The End Approaches

Is it me, or did this season just fly by? I mean, I don't feel like I ever stopped longing for the show to come back, and now we're about to say goodbye again. But I also can't wait to see how it ends.

Back in January, I was talking about season 6 with some friends. A couple of them expressed some of the same disappointment a lot of you have, and said the season has felt sloppier or more haphazard, with too much going on.

At the time, I agreed but said I had hopes that it wasn't going to end up that way overall. I thought that once we got to the end of the season, we'd look back or rewatch and find it extremely well done. And it's shaping up to be that way.

It's DIFFERENT, for sure. In all the past seasons, we knew what the goal was, and every detail fed that goal. We had the framework of a puzzle already put together, and every piece of information filled it in and gave us a better picture.

This season, we started with a jumble of pieces and no picture of what we were making. As we got pieces and started to fit things together, we got different parts of the whole put together. Instead of filling in from, say, top to bottom, we got two pieces in the top left corner, and then a chunk in the middle, and a bit from the right side.

Now we only have a few key pieces missing, and everything fits together. I really can't wait to see the end and then watch again from the beginning.

Going back to last week's episode...

I loved that they kept Mark Sheppard's name out of the opening credits. When he was killed, I felt let down because it seemed so easy and final. I always had a tiny seed of hope that it wasn't the end of him. And then the big reveal came, and it would have been totally ruined if we knew he was going to be there. (I'm good at avoiding spoilers during the week, but despite hating to know ahead of time, I can't stop myself from reading the guest star list!)

I also liked that once they came up against the "big bad," they vanquished her in the clever, determined way they used to do. They could have dragged it out longer, but making the Mother more powerful than Lucifer would have been a mistake, in my opinion.

So now we have three episodes left, and we finally can see a glimmer of everything tying together. I'm thinking it all comes down to the war in heaven. Purgatory, the Mother, the souls, bringing back the Campbells, maybe even leaving Sam's soul in the pit all connect to whatever stakes Cas is fighting for (or against).

I'm betting next week's Cas-centric episode will give us a lot of the answers, and then the last two episodes will be the big fight and the setup for season 7.

You know what? I might just go start watching season 6 from the beginning right now...