--This post originally appeared on my Tumblr. I am mostly posting it here so I can find it easily, since no matter how carefully I tag things over there, they tend to disappear into the ether. But feel free to engage with it if you'd like. Heads up that the tone of this post is quite different from my usual here, and there is cursing. A lot of cursing.--
(Spoilers ahead for Supernatural, especially the series finale. NSFW for language. The only link, despite what the surrounding text may lead you to believe, *is* SFW.)
So last night my brain said, “You know what would be
fun? Instead of sleeping and resetting and starting to heal from the deep hurt
that was 15x20? Planning, in excruciating detail, an essay about *why* it hurt
so fucking much.” So that’s what I did all night. And I guess now I’m gonna
write it down.
First, because I will never not be a Hufflepuff (oh,
hi, other property that has been hurtful, how are *you* this morning?) and I
will never be able to just piss all over something without feeling guilty as
sin for, like, maybe hurting someone else, I have to acknowledge how much Supernatural
has meant to me and how deeply grateful I am to everyone involved in making
the show for *making* the show FOR FIFTEEN YEARS. Good lordt. Bless. And I
recognize that endings are hard (truly) and that ending this show, which
ran for 327 episodes and reinvented itself wholly at least twice and has at
least two separate kinds of fans who expected and wanted different
things from it, was always going to be hard. I recognize the hard work of the
actors and sincerely thank them for putting their hearts and souls into this
show and especially for leaving their families during a pandemic, quarantining,
and making those last two episodes after such an incredibly long hiatus. I
recognize all the hard work of the crew and all the people who made the show
happen week after week after week and also went back to work under conditions
that were probably not great.
Okay? Love.
Now. Hurt.
Seriously, Where Is Cas?
Misha Collins was on SPN for longer (by far) than
anyone else except Jensen and Jared. Even Bobby, who is such a beloved and
quintessential part of the show, was in fewer than half as many episodes as
Cas. From the moment he first appeared until the end of the run, Cas was in
more than half of the total episodes made (148, by the way, or the equivalent
of more than every episode of a typical six-season run for an American show on
a broadcast network). For him to be so utterly absent from the last two
episodes not only felt wrong but like an erasure of all that he meant to the
show and to so many of the fans. Even if there was no way to bring him back
from the dead after 15x18, the almost complete ignoring of his character felt
like a slap in the face. Add to that the way that he died? “I’m queer, I love
you, poof”? Just. OUCH, guys. And not in a sad but entertaining or somehow
cathartic way. Just full on fucking ow. That *hurt*. I LOVED Cas’s speech. His
affirmation of his own truth? His recognition that his happiness was in his own
self-actualization and that the reactions of others cannot touch that? Fucking
beautiful. But then he died. And he didn’t come back, like he has so many times
before, so many times when he *hadn’t* just come out as queer. No resurrection.
No resolution. Not even a fucking recognition of the heart of that scene from
any other character in a further 82 minutes of television. That was harmful.
I lived in hope for two weeks that they were going to save this beautiful
moment from being an epic shift from queerbaiting into bury your guys, and
well. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” y’all.
Good God, Guys, Resolve This Chord,
Wouldja?
I just… don’t
understand how they could do the end of 15x18 and then not go anywhere further
with it? That scene begs, *begs* for narrative resolution. Cas drops three,
count ’em, three bombs on Dean—Bang! You, of all the humans, are the
most loving and the most deserving of being saved. Bang! Anything I have
ever loved, any capacity for love I have, I have because of *you*, and I *love*
you. Bang! Telling you this means I’m going die. Right now.—and Dean
does not get to respond. He wants to, but he’s interrupted by Cas shoving him
out of the way of the Empty coming to take him. And the scene ends with Dean
sobbing on the floor, ignoring a phone call from his brother in the middle of
an almost-certainly world-ending catastrophe. And then we get nothing more.
Dean never tells anyone what Cas said. He never gets to see Cas again. He never
prays to Cas as some kind of last-ditch effort to speak his truth back,
whatever that may be. We’re just left with what amounts to one half of a scene
and a narrative wound and an open character arc that never sees any resolution.
I wanted reciprocation. I was prepared not to get it. (I’ve seen this show
before.) I was not prepared for them to just drop the biggest unresolved
emotional question of the season show. May whoever
was ultimately responsible for this never hear a chord progression resolve for
the rest of their days.
They Done Dean Dirty
We all do this with narratives we love, right? Latch on
to one of the characters more than others? Because we see something of
ourselves in them? Because we go, “Hey, babe, I see you struggling with that
shit. Me, too, love, me, too.” I love Lizzie, but I relate to Darcy. Don’t come
for him, I will cut you. Harry is cool and all and Ron is fun, but Hermione is
mine. When she’s confronted with her worst fear—failure—I’m there with her. I
love Sam and, god, I love Cas, and Charlie and Jody will always be in my heart,
but Dean. Dean is me, man. His struggle to see the good in himself, not just
the bad? His work to bring forward the parts of himself that matter to him, not
just those he’s been told are what make him up? His nurturing nature and his
unhealthy tendency to put everyone else before himself? His dumb, chaotic,
allusion-laced sense of humor? His propensity to just keep going, bottling up
the big feelings until they burst out of him in a way he can’t really control
and that gets him into trouble with the people he loves? His
sexuality—definitely one thing and maybe, probably, something else too? All of
that. That’s me.
And Dean is dead. Hey, cool, he’s human. Humans die. I
don’t actually mind that Dean is dead. The *way* that he died? And when? It’s
sitting in my stomach like a hunk of lead.
All Dean ever wanted was to be free. Free of destiny,
free of Chuck, free to be who he wanted to be. And he got it. For a hot second.
I guess.
Here’s what happened to Dean in 15x20:
He got hit in the face with a pie and stabbed in the
back.
Or, alternatively:
He was silenced from speaking his truth in 15x18 and
that silence was continually perpetuated on him by first, a problem deemed more
important than his emotional well-being (Chuck) and second, some random
life-draining (vampiric) monsters who silence people (by cutting out their
tongues). Then he died after being penetrated by a phallus.
Or, alternatively:
After championing free will for twelve years, defying
angels, God, and destiny, his story ended in exactly the way he feared would
always be his destiny: in a violent, early death.
Good job trying to better yourself, Dean! Well done
with all that character growth! You’ve finally done it! Your reward? Death. A largely
pointless, ignoble death. And what will your last words be? Will they be about
the truth you’ve worked so hard to get to? Heck, no. Regress back to your
twenties. Think only about others. Your whole life was just the setup for
someone else. And you know what? While you’re at it? Definitely don’t give
yourself permission to find peace. Wait till someone else tells you they’ll be
okay if you go. Oh! And also? Don’t forget that your death is coming right on
the heels of the first time anyone has ever told you that they love you, like
from their soul to yours, love. you. And that person sacrificed themselves for
you. For nothing. Cause you’re dying a few weeks later anyway.
Remember how I said Dean was me? How all his struggles
and his character growth meant so much to me? I’m feeling *super* good about
myself right now, guys. SUPER good.
How Did You Miss the Last Fourteen Years
of Your Own Show?
SPN started out being about family. And it never
stopped. But the thing is, they immediately started complicating what family is
and what it means. In episode one, it was two brothers. Then it was two
brothers and their dad. Then two brothers and their other dad. Two brothers,
their other dad, a scrappy little sister, and surrogate mom. Two brothers,
their other dad, a scrappy little sister, a surrogate mom, and their weird
angel friend. Two brothers, their weird angel friend and their other surrogate
mom. Two brothers, their weird angel friend, their other surrogate mom and her
good friend. Two brothers, their best angel friend, their other surrogate mom,
her good friend, and the brothers’ little sister they never wanted. Do I have
to keep going right up to two brothers, their best angel friend who is in love
with one of them, and his son? This show stopped defining family as “two
brothers” eight thousand iterations ago. Family don’t end with blood. Someone
said that once. On the show. So why the fuck would anyone think a good
end to the show was an end that reverted back to “two brothers”? It hasn’t been
that since season one.
For the finale to be about nobody but Sam and Dean and
to practically belligerently insist that no one else ever mattered to them was
not only weird, but it felt like a giant fuck you to anyone who’s been watching
this show since… ever? Sam gives Dean a hunter’s funeral alone? (Insert my
obligatory nod to the difficulties with this scene due to the pandemic here,
but.) No Jody? No Donna? No Claire? No Garth? None of the other hunters to whom
Dean is famous? NO EILEEN? Dean gets to Heaven, and Bobby (okay, I love
that Bobby was there, but Bobby has been dead for eight years. For him to be
the only other long-time character from the show to be in this episode was strange.)
namedrops Jack and motherloving Cas? I’m to understand that Jack
resurrected Cas from the Empty *off-screen* and Cas neither saved Dean from the
fucking nail in the goddamn barn wall (since when is Cas hands off? Especially
with Dean?) and COULD NOT BE ARSED TO MEET DEAN IN HEAVEN? What the
actual hell is happening here?
And Bobby tells Dean he can do whatever he wants (in a
moment, by the way, that strongly suggests Bobby, at least, knows what’s up
with Cas—I was *sure*, for a glimmering couple of seconds, that we were going
to get a brief reunion with Cas after that moment, but alas. Ear wax.), and he
goes for a drive? In his car. The car he’s had for fifteen+ years? That he’s
been able to drive around, nay that he has done virtually nothing but
drive around, for that same period of time? He is finally free of everything,
he’s finally at peace, he’s in Heaven with all the people he’s ever loved who
have died (which is a long list: John, Mary, Ellen, Jo, Kevin, Charlie), and
his best friend the angel, who *just* told him he loves him, is kicking around
somewhere, and he decides to GO FOR A DRIVE. Until Sam dies decades later.
That’s it. That’s all we see him do. All of Heaven before him, a chance to do
what he wants, to make his own decisions, to have a (n after) life, and he
cares about nothing but his little brother and his car. “i’M tWEnTy-sIx, SaM.”
Jeebus.
This Story Didn’t Need to Be Told
Not only did this episode not deliver on the promises
of the season (Cas and Dean’s relationship, however you read it, was all
over this season, and we got no resolution; the whole season seemed to promise
an end “outside” of the writer (Chuck), and we for sure did not get that), it
also told us virtually nothing new. We learned that Jack “fixed” Heaven and
(apparently) that Cas is no longer in the Empty. We got that in one line of
dialogue in the last few minutes of the episode. Everything else was old news.
15x19 (and honestly the whole season) raised the question of what Sam and Dean
would do if they were free of the machinations of a capricious God/writer. Did
we get an answer to that?
Only if the answer is “exactly what they would do if
they weren’t free.” Sam goes jogging. We’ve seen that before. Dean cooks. We’ve
seen that before. Dean likes pie. We’ve seen that before. They go on a hunt.
We’ve seen that before. Dean goes for a drive and listens to classic rock.
We’ve seen that before. Dean dies. We’ve seen that before. Dean is proud of
Sam. WE’VE SEEN THAT BEFORE.
We have seen all of this before. We did
not learn anything about the boys we didn’t already know. We didn’t see them
make any choices. We didn’t see them experience any things, people, or feelings
differently than we’ve seen them experience them before. Did Sam go find
Eileen, the one woman who has really seemed to make him happy since Jess? Nope.
Did Dean do anything at all with his feelings about Cas, the feelings he was
sobbing into his hands over? Nope. Did they quit hunting? Nope. Did they go sit
on the beach and drink beers? Nope. Did they get jobs? Go back to school? Join
the FBI for real? Nope nope nope. Did they go out together in a blaze of glory,
somehow for once dying at the same time? Nope. Did Dean say anything surprising
to Sam while he was dying? Nope.
I don’t know what the point of it was. First episode:
here’s two brothers with an extraordinary bond who do dangerous, heroic shit
and are likely to die doing it. Last episode: here’s two brothers with an
extraordinary bond who do dangerous, heroic shit and are likely to die doing
it. And guess what! One of them did! For no reason! And after gay love was
declared to him! And before we could resolve his character arc despite knowing
for a year that we had to wrap up! And just in time to confirm (not that
anything had ever thrown this in doubt) that the brothers would be together
when they both got to Heaven! Oh, and hey, when they get there, they aren’t
going to care about *anyone* else, not their friends, not their parents, not
their significant others. Because we’re erasing the last fourteen years of our
own hard-won character growth. FIGJAM.
And Parts of It Were Just Cruel
Some pieces of those last two episodes were just
cruel. Bullet points, because I’m tired of this shit and I think I’ve finally
written myself to some catharsis about this cluster.
*Lucifer calls Dean and pretends to be Cas. This is
the last time we hear Cas’s voice on the show. Insult to injury: Dean runs to
the door to let in “Cas” like we have never seen him run before, like he’s
desperate to see his friend. Who is dead. Because he loves Dean. Runs like he
needs to tell him something. Which he never does. Salt in the wound: Lucifer
has a long history on the show of pretending to be men’s dead lovers so that
they will “let him in.” Cool, guys. It’s fine.
*Miracle. They found a dog that Dean called a miracle.
And it was the only glimmer of hope in an empty, hopeless world. And Chuck
poofed it away. Then the dog was back in the finale. It was clearly Dean’s dog.
Dean doesn’t like dogs. Because he was dragged to Hell by Hell hounds. But now
he’s found one he loves and snuggles with in bed and buries his nose in its
fur. He went and found the dog, but not Cas. Not Cas, who pulled *him* out of Hell,
just like we thought (because the parallelism omg) Dean was gonna pull Cas out
of the Empty. But no. Dog. And then Dean died. So. Sad dog. No, guys, really,
it’s cool. Juuuust fine.
*Pie. It’s been a long-running bit that Dean often
doesn’t get to eat his pie, especially if Sam is involved. Because Dean
associates pie with love and home and not having to be the adult and not always
being in danger. And we can’t have that. But anyway, they go to a pie fest, an
actual honest to god pie. fest. and Dean gets like a half dozen slices of pie,
and Sam smacks him in the face with one of them. And that’s the last pie Dean
ever sees before he dies. Haaahahaha*sobs*. Totally fine.
*Dean handwaves Cas’s death. Sam brings him up because
he misses him. Dean says that they have to live and honor his sacrifice.
Okaaay? Except we’ve seen Cas die a lot before and it has *always* turned Dean
into a barely functional, alcoholic wreck. But this time: pie. Oh. Also? Good
luck living to honor Cas’s sacrifice, Dean. You’re gonna die. Cool, cooool.
*Barn. Dean dies in a barn. Dean first met Cas in a
barn. Look, there’s gonna be parallelism! It’s gonna be okay… oh. Right. This
is fine.
*Jenny. Oh, heeeey, this whole episode has forgotten
that Sam and Dean ever knew *anyone* except Bobby, but look, a random
human-turned-vampire from that one episode in season one! Yay?
*Cas is alive (apparently) but we don’t see him. Or
even hear him. Not even a tiny “Hello, Dean” off-screen while Dean is in Heaven.
Nada. Zilch. No, I’m good, I love unresolved arcs. Makes me all nice and
twitchy.
*Sam’s montage. Sam gets to “live his life,” but he is
never happy. He looks miserable the whole time. And we have no idea what he
does. Or who he married. Or why his kid has an anti-possession tattoo. Family
business? Just for funsies? A safety precaution only? The world may never know.
It Could Have Been Salvaged… Easily
This was never going to be the episode I wanted, and
that’s okay (ish). People have different visions for things. If this was the
episode we were going to get, it was always going to disappoint me, but it
didn’t have to hurt. Fix this very episode by:
*Removing the admittedly fun but not super interesting
opening montage and replacing it with some real indication of what *choices*
the boys have made about their lives. Make it clear that they got to live their
lives for some amount of time so that when Dean dies later it doesn’t feel like
Cas’s sacrifice is meaningless now.
*Letting Dean tell Sam what Cas said to him and
showing that Dean took it all to heart and was shook by the moment. (Alternatively,
if you want to keep that moment between Dean and Cas, which would be a nice
touch, let Dean talk to Cas in his absence. Like a prayer, as we’ve seen him do
countless times before.) Show him grieving (this can be healthier grieving than
he’d done in the past—that would be great! But show it.)
*Giving Dean’s death a little more weight in the
moment. It doesn’t have to be something super grand, but just. Not this shitty
falling against rebar in the wall like he’s some no-name extra in a cold open.
*Making it clear that Sam married Eileen in his
montage. He could communicate through sign language with his son, maybe, since
they would almost certainly teach any of their kids ASL whether they were Deaf
or HOH or not. Remove that glaring, awful “Dean” from the kid’s overalls, jeez.
There’s dialogue in Sam’s last moments. He can call his son “Dean.” We’ll get it,
promise. It’s not like naming your kid after relatives you admired is a super
uncommon thing or something. Let Sam be happy in that montage at some point,
Christ. (ESPECIALLY since we. have. seen. this. before. We have seen a montage
of Dean after Sam died (6x1). That was arguably a way worse situation
(Dean thought Sam was locked in Hell with Lucifer; Sam has no reason in 15x20
not to think Dean went to Heaven), Dean only had a year to deal, and while he
was not *good*, he never looked as despondent as Sam did throughout a montage
that covered decades.)
*Intersperse Sam’s montage with Dean in Heaven
reuniting with Cas. Ideally this would cut into a small moment with some
dialogue, but some unambiguous physical affection would have worked too. A
reunion hug like we’ve seen before. Dean pulls back and looks into Cas’s eyes.
Then he buries his head in Cas’s neck for a second like he did to the GD dog.
Then Dean starts back toward Baby, reaching his hand out for Cas to take. They
walk toward the car holding hands.
These changes would take up virtually no extra time,
would require only one more cast member (Misha), and while they would have
still not made a lot of us happy, Christ on a flatbread, would it have been
better.
Right, That’s Lunch
Okay, that’s me, kidlets.
If you were happy with the episode, yay! Seriously, I
would not wish what I am feeling on anyone.
If it disappointed you, boo. AO3 is thattaway.
If it *hurt*, I am so, so sorry. I am there
with you. You are not alone.
Remember:
I see what you see.
Your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.
Don’t tag creatives in your crit of their work.
Don’t put no beans up your nose.
We’ve been through much together.
Carry on.
