Episode Report Card Demian: A- | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Hardy Boys Raise a Little Hell
By Demian | Season 4 | Episode 22
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.WARNING: This recaplet cannot possibly contain the awesomeness that was the season finale, so I'm just going to give you the basics.
The episode opens on a flashback to "St. Mary's Convent" in Ilchester, Maryland, in 1972, where a certain Father Lehne gets his damn fool self possessed by The Ceiling Demon. Azazel, you see, is Lucifer's son, and after a couple million years, he finally figured out that Heaven was holding Daddy Dearest somewhere beneath Howard County, specifically beneath the retreat the Redemptorists built in the 1860s because they somehow sensed the presence of something angelic on the grounds. So, after Azazel slaughters the convent's inhabitants during the high point of some sort of whacked-out Black Mass, Lucifer's able to reach up and grab temporary possession of one of the corpses and proceeds to fill Azazel in on what the latter needs to do to bring about The Apocalypse, and that's why The Ceiling Demon started recruiting his special army 36 years ago through the deals he made with the kids' parents, Mary Campbell included.
Meanwhile, back in the present, Sam and Ruby trap Lilith's dietician, who happens to be inhabiting a nurse named "Cindy McKellan." (Brava to former Supernatural recapper Cindy McClennan for the near-shout-out, even if the character does end up mutilated and dead.) They torture the demon into revealing Lilith's current whereabouts, which just so happen to be the ruins of St. Mary's, where Lilith intends to break the final seal on top of Lucifer's prison in order to free him. The two then hop into Ruby's crapped-out Mustang for the lengthy road trip from Minnesota down to the Piedmont -- with poor Cindy McKellan locked in the trunk the entire time, natch -- and once they arrive at St. Mary's, Ruby tosses around a little mojo to alter an urgent and apologetic voice message from Dean in order to get Sam to suck out all of Poor Cindy's demonically enhanced blood so Sam'll have the strength to kill Lilith.
Elsewhere, Bobby quite rightfully gives Dashing El Deano a verbal bitchslap for being a gigantic, whiny princess all season until My Sweet Baboo and Zachariah swoop down to drag Dean up to some sort of celestial waiting room (and yes, it's exactly like the one in 2001, right down to the cheesetastically tacky décor), where Our Intrepid Hero's forced to cool his heels for most of the episode because -- get this -- Zachariah and his fellow angelic overseers actually want Lilith to break the final seal, because the world will be a better place after the angels (and Dean) defeat Lucifer. Dean, of course, is outraged on humanity's behalf, and protests mightily to Castiel. My Sweet Baboo initially seems dismissive, but when push comes to shove, Castiel sides with The Stumpy Little Bow-Legged Lamb Of God, and he whisks Dean first to Chuck's tragic little bachelor pad to receive revelation from The Prophet regarding Sam's location before magically transporting Dean to St. Mary's to stop it all because...
...Sam offing Lilith is actually the final seal. Yep, and so it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal, so this entire 37-year-long odyssey has been leading up to this point, and thanks to a little more last-minute trickery on Ruby's part -- she's been working with Lilith, Azazel and Lucifer all along, don't you know -- as it is written, so does it come to pass. Of course, once Ruby's true motivations become clear, Our Intrepid Heroes waste not a second slaughtering her with her very own knife, but it's far too late, and the season ends with The Light-Bringer bursting forth through the floor to blind us all with that final white title card before hurling everyone into a summer hiatus that will likely prove unendurably long, indeed.
So, you know. Like I said: Awesome!
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see who vlogger Sean Crespo thinks the brothers should be battling in No Prior Knowledge! And check back next week for the gore-filled recap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Rattle, Rattle THE ROAD SO FAR! and yes, faithful friends and others, Supernatural now officially has itself a season-finale tradition, for barely has THE ROAD SO FAR! disappeared into the inky blackness of title card oblivion when the unmistakable opening wails of "Carry On Wayward Son" hit the soundtrack. Oh, Kansas. Even you have become a LYING LIAR WHO LIES, for The Brothers Winchester are never, ever going to get any goddamned rest, ever, now are they?
In any event, for those of you who either slept through the entire season or -- like me -- were too whacked out on Vicodin to remember much of the first half at all, join us as we delight in Dashing El Deano punching Darling Sammy's lights out in some random Motel Of The Week somewhere before one of our favorite pretty boys with guns blasts an off-screen monster in the face with rock salt. "VIOLENCE!" shrieks Raoul The Big Gay Supernatural Dragon whilst writhing about atop his overstuffed armchair with glee, for yes, gentle reader, this beautiful Previously sequence withholds not an instant of the good stuff, as we note in the very next shot, which features a bloody, conflicted, and remarkably broad-shouldered Sam immolating last October's rougarou. "EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Our Dear Boys make with the Tough Guy Jazz Hands somewhere dank and depressing for a moment until My Sweet Baboo sweeps down from Heaven to make Dean's acquaintance for the very first time, and it doesn't quite work out exactly the way Castiel had planned, what with the splinters of shattered glass slashing through the air around Dean's freshly washed face, so let's skip ahead a bit to Sam greeting the unquiet spirit of Special Agent Henriksen the only way Darling Sammy knows how, and oh, dear. Even when people try to be sociable on this show, it all ends in little more than gross misunderstandings and massive amounts of bloodshed and tears. "Hooray!" Quiet, Raoul. It takes long enough to get through these season finale flashback montages without your overexcited interjections every other line. "My apologies, I'm sure! Please continue!" I shall.
So, where was I? Oh, yes: Darling Sammy next exorcises the unquiet spirit of some fat fat fattie from a tiny little Asian girl who'd just handed his tantalizing ass to him right before Castiel boots Dean into the early '70s for an uncomfortably incestuous meet-and-greet with his demonically enhanced grandfather, after which the boys dive through stained-glass windows and get slammed into windshields and such before we at long last land on Dean's first conversation with his very own personal Angel Of The Lord. "I am an Angel Of The Lord," Castiel informs Dean rather needlessly, because I just said he was an Angel Of The Lord, but My Sweet Baboo looks so pretty at the moment with his deep blue eyes and his angrily feathery hair and the vast black shadows cast by his still-invisible wings as everyone's favorite angel man flexes them outwards for Dean's benefit and...wow. Woof. Even after all of these months. Also: Yowza. Plus: Marry me, Castiel!
Ahem. Meanwhile, Darling Sammy's a whole new level of freak because of all that demon blood he's got up inside him, but on the plus side, The Corpse Sucker did put all of said sucking to excellent use when he offed Uncle Arthur a couple of episodes ago, so we won't hold it against him. In other news, as Angelic Anna and her gross hair first told us, Lilith's been spending the entire season cracking open the 66 seals needed to free Lucifer from Hell, and as we rewatch Dean struggling to free himself from his grave, Castiel reminds everyone that Heaven freed Our Intrepid Hero from Hell for one reason and one reason alone: "We have work for you." Damn, but that line still gives me the chills. Woof!
Erm. Ahem. Again. Next, Dean Smith grabs a handy wrench and swings it like a baseball bat through an elderly specter's head right before Dean Winchester blasts a couple of rounds in the general direction of the ghoul beneath his already-dead youngest brother's truck, and then it's off to Cold Spring, where we find Lilith's dietician positively drooling over a nursery full of fresh infants just as Increasingly Insane Sammy drools over the last of Princess Embolism's corpse blood in his flask while Lovable, Furry Old Chuck calls out from the depths of his tragic yet accurate lair, "Dude! Knock it off!"
And finally, after a brief glimpse of Sam and Dean salting and burning the corpse of the brother they never knew they had, THE ROAD SO FAR! drills down to focus in on the most important bits from the episode just passed, specifically Dimwitted El Deano plighting his troth to dear Castiel (and all of dear Castiel's multitudinous brethren, of course, because Dimwitted El Deano's such a huge frigging slut as far as the heavenly host is concerned) followed by that gratifying episode-ending smackdown. "You walk out that door," Dean manages to gasp, "don't you ever come back!" Psychotic Sammy silently vows not to cry no more right before slamming the hotel room door in Defeated El Deano's face, and with that, we're off into the...