Advance Review: Supernatural: The Complete Eleventh Season Blu-ray

The series that spawned several novels, magazines, comics, games, and even an anime series continues with more thrilling adventures as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases SUPERNATURAL: The Complete Eleventh Season on Blu-ray, including Digital HD and DVD on September 6, 2016. The set contains all 23 gripping episodes from Season Eleven, and is packed with over four hours of bonus content (including featurettes, commentaries, the show’s packed Comic-Con panel, deleted scenes, and a priceless gag reel). It’s priced to own at $49.99 SRP on DVD and $54.97 on Blu-ray.

If you’re not familiar with the long-running fantasy-horror show SUPERNATURAL, then you probably don’t have a teenage daughter. Or a wife, girlfriend, or even a really hip mother. I think you’re picking up what I’m laying down here. While it appeals to just about anyone (especially fans of the X-FILES, SMALLVILLE, CHARMED, or 1980s horror movies), it’s the ladies who love it the most. This is in no way meant as a sexist reduction of the show’s appeal. It’s a great show that only seems to get better the more involved you get with it, and women seem to realize these kinds of things much sooner than men do. My now sixteen-year old step-daughter had already been watching the show for a couple years, dragging her mother into super-fandom with her shortly thereafter, when I finally parked in front of the television for a moment.

“Sweet car,” I said, “What are you watching, anyway?”

“It’s called SUPERNATURAL,” she said, “It’s really cool. There’s these two brothers, Sam and Dean. Their mom was killed by a demon when they were little, so they joined the family business. Now they drive all over, hunting supernatural things and killing them. It’s kinda scary, but it’s really funny sometimes too.”

Then she said, “And they’re hot.”

Well, that they are, dammit. As Sam and Dean Winchester, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are the kind of gruff but intelligent, no-nonsense guys that women lose their minds over, but also the kind that other guys like to hang out with. Especially if we had a chance to cruise around in Baby, the bad-ass ’67 Impala that the brothers’ father left to Dean before he was himself taken out by some supernatural baddies. Along with a detailed journal of all their father’s supernatural encounters, and a burning drive for the hunt, it’s the only thing the Winchesters still have from their parents.

Created by Eric Kripke, SUPERNATURAL debuted September 13, 2005 on the WB, later moving to the CW. The premise rose from a fascination with urban legends and such films as POLTERGEIST, EVIL DEAD II, and Asian horror movies. Kripke envisioned the show as a road trip series, with the two leads originally named Sal and Dean in homage to Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. The plan was for the show to run for three seasons, but then it expanded to five. Yet, even at eleven (the longest for any televised fantasy series), it shows little signs of stopping. Especially when each new story seems to open the horizon for numerous others to follow. As a matter of fact, the solution to one story arc’s problem often ends up being the next arc’s problem.

THE ROAD SO FAR

Sam gets killed so Dean makes a deal with a crossroads demon to bring him back, which kind of leads to Lilith breaking the 66 seals to unleash the archangel Lucifer, which the boys inadvertently do in their attempt to stop Lilith, so they have to collect the class rings of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to act as a key to the Devil’s cage, where Sam throws himself to save the world, but he comes back without a soul and has to help his own grandfather collect Alpha monsters for Crowley, which leads to Castiel absorbing all the souls of Purgatory and pronouncing himself God, which leads to setting the Leviathans free, which leads to Bobby getting killed and becoming a vengeful spirit, while Dean and Castiel get rid of the Leviathans but get stuck in Purgatory, which helps Crowley’s rise to power, whom the boys fight to find the Demon Tablet to lock the Gates of Hell, but Dean won’t let Sam die, so Castiel gets stripped of his Grace by the angel Metatron, who locks millions of other angels out of Heaven, and they all start fighting each other – only stopping long enough to fight Castiel – while Dean lets Ezekiel possess Sam because it’s the only way to save him, but let’s not tell Sam or anything, because the brothers are also trying to return all the angels to Heaven, but Ezekiel is really some other angel who let Lucifer into the Garden of Eden, so they need Crowley to help get the other angel out, but something makes Sam mad and the brothers break up for about the ninth time in just as many seasons, and now Dean needs Crowley to find a blade which will kill the even eviler Abaddon, but you need the Mark of Cain to use the blade, so Dean gets that, but then doesn’t know how to get rid of it, and he’s a demon for a minute anyway, but it’s still not as bad as the Mark of Cain, which causes him to break Charlie’s arm, which she might need to turn the pages of the Book of the Damned, but Sam knows they need Crowley’s bitch of a mother to decipher the pages of the book, but now Dean is just all done with the damn Mark of Cain and turns to Death for help, but Death says they should kill Sam first because he might stop them so instead Dean kills Death (even though I’m pretty sure it’s not for good), and this lets Crowley’s mother remove the Mark, but that only unleashes the Darkness, which ends up being a pretty big deal in season eleven . . .

Got it? Good.

Yeah, well, the good news is that you really don’t have to know much of this as you head into season eleven. Each episode includes a brief recap of previous moments that you might need to be aware of. It’s the characters (and the monsters of the week) that make this show so much fun anyway. Besides, let’s face it, this is a pretty easy story to follow once you grasp the basic concept. It’s just like Dean put it in that very first episode: “Dad wants us to pick up where he left off. Saving people. Hunting things. The family business.”

NOW

Season Eleven plunges Sam and Dean into extreme peril as they face The Darkness, a sinister new menace unleashed upon the Earth. They continue their monster-hunting missions, battling the usual werewolves, black-eyed demons, and even a vengeful ghost in a stuffed bunny costume, but with a sharp new focus: destroy The Darkness. Needing all the help they can get, the brothers turn to fallen angel Castiel (Misha Collins), the King of Hell, Crowley (Mark A. Sheppard), and even an unassuming God (Rob Benedict) – only to come face-to-face with Lucifer and Crowley’s power-hungry witch-mother Rowena (Ruth Connell).

If you’re already a fan, then there’s little else you need to know about this latest drive into the supernatural. You’re going to be thrilled by what Entertainment Weekly has called “the show’s best in six years.” My viewing became a bit spotty through the seventh and eighth seasons, which I understand are the show’s less cohesive arcs anyway. When a show has been around as long as this one, there are bound to be some potholes in the road (some might cite the same seasons as being the X-FILES’ weakest). The writers and showrunners seem to have realized the error of their ways and put a stronger focus on season eleven’s main story. After Rowena’s spell removed the Mark of Cain from Dean’s arm, it also unleashed a mysterious black fog upon a local small town. This fog heralds the arrival of something called The Darkness, an all-powerful entity that has both Heaven and Hell scrambling for survival. Some of the oldest enemies in religious mythology will have to call a truce if anyone wants to survive.

While there has always been an element of spirituality in the show (it is called SUPERNATURAL, after all), it hasn’t usually been that overt, or even noticeable. All of that felt like it had changed a bit for this season. Maybe it was out of necessity, as one of the sub-plots brought up by The Darkness was a question that the show has been asking since they first threw angels into the mix: where in the hell is God? The first two episodes deal with a kind of zombie virus that takes hold in the spot where our new baddie has entered the world. One of those infected is Sam. While even the most casual fan knows that the Winchester boys aren’t really going to get killed, it’s still a surprise to see one of them so convinced of his impending death that he finds a chapel and kneels down to pray. But when Sam starts to have visions, the question is whether they’re from a long-silent God, or from someone a bit more nefarious.

While all of this is best answered on your own, I will tell you that the elusive God does finally make an appearance in this season. His identity is one that completely makes sense for the show, resulting in a storyline that is both irreverent and somehow moving. Everything comes down to an issue that has always run through the series, and that’s sibling conflict. It also results in a few moments that are more quietly (irreverently) inspirational than anything I’ve seen in SUPERNATURAL up to now. The best one should be popping up on memes all over the internet, delivered from Metatron to God: “You were wrong about humanity. They are your greatest creation because they’re better than you are. Sure, they’re weak, and they cheat and steal and destroy and disappoint, but they also give and create, and they sing and dance and love. Above all, they never give up.”

But no worries, the lighter stand-alone episodes are still here in all of their glory.

Everyone’s got their favorites. Many of those that the hardest of hardcore fans claim as the best – “Changing Channels”, “Mystery Spot”, “Fan Fiction”, “The French Mistake”, “The Real Ghostbusters” – are also my favorite episodes. There’s just something about going meta that feels right for this show, which contains some heavy themes but never takes itself that seriously. It’s through these episodes that the show most seems to interact with its fans, throwing some of that nearly biblical love back at them. It is the fans that have kept this show going past the point where many others have called it quits, and SUPERNATURAL knows this. Which is why, amidst the broader story, we still get episodes like this season’s “Baby”, “Just My Imagination”, and “Red Meat”. I don’t think there’s any better moment for me this season than the very simple one of Sam and Dean driving around while singing along to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”. More than ghosts, demons, or absent gods, this couple minutes felt like the essence of the entire series. Just two brothers, trying to enjoy life while doing what they have to do.

Strap yourself in for the Winchesters’ darkest adventures yet as they journey between Heaven and Hell in all 23 electrifying episodes of the epic suspense thriller.