After a boring part of a potential season, this episode actually was a big relief, and something even more than that : A great mid-season premiere after a long time.
The episode starts right after the ending moments of the last episode. In a room with a Dean possessed by Alt!Michael, a sad Sam turned to his knees, a miserable castiel with blood on his face and a jack without his special nephilim powers. everything after this sequence is brilliantly directed to achieve the main goal of this action packed episode : knowing Alt!Michael better than before.
There are even some dream sequences inside the mind of Dean, for a moment you would think he is in heaven. He have everything he wanted ever, his brother and his friend out there but well, he has a nice little bar, Pamela (played by Traci Dinwiddie after nine years) is chatting with him, and amidst the blissful peace he also has some action, monsters he easily kill.
You even realize that there is a high quality unity of artistic elements in this story as billie the former reaper shows up with a file, and some flashbacks from the last season. or when they mention chuck and his failed attempts at making a perfect world, or when they go through the bad memories of dean with dialogues from the old episodes...
last but not least, they build up the foundations of arcs early on and gradually build up over several seasons instead of finishing them within just one (i.e., Jack and Ketch have been here since season 12, the death of billie happened two seasons ago, and well, even the apocalypse world started at the tail end of season 12 and we're still dealing with its implications now). They also pick up a lot of subplots from previous seasons and continue them (i.e., the Empty was introduced in season 11, Rowena became more fleshed out, the Princes of Hell was rooted from both Kripke seasons and also the civil war brewing just before Gamble started, Lucifer's arc with Jack was rooted from both Kripke and Carver era interactions with Chuck/God, etc.)
This is what Eric Kripke did for his era: everything was a gradual build up and every season is a direct consequence of the next. The formula got lost a bit somewhere around the early seasons of Jeremy Carver, but since Dabb-Singer took over, we went back to arcs spanning multiple seasons.
All in all, the episode was forty one minutes but it felt so much longer than that with all the information we got which is what made this episode a real highlight. God's failed drafts, Michael burning down the world, Michael caged inside of Dean, Jack using the power of his soul, How Dean will die and i really enjoyed all the Michael-Dean scenes, Jensen Ackles can really smooth-talk, enjoyed every moment of Alt-Michael on screen.
This episode will be one to remember for me that's for sure...
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