It’s been a crowded week in TV land, with more shows than you can probably keep up with pulling out the big guns for their finales. Of all of them, “Lucifer Rising” was my favorite. You can have your insane musical charities, your body in a box, your parallel dimensions, and your doctory hallucinations. I’ll take Dean and Sam and the coming armageddon. Every time. Kripke didn’t disappoint. It was all there. Last seal. Lilith. Ruby’s real motivations. Azazel callback. What’s up with Castiel. Sam and Dean and their fractured relationship. Good lord, it was fantastic.
As I watched the big finale, the comments from last week kept coming to mind. We were all nibbling around the edges of what was going on, but never quite figured it all out. That’s just as it should be. Most notably, everyone was on to Ruby. It came to pass that she was, in fact, working with Lilith the whole time. I’m really looking forward to watching the season back on DVD now, because knowing what we do now is going to put quite the new twist on all of her scenes. There were even more clues this week, leading up to the big reveal, as she pushed just a little too hard to get Sam down the path.
Still, the real beauty of the episode was that even though I suspected as much last week, I was still questioning it right up until she came right out and told Sam. Zachariah provided quite the wild card. Convinced that Ruby was playing the long con, suddenly the question became, “Who is she working for?” Clearly, the rules of Heaven are not what we had assumed. It wasn’t a big leap to think that they might have brought her in to help get Sam to the place where he could play his part. It was all very well done.
Those revelations about what the good(?) guys were up to get us right to what was so great about the season. Who does this story? Yeah, we’ve seen plenty of demons over the years, and an angel or two has popped up on our televisions. But from the bible that most people never saw, to angels working to bring on armageddon because they’re sure they can win, to God has left the building, Supernatural has its own very unique take on the story. And the way they wove all of this right back into the fabric of the series, with the Azazel flashback, was just perfect.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the goings on between Sam and Dean. I started putting aside the idea of a prolonged battle between brothers right about the time Bobby started talking some sense into Dean. It seemed pretty clear that the two would be getting back together, sooner rather than later. The question then became, “Would it be in time to stop Lilith?” That was, of course, before we learned that Lilith is the final seal. Just one more turn of the tale that I loved.
Really, I can’t say enough good things about the episode. Everything was good. The guest cast, with Katherine Boecher, Kurt Fuller, Rob Benedict, and Rob LaBelle was great. Despite the dark nature of the story, there was still a nice collection of funny lines. My favorites: Dean making a Suite Life joke about Zachariah and Castiel. And Lilith’s demon chef to Sam and Ruby, “Look at you all roided up. It’s like A-rod and Madonna over here.” Even the title was a nice reference back to where we started this ride last fall, with “Lazarus Rising.”
Sadly, though, that’s it for a few months. We’ll have to wait ’til fall to get to the big fifth season. And it certainly does look like it’s going to be big, right? Lilith and Ruby may have been dispatched, but the boys have never had a foe that measures up to this. How will that play with Zachariah and the crew? Dean’s still their go-to guy, isn’t he? And what’s to become of Castiel? Where will Chuck figure in? Lots of good questions that only point to another good season in front of us.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on May 15, 2009 @ 04:00 EST5EDT
This show is awesome. I love how they pick a story and run with it. There is no tip toeing around it. They never draw it out, or pad it up. I love how they just give us enough to get us thinking, without getting us over thinking. Don’t get me wrong – I love LOST, but this finale kicked LOST’s ass. Throughout the season they gave us just enough to piece almost everything together by tonight, so that all of this episode’s reveals made sense and/or were awesome. It also just set us up for a major season 6.
Ooops – I meant a great season 5.
I agree with Kerry. Kripke is a master at moving the story along, giving the viewer just enough to piss us off and get us wondering what the hell he is thinking and then he gives us a wonderful payoff that we don’t have to wait years for. I can’t wait for S5.
I too love going back and rewatching previous seasons now that I know what I know. After S3, watching the first two seasons broke my heart and it was wonderful. When this is all over, this will be the best box set ever!
Once again, SPN delivers a pitch perfect finale. It was awesome. I think we all knew Ruby was untrustworthy, but I definitely didn’t know she’d been working with Lilith (and by extension, Azazel and Lucifer) all along. I always kind of thought she had her own evil agenda. I thought it was awesome how Ruby kept dropping huge hints to Sam the entire episode that he never picked up on. Like when she said to Lilith’s chef, “I know, you just can’t trust anyone these days”, or when she told Sam that “that blubbery don’t hurt me crap, it’s just an act. She’s playing you”, and then, “There’s still a hell bitch snoozing in there”. All things Sam seemed to conveniently forget about Ruby.
I liked that the episode had a few light moments as well, Dean’s smart ass remarks to the angels and the scene where Chuck is ordering 20 prostitutes over the phone. The look on Dean’s face when Chuck turns around is awesome.
The bit with Azazel felt like the final piece of the puzzle somehow. Azazel’s whole Sam leading the demon army thing always felt a little vague to me, so this made a lot more sense. The demon army story may have been a misdirection on the part of Azazel. Telling Sam that he intended to use him to raise Lucifer would have put him on his guard.
Cannot wait for season five!
OMG!!! can’t wait to see what happens next!!! i can’t belive that they left us hanging like that!!!
Excellent show. :)
I loved the little touches in this episode – like the bucket of Dean’s favorite beer from the episode What Is and What Should Never Be, Azazel, all the actors were great, Heaven was gunning for the Apocalypse all along, all good things..but I wasn’t on the edge of my seat with the whole Lucifer’s coming/Apocalypse is nigh thing because I felt like we’d already been there/done that at the end of season 2. Wasn’t the Apocalypse impending when the gate to Hell opened and the demons came streaming out? What’s so different now? The Devil? They built Lilith and Azazel up so big, I’d like to see them outdo themselves.
Also, I really wanted to see Sam and Dean turn on eachother. Is that whole story arc over now?