Then there was the season finale that sent Dean to hell – again, something none of us thought the show would really do. And later, in what will always be one of my favorite episodes, Sam makes the ultimate sacrifice in Swan Song – for the love of family. Do you think I sobbed like a baby again? You’d be right.
Supernatural has taken all sorts of risks in its fourteen seasons on the air. It has turned its heroes into near-villains, Dean a demon, Sam soulless, Castiel into Godstiel and Leviathan possessed. The show has taken its viewers to the darkest of places, and also to the most unlikely and ridiculous – into a black and white “Monster Movie”, a musical episode that brought the show to life in a high school for girls, a sitcom hell where Sam and Dean got to parody the other popular shows of that time hilariously, into the head-spinning meta world of a Supernatural convention, and straight through the shattered fourth wall onto the Supernatural set itself in ‘The French Mistake.’
No other show has taken so many risks, and had its audience follow it to every single one.
This season’s finale episode, “Moriah,” took what was arguably an even bigger one – it made God (aka Chuck aka Rob Benedict) himself the villain of the story. Or, as Rob Benedict’s very first Supernatural episode was aptly titled, into “The Monster At The End Of This Book.” Talk about a risk! Not only did that take the risk of alienating viewers who take their religion seriously enough for that to shock, but Chuck’s final F-you to the Winchesters and Castiel caused shock waves throughout the fandom that still haven’t abated.
I had to teach a graduate class during the time the finale aired on the East coast, much to my dismay, so I entrusted my DVR with recording it for me and then watched when I got home. That meant I was on my own and didn’t have to censor my reactions so my family wouldn’t contemplate another intervention (I mean, fourteen years in, it’s probably too late, just saying…) That also meant I could let my jaw drop when it needed to. So here are five times when Supernatural’s season finale made my jaw drop – how about yours?
(Honorable mention: Dean smashing Chuck’s guitar when Chuck attempts to avoid answering their questions with a song, and Sam inexplicably professing his love for Celine Dion when he was unable to lie, because, really, Show??)