Grimm Season 6 Episode 13 Review: The End

This Grimm review contains spoilers.

Grimm: Season 6 Episode 13

“Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Psalms, 23:4

All seems lost at the beginning of tonight’s series finale. Zerstörer has left a trail of corpses in his wake at the gas station: a homeless man, and several policemen and detectives. It was painful to watch Nick suffer through Hank and Wu’s demise. The magic stick was inoperable when it was most needed.

Nick was beside himself with grief, as anyone would be in his position under those circumstances. For reasons we don’t know early on, the demon won’t or can’t kill Nick, and disappeared to parts unknown. The surviving members of Team Grimm, now split over several locations, tried to formulate a plan to halt or annihilate Zerstörer. Trubel doesn’t put stock in potions and spells because she’s always been a hands-on type of warrior. She prefers axes and swords to get the job done.

We’re told that the demon wanted both Diana and baby Kelly, but nothing ever came out of it, even when later in the episode he advised Nick to seek their counsel on a pressing matter. That was more red herring filler dialogue. Did we expect Kelly to suddenly rise up out of his carrier and speak in full sentences?

Back at the spice shop, Rosalee, Eve and Monroe were almost out of ideas when Rosalee thought to use a magic spell, “the strength of one’s blood,” although no one was confident it’d work. We’re treated to additional updates from Nick as town crier when he rejoined the trio at the spice shop.

Little did we know that the stick fragment was a homing device for Nick — for no other reason Zerstörer would have been able to track him. He wasted no time dispensing Eve after a momentary tussle at the spice shop. The stick didn’t resurrect a loved one yet again, further incensing Nick, and destroyed merchandise at the spice shop.

Body count for Team Grimm at the end of episode twelve and beginning of episode thirteen numbered three. Monroe and Rosalee made their way to the secluded cabin soon after Trubel, who stood sentry outside. The clock was ticking until Nick followed suit to mix his blood with Adeline’s and Monroe’s for the most powerful spell they were able to find in the books.

Similar to before, the demon materialized out of thin air at the cabin, rattled its foundation and flung the door open, as television and movie villains are fond of doing. Diana went against character and sided with Zerstörer, when it would’ve been expected that she would be his unstoppable roadblock. Previous episodes when either Renard or Adeline were in trouble, she murdered those who sought to harm them. I didn’t follow her sudden, inexplicable change of allegiance as she stood watching her parents meet their deaths on the muddy cabin grounds.

Monroe and Rosalee were no match for the skull creature, and keeping with the murder spree, they died almost simultaneously. Diana ran from the cabin and demanded Nick leave the demon alone, which on its own was another throwaway line. Up until that point in the last two episodes, Zerstörer was the most powerful entity in Portland. Had Diana wanted to make a point, why not use her powers against Nick to protect her would-be future husband? A few things haven’t added up over the course of the final season, and Diana’s purpose was certainly one of them.

At this point in the episode, the only survivors in or near the cabin are Nick, Trubel, Kelly, Diana and Zerstörer. With corpses of both loves of his life and his best friends scattered over three locations, he justifiably felt all was lost. It turned out the skull creature wasn’t as clever or persuasive as he might have thought. It was Trubel who revealed the wrinkle in his plan when the demon resuscitated her, after having killed her.

Nick and Trubel got into a scuffle over his wanting to willingly surrender the staff fragment, and a chase ensued deep into the surrounding woods. Bloody fisticuffs followed, peals of thunder and dark clouds overhead, and the ghosts of Aunt Marie and Nick’s mother Kelly appeared and clarified the demon’s goal. Side-by-side they returned to the makeshift battlefield as Zerstörer waited idly.

Nick, Trubel and the two ghosts laid waste to the demon. The once formidable skull creature was reduced to a charcoal briquette, and later disintegrated into a pile of swirling ashes that reopened a portal to the other side. Nick was pulled into the vortex and propelled through the replaced full-length mirror at Monroe and Rosalee’s as everyone looked on unaware of what had just happened.

I think the series meant to end with a moral lesson about family ties: the strength of one’s blood. I’m left wondering if the entire episode was an ode to The Wizard of Oz. The second journey to the other side had to have been a dream, however in the present action near end of the episode, Diana recalls having been through the looking glass, and the reassembled staff has come along for the return trip to Portland.

Also different and unclear between episodes twelve and thirteen, Eve’s a hexanbiest again, whereas she wasn’t at the end of twelve. There are several awkward and sappy minutes before the final curtain that paid homage to a mash-up of reunion stories. Flash-forward twenty years, and we’re in a futuristic Grimm family trailer replete with computer hardware as adult Kelly makes an entry into one of the dusty books. We meet adult Diana, and are told in passing that Monroe and Rosalee’s triplets have joined Team Grimm.

The series finale whimpered to a close for me. Everything leading up to Nick and Diana’s return to Portland twenty years prior, in hindsight, felt like a setup to end the show on a high note. What would you do if and when all is lost? The writers put the characters through their paces, and we felt Nick’s desperation and Trubel’s frustration. What do we believe? Was it all a dream, or a supernatural test for Nick to see what he would do when his back was against the wall? If the latter, it’d fit the fairytale genre. If the former, I feel toyed with by the writers’ take on Waiting For Godot.

And so after six years, we close the door and books on unseen and unfamiliar creatures and happenings mainly in idyllic Portland, with a few trips to European destinations. Twenty years into the show’s fictional future, the next generation is at the forefront of Wesen justice. I’d like to think we’ve learned or reconfirmed something about ourselves over the course of the show.