This is Part 2 of the episode transcript. Read Part 1 here.
How to Get Away with Murder - read the series finale recap here.
Mon: Speaking of characters dying in finales. So, we talked about Supernatural and its finale in last month’s Flashback Favorites, but we’re going to dive in a little bit more, especially within the context of the other finales that we’ve mentioned in this episode.
Supernatural ran for 15 seasons before finally ending in 2020. Unfortunately, its finale was heavily impacted by the pandemic. You could see from the very start off the finale that this wasn't exactly how they had originally planned it. We've also heard, after the fact, that they definitely wanted to bring in more fan-favorite characters, more of the main cast, but they couldn't. Because of the pandemic, they weren't able to come together. In fact, Misha Collins, who plays Castiel, he said that the original plan for his character was very different, but he never read it, because he wants to enjoy the finale like a fan.
So, what happens in the finale? Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles go on one final mission to take down some vampires, and in a twist that none of us saw coming, Dean gets impaled. Dean's arc ends exactly the way he expected it to, which is that he dies young.
Ron: I like the fact that, like HTGAWM, Supernatural ended the way it began. It started with the two brothers, and it ended with the two brothers. The thing is that the time between when the brothers ended their stories was huge. Because Dean dies as a young man, Sam has to continue to live on and he has to live without his brother. He has a family, he has a different life, but it's not without grief and sorrow.
Having said that, it paid off exactly what it had promised. Dean always knew that being a hunter meant death was around the corner for him. And what I liked is that he went out on his own terms. He wasn't a puppet on a string, which is something that he had been chafing against for years. So, it was sad to see Dean go, but at least he managed to do it on his own terms.
Dean has had the chance to have a full life. We saw that back in Season 6. But the moment Sam came back into his life, he stopped living the way he was, and he went back to protecting his baby brother. Even if it meant not having the family that he wanted to have. And, you know what, Jack and Cas’ heaven is the only place where Dean can finally just be himself without any of the responsibilities of his living self.
Of course, it's really Sam that I feel awful for because living without Dean is really hard. Dean is his brother, he's the one he loves the most. And he's already lost so much. Unlike Dean, who only really knew the hunting life, Sam was always better suited for the real world.
Mon: I like that we get to see Sam having a full life, even without his brother. But in the end, when he's with Dean again, you can see that he's just been waiting for so long. I have to say, that miniature little expression on Jared Padalecki’s face when he sees Dean in heaven was priceless. He was really good in this season.
I feel like we always knew that Sam could live on without Dean, but the other way around would never have worked. Aside from that short stint when Dean accepts that Sam is gone, because he's been taken down to hell as Lucifer, we really don't see Dean actually living a life without Sam.
Contrary to that, Sam moved away to college the first chance he got because he did not like living with Dean and their father. He was completely out of touch with them when he was in college. And then he was dragged back into the hunting life.
Later on, when Sam is soulless, he spends almost a year with his own team, and his resurrected grandfather, and he doesn't even contact Dean. It's only by accident that the two of them meet. And if you’re thinking about regular Sam, with soul intact, he lived pretty much a full life, with a dog, when Dean was in purgatory, for almost six months.
When Dean came back, he was so upset with Sam for not rescuing him, but that's exactly what he told him! So, let's just say that when Dean was living without Sam, he always thought of it as a temporary stopgap, but for Sam, I think internally he felt like it was inevitable. Which is why Dean was finally able to tell him that he needs to let it go. And Sam does.
I don't think this is the finale we were expecting but it did its job. It was sad but also sweet, and a little bit hopeful, I guess?
Ron: Most of all, it was real, and that’s saying something for a show about monster hunting- brothers. Supernatural’s probably one of the rare shows where the main protagonists meeting in heaven works. It didn't work in Arrow. But here, it's something that, you know, makes us fist pump the air.
Mon: Especially when you compare it to the fact that heaven has changed so much under the guise of Jack, their god-son, you could say. It's a place where they can finally be together as a family. We don't get to see all the family members, but we know they're there. And that's what we hope for the brothers.
But what I liked the most was that, at the end, there's Jared Padalecki and Jensen ackles, surrounded by a huge group of people, who are obviously making the show come to life, thanking the fans. I feel like, Supernatural, while it hasn't always been good to its fans, it has mocked them, I feel like the people who are creating the show, they really do love the fans, and they love what the fans have given them. Especially the fact that they've been going on for 15 seasons, and it couldn't have happened without the fans. So, it was a really nice way to say goodbye.
Ron: Yeah, I thought it was a really beautiful ending. Because the show’s first episode had quite a lot of time spent on a bridge, and then the final episode sees them on a bridge, then the actors speaking to the fans? It's quite a lovely moment because 15 years is a long time for a show to be made, but also for fans to be invested in the show. Long enough for them to actually be able to complete their arc on their own terms. The show and the characters didn't really end the way anybody was expecting it to, but it went out the way it wanted to.
Mon: They did the best that they could, given the circumstances. I know we would have got a much more epic finale and many more characters in the finale had the pandemic not hit, had they gone on shooting the way they had planned to, but I feel like we got a really good emotional finale because of the constraints that the crew had to face.
Ron: I feel that those constraints made the last half of this season more powerful. The acting came across more natural. And this finale, despite the fact that it was very pared down, it hit the emotional beats. This is the only thing they could do with the resources that they had available to them.
Mon: Yeah, the finale went back to family which is what the show has always been about.
Ron: Because we are all part of the SPN family.
Ron: So finally, on to Clone Wars. Now, we’ve dabbled in Star Wars: The Clone Wars off and on, but due to the pandemic, we found ourselves sitting down and just watching the whole thing, start to finish. It took us a little while to get into it. The first season was a little bit choppy from time to time. The show does move back and forth in time for no discerning reason. So that was very difficult. But once he got hooked into the show, we couldn't let it go. And we were both eagerly anticipating Season 7, but also dreading having to let the show go.
Season 7 starts off similarly to the other installments of the show, but we finally get a conclusion to Ahsoka’s story, which we'd left way back in Season 5. It segues beautifully into Revenge of the Sith, but this time it's from Ahsoka’s point of view. She sees Order 66 happening in front of her eyes, and she has to find her way out of it. She's aided by a handful of droids.
Mon: Very cute.
Ron: And eventually manages to get the chip out of Rex so he can join her. It's really heart-pumping stuff, even though we know they're both alive, we've seen them both in Rebels, but you're still on tenterhooks throughout.
Mon: Ahsoka and Rex are on a ship full of clone troopers, and these are literally legions of people who are their friends or were their friends. In fact, most of the troopers had painted their helmets in Ahsoka’s markings to honor her return. And these are the same people who are fighting to kill her. And there's this sense of claustrophobia because they're stuck on this ship; they can't get off it. And Ahsoka and Rex don't want to kill the people who they've called their friends all these years. But in the end, the ship crashes, most of these people go down anyway. And Ahsoka and Rex end up having to bury their dead and bid their allies and former lives goodbye.
Ron: When we see Rex in Rebels, he's with some fellow troopers who had also removed their chip. As for Ahsoka, she leaves her lightsabers behind on the planet where the ship crashes. This is her final gift from the Jedi, from her master Anakin Skywalker. She leaves the Jedi way behind, because in Rebels, not only does she mention that she is not a Jedi, her blades are white, which obviously shows that she has no allegiance to the Jedi ways. Because we've seen the colors—green, purple, blue, red for the Sith, and yellow, which Rey has. And she refuses to call herself a Jedi throughout that show.
Mon: As if all this isn't devastating enough, we see Darth Vader arrive on the frozen planet where the ship had crashed, and he uncovers Ahsoka’s lightsabers. So, we can assume that he's looking at these lightsabers and effectively thinking, that's it. This is the last vestige of my old life, and she's dead as well.
And this entire scene has no dialogue, it's just music. It's so melancholic that I think you and I both stopped breathing.
Ron: In typical Star Wars-style, this scene was not supposed to have any dialogue. That's fine, that's expected. But the way it was shot; the cinematography, the simple tones of that background score. It's just feeling in motion, and music, which is just beautiful.
And you know what, if you've watched the finale, just check out the score on Spotify. This particular piece is called ‘Burying the Dead’. Even now, months after we've seen this episode, it still gives us goosebumps when we listen to it.
For me, I love this final season because we get to spend so much time with Ahsoka. While watching Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka quickly became my favorite Star Wars character and getting to see the events of Order 66 through the eyes of someone who survived it was really powerful and moving.
Because Ahsoka is young. In Rebels, she's obviously older, wiser. But the Clone Wars Ahsoka is a teenager, and her entire life as a Padawan was spent fighting this war. She has never known the peace that the Jedi is supposed to bring to the galaxy. And her last act as a Jedi is to fight the people that she had called friends. It's so, so sad. But it's also the only way that this show could have ended.
Mon: The smartest move that the creators made with this final season was centering Ahsoka. Yes, we get an episode about Obi-Wan and Anakin, yes we get a couple of episodes about the stormtroopers, but making sure that Ahsoka’s story is told and concluded made the most sense.
Mon: What I also have to commend the writers for is the way they segued into Revenge of the Sith. At the beginning of Revenge, we see Anakin in this jolly, jovial mood, and it wouldn't make sense if he had lost his Padawan. So, this season retroactively fixes that emotion. Ashoka comes back into Anakin’s life and she joins the clone troopers, she even gets a promotion. She saves Mandalore and she makes a new friend in Bo-Katan Kryze. And it all makes sense. That's why Anakin is in such a good mood. And then by the end of it all, Anakin is Darth Vader. Ahsoka is fighting for her life against Order 66.
And it's funny because, just like in Revenge of the Sith, where you know the ending, but you want it to change, the same thing happens with this finale. You know that the clone troopers are going to turn on the Jedi, you know that Anakin is going to turn into Darth Vader, and you still wish that Ahsoka had a happier ending.
Ron: That the story can move in a linear fashion in such a way that makes you think that the ending is still a surprise, that is one of the reasons why we both loved Revenge of the Sith, and that is why this finale is so well executed.
And the thing is, the end of Clone Wars is dark. It was always going to be. But we didn't feel as depressed as we did when we watched Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I think it's probably because there was no hopeful conclusion to the story, in the sense that, there is no hopeful conclusion for Anakin or Ahsoka at this point. But we know that eventually, Anakin will come back to the light, that Luke will help bring balance to the force, that Rey will finally defeat Palpatine. We know all that is going to happen. So, even though this particular episode has no hope in it, we can look forward to something.
Mon: Where the Star Wars: The Clone Wars finale worked was that, while it is tragic, the emotional blows were well-earned.
Ron: Yeah. It's sad but it's supposed to be sad. Whereas Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. really had no business being that sad.
Mon: That was the saddest happy ending I've ever seen.
Ron: Whereas with Clone Wars, it's kind of a happy ending because Ahsoka could easily have died in Order 66, but she doesn't. We’d already seen Rebels, so we know that Ahsoka is alive. But for somebody who's just watching Clone Wars and then goes on to Rebels, knowing that Ahsoka survives, that is something to celebrate.
But, even for Anakin, when he arrives on that planet and he's uncovering the lightsabers, we can see that there's so little snow on it that this is soon after he's become Darth Vader. By finding the lightsabers, he has some closure, as well. It can start him on his path to becoming Darth Vader. And that's not a great thing for him, or for the people who loved Anakin, but it leads him to become the person who will eventually throw Palpatine down that shaft in Return of the Jedi.
We had a lot of feels about Clone Wars. We still have feelings about it. It was just such a surprising, melancholic, memorable ending for an animated show that was apparently made for kids.
Mon: A very, very beautiful ending to a rather beautiful show.
Ron: Star Wars at its best.
Ron: Which of these finales worked for you, and which finales do you love? Let us know.
Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email [email protected]. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!
Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.
[Continuum by Audionautix plays]
Transcription by Otter.ai and Ron.