RIP Trickster

I understand that in any Supernatural appocolypse, there are going to be some casualties. And when it's a battle of good vs. evil, both sides are going to take a hit or two. But I really wish that it hadn't been Gabriel (aka The Trickster) that bit the dust this time. I mean, in addition to the fact that I have always found his episodes really fun to watch (remember that time he killed Dean every day in new and hilarious ways? Fun!), he gave us decent intel on the archangel sitch and he was funny. Oh yeah, and much like Kurt Fuller (Zachariah), Richard Speight, Jr. tore into the Trickster's dialogue with such exuberance making him great fun to watch.
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Right, so the plot. The brothers Winchester are detoured by a torential storm into a motel that's like a fancy oasis in the middle of extreme nowhere. Despite the fact that they've lived through the Trickster's antics 3 times already, they do not immediately suspect that something is amiss. They are not smart in the extreme.
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Ok, in fairness to them, this isn't the Trickster's work, but still - once you've been lulled into a false reality a couple of times, wouldn't you be skeptical of anything that's even remotely out-of-place? Anyway, what's actually afoot at the Elysian Fields Motel (oh, Kripke!) is that a variety of Gods - Baldur, Kali, Odin, Ganesh, Zao Shen, Mercury, etc. - have come together to kidnap the Brothers Dim in an effort to flex a little muscle and get Michael and Lucifer to call off their Apocalypse Cage Match or whatever. The plan makes little sense if you look too closely at it.

But Gabriel shows up and tries to snatch Sam and Dean out of this mess via some smooth talking and a ruse that he's really...Loki? Anyway, that falls apart and before we know it, he's dead but then not really because - TRICKSTER! - and then Luci shows up.
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Luci has really run Mark Pellagrino's body into the ground but despite how rough he looks, he's got all his powers at his disposal so he pretty quickly does away with the gathered Gods in impressively fast and gory fashion. Then there is a showdown between him and Gabriel - a real sibling squabble-fest - and while the boys scoot Kali out (the only God to make it out alive) and free the various humans kept stashed in the walk-in freezer as food, Gabriel talks a good game about how he's not choosing sides between his two idiot brothers, rather he's on the side of the human race and would prefer it very much if his brothers went back to their corners and never came out again.
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Then Luci kills him.
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All is not completely lost because the Trickster was good enough to leave the boys with some porn he made that contained the helpful tip that if they gather up the rings of the Four Horsemen, they will posses the keys necessary to lock Luci back into his cage in hell and avert the whole nasty mess.
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That's all well and good - they've got War and Famine's rings already after all - but Death has been roaming the countryside wiping out one state at a time since Thanksgiving and they've never even TRIED to take that damn ring (the SOURCE of his ABILITIES to KILL large numbers of people - I'm just sayin') off his finger. Now that they know it'll help them personally, they're going after it? Dipshits!
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Oh yeah, and we've got visual confirmation that Pestilence (Matt Frewer) is snotting all over and unleashing his grotesque little friends on the world now.
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Gabriel was right, Luci really is just a huge bag of dicks.