A Little Goes A Long Way
Season 4 has Lilith orchestrating events hidden from view, she’s hardly mentioned in Lazarus Rising and only at the end of Are You There, God do we learn that she’s breaking seals to raise Lucifer, thus setting the through story for all of Season 4. From then on it’s all about how many seals are breaking until Lilith makes her appearance – outside of one hallucination by Dean, nice continuity in bringing the same actress from NRFTW in for that – in Monster At The End of This Book and Lucifer Rising.
Season 5 brings us Lucifer who of all the big bads has had the most appearances. Lucifer is shown by an actress in Sympathy for the Devil as he ‘courts’ Nick into letting him be his vessel. In Free to be You and Me he uses Jessica to make his first approach to Sam before revealing himself and stating his plan. It’s seven long episodes later when we get a chance to see Lucifer hard at work raising Death and wondering at Castiel’s loyalty to humankind over his plans, you know, one fallen angel to another.
Hammer of the Gods is a chance for the many facets of Lucifer to shine, he’s at first grateful and sympathetic to Mercury for calling him and then merciless as he slaughters the hotel full of pagan gods. It’s Lucifer’s interaction with Gabriel that shows the depth of the character as he tries to get his brother to see his point of view and wonders at Gabriel’s willingness to betray family for humanity. In the end the ruthlessness of Lucifer wins the day as he callously kills his brother and dares to look sorrowful for doing it. For all Lucifer’s talk about rebelling against daddy, he’s more than willing to kill whether he needs to or not simply to follow ‘the plan.’
Swan Song delivers the last appearance of Mark Pellegrino’s excellent Lucifer and yet it also gives us the second of two appearances of Lucifer as portrayed by Jared. Jared first gave us a look of Sam as Lucifer in The End and while then he only had two prior episodes with which to get any idea of how Mark portrayed Lucifer (really only one) it is in Swan Song that Jared really sells his portrayal of Lucifer. Clearly Jared paid close attention to Mark’s portrayal in Abandon All Hope and Hammer of the Gods.
As an aside, I commend Jared for his brilliant dual role in Swan Song. I knew each time the camera gave me a close up whether I was looking at Sam or whether I was looking at Lucifer. Well done!
Kim Manners used to try to shoot things so the less you saw the more you imagined the danger or the fear, very Hitchcockian and still true today. Meg, Azazel, Lilith and Lucifer scared and added suspense exactly because we didn’t know when they would appear and what they would do when they did. Supernatural has more refined their approach with the big bads rather than have them overtly working against the boys their approach more seems to be having them work through proxies.
Meg was an agent of Azazel who appeared to be freelancing in Season 2 and a devoted follower of Lucifer in Season 5. No idea if she’ll be returning in Season 6 or not but I’m not counting her out. Lilith had Ruby doing her dirty work for two seasons and Lucifer had four horsemen (and their wrangler) out doing his dirty work. I’m wondering if there will be such an agent for the big bad in Season 6, don’t know.
Whoever the ‘big bad’ is in Season 6 I’m betting we don’t see too much of him or her, rather they’ll be orchestrating things behind the scenes and building the suspense. I’m stoked, are you?
Thanks for reading, Elle2
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Great analysis elle2. I agree, the slow build adds a lot of tension and had we seen these big baddies more often throughout the seasons, I don’t think they would have had as much of an impact as they did when they finally did appear. Oftentimes, the unknown creates more atmosphere than actually seeing something.
I dare say we have not seen the end of Meg and am very interested if they will bring her in this season. I’m hoping they will at some point and would love for Dean or Sam to finally kill her once and for all. As to the new baddies for Season 6, I can hardly wait. Whatever or whoever they are, it will definitely be fun, but not necessarily for Dean and Sam.
I love the method of less is more. It keeps the characters fresh. If you have them in too many episodes, it could result in some shoehorning (see: Castiel in season 5). I’m probably one of the few who thought they put Lucifer in too many episodes. Well maybe that’s just me because I wasn’t really a fan of how they portrayed him. The idea had potential but by mid-season, he annoyed the crap out of me.
I do think we’ll see Meg again, though hopefully in a new, better actress. She started to feel like a recycled character and honestly, when I looked at her I didn’t see Meg. Why can’t they use Nikki? Didn’t her other show get cancelled?
I have always loved the little goes a long way method Supernatural uses to keep us guessing. The things I can’t see always creep me out more then the things I can. The less we see, the less desensitizing occurs. Makes for a really good scare every now and then. And that’s what this Supernatural girl sits on the edge of her seat waiting for on a weekly basis. Well, that along with Jensen, Jared, Misha, Jim…. I could go on and on, and usually do but I will stop now. 🙂
I hope Meg will return. She should be in a new body though. The old one was last seen as an angel crosswalk, through a ring of Holy fire. But I think, in all fairness, Rachel Miner had pretty big shoes to fill. I loved Nikki’s portrayal of Meg, and it was pretty hard for me to give Rachel a chance. Later I had seen her in an episode of “Cold Case”, not something I usually watch, but I saw her as I was channel surfing and watched. She really wasn’t that bad. It can’t be easy for any actor to try to fill such big shoes. Just try to imagine the uproar if they tried to cast someone else as Castiel in season 6. I would get very, very ugly.
Nikki’s other show is “Dark Blue”. It’s a summer series, runs 10 episodes and the season 2 debute is August 4th on TNT. Tricia Helfer (Molly from Roadkill) will be joining that cast as well. Thanks to Wikipedia for the info…
Thanks for the article elle2. I agree with the less is more with the big baddies & with visuals-Give me one of those pricelss expressions from Jared or Jensen & a sound effect or musical score & my imagination will take it from there.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Meg back in Season 6 & she’ll probably be more than a little “upset” with the boys. I liked both Nikki & Rachel. (One little side note-John Winchester did threaten to kill Meg back in “Salvation”-maybe he should come back & carry out that threat.)
“Screaming makes me mad.”
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment, elle2. What isn’t seen is often scarier (at least as far as television goes, not sure I’d be real thrilled to have an Alien or Freddy Krueger standing in front of me) because what the mind churns up is often more frightening than what’s on celluloid. Imagine of the CSM was in every episode of the X-Files. Awful. Always leave ’em wanting more.
Evelyn, Mysticpeach, boobula, Smokencharlie and Randal,
Thanks for all the comments. I see many of us are thinking ‘demon/Meg’ will return. I really, really, really wish they could find a way for Nikki to return although Rachel didn’t horribly bother me but Nikki set the tone and it is very difficult to repeat, Mitch was the exception (well and technically so was Fred Lane as JDM truly set the tone of yellow eyes first…technically)
Glad everyone is excited for Seaon 6 and whatever slow builds and scary things they hide in the shadows for us.
🙂
Hi Elle2
I’m a little late to the party, but just wanted to say that I agree with you and everyone here.
I think seeing less adds to the mystery and to the anticipation of when/what will happen next when you see them again.