Supernatural: Alpha and Omega

Posted by: Kyle Tetarenko  •  May 25, 2016 @ 10:11pm

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

No chick flick moments.

After Amara used the dim mak on Chuck, the creator lies on the floor knowing that his time is coming to an end. Lucifer was also cast out of Castiel and now they are down an archangel and Amara was able to withstand their best shot and walk it off moments later. That's when Rowena gets them to take a look outside. With Chuck dying, the sun is quickly burning out and earth will end along with it. Ready to call it quits, Dean can't think of anything to do besides go for a liquor run but Sam isn't ready to give up just yet. After a short bit of thought, Sam has it: if they can't cage Amara then they have to destroy her. If she and Chuck both die, the balance will be restored. Chuck says that her one weakness would be light but they would need a lot; ten thousand suns a lot. If Chuck was in fighting shape that would be no big deal but the team will instead have to make due with souls (apparently one soul = one hundred suns for brightness). With enough souls, Rowena can make a bomb and use that against Amara. The Winchesters, Crowley and Castiel all make a plan to get the souls but the angel and demon fail utterly but luckily, Billie shows up, says a few ominous words to everyone and gives them a few hundred thousand souls. If the world goes then so does she. Elsewhere, Amara is in a park and questions what she has done after realizing that with Chuck dying, the world won't fall into darkness but nothingness. All will be lost and her along with it. With all of the souls gathered, Rowena tells them that the souls can't just be held in a crystal or object but will have to be in a person and that person will have to set themselves off to destroy Amara and restore balance. As Dean is the only one that can get close enough to her, it will be up to him to make the one way trip to destroy Amara and save creation.

After an entire season of build-up, Supernatural ended season eleven with whimper in Alpha and Omega. For starters, the first fifteen minutes were spent with everyone giving before they were ultimately convinced by Sam that they can still do something to save the world. Just when it seems like the cool plan to get souls will turn into something, Crowley and Castiel fail and basically contribute nothing to the story. Then, in order to further the plot along and bring back a character that has done less than anyone else this season, Billie conveniently appears to save the day. Even after all of that, Dean is able to convince an eternal being that has been locked away in a cage for billions of years that she still loves her brother and doesn't want everything to be destroyed. Sure, it's the season finale and a lot of loose ends need to be tied up but the trials and triumphs of the story were inserted in such a way that it felt choreographed and like Alpha and Omega was doing everything to remove any sense of urgency around what could happen if Sam, Dean, Crowley, Rowena and Castiel were to fail.

What further hindered any momentum Alpha and Omega was building was the introduction of Lady Antonia Bevell played by Elizabeth Blackmore. Bevell (her name is way too long) distracted from the end of the world multiple times as we watched her arrive home, have tea, and travel in a luxury private jet and vehicles while everyone was trying to save the world. She also managed to do all of this in a couple of hours but who's counting? If Supernatural wanted her to be more mysterious and keep the surprise that she was a member of the Men of Letters, she should have only been waiting for Sam and Castiel in the bunker at the end of the episode. Everything else that she did up to that point had no relevance to the episode and only dragged down the pacing. If Bevell shot Sam in the final moments is also entirely inconsequential. Unless she killed Sam in one shot, we have already seen that plot six episodes ago in Red Meat. Lastly, if there was a London chapter of the Men of Letters, why have they done nothing to save the world over the past decade? They've had many opportunities.

While season eleven had its moments, it failed to recapture the magic that the show had in its first five seasons. Episodes like Baby, O Brother Where Art Thou and Don't Call Me Shurley were incredible and gave us fantastic stories because they didn't hold back at any time. Baby was a call back to the earlier days of the show when a lot of great times were had with the Impala. O Brother Where Art Thou brought us terror and dread when Lucifer returned and Don't Call Me Shurley gave us the answers we have along waited for. Speaking of Lucifer, Misha Collins I fantastic as Castiel but he could never pull off the character as well as Mark Pellegrino. Collins lacked the charm and menace that Pellegrino has and it never translated in quite the same way. It didn't help that Lucifer's vendetta against God ended up being a pouty child that was angry that his father never listened to him. That turn reduced the character greatly in the span of fifteen minutes and he never quite recovered after.

It was several years in the making but Chuck's return did not disappoint. Returning to the character in a meaningful way for the first time since season five, Rob Benedict was quite good in the role of Chuck/God. Don't Call Me Shurley's scenes between Chuck and Metatron are among the best this season and for good reason. Chuck had a story that he wanted to tell but did everything that he could to stay out of it entirely. It was the moments where Chuck sat down with the Winchesters and talked that were handled very in a remarkably believable way. Chuck is one of the highlights of the season but the same can't be said for his sister.

Lastly, we have the darkness herself: Amara. The concept of Amara was a great idea: the sister and opposite of God that would inevitably force a direct confrontation. Unfortunately the execution of Amara never quite came together. Amara was a baby that swallowed souls and then a bratty child and teen that just wanted to eat more souls; the character was powerful but paper thin for story. When she became an adult she wanted more souls and revenge on God for locking her away for so long. She planned on destroying all of creation but no idea what that would get her if she succeeded. She said the world would be enveloped in darkness but only understood what the death of God would do after went through with it. Needless to say, her motivation was never clear and we didn't know what she was after or what she would get if she actually killed God. Did she want to be the next God or just be the darkness and be...dark? The confusion of the character only came across further with Emily Swallow. Even though Swallow did her best she couldn't give the character what simply wasn't there.

I may appear hard on the episode but that's only because most of the groundwork for this season was laid six years ago when series creator, Eric Kripke, was still in charge as the show only needed to build on something that was quite solid. Instead, God and his sister held hands and floated away and all was right again. We'll see what happens next season as current series showrunner Jeremy Carver departs and Robert Singer and Andrew Dabb take the reins when Supernatural makes it return to Thursdays in the fall. I hope you've enjoyed my reviews of the show this season and I look forward to the more Supernatural when the show returns for season twelve.

Tags: Supernatural, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Emily Swallow

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