Before you hurt anyone else, you have to be stopped at any cost.”

Everyone’s acting their little hearts out. It’s just a shame that it’s much more than this shambles of a plot deserves.

Death hands over his scythe. “Sammy, close your eyes,” Dean says. Sam tearfully lays down the old pictures of their mom and the two of them as little ones. “One day when you find your way back, let these be your guide. They can help you remember what it was to be good, what it was to love.” Okay, but they’re totally going to get blood all over them since you put them on the floor, buddy.

Dean starts to reconsider killing Sam. “Do it,” Death urges, “or I will.” With that, Death manages to slip inside Dean’s little window of doubt, just enough to trigger his “MUST PROTECT BABY BROTHER” instinct and Dean swings around and kills Death with his own scythe.

Maybe Death isn’t actually dead, but just so damned done with the Winchesters that his molecules temporarily lost cohesion.

**************

Rowena gives Oskar a hug, bids him farewell, then stabs him with a fountain pen. Castiel is so horrified that he has to look away, but not so horrified that he puts a stop to this total murder of an innocent human being. Nor does he use some angel magic to revive the poor fellow.

Rowena completes the spell just as the Winchesters are standing around feeling better about their relationship even though nothing has actually changed and all they’ve done is confirmed, yet again, that they’ll screw up a lot of things just to save each other.

A bolt of lightning pierces the restaurant roof and lasers the Mark of Cain right off Dean’s arm. The lightning then bounces back through the ceiling, disappearing to parts unknown. Dean stares after it in shock.



Rowena shrugs off her shackles like it’s no biggie, freezes Crowley and Castiel where they stand, and gathers up the codex and Book of the Damned. Before she leaves, she turns Cas rabid and sics him on Crowley. Wow, a female villain survived the finale!



Sam’s feeling pretty good about the way things turned out. Shouldn’t Dean be super pissed at him for not cancelling the book club? Maybe he doesn’t have time to be pissed, because The Darkness is currently blasting lightning bolts out of the sky all around them. Everywhere a bolt hits the earth, living black smoke shoots out.

The Winchesters pile into the Impala and try to escape, but drive into a muddy pothole. The wheels spin, but nobody goes anywhere. The smoke envelops the Impala and the Winchesters. It’s Sam and Dean inside a car, stuck in a rut, obscured by a plot that came out of nowhere. It’s a turducken of metaphors!



Well, there we have it. The end of the season. Enjoy the hiatus, because you know The Darkness is going to turn out to be a bunch of people in middle-management business suits.

I give this episode two Hellhounds:

Most importantly, I owe a huge thanks to everyone who backed my Kickstarter recap campaign. I didn’t include the finale recap in the campaign, so if you enjoyed it, please feel free to drop by my virtual tip jar, if you can: here.



– Tippi Blevins

P.S. They should have transferred the Mark to Metatron and then marooned him on Pluto. Nobody would go looking for his ass.