Supernatural Last Call Review: Dean, a Marid and What Hunters Deserve

Supernatural Last Call review: what happens in season 15, episode 7

Season 15 had been a bumpy ride for Dean. He was ready to fight, then he sank into depression when it became clear that God was pulling the strings, and in “Last Call” he is feisty again. The previous episode left Dean holding down the bunker while Sam went out on a mission that ended with the return of a fellow hunter. This week the roles flip. Sam stays at the bunker, and Dean takes a road trip to Texas, apparently to feel better.

The cold open sets the tone. A young woman named Angela is tied to a chair in a basement, with an IV line draining her blood into a cage. Whatever lives in the cage will, if fed, reward its captor with riches and health. The creature is a marid, though the episode never names it for the audience. The show behaves as if viewers have seen this kind of monster before, and the viewer gets only a glimpse of it through the bars and, later, a view of its swamp-monster head after Dean has dealt with it.

Context helps here. Season 15 premiered on The CW on October 10, 2019, as the show’s final season, and its central story is the fight against God, who has been manipulating the lives of Sam, Dean and Castiel. The season later paused because of the pandemic and ended on November 19, 2020. Supernatural Last Call sits early in that run, in the stretch where the characters are still working out what a war against Chuck even looks like.

Dean tracks the disappearance to Texhoma, Texas, and finds an old friend, Lee, played by Christian Kane. Lee is a former hunter who quit after something went wrong in Arizona, and he is doing very well. He runs a bar called Swayze’s, plays music every night and has the kind of life a hunter might dream of. The Roadhouse references are obvious and deliberate.

Naturally, Dean learns the secret. Lee’s good fortune comes from feeding the creature in his basement, and Angela is its latest meal. The two talk it through, and Dean ends up sounding like John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. In the end he does what he has to do, and he kills his friend.

The argument about what hunters are owed

The conversation between Dean and Lee is the reason the episode is worth discussing. Lee’s argument is simple. After everything the hunters have done, all the people they have saved and the world they have kept going, don’t they deserve some reward? And if the world will not give it to them, why not take it?

It is a fair question. Doing good often brings no recognition, thanks or payment. A truly altruistic person expects nothing back. But Supernatural is unusually well placed to ask the question, because Sam and Dean have been thanked on occasion, and they know that Heaven, God and angels exist, which means a real reward could be on the table.

God, obedience and the rewards that never come

What stands out is how rarely the show’s God and angels offer a reward for goodness. What they offer is a reward for obedience, which is not the same thing. In this universe, the clearest religious rule is to follow God’s will, whether or not the will is good. Sam and Dean were ordered to kill Jack, and they refused because they understood it would be wrong. Their reward was that God got angry and opened the Earth, sending zombies from Hell after them.

There is a biblical comparison that fits. Abraham was willing to kill his son because God told him to, and no one sent zombies after Abraham. The episode never makes the point in so many words, but it is hard to miss.

The wider television landscape offers a similar picture. AMC’s Preacher also portrayed a petty, bored God, and its final season showed him trying to end the world so he could begin again. Supernatural’s Chuck did not use the apocalypse that way, but he did use it as a distraction while he left for another world to get his story right, or so Apocalypse Michael implied.

The bunker storyline: Sam, Cas, Eileen and Sergei

At the bunker, Sam and Eileen are trying to find Chuck or Lilith, and they have also grown closer. They got drunk to celebrate her return, and Dean is convinced something will happen between them. Castiel arrives unannounced just as they are about to kiss, which keeps the long joke about Sam’s luck going.

Eileen Leahy is a deaf hunter played by Shoshannah Stern, and she has been drawn into the bunker’s circle through her closeness to Sam. In this episode she is part of the search for Chuck and Lilith, and she is the one with the most to lose when Sam’s condition worsens.

Cas thinks Sam’s wound can show where Chuck is, but using the connection backfires, and Sam ends up dying again. Cas has someone he can call: the shaman Sergei, played by Dimitri Vantis. According to the episode summary, Sergei demands the Key to Death, and Castiel forces him to cooperate by threatening his niece. Sergei helps Sam in the end, which gives the story its one real piece of news, which is that Sam now knows God is weak and that the group has a chance of defeating him.

Episode facts

• Episode: season 15, episode 7, the 315th episode of the series overall.
• Air date: December 5, 2019, on The CW.
• Director and writer: Amyn Kaderali directed and Jeremy Adams wrote it.
• Guest cast: Christian Kane as Lee and Dimitri Vantis as Sergei, with Shoshannah Stern returning as Eileen Leahy.
• Monster: a marid, kept in a cage and fed human blood.

Verdict: Supernatural Last Call review in a sentence

A fair Supernatural Last Call review has to say that the hunter-of-the-week story is the weak part. Like the first few episodes of the season, “Last Call” relies on a twist that is easy to predict. Earlier this season there were werewolf brothers who had to kill each other to save the world, and a vampire teen who had to die for the same reason. The message keeps being the same: Sam and Dean must die for the world to survive.

That might be intentional, if Chuck is telling the story, but the monster plots were thin even before God returned. The marid has no name or backstory, and the episode is more interested in Lee than in the creature he feeds.

The structure is worth a note. Supernatural Last Call splits its hour between a case in Texas and a crisis at the bunker, and the two halves reach the same conclusion from opposite sides. In Texas, a man takes what he thinks he is owed and becomes a monster. At the bunker, a family fights for a chance to take on a God who has never given anything away for free. The echo is neat, though the episode never quite builds on it.

Kane makes the difference. A veteran character actor known for Leverage and The Librarians, Kane plays Lee as a likeable man who has talked himself into something terrible, and his argument is persuasive enough to make Dean’s answer feel costly. That is what lifts the episode above its plot.

A word about Dean in this story. The episode gives him a moral test that mirrors the larger season: a man who has given everything meets someone who decided to take something back. Dean’s answer is to refuse, and the refusal costs him a friend. It is a strong beat for a character who has often been written as angry or tired, and it shows him choosing the harder path on principle. That choice is the best thing about the hour, and the strongest argument for watching it, and it is a reminder of why audiences stayed with the show for fifteen years.

The final question is where the season goes next. What will God’s final draft look like, will the Winchesters be able to kill him, and will killing him kill Sam? The safe guess is that the last answer is yes. Sergei did not remove the wound, he only patched it, much like repairing a rubber band, and the episode leaves the damage visible.

Sources

• Supernatural (American TV series), Wikipedia — season 15 episode list, cast and air dates