‘Castle’ Season 8 Finale Recap, Review: ‘Crossfire’ on profound madness and divine love, always (SPOILERS)

“Castle” Season 8 finale aired May 16 on ABC. Titled “Crossfire,” the farewell episode told stories of mad men who wanted death for the show’s lead characters, Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic).

Spoiler alert: This review includes “Castle” series finale spoilers. Fans can also watch the last episode on ABC Go.

Jed Rees (“Galaxy Quest”) opens the series finale as a mad killer. Later he returns on screen to introduce himself as LokSat’s associate, Mr Flynn. He injects Castle with a truth chemical to identify everyone who knows about LokSat.

Mason Wood (Gerald McRaney) of the Greatest Detective Society (G.D.S.) in Los Angeles shows up to rescue Castle and Beckett using a Korean barbecue taco truck. He explains to the duo that he owes Castle’s stepmother a favour. Mason later returns for a plot twist, though.

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Caleb Brown (Kristoffer Polaha) is supposedly dead but he shows up in the final moments of the finale to kill Castle and Beckett. He does not succeed, as implied by an epilogue featuring kids – three lovely Caskett babies!

It’s a shame the series ends without the audience getting to know more about Vikram Singh (Sunkrish Bala). At least the fans got to know Hayley Shipton (Toks Olagundoye) well enough. Lanie Parrish (Tamala Jones), Martha Rodgers (Susan Sullivan) and Alexis Castle (Molly Quinn) are in a few scenes, but not enough for a series farewell.

Ryan and Esposito, played wonderfully for eight years by Seamus Dever and Jon Huertas, respectively, go out without a major development in their lives, tho Ryan welcomed his second baby a few episodes back. Espo reunites with an ex-flame in “Castle” Season 8, but nothing more. Fans are left free to imagine if either or both of them eventually get a promotion or succeed in other aspects of their lives.

As they always do, Castle and Beckett triumphed over mad people who are fascinated by their love story and dismayed by their unrelenting will to fight crime. LokSat is widely linked to the first season finale cliffhanger of the series, the one where Castle finds out that Beckett wanted to find out who killed her mother.

The series ending appears rushed with few moments that tugged at one’s heart strings, but the epilogue really gave the fans what they have been asking: Castle babies.

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Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic have an excellent rom-com chemistry on screen. Fans will miss seeing them joking around and getting serious on love and matters of the criminal world as macabre writer Rick Castle and NYPD Captain Kate Beckett.

Co-showrunners Terence Paul Winter and Alexi Hawley earlier told TVLine they were “excited” about a planned finale that has a shocking cliffhanger. This is presumably Castle and Beckett laying on the floor after sustaining gunshot wounds from Caleb Brown. They also said they filmed something that “would exist only if we weren’t coming back.” This is presumably the time jump to seven years later, when Castle and Beckett have three kids together.

‘Castle’ Season 8, Series Finale: Gerald McRaney as Mason Wood a.k.a. the big bad LokSat

Mason Wood turns out to be LokSat. This is something that many fans are having difficulty accepting, just because Gerald McRaney is a wonderful actor who fits good guy roles. Here are some tweets:

“Castle” Season 8, Episode 22, the series finale titled “Crossfire,” was written by co-showrunners Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter, and directed by Rob Bowman, who directed most of the best episodes of the series.