final thoughts: supernatural season 9
holy shit i did it!!! i've now officially watched as much supernatural as 17-year-old me did a decade ago. everything from here out will be 100% new to me which is honestly really exciting.
i've been holding in a lot of my thoughts about season 9 for this post, and now i don't even know where to start... how about this: this season was bizarre. in isolation, i think most of the episodes were actually pretty decent. there were only two episodes that made me want to quit watching this show, and honestly i count that as a win. like a MAJOR win. because even the obvious filler episodes tended to be more impactful or emotional, and i appreciate the effort that went into them.
but at the same time? i really didn't like this season that much, from a writing standpoint. and by that i mean i think this concept was way too big for the season, and as a result everything felt both incredibly rushed and very, very underdeveloped. almost nothing was given the time to really marinate or build up properly.
my main gripe here is with the mark of cain. the elevation of tension was drawn out, then all at once, when it really didn't have to be that way and i can't fathom why the writers would choose to do that. sure, dean got a bit more aggressive in the last few episodes, but what about the episodes immediately following dean obtaining the mark? the lack of, well, anything implies that the mark itself is fairly innocuous, but then at the same time the first blade is "just a pile of bones" unless it's paired with the mark—so what, exactly, is causing the changes in dean? both are useless and powerless on their own, and then you want to sell me on the idea that putting them together turns dean into a demon? it's just a little weird to me. putting four filler and semi-filler episodes immediately after dean getting the mark was a mistake imo, not because the episodes were bad but because they failed to explore what the mark means or what it does (and they could have done that!!! within those very episodes!!! they just didn't for some reason). of course, i guess according to the show, the mark itself does nothing—and i just keep spinning in circles on this matter. genuinely, what is the source of power if the mark itself doesn't affect dean and if the first blade is useless without the mark??? it has to be coming from somewhere, and the way the mark is talked about in this season would imply that the mark IS the source of the power ("great burden" and all that), but there isn't anything tangible to back that up.
and that's what i mean: there are ideas here that just are not used to their potential. story beats happen because they need to happen rather than there being natural buildup for them. i mean hell, cas gets a following and then he disappears for several episodes and suddenly it's a whole operation; sam is fine while gadreel is healing him until suddenly he's not and he's having trouble recharging; gadreel is loyal in helping sam and dean until suddenly he's not, and then he's loyal to metatron until suddenly he's not; abbadon is a threat but she's MIA for half the season. some of these criticisms are fair and some aren't, but my overall issue here is just that the concept didn't fit in 23 episodes (rather, the concept didn't fit in 13 episodes, considering 10 of them really didn't directly impact the seasonal plot or tangibly drive it forward). maybe what could have fixed it would have been either fewer irrelevant episodes (seriously, why were there 10 of these when the plot was this big) or spreading it out across two seasons. make abbadon the big bad of season 9, then metatron of season 10, idk. something like that. i would have preferred fewer irrelevant episodes though, even though i actually liked many of them.
speaking of irrelevant episodes, that bloodlines ep should have been in the first half of the season. it was so contradictory to the second half ("we have to find abbadon, we can't let ourselves get distracted") that it just annoyed me. i get it was the pilot for a spin-off but they could have ordered it better. it would have fit better with episodes 4 and 5 when sam and dean were still mulling around and hadn't yet gotten caught up in the main plot.
anyway, all of this has culminated in what has become a fairly lackluster season for me. which is pretty weird, because like i said: i enjoyed almost all of the episodes, at least in isolation. it's putting them all together that disappoints me. the jerky, noncommittal weirdness of developments left the season without much tension because frankly, most of the actual developments happened in the last, what? three episodes? not great when you have 20 other episodes you could have used to support the story.
aaaand as a result, the season finale was also pretty lackluster. i think the only part of it that really had me on the edge of my seat was the fight with metatron and everything after that. but really, it was a great ending! there's a couple things that stood out to me which i thought were actually really good:
the first is that i like how crowley was used throughout season 9 as he stood on the precipice between demonhood and humanity, and how that culminated in his final speech as he awakens dean as a demon. to show the transition between human and demon as much more fluid and real than it has been before is pretty awesome setup for season 10, and crowley was used really well to show this off. dean bonding with crowley also helped foreshadow the demonization of dean winchester, and i like how dean was shown waffling between working with crowley and wanting to kill him. he couldn't make the commitment either way because he wasn't ready; he was still incubating as the story built around him.
the second is that i love love love how this season finale parallels season 2, all hell breaks loose. sam has to watch his brother die, and he can't even bury him. he takes his rotting corpse home and lays him on a bed and he can't let his brother die so he goes off to make a deal with a demon. of course of course of course of course sam would pull a stunt like this after watching his brother die. of course he lied and pretended he could let dean go. of course he couldn't. i'm obsessed with how violent sam gets when he confronts the homeless camp; he is NOT fucking around. and this feels so faithful to early seasons sam that i can't help but smile. i've spent this whole season questioning the writing choices for sam regarding the first episode and its ripple effect, but THIS... this is it. this is the psychotic, irrational, erotic codependency their relationship is built on. sam couldn't even bury him! god i'm going to be thinking about this for days.
anyway this is long enough. supernatural season finales have the worst habit of building more tension for the next season than any other given episode manages to within a season, so of course my heart is fluttering with desire to start season 10 already. but i know. i know i'll regret that decision. i need the detox or i'll die. so instead i'm going to finish hannibal finally and get that off my plate. maybe i'll watch another miniseries after that, since i still have a few lined up for me; i haven't decided quite yet. either way, i am FORCING myself into detox, even though my heart is yearning to finally see demon dean in action. i'm not going to lie—demon dean was one of the biggest factors for me starting this rewatch, because i've regretted not sticking around for season 10 for wayyy too long. but i'm finally here!!! holy shit!!! i did it. are you proud of me (i'm not lmao)
