Wednesday no more – check out Amy & Sophie’s thoughts on the season finale of American Gods

All right, guys. We finally have our answer: No, insurance won’t cover Laura’s car accident. It was an act of god.

And the gods’ acting was certainly on point this week. Media was splendid in her Easter bonnet; Mr World’s distorted face and faceless minions (am I the only one getting a Studio Ghibli vibe from these guys in their quality of movement?) were pretty excellent; and Easter, or should I say Ostara, packed quite a punch for a pint-sized lady.

Although the season finale, we are still meeting new gods in this episode – and thank Odin for that. Easter is a fantastic addition to the cast. Dressed like an aging Southern lady trying to stay young and relevant, Easter is sweet. Sweet in a way that insidiously rots your gums while you’re not paying attention. It was glorious to see her giveth – but it was even better to see her taketh away. The devastation of a blighted spring was what we have been waiting for, a real display of power at last. And those graphics!

‘Come to Jesus’ is a visually stunning episode. It exemplifies all the great things about American Gods’ aesthetic. The transitions are clever, the lighting is gorgeous, the effects are delightful. This is a fun show to watch for the visuals alone, but this episode had a bit more humour than some of the more grim episodes of the past. Easter’s hyper-saturated idyllic estate was a playful landscape, particularly with the multitudes of Jesuses (Jesusoes, Jesi...?) hanging around, and Shadow’s blushing and bumbling interactions here were pretty adorable.

Finally our star-crossed lovers are reunited and it will be interesting to see how our recent-believer Shadow will react to the news of his boss’s involvement and if one dead-wife can bring his plan down, but the episode’s climax is the clash of old vs new gods. Sadly, this seemed to lack all the tension of their police station visit a few episodes ago, and their conversation seemed to mostly rehash their previously-stated statements. The point here was the big reveal of Wednesday as Odin to Shadow – who, if he didn’t get it by now, must be pretty damn thick – and I wasn’t sure that this was all that impactful. But at least Odin’s show of force was shockingly good (sometimes a pun is too fun to resist).

With the tangential quietness of last week’s episode (devoid of the usual penultimate ‘tune in next week’ cliffhanger), we didn’t have much of a run-up into the finale. American Gods has prided itself on making the bold decision to meander rather than rush (it’s a marathon mentality) but the effect is that the stakes here don’t feel terribly high. For non-readers, I can’t even imagine how they would feel about this episode, that doesn’t feel much like a season-ender but maybe more of a mid-season moving-things-along episode. The House on the Rock has great significance to fans of the book, but to the uninitiated, Bilquis’ roadtripping would be quite an anticlimactic ending to a very unusual eight episodes. 

Well, that’s it for season one – and as Odin and Easter agreed, now we will starve – and hopefully our prayers will be answered with season 2.