Okay, I’m going to purge all my emotions into one text post in the hopes of cleansing myself. “Carry On” wasn’t just a bad finale, it was very nearly a parody of how bad a finale can get. The kind of thing that fans might — and in some cases actually did — post about as a worst case scenario joke, a “Lol can you imagine the chaos if they did this?” without any real belief that the show would go that far. Yet they did.
We begin the episode with a generic life routine montage that segues into an equally generic case, a callback to SPN’s roots that, while nostalgic in terms of the “Saving people, hunting things” motto, nevertheless fails to acknowledge that SPN hasn’t been that simple a show in years. I’m waiting for the case to tie into the larger plot/mythos somehow, but it doesn’t. We’re treated only to the heavy-handed symbolism of them saving two brothers. A woman victimized by vampires seasons back shows up for a second so Dean can comment on how good she looks, then Sam kills her. She is the only woman we see in the finale besides a nameless cop who gives exposition and leaves. Donna, an old favorite, is mentioned only by name. We know nothing about Sam’s wife.
Dean dies. After 15 years of surviving the unsurvivable, his chance to finally live life disappears as he’s killed by a grunt vampire via a nail in the back and just tells Sam not to try and resurrect him. Though the acting in this scene is decent on both sides, I have precisely zero emotional investment because I’m just asking why this is happening. Why aren’t the brothers living or dying together? Will Cas somehow return, given that they’re in a barn and all? Nope. Dean dies, is cremated, Sam mourns in another montage and moves on.
Despite this being a show positively stuffed with significant characters (it may have started out with two brothers but it certainly didn’t stay that way), the only one Dean (and via him the viewer) gets to see in heaven is Bobby. After some explanations and a bad beer, he drives off in his Impala while we get another montage of Sam growing old, which if you’ve seen the Six Feet Under finale may look familiar. Sam doesn’t age well, in the sense that the wig and makeup look ridiculous. He marries a woman we, as said, know nothing about and has a generic hunter son that he of course names Dean. Dean 2.0 tells his ailing father that he can die now and Sam does, dutifully, appearing to stand with brother!Dean on a bridge as his younger self… despite the fact that apparently only five minutes have passed for Dean in heaven, but Sam has theoretically grown into a different person after decades of life.
Most egregiously, any hope the fans had for Cas getting a respectful ending were dashed. After a shocking confession two weeks ago, everyone was waiting for their reunion and to see if Dean reciprocated Cas’ implied feelings (the “I love you” deemed romantic largely due to the “What I want, but know I can never have” line, given that Cas has said “I love you” to both brothers in the past). Except that Cas never shows up. The first time he’s mentioned it’s by Sam, with Dean encouraging him to move on and eat pie instead of thinking of lost friends. The second time he’s mentioned by Bobby, who drops the reveal that Cas “helped” build this new heaven. So did Jack let him out of the Empty? Is he here now? Why wouldn’t he ever tell the brothers that Cas is no longer in super hell? It’s unclear. Either way, Dean doesn’t seem to care. So we had eleven years and a couple of months worth of queer baiting, a presumed romantic confession, followed by immediately killing Cas off, then Dean off, and the two of them never meeting on screen again.
So… yeah. Well done, SPN! I think you may have pushed Game of Thrones and How I Met Your Mother out for a certain title.
