Castle series finale

[sheenianni]

Well, it’s over at last. At this moment, I’d say there’s mostly relief. The ending was somewhat weak, but it wasn’t utterly terrible. Castle and Beckett lived. Their love story wasn’t destroyed. No major character died.

Reviewing Season 8, I stand by what I’ve said before – they should have ended it with Season 7, with the powerful “Hollander’s Woods” season finale and a happy ending for all the characters.

Also, let’s put this in the open – the whole Loksat plot was absolutely terrible. It was terribly convoluted, it required for characters to act highly out of character, unlearning lessons they have learned in the previous seasons; the ties to the previous Bracken mystery were flimsy at best and even worse when it came to Castle’s kidnapping (so if I understand it correctly now, he was back in the US for two months, knowing that his family was sick with worry and he didn’t even let them know that he was alive just so he could chase some new shiny mystery??? Man, and we’re supposed to root for this guy? Moving on…)

Actually, let’s stay with Locksat for a while. So some of this mess falls back into Season 7 – the whole CIA kidnapping plot was rather weak and the whole disaster of “Castle was back in the US and didn’t tell anyone” originated there. However, season 8 could have taken the smart route and just abandoned that whole season 7 plot arch (of which we still didn’t learn enough, like, how did Castle even stumble across Locksat in the first place? How did he investigate? All these answers we don’t have). Instead, they chose to continue that arch in the worst possible way.

The thing is, a lot of this could still have been salvaged (despite Season 7) if they didn’t try so messily to tie the plot back to Bracken and the murder of Kate’s mom. Beckett’s old team murdered? Say it’s connected to one of her old cases in DC. Castle’s lost memory? He learned some big national security secret he really wasn’t allowed to know, and agreed to have his memory wiped so he could get back to his family. There, you have explanation of Season 7 and an introduction to a slightly less messy plot in Season 8. (And if you really have to have Castle previously involved in the “big mystery”, say the FBI and CIA case overlapped.)

Or, hey, how about a smaller season arch that doesn’t have a villain with supervilainish supersecret organization who (despite having top notch resources) is so stupid that he single-handedly gets himself caught? How about an ordinary bad guy with just a smaller crew of baddies? You know these exist from time to time…

The good things about Season 8:

- Hailey. I really came to like her (I wouldn’t have been opposed to a spinoff with her, Alexis and the occasional guest star appearance from the old Castle characters). Actually, I came to ship Hailey/Alexis quite a lot, which is… probably my only non-canon Castle ship. Anyway. Hailey. It’s a bit sad she only got a place in the show because it started falling apart. (Are there any good Alexis/Hailey fics? I never looked.)

- Despite the Locksat mess, the final message is that no matter what terrible plot twists their relationship takes, in the end, Castle and Beckett love each other and want to be together. (I just wish we could have skipped those plot twists…)

- we got several great new episodes, usually when the Loksat plot was nowhere in sight.

I guess that’s it from me. What were your impressions?