It’s difficult to be unbiased about the ninth season of a show you have loved for years, but here it goes: Supernatural Season 9 isn’t excellent. It’s all right. It’s not as good as Seasons One to Three, but probably better than Season 8.
However, the cast, characters and setup continue to be excellent, if that’s what you’re into. When you’ve been following the Winchesters for eight seasons, and Castiel and Crowley for four, there is very little they can do to stop you liking them. It’s a long-running curse.
The ongoing storyline involves the Winchesters trying to stop Metatron from declaring himself God.
It can be quite intense and heart-wrenching at times, but it doesn’t hit the same buttons as Dean’s demon deal in Season 3 or Sam’s apocalypse in Season 5. A lot of the tropes have been used before: Dean’s search for Cain’s mighty knife is too much like the brothers’ quest for the Colt in Season 2, and the whole possession thing – angel possession, demon possession, take your pick – never ends. But the pay-off in the finale, though not as shocking as some seasons, is still pretty great.
The goofy filler episodes are top-notch as always. In particular, ‘Dog Dean Afternoon’ is easily on par with ‘Yellow Fever’ and ‘Changing Channels’ of earlier seasons, and ‘Slumber Party’, which guest-stars Felicia Day as the brilliant Charlie Bradbury and Kaniehtiio Horn as Dorothy of Oz, has so much spin-off potential.
Ultimately, loving Supernatural this late in the game is like loving an old dog: you were excited when you got it and have loads of fun memories from its early years, but now it’s old, slow and tired. You let it sit on you and eat your shoes because you love it so much, but you’re still left rubbing its back and mopping up sick when it throws up everywhere.
You don’t give up on it though. You know you’re going to stay with it until the end.
