Castle's Season Finale

I loved last night's finale! The final five minutes were so crazy awesome. The case itself, however, was scary! LOL

A woman with a bleeding face escapes her killer and runs to a highway, where she's hit by a truck. Yikes.

Cut to the loft where Castle is trying to decide between a large picture of him brooding and serious or smiley.  It is such a cute scene and stuff that authors really obsess over.  He's won an award and one of the pictures will be his backdrop. Personally, I liked the smiling one.  Kate gets called to the murder scene, which is out of their jurisdiction, but the local police think the victim was from the city and are hoping our team can help.  Castle bends over the body and sees the crosses that were carved on her face and flashes back to something similar that he saw as a child.

Caskett heads to the hospital to interview the truck driver that hit the woman and when he starts describing a dark figure wearing a mask that he glimpsed coming out of the woods, Castle describes exactly what the guy saw. Because he saw that, too, when he was eleven years old.  (And it was super creepy, porcelain mask with black tears coming down it. *shiver*)

Castle tells Kate about a weekend when he was visiting friends in New Hampshire while his mother was away. It was near Hollander's Woods, and he'd been told not to go in them alone. But he did, of course, and saw a dark figure leaning over something. He watched the guy, then went to see what he'd been looking at and finds the body of a dead woman with crosses carved into her face. He reaches down to touch her and the dark figure slams him back into a tree trunk and says if he tells, he'll find Castle and kill him.

Castle does phone it in from a pay phone, but nothing ever came of it and the woman was never found or reported missing. Castle had begun to wonder if it had really happened at all.

But back to the case at hand. They find the victim's father, her apartment, and figure out that she was investigating her friend's disappearance. It becomes apparent that the killer picks people who won't be missed.  The victim had tracked her friend to getting into a white car that had a license plate with a Y and Z in it. The team gets a hit on the same sort of car and goes to investigate and the owner is in her house, her decayed remains sitting in an armchair in front of a TV. Ick. When Beckett calls to talk to her only son, the phone rings in a wardrobe and when Beckett opens it, the team is shot at. They chase the guy down and he gets away. They find him, though, and bring him in for questioning, but he's not all there. They go to talk to his therapist and Castle recognizes the voice. It's him! The therapist is the killer!

Beckett and the boys don't believe him and Castle is visibly upset that Beckett doesn't. She goes to him while they're at home and apologizes and gives him the property records of an old barn the therapist owns. She can't go there, since she's a cop, but Castle can. Noooooo.  But yes, she drives him to it and he goes in. Alone. I have a bad feeling about this.

While inside the barn, Castle finds the mask and a souvenir photo book of all the victims. So horrible! The tension is ratcheted so high in this scene and then the door locks. The killer is inside! He attacks Castle with a knife to the throat and Beckett is outside trying to get in but she can't. Castle reaches his hand under the door and she hands him his gun just as the knife is pressing hard enough on his throat to draw blood, but Castle shoots him and saves his own life. And he shoots several times to make sure. So, so tense.

The B story is Beckett getting called into 1PP and attacked for some of her more edgy choices as a detective. She defends herself and says she doesn't cross the line, she puts herself on it. They tell her this was an audition and they want her to run for senator.  She's considering it. (And I love that her and Castle discuss it on the swings. Awww).

The awards ceremony speech at the end was the highlight of the show. Castle mentions everyone who has helped him, his mother, daughter, the boys who let him in, and Beckett.  They got this partner thing down. Always.  *sniffle*

They all toast and when the murder call comes in, they all head out together. So beautiful and fitting. But I am SO GLAD the series was renewed for Season 8.  It's going to be a long summer.

Did you watch? What did you think?