Maybe I’m coming at this from a writer’s perspective but in a season that claims to have an ‘arc’, the season finale should answer the season premier, with hints and clues along the way during the season. In simple terms, S1 premiere asked who killed Mom & Jess, and where was Dad? S1 finale, they found out. S2 premier - what did Dad tell Dean? S2 finale, we knew Dad told Dean he had to save Sam or kill him, and he chose to save him. S3 premier was kind of flat, but the arc of the season was - how were they going to save Dean from hell? S3 finale - they didn’t, Dean went to hell. S4 premier - Dean was saved by God for a mission and Sam was consorting with a demon. S4 finale found Dean refusing to go along with his ‘mission’ and Sam found out the truth about his role in the Apocalypse. S5 premier - the cage was opened. S5 finale - the cage was closed again.
Then we get to S6. The premier - Dean was with Lisa & Ben for a year and Sam was back for a year with the Campbells without letting him know. S6 finale - Cas becomes the new god. Those two don’t jibe. Cas wasn’t even in the premier. There were no clues along the way until the last few episodes what he was up to. (And even then it came across to me like a rehash of Sam & demon blood)
There was so much going on in S6 that had nothing to do with anything, especially not the finale. Why was Sam soulless? Other than to make him the amoral asshole that Sera admired so much in LA Confidential. And what did soulless actually mean? Because Sam ran hot and cold from episode to episode, like soulless meant whatever they needed it to mean in any particular episode. I think it would’ve been a more powerful plotline to have Sam turned so hard simply because he was in hell, and because he was tired of being the good guy all the time and getting nothing but grief and horror in return for it. There would have been a better inner struggle with both him and Dean trying to work with and compensate for that.
For all of everyone’s dire warnings about the wall in Sam’s head, it came crashing down and all he suffered was a memory of a bartender he shot, not the full fury of his century and a half of unremitting torture. And yes, they may address it in S7 (I doubt they will) but they didn’t know if there would be a S7, so what we got here was all they figured the wall was worth. Which was pretty much zilch
Cas wiped Lisa & Ben’s memories clean. Which meant he had to clean the memories of Matt’s family (Lisa’s boyfriend who was killed) and everybody who knew Lisa & Dean together, and Ben’s friends who knew Dean, and Lisa’s family who knew Dean, and he had to wreck their car and phony up a police report and insurance information and the hospital report and a million other tiny details.
I loved Cas in S4 - warrior angel of the Lord who wasn’t to be messed with, but who gradually came to respect and like the Winchesters. But in S5 and especially S6, he became a convenience at best and a gag line at worst. (And he was surprised by porn? Really? In 2000 years walking among men, Cas never came across porn?) So now they’re getting rid of him just to bring on some other angel.
We were promised that the Apocalypse was over, there wouldn’t be any new “big & bad”, that the show would go back to smaller hunts, like S1. And none of that happened. According to the finale, the whole season was about still averting the Apocalypse. There was a new “big & bad” every time we turned around, and S1 was about the brothers, being together. They weren’t together for the whole first half of season 6. Even Jensen was relieved when Sam got his soul back “Because Dean gets to be a brother again.”
Eve was a total waste of time, she came & went so fast. The Campbells did nothing and were poorly fleshed out, in my opinion. Either one of those plotlines, Eve or the Campbells could’ve been their own season-long arcs. ANY of the foreshortened plotlines in this season could’ve been a good season-long arc, but it all got crammed in there any old way and ultimately came out so unsatisfying (to me) because it was very poor storytelling.
I don’t hate the finale - it didn’t engage me enough to inspire anything other than boredom. I have no interest in S7 because I have no interest in poor storytelling, and that’s all I see on the horizon. It’s like an analogy I put in one of my stories, “It’s like I asked for chocolate pie and they gave me mud pie and told me it’s the same thing because the crust is the same.”
I’ve been told that the ending Kripke has been holding onto is that Sam goes darkside and Dean kills him.
So, for me, I’m going to say that Supernatural ended at the end of S4 (after Cas got Dean to the convent in time to stop Sam, of course!) and pretend that the rest of it never happened. I’ll be happier that way. (and my happiness is the most important thing, of course!)