Supernatural: “King of the Damned” Review

Castiel’s war effort gathered steam while Crowley and Abaddon settled down for some quality time with a significant person from Crowley’s past.

Note: The following review goes into detail about the episode. SPOILER ALERT!

It’s taken a while to get here, but we’ve finally reached Season 9’s endgame! After a few so-so episodes and a brief detour last week to set up the spin-off, we now have our first massive step towards wrapping up the season. There’s a lot of plot to get through in these remaining episodes, but it’s pretty clear that there’ll be no more time wasting.

So, farewell Abaddon! Alaina Huffman has done a fantastic job playing Abaddon in her short stint on the show, so it’s a little sad to see one of best, recent villains of “Supernatural” bite the dust, but it was necessary. The two main storylines this season have involved the war between angels and the war between Crowley and Abaddon, with Sam and Dean stuck in the middle, so one of them had to be wrapped up to allow the other to take the spotlight. She certainly went out with a hell of a fight though as she first travelled back in time to grab Crowley’s son, and then had a barnstorming fight with a “mark of Cain” powered Dean.

(Credit: The CW)

Crowley and Abaddon got a lot of screen time together this week and every one of their scenes together worked. Abaddon torturing Crowley’s son in front of him to play on his new emotional side was a darkly fun scene, while the moment Crowley brought up Poughkeepsie while on the phone to Dean was a clever one. The aforementioned fight between Dean and Abaddon was certainly very eye opening, as we learned of Dean’s new found power obtained from “the mark.” Over the years we’ve seen many a demon fling the boys around with their power, but this week Dean was able to resist and also was able to do the whole “Jedi lightsaber trick” by making the First Blade fly into his hand from the floor. Abaddon isn’t a regular run of the mill demon either, she’s a knight of hell, which makes Dean’s strength even more impressive and somewhat worrying. It’s an interesting parallel with Sam’s powers back in the earlier seasons where he was immune to demon power. It was a fitting end for Abaddon as Dean plunged the First Blade into her stomach and lifted her off the ground. Worryingly, he continued to viciously stab her well after she was dead, a truly brutal moment by the show’s standards.

Castiel also got a decent amount of screen time here as we got a look at his whole angel operation. It was great to see the scale of his movement and how many angels have flocked to stand by his side. Castiel has made a lot of mistakes in the past and doesn’t want leadership. Hopefully by the end of this storyline he will have forgiven himself. The scene where Sam and Dean interrogated a bumbling Metatron worshiper for Castiel was hilarious, with the brothers easily tricking the angel into spilling all he knew without resorting to violence. The key secret revealed here was that Metatron has a backdoor portal into Heaven that he moves around all the time. We’re now getting a clearer image of how Castiel may be able to fix things.

(Credit: The CW)

I mentioned how he has made mistakes in the past, and hopefully working with Gadreel won’t turn out to be another one. Gadreel is quite like Castiel in a way, with both forever making up for his own past mistakes. We’ve gotten a sense over the last few weeks that he may be disillusioned with life under Metatron’s rule, but I’m not sure if we could ever have a full redemption for the character. He did kill Kevin after all. Time will tell whether this will work out well for Castiel, but I assume the Winchester’s won’t be too pleased about it when they find out.

THE BREAKDOWN

So one down, one to go. Now that Abaddon is out of the picture, Metatron is the sole focus. We’re all hoping for some good ol’ Castiel redemption here, but Metatron has proved himself to be a very tricky customer. The warning bells are now ringing very loudly for Dean as “The Mark of Cain” has taken a hold of him and won’t let go. He won’t allow himself to be parted from the blade, and the primal rage he showed with Abaddon was very disconcerting. Sam went off the deep end under the influence of demon blood in the earlier seasons. Could we be seeing a similar story with the brothers now switching roles? We’ll find out soon!

What are your predictions for the soon to come finale? What do you think of Dean’s actions? Let us know in the comments below.