User blog comment:Rafe Adler/"The Rising Son" Discussion/@comment-25529244-20171020160053

I loved it.

The episode, in my opinion, was good in almost every way aside from some minor gripes. Overall, as far as Buck-Leming written episodes go, i think this is one of their better ones, up there with their Season 10 works.

The season seems like it's starting off strong, and Jack The Nephilim is a very interesting character, which I hope they'll do more with. It feels a lot more like Supernatural than Season 12, which, aside from its flaws didn't really feel like I was watching the same show at all. I think Asmodeus is a good villain. I also liked the way they set up The Shedim (i mean, if Lucifer of all people is afraid of them... Please, don't screw it up like with the leviathans)...

Also, I'm surprised no one (except one commenter, but only briefly in their case) mentions the return of Donatello in this episode. His actor is great, his character is interesting and i liked how he is portrayed differently from other soulless characters. He is sympathetic and he is still funny without his soul and i hope they'll do something with his character, as him losing his soul leads (from where I sit) to a few quite interesting takes they can do on his character. I hope they'll make him a more prominent side character, sort of like how Kevin also was.

As for what i think was a little less good...

Michael is interesting, though I wish the real one makes an appearance later. In the battle between worlds, maybe? imagine seeing the "insane Michael" of our world vs. the other world's Michael and see how differently they would be from each other. Also, Lucifer (and Michael, for that matter) just don't feel threatening anymore, not like in Season 4 and 5 at all. In Season 11, Lucifer was an actual threat on his own despite The Darkness being out there.

That leads me to the thing that worries me about this season as a whole.

The alternate reality concept is really easy to do wrong. It is hard for me to get invested in it at all due to how often it's done wrong, so i'm lowering expectations here. In a lot of stories where this kind of thing is done, it's either to introduce a series of characters to act as cannon fodder, or to kill a character without actually removing them from the story, or to bring back a dead character. Usually it's simply a cheap plot device. In all fairness, i might be wrong here, and I won't be able to judge until the season is over or at least further in. I am not hating on the show here, i am just... worried. I really want this season to be great. so please, writers, don't fall in the common pitfalls that this plot tends to suffer from.

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TL;DR: Aside from a few minor gripes (and worries for the season in general) this was a great episode. I am optimistic for this season. I hope that this will be a lot better than the flawed Season 12 was.