"The Spear" – Supernatural S14E09 Review

And all seems hopeless, and crash cut to the mid-season finale.

In other words, another Supernatural mid-season finale.

I wouldn't say there were any great surprises in "The Spear". The good guys try to get some weapons to take out the big bad. The big bad toys with them while executing his master plan. And as I predicted, the big bad did what I figured he would do and what they've been gaslighting for a while with Dean's occasional dizziness spells or blurred vision or whatever you want to call them.

So what did happen? The guys are having Ketch (David Haydn-Jones) get a (Faberge, presumably) egg. He is forced to put in the mail, and despite the fact he claims he was improvising, he had enough time to send it priority mail.

Meanwhile, Michael has had her vampire and werewolf (but not djinn?) minions wipe out the occupants of a finance office building during their Christmas party. Michael is now in a female body (Felisha Terrell), and picked the building because she liked the view. The building is in Kansas City, and she plans to turn the entire population into vampires and werewolves. Then they will... fight as part of Michael's army. I'm not sure why they'd do this. It's suggested Michael can control them if they drink some of his grace. But Kansas City has a population of almost 470,000 (2017 census). Michael has enough grace to feed to 470,000 people? And can control them all if somehow he did have that much grace?

Don't get me wrong: 470,000 new vampires and werewolves would be a major catastrophe. But it's much more of a mob than an army. Michael keeps describing them as his army, though. Thanks to the relatively low budget, we never see more than two vampires and two werewolves, either.

Speaking of werewolves, one of them is Garth (DJ Qualls). We're presumably supposed to think Garth has flipped to the other side, and he does give Michael a convincing speech about how he wants to be on the winning side to keep his family alive. But we know better, don't we? I did, and we quickly find out Sam sent him as a spy to infiltrate Michael's operation.

After Castiel and Jack have a heart-to-heart, affirming Castiel isn't going to tell Sam and Dean about the deal he made with the Empty last episode, the team splits up. Sam and Jack go to the hub facility where Ketch's package is being held. While Dean and Castiel go to get Dark Kaia (Yadira Guevara-Prip)'s spear, the only thing other than the egg that can hurt/possibly kill Michael.

Jack and Sam break into the facility which is closed for the holidays. And in a cute moment, Jack demonstrates his newly-gained lockpicking skills by getting the door open. However, Michael and his minions are waiting outside. They grab Jack and take him away, and Michael melts the egg and knocks Sam around a little. And then leaves without killing him. Because that's what most big bads do.

Dean and Castiel have tracked Dark Kaia to an old recycling plant. Michael and his minions aren't there, although they told Garth earlier they were going there and he told the team. Ruh-roh! However, Dark Kaia finds them and holds Dean at spearpoint. He gives a speech about how she might as well kill him if she isn't going to give him the spear because Michael will kill thousands. Why don’t they have her fight Michael?

Dark Kaia agrees to give them the spear if they'll return her to her point of origin, the Bad Place. Which seems a lot like the Apocalypse World that Michael (or Alt-Michael, I guess) came from. Castiel figures she has a reason for wanting to go back there, and all she'll say is she has loved ones there she is sworn to protect. Dark Kaia hands over the spear and promises to hunt down and kill Dean if he doesn't return the spear. Which only seems likely if Michael kills him, in which case Dark Kaia will have to fight Michael but he'll have the spear and she won't. So why not just fight Michael in the first place when she already has the spear?

Sam rescues Jack, who Michael is holding captive in the hopes that will eventually get his grace back and get the angelic point of view that presumably comes with it. It's your basic "I want you at my side" mistake most big bads make. So of course Michael does it as well. Sam breaks into the building, kills two vampires, frees Jack, runs into Garth, and they head out. But Garth had to drink Michael's grace to make his side-switching look convincing. This lets Michael turn him against Jack and Sam. They manage to hold their own (super-charged werewolves my ass) until Sam can knock him out. Dean and Castiel show up, and the four of them do this weird Die Hard homage where they go striding in to the tune of "Ode to Joy".

They send in Castiel first because Michael will sense him coming. Michael kicks the crap out of Castiel, and then does the angel-magic TK blast on Sam and Jack. Dean comes at Michael with the spear, and they fight. After the usual 30-second struggle where Dean is down but then Sam slides him the spear and Dean is up, Michael jumps out of the unnamed female host and into Dean's body.

Michael then does the bad speech that big bads usually do. He found Dean's mental squirming against his possession irritating, so he left but put in a back door so he could jump back in to Dean whenever he wanted. Michael figures watching Kansas City's population get turned will crush Dean's spirit so thoroughly he won't do any squirming in future. I'd think it'd have the opposite effect, but then, I'm not a big bad so what do I know?

With that, Michael/Dean turns to the office window and snaps his fingers to give the signal for his followers (which for all we've seen is one kinda dopey werewolf buddy of Garth's) to turn the 470,000 people into werewolves and vampires. And... cut to the mid-season finale blackout. We do get a preview of the next episode on January 17, which seems to involve Big Mike still in charge of Dean's corpus, and Sam and Castiel somehow mentally entering Dean's consciousness to help him repossess his body. There's also no sign of major KC devastation, so apparently they capture Michael pretty easily and take him to the bunker. I'm getting kinda sick of that bunker. :(

And... I called it. At least, I'm pretty sure I said Michael would be back in Dean's body in time for the mid-season finale. So the creative team has been treading water for the last few episodes. We had a Michael episode or two, then Michael left Dean's body, and now he's back and is also back in Dean's body.

One problem is that Michael's departure meant he hasn't been much of a threat. Since then we've had Jack's death, and the Empty attacking Heaven, and Nick going all Lucifer-y, and the Bobby/Mary romance until they decided to go on a break. It's all taken away from the threat Michael supposedly represents, because he hasn't been on-camera enough. We've had a few hints of his master plan, but they didn't go anywhere. Like his laying "traps" for the Hunters like the djinn in "Nightmare Logic". How many traps like that have we seen since there? Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Michael also doesn't seem like much of a threat because he's got no goal, no objective. He (somehow) is going to raise an army with his one remaining visible werewolf underling. Although it's really a mob of 470,000 uncontrollable vampires and werewolves. Yes, it's unpleasant and would cause widespread destruction. But the government drops one nuke on Kansas City and it's game over, man, game over. Michael doesn't have an angel battalion. He can't control the supposed 470,000 monsters that he will get from his plan. Heck, he had to rearrange his plans just because he found Dean's mental squirming irritating. World-conquering dictator, none of this makes.

There are the usual funny bits that make Supernatural Supernatural. Jack and Castiel's heart-to-heart is amusing. Watching Jensen Ackles trying to twirl the spear in funny. Jack demonstrating his lockpicking skills and his smug "Happy Holidays" afterward is entertaining. The Die Hard homage is out-of-place, but half the humor on Supernatural is so just sit back and enjoy it.

But the season so far seems kind of muddled. We've got Michael, and the Michael/Dean possession, and Michael's supposed possession. And the return of Lucifer, And whatever's going on with Jack. And whatever's going on with Castiel and the Empty. And the resolution of the Apocalypse World refugees: where are they these days? The bunker was full of them eight episodes ago, and now the place is pretty much abandoned. In four more episodes we have the 300th episode, and John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is scheduled to show up.

So everything is going in different directions. it seems awfully... rote by now. There's a big bad, and he drags everything out for 22+ episodes because he has some plan that doesn't require him to do anything for more than 4-8 episodes. So we get a few more bad guys. And probably one of them will turn into the big bad for season 15.

Supernatural seems like it's caught in the same trap as many long-running shows. They have to give the viewers who have kept it on the air what they want. But most of those viewers want the same-old/same-old. It brings in... a sense of ennui. Or maybe the creative team thinks the viewers want the same old thing with a few very minor variations. I'm hoping that next year and/or next season they'll give us a bit more.

And maybe they will. We're only nine episodes in: they've got time to do something different if they want to. but do they want to? That is the question.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

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And that's it for the network new shows until January 17, 2019. Until then, we've got the obscurer new show stuff like Titans and Marvel's Runaways. The Timeless two-hour wrap-up finale is next Thursday on 12/20 in the U.S. Happy holidays!