Devil’s Trap Review

Season finales can be a tricky thing, especially when there’s no prevailing indication that the series will be renewed. The writers need to bring the season arc to a relative close while preparing for the possibility of a season to follow. In this case, the challenge may have been more than the writers and producers were capable of handling.

Actually, the first three acts of the episode were a logical extension of the previous episode. As obvious as it was, I never picked up on the idea that Meg was actually a human being possessed by a demon. Just that little piece of information is enough to make sense of some of the season arc elements. It also points to the most obvious direction for a final confrontation.

Like the previous episode, Meg wasn’t nearly as annoying as she’s been in the past. The exorcism scene was a nice touch, because it allowed Dean to show the darker side of his personality. Dean is right to be concerned about his lack of remorse for causing the deaths of human beings. He was already seeing himself above and beyond normal human society, and this would be a big step towards becoming the very thing he hunts. (In other words: when you obsess over the enemy, you can become the enemy.)

Once it was clear that the demons were jumping around in human hosts, not unlike the concept from the film “Fallen”, I was certain that the main demon would end up in John Winchester. It’s just too predictable a plot twist. More to the point, it’s like most standard Western tales: the sons metaphorically killing the father to become men themselves. In this case, there’s actually a compelling reason to kill John, if it can kill the demon in the process.

The episode builds towards one hell of a confrontation, but the final act just didn’t work for me. It all came down to Demon!John tossing the brothers against a wall and delivering a monologue to cover the exposition necessary to explain a few things. So now we know that Mary and Jess were targeted because they would have gotten in the way of whatever plans the demon had for Sam. But wasn’t that already apparent?

Far worse was the idea that John would assert some measure of control at the most convenient moment for the story. While it might have been predictable for Sam’s abilities to kick in at that moment, at least it would have been consistent with what has been revealed previously. By having Sam’s success at getting to the Colt come through a plot contrivance, the integrity of the story was compromised.

The producers promises on several occasions that this wouldn’t become another “Lost”. While I don’t see an issue with having a deep, long-term mythology, there are ways to ensure that one door closes and another opens. “Buffy” and “Angel” used to do it all the time by blocking out a season arc that would end in the finale. The final act could have played out to end this arc very easily, if Sam had killed Demon!John and brought that story to a relative close.

Instead, the story is left wide open by Sam’s decision not to sacrifice John to kill the demon. This leaves a great deal unresolved. While the psychology of the Winchesters is the most impressive aspect of the series, and that’s more than enough of a reason to keep the conflicts raging and evolving, it’s just not very satisfying. And that’s especially true in light of the final scene.

Frankly, that kind of quick accident has been overdone in the past few years. It makes sense that the demon would find a way to strike back quickly, since there’s still one more bullet left for the Colt. And this leaves the season with a grim cliffhanger. But it’s equally obvious that the situation was staged for a relatively easy resolution in the second season premiere. Without that resolution, the series would end (assuming no pick-up) with one hell of a downer ending!

My biggest problem is how little was actually resolved. Sam’s abilities were probably connected to this idea of demonic possession (it really is strongly suggested), but after so much build-up, they didn’t seem very important when the time came. If Sam’s abilities flared up when Dean was in danger before, why not now? In fact, the demon’s goals are only generally addressed.

This may have been a matter of heightened expectation. “Supernatural” has been building towards something big for a long time, and the previous episode raised the tension even higher. It felt like all the pieces were there for a stunning finale, but the writers chose to leave the big fireworks for a potential season premiere instead of an assured strong ending.

So now we are left to hope that the arc actually comes to a conclusion in the season premiere. Unfortunately, that all falls within the mess that is the CW merger. One would think that the series is a dead lock, given the strong critical buzz and the lack of any competition in the genre at the moment. But it hasn’t killed in the ratings, which is never a good sign. Will those references to a sneak preview of “season 2” on the DVD extras turn out to be valid?

Even if the plot didn’t quite plan out as definitively as I had hoped it would, the acting was incredibly strong. Jensen and Jared have really grown comfortable in the difficult psychological space inhabited by these characters, and it shows. I would have expected this episode to be about Sam, but in the end, this was a lot more about Dean and his motivations. Which, in retrospect, makes sense, given that the previous episode had more of a Sam focus.

This is the part where I would usually launch into a discussion about the season as a whole, but I’m doing things a little differently moving forward. The “Supernatural” post-mortem (so to speak) will be the main focus of this week’s episode of “Dispatches from Tuzenor”, a new podcast started as an expansion to the written reviews conducted every season. That episode should be up after the weekend, so I invite anyone interested to drop by the archive site (www.entil2001.com) and click on the link. (It’s also available on iTunes.)