Summary: The season nine premiere of Supernatural continues the creative resurgence of season eight with tons of unexpected twists and freshness, despite it being a little slow.
If you have not seen this episode yet and don’t wish to be spoiled, do not keep reading.
Recap
After the fall in last season’s finale, Sam is in a coma from the toll the trials took on his body. Inside his own mind, images of Dean and Bobby argue over whether Sam should fight for his life, or give in and die. In the real world, Dean sends out an open signal for all angels to help, attracting some who want to kill him, and one who wants to do his duty and help. Elsewhere, Castiel, who’s now human after Metatron stole his grace, meets an angel named Hael. He wants to help Hael, who is desperately searching for meaning now that she’s stuck on Earth. Castiel wants to get back to Dean to help Sam, but Hael kidnaps him, intending to join with Cas in a single vessel and live as one. Castiel manages to escape, and is forced to kill her when she threatens to tell all the angels of his whereabouts. He’s blamed for sealing Heaven, which means all the angels want his head. Meanwhile, after Dean fights off the killer angels, the good angel, Ezekiel, offers to possess Sam and heal him from within. Wanting Sam to give the final consent, Dean and Ezekiel enter Sam’s mind to help. Inside, Sam is meeting Death himself, pleading for this death to be his final one–no way to be resurrected this time. Before he can, Dean convinces him to come back for him, because he’s nothing without his little brother. Sam agrees, and Ezekiel possesses him and saves his life. Ezekiel can let Sam maintain control of the body while it’s being repaired, but Dean and Ezekiel agree to keep it a secret in the event that Sam rejects the weakened Ezekiel–if the angel is ejected, Sam dies.
Review
Supernatural is at an odd place. For a show that barely made it past season three, it’s pretty certain that the CW is going to give it the Smallville treatment and keep it on through season 10, before ending it (arguably) long after it should have ended.
But while Smallville often felt like it was dragged past its prime kicking and screaming into its later years, the people behind Supernatural have never stopped having a fresh excitement for the show they’re doing. They want to keep going forever, even if they shouldn’t. As such, it’s never stopped being an enjoyable show to watch, even if it’s gotten to be a bit of a chore for some sticking with it out of loyalty. It’s struggled with how to make it worth continuing on; even while throwing out some of the series’ best individual episodes (“The French Mistake”, “Death’s Door”) and characters (Charlie, Kevin, Benny), it hasn’t been able to craft overall arcs as tight or compelling as the show’s first five years. Like Smallville, it hit a bit of a creative resurgence in its eight season last year, introducing new concepts like the Men of Letters that fit the mythology, while pushing forward to a truly surprising and big finale cliffhanger. But while Smallville reinvented itself to the point where it almost wasn’t the same show it was when it began, Supernatural has managed to retain the same shadowy, self-aware underdog quality throughout. And while that’s certainly held it back before–the “treading old ground” feeling of season seven comes to mind–season eight managed to twist and shift the well-treaded plot points and mythology to the point that they became interesting again.
All that’s to say: it’s amped up to eleven in “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here”. This is an episode that’s made up solely of developments and sequences we’ve already seen, but played with and shifted around enough that it becomes new all over again. We’re still dealing with angels being dicks, the Winchesters dying, Cas feeling guilty, and two brothers making stupid sacrifices for one another, but damn if it isn’t attacking every angle of these concepts, and with appropriate self-awareness. This is the freshest the show’s felt since season five.
Much of this has to do with just how big this season’s story is right from the get-go. The fall of the angels is treated with the approriate amount of fanfare, the haunting images of the falling angels on TV screens (masked in the media as “meteor showers,” which…whatever) and talk of literally thousands of angels now walking on Earth. Like season five’s apocalypse storyline, there’s a whole lot more talk than what’s seen. But it’s not to the episode’s detriment, as we still get an attack from no less than four angels, and there’s an appropriate “end of the world” feeling that’s worse for there being no obvious solution. The idea of the Winchesters being overwhelmed by the sheer number of their enemies was played with in season seven with the Leviathans, but that these are beings we’re already familiar with makes this all the scarier. That said, much effort is placed in making it clear that not every angel has a nefarious agenda; Ezekiel is actually a brave, kind soul (so far), and Hael is just as lost as any human, if not moreso. And there’s still plenty more angles to explore.
But in spite of how big all this is, the story in the premiere is quite small, almost to a claustrophobic extent. Very few things happen, actually, which makes this fairly tense hour surprisingly slow-paced and a little drawn-out. But the slowness did manage to let appropriate time be spent exploring Sam and Dean’s respective rationales in the situations. The show has established since day one that Sam has been reluctant about hunting, and this was pushed to its extreme last season when he found a life away that he enjoyed. But after failing time and time again, it seems Sam has joined Dean in a “death wish” mentality. It’s a rather scary dichotomy; both Sam and Dean have their own death wishes, but for two different reasons now. Dean wants to die for his brother, and refuses to let Sam die before him, because he’s nothing without him (as evidenced by his emptiness between seasons 5 and 6.) Sam, on the other hand, is frustrated by his failure–he failed to escape the hunting life, and as he brought up in last year’s finale, he’s failed his brother countless times.
What everyone in the episode, including Death himself, tries to purport is that Sam’s life has actually been amazingly worthwhile. After all, even though his failings have brought about end of the world scenarios, he’s managed to stop them and worse each and every time. The show does a nice job of avoiding painting Sam and Dean as epic heroes all the time, but when it brings up that they have literally saved the world more than once, it makes all the more impact. But at that, Sam doesn’t seem convinced–after all, how many times can things get worse before you have to realize they won’t get better? The way this was handled, with Sam pleading to make this death final, considering how many times it’s happened in the past, was a brilliant way to bring this character arc into the spotlight. Jared Padalecki effectively played Sam significantly more broken and beaten than he ever has. But with this internal battle wiped from Sam’s memory, it doesn’t look like he’ll be coming to terms with this struggle anytime soon.
As mentioned above, Dean’s major motivation has always been to keep his little brother alive at all costs. Dean’s desperation to keep a dying Sam alive is nothing new, but there’s an added bit of frustration that help could be just out of reach, but not close enough. Angels are out there, but they’re out to kill him. And the whole point of stopping the trials and forfeiting sealing Hell was to save Sam, only for it to be all for naught anyway. Dean’s frustration is summarized well in the utterly captivating scene where he chews out the doctor for telling him “It’s in God’s hands now.” There’s lots that could be discussed from an Atheist vs. Religious perspective there (and Dean’s lines taken out of context could easily be used as one side of a real-life argument), but the added layer of Dean having literally searched for God and not found him makes the explosion disturbingly funny and horrifyingly tragic. The Winchesters get a whole lot of crap, and Jensen Ackles sold the release of his anger in that scene.
There’s a throughline in the episode, between Sam’s inner struggle, Dean’s outer one and Castiel’s conversation with Hael suggesting that no matter what happens, winning will always be impossible, but that doesn’t mean looking forward should be discredited. Dean is, again, at his wit’s end, but he keeps fighting for that back way into getting at least a partial victory. In the case of Cas, he’s got the weight of an entire race of beings on his shoulders, again, and this time he’s at a disadvantage without his power. But even with the odds stacked against him, he’s still looking at the benefits of living on Earth. We’ve seen a whole lot of Cas showing off his guilt and misguided attempts at redemption, and we’ve also seen him living without angelic abilities. But it’s refreshing to hear him firmly establish just how positively his life with the Winchesters has affected him. There’s potential foreshadowing here, perhaps, that his experience on “Team Free Will” may, by the end of the series, allow him to be a ruler in Heaven with humility, sort of like how he’d imagined season 6 to play out. Time will tell, of course, but for the first time in a while, there seems to be a clear trajectory in the works for Cas, something much-needed.
Along with the falenl angel stuff, we now have an angel secretly hiding within Sam, a development most surely didn’t see coming. There’s a number of ways this could go, and while forcing Dean to keep it a secret was definitely forced and contrived, there is some half-decent logic behind it. Hopefully it isn’t milked for tension more than it needs to be. And let’s not forget…Bobby! What a creative way to bring back Jim Beaver for another outing, and his scenes in Sam’s head were the funniest parts of an otherwise grim episode. Beaver and Bobby are always a welcome addition back, but considering how many appearances he’s already made after his incredible death, it’s good the show kept this to the most logical minimum. However, it does bring up an interesting idea: what’s going on with the human souls, like Bobby, that are now sealed away in Heaven? Has anything changed for them?
There’s a ton of questions this season is posing, and it’s incredibly exciting. The goal isn’t clear yet, but that hardly makes it aimless; there’s enough potential stuff going on that there doesn’t need to be one quite yet. What we have instead is a stellar reworking of a show that desperately needed to pick up steam, but a reworking that in no way invalidates the show’s spirit. So while these are all things we’ve seen before, the intriguing context in which these things are taking place makes this the most exciting this show’s been in a long while.
Odds & Ends
- The new opening title is super duper cool. And as usual, the recap is as engaging and fun as the show itself.
- The guest actors this week are all awesome. Aside from the always mesmerizing Julian Richings as Death, Tamoh Penikett turns out the most angelic angel performance we’ve ever seen on the show. Having seen Penikett on…well…pretty much every TV show ever, it’s fun to seem him in such a different role. With Ezekiel’s vessel still intact, perhaps we’ll see him return.
- On that note, we also got creative ways of keeping Mark A. Sheppard and Osric Chau out of the picture–one locked in the trunk, one locked…offscreen and without even a mention.
- The Grand Canyon bit with Hael was very cute, and mostly succeeded thanks to Misha Collins’ comedic timing.
- So…every angel in the world knows about Castiel’s involvement in the sealing of Heaven, but no one’s even bothering to place any blame on Metatron…you know…actually orchestrating the whole thing? Where is that pesky guy, anyway?
- The last time Sam was having brain trouble was when the wall broke in the season 6 finale, and he retreated into an imaginary world in his head. At least this time he’s more privy to it being a hallucination.
- I swear I won’t be throwing out Smallville parallels every week, but just one more: Smallville season 9 has Clark dealing with a veritable army of depowered Kryptonians, some with aspirations to do harm and others who just want to find a way to acclimate into their new life. Supernatural season 9 has the Winchesters dealing with a veritable army of depowered angels, some with aspirations to do harm and others who just want to find a way to acclimate into their new life.
- Gotta admit, I’m a little disappointed that after a long shot of a motorcycle as Cas walked onscreen, we didn’t see him ride it at one point.
- “Well played, my boy.” – Probably the best words you could hear from Death himself.
- “There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”
