Supernatural, season 11

The Darkness is Amara: God's sister, spent as the price of creation, sealed so the universe could exist - and she wakes with a bond to Dean, who held her lock. She grows through the season from child to force, eating souls and grace alike, and heaven, hell and witchcraft in every combination bounce off her. Lucifer gets out of the cage on the season's mid-turn - riding Castiel's yes, a possession played half for comedy and all for grief - and even an archangel is a toy to her.

The year's real reveal is Chuck. The prophet-novelist of the early seasons walks back in with a guitar and an autobiography, and is exactly who the fans decided he was a decade ago: God, retired, defensive, and finally answering his sister's grievance in person. Their fight goes as family fights go - he loses, wounded, the sun guttering with him.

The finale refuses the arsenal. The plan of last resort - a soul-bomb in Dean's chest, walked into a garden - dissolves into the thing the show does best: a conversation. Dean tells Amara that being owed is not the same as being right, and she and her brother choose repair over ending. The sun comes back full. Amara's parting gift, unasked, is the season's cliffhanger: Mary Winchester, thirty-three years dead, waking confused in the night air. And in London, a woman with a syringe introduces the British Men of Letters by putting Sam on the floor.