Review: Castle 7.06- “The Time of Our Lives”

The wedding we have all been waiting years for is finally here and so worth the wait. Grab your tissues and enjoy!

*****SPOILERS BELOW*****

The episode starts with Castle and Beckett being cute (as always), thinking about where they would be today if they had never met each other. Beckett received an invite to her ex-flame Sorenson’s wedding, who Castle says he saved her from. Beckett says she might have been Captain of her own precinct, and Castle says he’d be working on his second Pulitzer. They joke about how they’re bad for each other and then head off to their case of the week. His name is Mathias Ginsler, a Swiss national, who was attacked by masked men and his briefcase stolen. He has a boot print on his shirt that looks like dirt, but Castle thinks it’s unrefined coal dust.

Castle and Beckett stop off at an abandoned coal plant to check it out and see if it might be where the killer is working from. On the way, Castle asks Beckett if she’s going to go to Sorenson’s wedding. She says she’s not ready for someone else’s perfect day yet. They find Ginsler’s briefcase and it looks like it has an artifact in it. Castle, of course, picks it up and this results in an alarm going off and them being shot at by the killer. Castle is thrown by a grenade blast and wakes up in an alternate reality where he and Beckett have never met.

Thinking he is being Punk’d, Castle talks to Beckett (who is Captain in this reality) and crew about the crime scene, and they think he has something to do with the murder and arrest him. Martha comes to pick him up from the precinct and brings him home; telling him he’s blown most of his money and Alexis walks in with black hair, having apparently having moved to LA in this world. Castle tries to get himself to wake up by repeatedly dunking his head in a bowl of ice water; it doesn’t work. Trying to figure what’s going on, Castle researches parallel universes, and sees a picture of the artifact from Ginsler’s briefcase as a possible gateway to another universe. Thinking back to the explosion, Castle remembers thinking at that moment that maybe Beckett would have been better off if she never met him, and he thinks that might be what caused this.

Castle goes back to the precinct to try to help with the case and find the artifact, so he can get back to the real world. It looks like Beckett can’t resist Castle even in this reality. He convinces her to let him ride along with Ryan and Esposito, where he learns that Esposito and Ryan didn’t end up with Lanie or Jenny. So, it seems like Castle has effected everyone’s lives more than he thought. Castle finds the artifact and is trying to wish himself home when a woman, Maria Sanchez, puts a knife to his throat. It turns out the artifact is a fake, so there’s still hope for him to get home. Castle was supposed to wait in the car though, so Beckett isn’t happy with him when he gets back to the station and throws him off the case.

He sneaks in to the observation room and listens to Ryan and Esposito interrogate Sanchez. Beckett finds him and arrests him. Martha refuses to bail him out, but Beckett decides to let him go. She says they did meet before, she went to get his autograph for a Derek Storm novel and asks him why he killed Derek. Before he can answer, Esposito comes and gets Beckett to update her; their suspect has a rhino tattoo on his neck. Castle gets Beckett to agree to a drink; while there she tells him being Captain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and she doesn’t think she was meant to be a homicide detective. At the bar, they find their suspect. They haven’t found the artifact, and that’s a problem for Castle, who confronts Beckett about not trying hard enough to get all the answers. She gets upset and tells him he doesn’t know her.

Alexis and Castle have a heart to heart where he tells her that everything she does matters, and everything has an effect on the people around them, even if they can’t see it; this seems to be a bit of an epiphany for Castle. He decides to show this world’s Beckett how great she is, so she’ll help him find the artifact, but on his way he gets kidnapped at gunpoint. The takes Castle to the coal plant. Their suspect’s lawyer and Marcus Lark of Lark development are there and behind the murder.

They want Castle to tell them how the artifact works, but he isn’t sure. As they are about to shoot his kneecap, Beckett shows up and saves the day. Castle is trying to get the artifact to take him home when a shooter doubles back and goes to shoot Beckett. Castle jumps in front of her and takes the bullets. She asks him why he did it and he says it’s because he loves her, then he wakes up back in the real world. The killers have been caught while Castle was out of it and everything is back to normal.

Castle tells Beckett the only other world he would want to live in is the one where he made it to their wedding, and asks if she will marry him, right now. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, but yeah, couldn’t help myself. So glad these two finally got their happy ending. #CaskettAtLast!