#Alchemy is S15

[drsilverfish]

The Cast of Heroes in 15x11 The Gamblers

So, following straight on from 15x10 The Hero’s Journey, we encounter the Goddess Fortuna in Alaska, who compares Sam and Dean to three mythological heroes.

Heracles/ Hercules and Iolaus (one of his male lovers) fighting the Hydra (one of the twelve labours of Hercules).

Malibu 83.AE.346, Caeretan hydria, c. 525 B.C. Main panel: Hercules slaying the Lernean hydra

Gilgamesh and Enkidu fighting the “Bull of Heaven

The Gilgamesh Cylinder Seal - Assyrian 7thC BC

Cú Chulainn carrying Ferdiad’s body (sculpture in Co Louth. Ireland) 

I’m even later to the party than usual this evening because it’s a particularly hectic work period. 

Looking forward to seeing all your takes on The Gamblers!

Firstly, I am ecstatic, as I’m sure many of you are - THANKYOU Meredith Glynn and Davy Perez - they friggin’ mentioned GILGAMESH. 

We’ve been talking about The Epic of Gilgamesh as the closest model in world literature for the epic-heroic love story between Dean and Cas for years. 

Gilgamesh, Hercules,  Cú Chulainn - those are the heroes Fortuna mentions. 

Three heroes from three different mythologies. What is their significance?

Cú Chulainn (Irish mythology) was a handsome warrior, the lover of many women, but with a true love, the lady Emer. He was the son of the God Lugh, God of the harvest. Tragically he killed his own son, Connla, not knowing who he was. 

He may also have been bisexual. His relationship with Ferdiad, his best friend and foster-brother, is described by Cat Mount in a scholarly article, “The Three Loves of Cúchulainn: The Impact of Warrior Relationships in The Táin” (2012) as follows:

“Cúchulainn’s relationships with Fergus, Laeg, and Ferdia demand attention. Each is different not only because each man is different, but because they depict separate types of relationships. The relationship with Fergus is based in the familial, while the relationship with Laeg is one of friendship. The relationship with Ferdia falls somewhere between the other two and, yet, is neither. Romantic is a term that can be used to describe this friendship.”  

http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/ulsterrising/ulsterrising.pdf 

Tragically,  Cú Chulainn kills Ferdiad in battle. 

Heracles/ Hercules (Greek/ Roman mythology) was also the son of a God, Zeus. In Greek mythology he was also bisexual, taking many male and female lovers. His most well-known male lovers were Iolaus and Hylas.

https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/art/2013/08/14/golden-age-denial-hercules-bisexual-demigod?pg=8 

Hercules also undewent great suffering. His famous twelve labours were penance for having killed his sons whilst in a state of madness induced by Zeus’ wife Hera (jealous as usual of Zeus’ eternal philanderings).  

Gilgamesh, from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, was, like Cú Chulainn and Hercules, part divine and part human. Enkidu was a “wild man” fashioned by the Gods to be his companion. Gilgamesh’s mother, Ninsun, interpreted her son’s dream which foretold the coming of Enkidu to him thus:

“This star of heaven which descended like a meteor from the sky; which you tried to lift,- but found too heavy, when you tried to move it it would not budge, and so you brought it to my feet; I made it for you, a goad and spur, and you were drawn as though to a woman. This is the strong comrade, the one who brings help to his friend in his need. He is the strongest of wild creatures, the stuff of Anu; born in the grass-lands and the wild hills reared him; when you see him you will be glad; you will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you. This is the meaning of the dream.”

http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.htm

Why Reference These Particular Heroes?

Well, yay for bisexual heroes - the queer subtext of S15 continues apace. 

Also, there are three of them, so we could, perhaps, map them to Sam, Dean and Cas.

But, I think there’s more than that. 

These heroes are part divine and part human. That fits with the alchemical themes of S14 and 15, where alchemy is a symbolic map of the soul’s journey to God, but also represents the recognition of the spark of divinity in man. This fits with the cosmic and earthly planes mirroring one another, which has been a feature of Supernatural (as above, so below) since Chuck tried to make Sam and Dean vehicles for a cosmic show-down between Michael and Lucifer, and, more rescently, the way Chuck and Amara’s break-up mirrored Dean and Cas’ break-up, and Sam’s direct human-divine connection to Chuck via the God-wound.

Chuck, so I think the ending goes, needs to recognise the “divine spark” in his creations (free will) instead of treating them as characters in his story and as “toys” (as Dean said in 15x09 The Trap). In other words, God needs to recognise the “divinity” in our heroes (just like Cú Chulainn and Hercules and Gilgamesh are part divine).   

And that’s the other element that’s interesting - because heroes lead epic but tragic lives in mythology. All these heroes killed people they loved - sons or comrades-in-arms/ lovers. 

That’s the ending Chuck wants for Sam and Dean - one brother kills the other. 

So, in as much as Chuck needs to recognise the “divine spark” in his creations, Sam and Dean need to recognise that they don’t have to be heroic tragic archetypes, they can instead, embrace the gloriousness of their humanity. 

Heroes get tragic endings, humans sometimes get happy ones. 

So there’s an as above, so below symmetry happening through the invocation of these three mythic heroes - God must come to recognise the divinity in his creations, and our heroes must come to recognise they don’t have to be larger-than-life (part divine) heroes forever, but can just, at the end, win their freedom to be free humans.  

I’ll say more about hero paralllels and Jack in another post. Suffice it to say that I don’t think Jack killing Chuck will turn out to the the “correct” doorway to cosmic and earthly freedom.     

[neven-ebrez]

Bringing this back since we’ve now seen what the water imagery was in relation to: the escape and resurrection of Eileen. I think Belphegor was supposed to be some kind of Lilith-adjacent construct (unlike the literal Chuck stand in I originally took him for), but the show still hasn’t been terribly clear with itself there. “Profoundly (bond) irritating” as he was, I don’t know whether to say Chuck actively tries to breakup Dean and Cas or not still. Which feels... weird? Lilith fully admits what she is, explains how she is written and why she’s doing what she’s doing. Belphegor... does not. Of course we were supposed to think Chuck was gone while Belphegor was around causing trouble for Dean and Cas, but it really seems Chuck was not really paying attention to what was going on then. So! I wonder if Chuck has some automatically generated narrative device that is just automatically programmed to prevent Dean and Cas from getting “together” for lack of a better term. Hmmmmmm

15x01, a look at the future through the past

Back home! I watched the episode last night and rewatched it just now. I’m sorry to say that I was baseline bored on most levels but the second time through things felt better (yay!) even if the bland factor was still there for me personally (I’m bored with most ghost stuff from SPN these days). Imo the characters basically served the plot of 15x01 instead of the other way around which is very Game of Thrones-y and 1000% not what I’m here for but I won’t talk about the details of that because I’m sure no one wants to hear that and I’m also sure things won’t stay that way long so I’ll talk about some other things instead. There are some things I can tell are a thing but I don’t know exactly what the shows means in depicting them, and others where I’m more confident in my interpretation so here we go.

I’m like 99% sure the demon in Jack is actually Chuck and that he’s basically trying to maintain his torture (I mean... the guy admitted to being a torturer ffs) of the Winchesters with the best viewing seat possible as it were (he even tells Dean point blank he’s a “fan”). For some reason only Dean and Cas got the focus for this (torture) tho and not Sam. With Dean it was the demon reminding him of how dark and brutal Dean can be himself (via his time with Alastair). Dean blows that off pretty quick and isn’t too visibly effected, commenting that it was a long time ago. With Cas the torture came in the demon’s possession of Jack himself, Cas saying bluntly that he can’t even look at Jack and that demonic possession is basically defilement. Cas is clearly more effected and Dean’s harsh “Jack is DEAD!” tonally recalled S13 in many ways. Also oddly the demon admits Dean is gorgeous but not the same is said of Cas, with the demon insulting him instead. Two interactions. Two wildly different responses. It’s the demon putting Dean and Cas at odds without any interaction needed from them themselves, though the latter comes in spades and is the only focused on “true” conflict of the episode, set against soft Sam/Dean exchanges.

The blend of Cas’ angelic nature along with his human nature was also heavily, heavily highlighted in the episode. It was probably the most highlighted thing in fact. Cas smiting and healing. Cas shooting a gun and throwing rocks. Cas tells Dean he wouldn’t starve to death in the crypt (which, on a side note, has huge Buffy vibes for me, along with Belphogor (sp?) calling the Hell rip or whatever the “Hellmouth”). Cas can see the demon’s demonic face easily despite episodes like 14x01 (also written by Dabb) where he can’t see a room full of them (I think I argued back then that Cas was willingfully trying to ignore and was annoyed with his angelic nature). Cas’ angelic side gets another highlight when Sam accidentally shoots Cas and he doesn’t get truly injured. This particular scene seemingly serves no other purpose other than to highlight Cas’ difference (as non-human) in general. Emotionally tho, Cas’ human side is on full display. He’s worried about the town’s people. He’s annoyed with both Sam and Dean for different reasons at different points. Cas bodily removes the demon from sharing the same space as him because the demon upsets him. Cas can not even LOOK at “Jack” but Dean (and Sam) can. As I said, it’s similar structurally to how S13 handled Dean dealing with Cas’ death in comparison to Sam moving on from it. It functions to show that for Cas his relationship with Jack is different from Sam and Dean’s, however otherwise similar in the fact that TFW all see Jack as their child, their family. It’s exactly like how Cas is different to Dean as compared to Sam.

Back onto demon “B” whatever tho. Interestingly, we never see the demon smoke into Jack. Then he just “”happens”” to know every spell needed to help the Winchesters but for Dean and Cas two things are required for sacrifice/gathering. In each, one component is dead-like and protecting (salt, goofer dust) and the other channels life/creation (a heart and angel blood). Each time there’s a duality in play. Curiously Sam is not involved in any of this with the demon for whatever reason, making the demon (within the season’s structure as presented so far) a primary component of Dean and Cas’ differences. They are tests of free will for them specifically in a way. What will each person “freely” give/obtain for the demon? To me, it just all screams this thing/demon is really just God fucking with them in every way he can but while maintaining some ally aligned position physically. It’s Chuck’s literal MO.

Also. The show is back to Dean blanketly treating Cas like shit. Which we know happens in waves constantly but as a Cas fan it’s still annoying to watch for the umpteenth fucking time. And they haven’t even pinpointed the *exact* reason here for all the snapping (yeah, pacing, I know). The audience has to do some connecting the dots here I feel. They have to have a certain understanding of how Dean needs Cas. I *think* the takeaway is that Dean uses Cas as an emotional punching bag when he’s actually mad at himself and that instead of getting so angry with himself these days that Dean’s decided yelling at Cas is a better/healthier way for him to deal with himself. Which is absolutely unfair and devastating to Cas, but it’s what Cas (unfortunately) has become to Dean. It’s like when he told Cas he was dead to him at the end of S14 because of Jack killing Mary. Dean’s really mad at he, himself, for ignoring the warning that was always there. Not really Cas. But Dean has yet to apologize and/or rectify this. This is the (ongoing) problem for Dean and Cas. Point blank.

At this point if I was Cas I’d just leave and not come back. He doesn’t deserve the way Dean constantly treats him. Dean doesn’t “need” Cas like this but he’s become comfortable using him like this. This is so jarring from the understanding Dean shows Cas in late S12. And from the grief arc he has in S13, followed by the relief he shows when Cas returns. Dean never learns how to properly “claim” Cas, however. Looks like this time instead of killing Cas the show (like in S8) is gonna have Cas choose to stay away (after 15x03?) I guess, prompting Dean to do some reflecting or whatever following this (What is Cas to me? Why do I actually need him? How should I treat him?). But honestly I’m not thinking of the reflecting right now. Or the “after” or whatever. I’m just thinking about how shitty Cas is being treated RIGHT NOW and it 1000% makes me wanna just drop the show and not watch anymore until it’s over. I’m just not interested in torturing myself for months watching this slowly drag out but apparently I’m so masochistic and love Cas so fucking much that I will. GODDAMMIT

Onto “pipes” I guess. This is where I point out that I don’t know what the show is going for here but I’ll throw around some ideas. Pipes had a lot to do with the episode. Sam thinks he hears water flowing in a pipe in the crypt and they think they can escape through the sewers. Wrong. Later, Sam tells the sheriff that a pipeline burst near the town. Lies. And lastly there’s a plumbing truck outside the home where the clown ghost slaughtered the birthday party (uh... where’s the bodies btw?). So everywhere we have the imagery of pipes bursting and needing to be fixed. Which, water has nothing to do with Hell, not really. I guess the Hell “rip” is kinda acting like a burst pipe?? Water is usually associated with angels/Cas/change tho. My best guess is that it’s repurposed Michael imagery since good ol’ Bel-whatever let us know Michael’s cage door is busted open and he’s just sitting there for now apparently. I’m not confident in my interpretation here at all though. All I can tell is that busted pipes as imagery (something likely associated with lying/wrong) for something is a thing.

In general I’m going to say 15x01 didn’t even feel like a Dabb episode to me. I honestly wouldn’t have guessed he wrote it. Since I didn’t care about the random people under attack (women running and scared and not tougher is always a hard sell for me personally) I found myself frequently saying “why aren’t they doing _______?” a lot during the episode. Ghosts needing to run? Why? I mean, I get the show wanted to show how the magical border worked but this could have been done in many other more effective ways utilizing tension more. It almost felt like the show didn’t know what to do with its S1 self and so visually everything ended up looking so very incredibly cheesy and not just in the way the colors are no longer desaturated. It literally looks like the show can’t go back into what it was. We saw this visually with a sign that cropped up in several shots as Sam and Cas tried to get the girl and her mom to safety. It was a cul de sac sign.

Here’s a video on why cul de sacs as a design became popular. In short, following the rise in popularity of the automobile neighborhoods are designed for safe car use, above all else. They don’t want outsiders passing through and they want things to be slower. When cars got popular streets were redesigned away from the traditional city “grid” (where accidents happened at intersections most commonly) with features that instead had safety in mind. I choose to interpret this as a visual comment on the show’s design. The Sam n Dean show is like a city grid, dangerous, while the Sam, Dean, Cas, Rowena, and Jack show offers more “safety”. That’s why we get it framed like this imo, between Sam and Cas. Things looked one way before Cas, and another after. Things have changed from the grid and they aren’t going back, for a variety of reasons.

Since the episode title recalls the movie Back to the Future I thought we’d have more of a visual/dialogue tie in tbh. I’ll try to talk about what we thematically did tho. BTTF is a movie about a boy overcoming his impulsiveness to be an alpha male who isn’t scared. This wasn’t a goal of the boy himself necessarily but it was an effect had upon him just the same by the story and his experiences. The movie bookends on this character development. In between the movie is about the disconnect of generations, how kids don’t see their parents in the way they see themselves and vice versa. It’s also about trying to set right familial relationships into proper categories. Marty’s mom, Lorene, accidentally falls in love with her own son instead of Marty’s father, George. Marty’s existence is then threatened and he must spend the movie trying to understand his parents and help them fall properly in love, thus saving and changing himself and them. We only get shades of these themes in the episode, like when the demon (in Jack’s body) calls Dean gorgeous and it makes him uncomfortable. Divorce (unhappy marriage) is also touched upon with the sleepover/makeover girls. In BTTF Lorene and George do not have a great marriage as George lacks confidence but Marty’s interactions with George in the past help change this in the future and their family is much better for it.

We are told in PR that Dean’s “conditioning” and him changing from that is a big part of what SPN is and has always been about. This is similar to how Marty must learn to properly deal with bullies (as he sees his father as weak and overcompensates to distinguish himself from him) and not letting them have power over you. Chuck is like Biff in this structural comparison. Biff is someone we watch become depowered over the course of the movie and I feel this is similar to what the show will likely do regarding Chuck. I could go further in depth here but these are the general thematic points this episode alone addresses. Only with Marty’s character development does he stand to have a happy life with his girlfriend, Jennifer. Back to the Future ends with another call to adventure and its script is widely regarded as “perfect” by many. Quite the structural comparison for SPN to be making. We’ll see. We’re currently stuck in the past for now. Onward, to the future...

[dimples-of-discontent]

“Absence, darkness, death: things which are not”: 14x18 watching notes

“What’s Deal with Catharsis?”

Let’s talk about catharsis. 13x04 has been haunting me since it aired. I couldn’t get over Dean sitting on a therapist’s sofa asking “So what’s the deal with catharsis?”. I know it’s obvious but it is also a dramatic term and we are hardcore missing some catharsis in this show. Essentially, it’s the purging of negative emotions that are typically repressed which, in drama, enables renewal or restoration. One of SPN’s narrative problems, for me, is that it gives us precious little in the way of catharsis. There are notable exceptions (12x22 when Dean confronts Mary in his dream, for instance) but for the most part negative emotions are repressed, sublimated, and remain unaddressed. 

This is especially (haha, autocorrect turned that to “epically,” which is also true) for Dean and Cas. And it’s not sustainable. We need some purgation of their negative emotions, we NEED them to know crucial bits of information that reveal their true feelings instead of repressing them: Cas killed a million Deans but Dean doesn’t know! Dean was nihilistically depressed when Cas died but Cas doesn’t know! Cas sacrificed his soul (and happiness) to save Jack and Dean doesn’t know! The layering of dramatic irony is all very well and good, but we need to stop it at some point.

“A quintessence even from nothingness”: Absence and Negative Space

Do I actually think that will happen soon? No. I was interested in “Absence” being the title of this episode since absence is defined by the things it is not. Cas explains it in terms of Jack--not bad but the absence of good. And that’s kind of where we are with DeanCas too. It’s not definitively one thing (romance) but it’s the absence of any other convincing explanation. If they aren’t these other things--brothers, friends, war buddies--then what are they? “Absence” also refers to Mary, of course, who was absent from their lives once and now is again to be experienced not as a person but a lack. Their whole maternal relationship is defined by feelings of loss and absence so in a sad and terrible way it’s returned to normal. SPN is full of things that are not definitively one thing but which are NOT a bunch of other things and, in all cases, the slipperiness of the definition is itself the narrative problem.

SHAMELESS RENAISSANCE POETRY PLUG please go read this poem by John Donne on the winter solstice, which is all about death and renewal:

Study me then, you who shall lovers be At the next world, that is, at the next spring;        For I am every dead thing,        In whom Love wrought new alchemy.               For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness; He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

It’s called, “A Noctournal upon St. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day” and I adore it. Also...it (along with a lot of Donne) seems so SPN-appropriate that I think he would have been a fan. (Donne is the preacher who wrote the “no man is an island” sermon and asked “not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”. He had a massive command of rhetoric, yo.)

Anyway, “absence, darkness, death: things which are not” is what the title immediately made me think of. Jack promised a new beginning, forged from the darkness that was Lucifer, and part of me is still convinced that this is what he’ll bring, despite appearances. We all predicted early on that he’d have a moment to go darkside and, yeah, this is it! His choices would also matter--because this is Team Free Will--but it would then be his choice to act evilly. Even if that happens, though, he can choose not to and part of me thinks he will. We don’t have other Big Bads on deck for the end of this season/start of S15 so I’m assuming episodes 19 and 20 will focus on the Jack problem until it reaches a crisis that carries us through to the summer. But how they will resolve it, I hope, has more to do with the power Jack holds to create as well as destroy. Or maybe Chuck’s reappearance will set this balance off? We’ll see.

Also, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” which I’m going to keep an eye on as the season goes on.

Destiel is Pain

It’s fascinating that the promos were edited to suggest that this was an episode with MAXIMUM DEANCAS DRAMA OMG!! when it kinda...wasn’t. I know @occamshipper​ pointed out that they edited it just like a het romance drama, centering on the “you’re dead to me” and building up the angst and tension. And that was there, but it wasn’t everything. PR isn’t showrunning, yes, but it does mean something; it means they think the GA cares. And that’s kind of a big fucking deal at this point because what the GA cares about determines what we’ll see more of in the show. It’s not definitive at all. But it’s a trend and an important one that some fine folks have been tracking for a while.

The “you’re dead to me” was not not a big deal--and I had hoped very much that we’d get an apology along the lines of, “Cas, I’m sorry. What I said--I put the whole Jack thing on you and that’s not fair. I did the same thing. We all did. You didn’t fail us.” Let’s cross fingers and hope we hear that the next time they talk (since Sam stopped Cas from trying to give comfort in this episode...pray4Sam who was SUCH a brother-in-law/marriage counselor here). But it’s a Buckleming next so I don’t hold out hope. In any case, it’s a big deal because while Sam now knows that Dean doesn’t consider the whole thing Cas’s fault Cas doesn’t know that and will continue to go on thinking that a) he’s only good the Winchesters insofar as he’s “useful” and b) he’s a failure to Dean specifically. THAT’S TERRIBLE AND WE NEED TO CORRECT IT IMMEDIATELY!!

But we won’t correct it immediately because the show is riding DeanCas tension as basically the A plot at this point. Building angst to a breaking point surrounding Jack just emphasizes that. Jack caused our biggest DeanCas rift to date, both by Cas’s unwavering support in him that led to betraying Dean (running off with SOME WOMAN after stealing the colt from under his pillow after the mixtape scene, layering romance trope on romance trope) and by coming into existence the same day Cas died. Jack’s essential good or evil nature has been the biggest disagreement in their relationship for 3 seasons now so it makes sense to center a crisis on it. 

And Dean doesn’t even KNOW about Castiel’s deal with The Empty! He doesn’t know that Cas traded his soul to return Jack’s to earth...only to have it be destroyed. True, The Empty said it would only come when Cas was happy and the thick angst we have now doesn’t suggest he’ll be happy anytime soon, but I think Dean and Sam are about to find out about the deal and Dean’s about to be pissed the fuck off at Cas for doing something SO STUPID (so like a Winchester). Maybe in the same conversation where Dean apologizes we can have Cas tell him the truth about the deal? Like, can they talk please? The real villain was miscommunication all along though, right?

Zombie Moms

Just a little sidebar to tell myself to return to 13x12, “Various and Sundry Villains” (a Yockey ep) and the two witches who were able to get Rowena the Book of the Damned (crucial in this episode, as Rowena unwittingly leaves it with Jack) try to resurrect their mom and bring her back...wrong. Because necromancy is extremely tough (and why didn’t Jack need any victim blood to bring Mary back the way that the Plum sisters did??) what they bring back is just a murderous simulacrum that was, honestly, what I was afraid they were planning to do with Mary. I’m relieved that they didn’t.

Both episodes owe a great debt to the Buffy episode “Forever” (5x17) where SPOILERS FOR BUFFY after their mother’s death her younger sister attempts to bring her back, only to realize at the last second that it’s not possible and the thing outside the door is a horror. It’s a very intense episode about grief, following “The Body” (5x16), one of the most devastating TV episodes to ever air. It was obvious to me that Yockey et al. were using that episode in 13x12, though not totally clear how. They even cast the zombie Mom like Joyce!! 

In any case, in 13x12 the sisters’ refusal to let their mom go was an example of the toxic sibling codependency that Rowena used to kill them (as they beat each other to death, one using a hammer just like demon!Dean). In 14x18 Jack’s desire to bring Mary back is an example of his being unable to cope with the reality of his actions and his fear of losing the Winchesters. That’s not toxic codependency, but it is a refusal to go through the stages of grief. There’s definitely something going on here--and going on about Moms--that I can’t pick apart now but want to (or hope someone else will!!).

On which note, my chemo fatigue has found me so I’m gonna sign off. Apologies for typos or lack of clarity. I have really missed doing episode notes, though, so maybe I’ll be back to it soon. I’m psyched to see how this season wraps up, how about you?

[drsilverfish]

The Absence of the Feminine in 15x19 Inherit the Earth

I’ve been thinking about the fact that Amara’s absence from 15x19 Inherit the Earth felt... really disappointing. And how that deliberately parallels the disappointment the narrative itself creates at Cas’ absence in 15x19 too (Dean running to the door of the bunker, only to be faced with the huge let down that is Lucifer).  

I’ve previously written about the ways in which Amara and Castiel have been paralleled in the SPN narrative here: 

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/133295635934/amara-and-castiel 

and here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/633588894701682688/amara-and-castiel-parallels-in-15x17

I was hoping Amara would, as an active power, evidently, transform Chuck from the inside in 15x19 Inherit the Earth; i.e. that feminine power in the narrative would come rushing back.

And in one sense, of course, that did play out. Amara did transform Chuck. 

The ineffable power of the Divine, including Amara, moved on from its vessel Chuck (the Demiurge, or lesser God in Gnosticism) who had proved unworthy, and into its new vessel, Jack Kline Novak Winchester; part human and part divine.  

And inside Jack, Amara’s Goddess-power is in harmony, and in balance, with the God-power of the universe; Creation and Destruction, Alpha and Omega, the End and the Beginning, united at last, in an alchemical Sacred Marriage. 

Indeed, the first power Jack exhibited, after he exploded in The Empty and returned to earth, was a power more compatible with The Darkness and with endings (Amara’s traditional function). He kept sucking the life out of vegetation in 15x19:

Still, Amara’s voice and her form were absent in 15x19.

Just as Castiel was absent in 15x19.

The disappointment at their absence, which the narrative itself creates in relation to Cas, fits with the metanarrative feat S15 is attempting to pull off, in which the current SPN writers’ room drags elements of SPN’s own narrative - personified in Bad Writer Chuck (who is partly a writers’ room self-send-up, and, perhaps, partly, no doubt, a stand in for Exec Level at the CW Network).

God (Chuck), as Metatron said, in 8x23 Sacrifice, was always “a bit of sexist.”

And so has the show been, let’s acknowledge that; the writers’ room is :-).  

So, of course, in the final chapter written by Chuck, 15x19, (although, notice, in that episode, that the Winchesters and Jack start to take over as narrators, as they begin to win) the feminine would be absent. 

Chuck has always tried to write the feminine (which is symbolically equated with love in SPN) out of the narrative. He wanted a story about monsters, not love.

Chuck’s removal of the feminine from the SPN narrative on the earthly plane, mirrored his original sin, of locking away his sister, Amara, starting with the original fridgings of Mary Winchester and Jess. Followed by (remember Old Sexist SPN) the “ganking” of such Biblical anti-woman depictions as the Monstrous Eve, The Whore of Babylon and Lilith.    

As a result, of course, of all the dead, or absent, or monstrous women, Chuck accidentally super-charged his story with homo-eroticism (lol) but that wasn’t his intention. Castiel was, in Chuck’s view “broken” because Cas rebelled and wrote his own (queer) love script. 

So, Chuck tried to remove Cas from the story too; his ideal SPN ending being a Winchester Brothers Only Murder-Suicide, another revenge tragedy. We saw that played out on the angelic plane in the final fratricidal killing of Lucifer by Michael in 15x19.

But Chuck didn’t kill Amara, although his sibling rivalry with her was his driving creative force. He thought he’d won, when he absorbed her in 15x17 Unity. But, she simply moved on from him, to a higher plane, united with Jack. 

Now that Chuck’s power over the story has ended, I am hoping the feminine will return to the narrative in 15x20, in the form of Mary Winchester, Donna and Jodie, Charlie, Eileen, and... Castiel. Castiel, who has been symbolically placed: 1) through his parallelling with Amara, and with Eileen; and 2) through Chuck’s repeated attempts to banish him, in the place of “the feminine”.

Let’s hope the narrative can now, fully, take Becky Rosen’s note (from 15x04 Atomic Monsters):

“It’s feeling a little… thin? Low stakes? It’s fun to hear the boys’ voices, but a story is only as good as its villain, and these villains are just not feeling very… dangerous? Not to mention, there’s no classic rock. No one even mentions Cas. The climax is a little stale.”  

[drsilverfish]

The Symbolism of Adam’s Rib in 15x17 Unity

In Genesis, Eve was created by God from Adam’s rib:

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

(King James Bible)

In 15x17, Seraphina takes out Adam’s rib and gives it to Dean in order to provide the final ingredient (apparently) in the cosmic Jack-bomb designed, according to Billie’s plan, to kill God by smushing Jack’s Nephilim grace and his human soul together.

It would seem Chuck wrote that part, however, in order to deliver the rib to Jack as an agent of Jack’s destruction. Chuck has wanted to kill Jack (whose Nephilim power seems to be a genuine threat to him) for some time - remember 14x20 Moriah. 

But, perhaps Adam’s rib, which in Genesis gave rise to the feminine, is another part of the alchemical and Jungian symbology SPN has laterly been drawing on. 

Just as Chuck has absorbed Amara (the feminine God-principle) so Jack has now absorbed Adam’s rib (originally the generative element in the creation of woman). 

The feminine presently seems destroyed, lost, gone from the narrative (as Mary Winchester was apparently killed by Jack in 14x18 Absence) and that’s always been Chuck’s narrative. He locked up his sister, Amara, the feminine God-principle, for aeons previously after all, and the origin story of his Winchester Gospels was the fridging of Mary Winchester, followed by the mirror-murder of Jess. Chuck, as Metatron pointed out in 8x23 Sacrifice (also the writers’ room’s own comment on itself)  is, “A bit of a sexist...”

BUT, I suggest, the feminine principle, which in Jungian, binary terms, as the anima, is the internal, unconcious, feminine psychic element within the male psyche, will return. Within those terms, the feminine principle has been coded, in the SPN narrative, as love. 

It is Amara, the feminine God-principle, whom we see now truly loves and appreciates creation in 15x17, whilst Chuck has become wrathy and destructive.

I noticed that when Amara was trying to get Chuck to appreciate angelic devotion in Heaven, and he snaps the angels out of his way, he says to her: 

“Don’t worry, they’re not gone, just... away..”

Those of you who’ve been following me for a while know I’ve always thought that’s what happened to Mary - she was zapped “away” somewhere, rather than killed:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184131452324/14x18-absence-the-games-continue 

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184458723054/mary-is-watching-over-you-from-a-mirror

and that we will see her again at The End.

Many metas have been written about how Dean has been coded as “feminine” within the SPN narrative, in a variety of ways, e.g. because he had to be a substitute “Mom” to Sam when Mary died, e.g. because in the narrative filmic codes SPN has frequently drawn on, to be queer-coded (for men) is, frequently, to be feminine-coded (Dean’s love for Rhonda Hurley’s pink and satiny panties etc. etc.).  

Chuck saw Dean as his own (”mascline”) mirror, in his 15x17 narrative. And in Chuck’s storied ending, he wanted Dean’s “...sense of duty, his rage, winning out in the end.” The “good son” imploding, and killing his sibling - an earthly mirror for Chuck’s own fantasies, just as Chuck has attempted to banish or absorb his own sibiling, Amara. 

But Dean’s love for Sam won out, and Chuck didn’t get his Winchester murder-suicide finale.

And through these final episodes, the last trials of Team Free Will 2.0, love (coded as the feminine God-principle, the anima etc. in the narrative) will win out again, on the cosmic, as well as an earthly plane. 

Because, out of Adam’s rib, came Eve. 

[drsilverfish]

The Alchemical Sign of the Rose in 15x19 Inherit the Earth

15x19 Inherit the Earth is a very complex episode, because it both has to function, on one level, as a ridiculous shit-show of a miserable, cheesy, “Bros only” “ending” (but plausible enough, for a certain audience fraction) AND, on another level, as a piece of profound synthesis, for many of the symbolic themes which have run through the Dabb era.

For those of you who have been following the alchemical symbolism in Dabb’s S14 and S15, well lookeee here - Rose Street is the name of the street outside the Church of Michael:

And look at this amazing shot, as Sam and Dean and Jack enter the church, which is of Christ’s crown of thorns, from above, shot so it looks like a stone rose:

Rosicrucianism was a Christian mystical order (dating to the 17thC). The Rosicrucian cross at the top of this post (from an 18thC manuscript) is red for the blood of Christ (sacrifice) with a heart hidden inside. The gold cross represents the spiritual gold within human nature.

And gold is the culmination of the “Great Work” of the alchemists; turning lead into gold as an allegory for the soul’s journey to God, which is also symbolic, for Jung, of the psyche’s journey towards self-integration. Dabb’s writers’ room has been drawing on alchemical and Jungian symbolism for a long time now. 

And in this episode, in a profound act of psychic self-integration, Dean finally puts down his father’s revenge quest; John Winchester’s and God the Father’s mirrored revenge quests, on Earth as it is in Heaven. He refuses to kill the monster that is Chuck, although Chuck has tortured them mightily; he refuses to enact bloody revenge; he breaks the cycle of Chuck’s revenge narrative (which, notice, Chuck is still urging him on to complete, even as he is cowering on the floor, demanding that the Winchesters kill him). 

Why does Dean put down the rage of revenge? Because Cas has finally taught him to see who he is, inside; that, at his core, Dean is not rage and violence, but love. 

And Jack-the-Divine-Unity’s message (he who contains both the divine feminine, Amara, and the divine masculine, Chuck, in balance within him) is that divinity is immanent (in-dwelling). Divinity (spiritual gold) is within us:

Jack: “I’ll be in every drop of falling rain, every speck of dust that the wind blows...”

“People don’t need to pray to me, or to sacrifice to me, they just need to know they’re a part of me, and to trust in that.”

The rose, as well as being a symbol of spiritual love and sacrifice, also has an earthly symbolism, of course, as a flower we associate with romantic love. Remember this, from Beren’s 9x06 Heaven Can’t Wait?

The shot shows us Castiel, ready for his “date” with Nora, holding a rose behind his back, but we see it, knowing it’s from Dean’s POV, watching Cas leave from the driver’s seat of the Impala. Castiel’s rose points towards Dean; in visual subtext, the shot tells us, the rose (Castiel’s romantic love) is, and should be, for Dean, not Nora:

The Rose

“A highly complex symbol; it is ambivalent as both heavenly perfection and earthly passion; the flower is both Time and Eternity, life and death, fertility and virginity. In the Occident, the rose and lily occupy the position of the lotus in the Orient. In the symbolism of the heart, the rose occupies the central point of the cross, the point of unity. The red and white rose together represent the union of fire and water, the union of opposite. In Alchemy, the rose is wisdom and the rosarium the Work; it is also the rebirth of the spiritual after the death of the temporal. In Hebrew Qabalism, the center of the rose is the sun and the petals the infinite, but harmonious, diversities of Nature. The rose emanates from the Tree of Life. In Hinduism, the lotus parallels the symbolism of the Mystic Rose as a spiritual center, especially in the chakras. For Rosicrucians, the Rose-cross is the Mystic Rose as wheel and cross; the rose is the divine light of the universe and the cross the temporal world of pain and sacrifice. The rose grows on the Tree of Life which implies regeneration and resurrection. The rose in the center of the cross is the quaternary of the elements and the point of unity.”

J.C. Cooper's Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (1978), pp. 141-142

Divine love has achieved integration on the Heavenly plane, thanks to Jack’s integration of Chuck and Amara in harmony within him; the Hieros Gamos, the Sacred Marriage, the culmination of the “Great Work”.

Surely now, the narrative symmetry suggests, it must achieve integration on the earthly plane (in 15x20).

As above, so below. 

My usual disclaimer applies; reading this symbology does not promise a rainbow of obviousness. It just hopes for one :-)   

[drsilverfish]

Dean’s 17 Cavities in 15x10 The Hero’s Journey

Seventeen is a pretty specific number, right?

I’ve already written about the way in which the dentist’s chair sequence in 15x10 makes specific, subtextual, reference to Dr. Freud, who wrote, in The Interpretation of Dreams, that dreams about teeth falling out were repressed sexual anxiety dreams.

And why would Dean be suffering from (subtextual) sexual anxiety? 

Because, he’s just confessed more of his feelings, and on his knees no less, to Castiel, than he’s ever confessed before. 

Garth probes Dean’s teeth and finds seventeen cavities.

In subtext, Garth has always had a bit of a crush on Dean. In subtext, Garth the werewolf helps Dean learn to tap-dance in the dentist’s chair dream-sequence as a metaphor for self-acceptance (in part) of Dean’s own “monstrous” side (his queer closeted anxiety). And after that dance sequence, Dean is able, back up out of the dentist’s chair, to admit to Garth that he smells good too (a bit more, subtextual, bisexual self-acceptance), and to look longingly at Garth and Bess dancing, wishing (we can infer) for his own “dance partner”.  He thinks he’d be good at it <3. 

For those of you who’ve been following the Jungian and alchemical symbolism in S14 and S15, the number 17 might ring a bell as the path, on the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, between Tiphareth (Integraton/ Beauty) and Binah (Wisdom/ Understanding):

That pathway is said to be linked to the Tarot card The Lovers (here reproduced from the Crowley-Harris deck):

This card doesn’t simply symbolise the meeting of two lovers on the physical plane, but also the “sacred marriage”, which, in Jungian alchemy (which views alchemical texts as metaphors for psychic forces) it is the meeting of the Self and the Shadow, the integration of “masculine” and “feminine” principles within the self. 

Dean has just been on an underworld journey to Purgatory 2.0 (a metaphor for a journey into the unconscious) and has come face to face with his Shadow-self, in the form of admitting, in his prayer to Cas, to the rage that he inherited from his childhood trauma and which has, up to this point (because it hadn’t been confronted) often controlled him, turning him into someone who acts out like his father did.

So, in subtext, Dean’s seventeen cavities link to The Lovers tarot card, and thus symbolise, a) Dean’s “hero’s journey” towards greater acceptance of his bisexuality, b) Dean’s psychic journey towards greater integration of his self and his Shadow-self, c) Dean’s psychic journey towards greater integration of his “softer” side (the side that wants to dance) with his exterior “hardass” side (the side his father approved of), and d) also symbolises Castiel as Dean’s potential life-partner. All of these are, of course, clearly linked. 

Not only that, but this integration of Self and Shadow on the earthly plane has been, and will again, be mirrored on the cosmic plane. 

Chuck is unbalanced at present, because he has “broken up” with Amara, and he is not facing his own Shadow self (whatever it is he has repressed about himself). Therefore, he is acting out and behaving “monstrously”. Chuck needs to achieve the same kind of psychic growth Dean is in the process of achieving - the creator must learn from his creation. 

N.B: As ever, my reading of the queer subtext in SPN does not promise a rainbow parade of obviousness at the end.  But subtext IS part of narrative.

[drsilverfish]

Rowena’s Symbolic and Alchemical “Return of the Feminine” in 15x08

I’ve been talking for a while about how Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of his version of the grim-dark bros murder-suicide conflict narrative he’s writing:

1) Pouffing Becky somewhere unknown (an AU?) in 15x04 Atomic Monsters

2) Mary Winchester’s second (apparent) death in S14

3) Threatening more women Dean and Sam care about, Eileen, Donna and Jodie, in 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven

By contrast, we’ve also had the return of the feminine in S15 (contra Chuck):

1) Amara’s triumphant return, clothed in an f-you glorious shade of yellow like the sun (casting off her type-casting as The DarknessTM)

2) Eileen’s return from the dead, thanks to Rowena and Sam’s magic

3) Rowena’s return, after her sacrifice to save the world from Chuck’s rift into Hell, as the new Queen of Hell

The symbolism of Rowena’s attire and throne in 15x08, the episode of her return, is interesting.

She’s dressed in red, which is, in Western culture, a symbol of harlotry (the “scarlet woman”) which feels like a kind of f-you to Chuck’s (and the earlier writers’ room’s) shitty writing of the feminine as monstrous: Ruby as an evil sexual temptress archetype; Eve as monstrous; the Whore of Babylon as monstrous; Abaddon as a bitch femme-fatale - and all “righteously” “ganked” by our male heroes (basically a bunch of Biblical fan-fiction reproducing Chuck’s patriarchal BS). 

Whilst Rowena was likewise killed by one of our heroes, she chose the manner of her death, and Sam acted (reluctantly) on her instructions. The pattern was broken. Just as it was previously and most dramatically broken in S11 when Amara turned out not to be the next evil villainess in need of ganking (hurrah) but a wronged God-entity entitled to an apology from Chuck himself. That was the origin-point for the great turn-to-the-feminine in Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative, which also brought Mary Winchester back from the dead and into the narrative again (whose fridging was the original inciting incident for the Winchesters’ bro-story).

Rowena’s red dress therefore also symbolises a stage (rubedo) in the alchemical process, for those of you who’ve been following my alchemical meta and discussions on S14 and S15, which is the stage which comes before the “great work”, symbolised by the “sacred marriage”. In Jung’s configuration/ reinterpretation of medieval alchemy, the sacred marriage symbolises the integration of the masculine and feminine (the anima and the animus, the self and the Shadow) in the psyche.

The universe needs both Amara and Chuck, for balance (beginnings and endings, dark and light) but Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of the story, following his original, Ur-sin, of locking away his God-sister unjustly. 

But despite him, the feminine is returning, filled with power, both on a cosmic level AND in the psyche’s of our heroes, as they encounter their Shadow-selves and achieve (or rather, are in the process of achieving) psychic growth, emotional maturity and wholeness.    

Rowena is sitting on a three-headed serpent throne. 

Firstly, the serpent is the symbol in the Bible of The Fall, which places the blame on the feminine, on Eve, as the original temptress. So we can read this as a reclamation of that symbol in the service of feminine power.

Secondly, three headed serpents or dragons appear in alchemical symbolism:

 The heads are often coloured in three of the colour stages of alchemy (black,white, yellow, red).

Nazari’s “Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals” (1599)

https://www.alchemywebsite.com/Alchemical_Symbolism_Triple_headed_snakes.html

The three-headed dragon/ snake symbolises, in alchemical texts, the integration of the three elements (of the universe and of “man”); of soul, spirit (or mind) and body, symbolised by mercury, sulfur and salt. 

And, as you can see, the three-headed dragon/ snake is sometimes depicted (as in the first image) in conjunction with an Ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail) which is a symbol of death and rebirth as the ascendance of the soul to God in the allegorical undertanding of medieval alchemy or, in Jung’s later interpretation, of the integration of the psyche, after the underworld journey to encounter the Shadow. 

Rowena of course has, in dying, returned, transformed and more powerful than before - her own Ouroboros narrative. 

So, cosmically and internally, the SPN narrative, drawing on alchemical themes,  is progressing towards the re-integration of the feminine, both above and below, so Rowena’s powerful return tells us. And thus, towards the union of the earthly and the divine (as currently evident in the God-wound connection between Sam and Chuck), light and dark, self and Shadow, beginning and end.

[drsilverfish]

Nothing Gold Can Stay... (15x04 Atomic Monsters)

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Hey everyone, as ever, I am catching up British-time, so I haven’t jumped into your posts yet, but I’m looking forward to it!

I’m sure there are some great gifs and discussions already out there about Dean and his “man meat” grief-eating. 

But I thought I’d start with Veronica and Robert Frost.

Those of you who’ve been following mine or @occamshipper​ ‘s musings on the use of alchemical themes in Dabb-era SPN will know that gold was highly significant to the medieval alchemists. It was their ultimate goal, to turn “base metal” (lead) into gold, and that was understood as a metaphor (or a mirror on the earthly plane) for the refinement of the soul on its journey to God. 

Next week’s episode, 15x05, is titled  Proverbs 17.3, and in the Bible, Proverbs 17.3 reads (King James version):

The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold:

But the LORD trieth the hearts

Gold is, officially, a theme. As is the symbolic red of the heart.

As Becky tells Chuck, it’s not the monsters (ooh shade at the Leviathan, whom Chuck thinks were “great”, just like he thought the ending of Game of Thrones was “great”) which SPN fans are really interested in, it’s the emotional interactions between the characters - i.e. their hearts. 

Becky, in Perez’ metafictional commentary, is the fan-fiction representative who has come to understand the SPN story better than sucky origin-writer Chuck. She knows it’s about the emotional notes, the heartfelt conversations between the hero characters (including Cas, since she shades his non-mention all too often in Chuck’s MOTW stories) - aka the real “gold” of the story.

Interesting also, in terms of alchemical colour symbolism, are Sam’s God-wound induced “red visions”, which seem to be of an AU in which Sam has succumbed to his old demon-blood addiction (symbolic of his S5 apparent “destiny” of possession by Lucifer):

I was waiting for the Ouroboros (spiral/ circular narrative) reference to 5x04 The End (in its numerical correspondence to 15x04). And here it is, because Sam in the red-vision in 15x04 speaks in a similar voice to Lucifer!Sam in The End. Dean in the 15x04 red vision is a desperate fighter and Sam has said “Yes” to the demonic, just as was the case in 5x04 The End.:

In alchemy, there are four traditional colour-stages along the alchemical transformational road from lead to gold - nigredo (blackening) albedo (whitening) citrinitas (yellowing) and rubedo (reddening). Reddening is the final stage before gold. So Sam’s red-visions, and the gold which becomes a theme in 15x04 by means of the quotation from Robert Frost’s beautiful poem, are linked pieces of alchemical symbolism. 

Their meaning, I think, is that just as Amara’s link to Dean through the Mark of Cain changed Amara for the better (she learned about love through experiencing Dean’s “heart” through the Mark in S11, thus shaking off The DarknessTM to become clothed in yellow, the colour of the sun, at the start of S15), so Sam’s link to Chuck through the God-gun (of equalising/ revenge) will (hopefully, eventually) change Chuck for the better. A balance of powers - the feminine God-principle and the masculine God-principle, both learning compassion and becoming their higher selves (achieving the spiritual synthesis of “gold”) through their links to the (red) hearts of the Winchesters.

That means suffering for the Winchesters along the way, of course, as they too, undergo the alchemical process of self-transformation by (eventually) fully facing their Shadows (their unconscious); Sam’s fear of being permanently “contaminated” by the demon-blood fed to him as a baby, and Dean’s fear of abandonment (stemming from the loss of his mother) which leads him to be over-controlling and to act out and push people (ahem, Cas) away.    

But back to Veronica. Veronica who quotes Robert Frost’s lovely poem in her tribute speech to her “best friend” Suzy (possibly, her lover - that subtextual reading is certainly available).

Veronica is a fascinating character, because she is “read wrong”, by Dean in particular, who thinks she’s the vampire, the one killing her cheerleader rivals in order to get the top spot. And he’s wrong because, as Sam points out, she has braces, a no-no for vamp-teeth. Dean is really sarcastic about the memorial speech Veronica is practising for Suzy, of whom she says, “I’m lost without Suzy, it’s like a piece of my heart is gone.”  

Here is Dean, being a sarcastic little shit about Veronica’s emotive school-girl speech: 

Of course, Veronica’s eulogy for her dead beloved, who was “gold” and thus (in her Frost’s poem analogy) was too beautiful to last in this world, is too painful for Dean to hear. It verbalises what he cannot (he can’t even bear to speak Castiel’s name, all episode):

“My best friend Suzy who I miss like she was a part of me, and in many ways she’s still a part of me.”

In subtext, Dean also reads Veronica “wrong” because he thinks she was Suzy’s rival, when in fact, she was her lover (part of a Veronica-Suzy-Billy love-triangle, the F/F element emphasised by their attendance at a school called “Beaverdale” where “beaver” is of course slang for vagina). 

Look at all those red hearts (symbols of romantic love) on Suzy’s memorial pin-board, Indeed, look at all that red in general. A “match” for Sam’s “red-visions”. If Sam’s rubedo (alchemical reddening) trial is his God-wound, Dean’s is his separation from Cas: 

Veronica, it seems (unbeknownst to the Winchesters) is a neophyte hunter (as well as, in subtext, Suzy’s lover) a sleuth, on the trail of whoever killed Suzy. And it looks like she knows it was a vampire. When Sam and Dean are questioning her (and she’s clearly suspicious of them) we see her with a syringe of what looks like blood behind her back, ready to jab them:

We know, from 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, that in the SPN universe, a dead person’s blood can temporarily take down a vamp. So it seems that whilst Dean suspects Veronica of being the vampire, she suspects the Winchesters (a recurrence of SPN’s perennial - “Who is really the monster?”/ it’s not black-and-white theme. The reference to Dead Man’s Blood is also interesting, as this was an early episode in which Dean defied his father (stepped out of being John’s “good little solider”, who did see monsters in black-and-white) yet now, we have, Ouroboros-style Dean regressing to old John-learned behaviours (conceal, don’t feel) after the second death of Mary. 

I love this little Veronica detail. It’s an un-explored thread in the story, a piece of fan-fiction catnip begging for further elaboration. More Perez meta-narrative, in fact, in which he suggests that, despite the sinister Chuck and his insistence on a final SPN ending with a gravestone reading “Winchesters”, the story itself is WaywardTM; it is capable of fluidity, of control being wrested from the origin-creator (God). After all, Chuck created free will, and despite his desire for total control, he cannot undo this wild-card element in the narrative, which Veronica’s little secret hunter-identity (in subtext, also, her secret queer identity) just like Becky’s fan-fic, is a mirror for. 

Veronica’s citation of Frost’s melancholic poem becomes a metaphor for (Dean’s) lost love. Just as Sam’s mention in the final Impala scene, of how he still thinks about Jess often, becomes a verbalisation for Dean’s own constant (unspoken) thoughts about his own lost love; Cas.

 Veronica and Billy (who were possibly both Suzy’s lovers; although in text it’s Billy, in subtext Veronica, true to SPN’s ongoing bisexual subtext in relation to Dean) exchange a memorial bracelet to Suzy in front of Suzy’s picture, as Veronica tells Billy a piece of her heart is gone:

Both are mirror images for Dean - Veronica-the-vampire-hunter who mourns excessively, and Billy-the-vampire, who has killed the person he loved (just as Dean has driven Cas away):

Dean is forced by Chuck’s authorial hand to kill Billy, who is both a representation of his own lost son, Jack (Chuck’s cruel re-staging of the scene in which Dean almost kills Jack in 14x20 Moriah) and of Dean himself (symbolising Dean’s present “self-murder” aka his self-punishment and repression re Cas):

Nothing gold can stay....

Frost’s poem is also used by Perez as a metanarrative commentary on the sadness we all feel as SPN draws to a close. Everything beautiful has its time to fade and die, Frost says; even SPN, says Perez.

Frost’s poem also makes reference to Eden, to the Fall, and how that was, in God’s plan, an inevitability; the descent from the Godly to the earthly. 

It’s noticeable how, just as The Fall was presented as Eve’s fault in the Bible, Chuck is, yet again, trying to eliminate the feminine principle from the narrative, just as he has always done throughout SPN (which began with the deaths of Mary Winchester and Jess). Chuck kills Suzy, as the driver of the episode, and he “poufs” Becky (the fan-fic writer) out of existence (possibly into an AU) so he can finish the story the way he wants, just as he has re-murdered Mary Winchester (or possibly also poufed her into an AU) to continue the Winchesters’ suffering. 

But Chuck’s determination to arrive at a tragic ending, an ending in which the feminine principle is still subjugated, Perez suggests, can be subverted, because the seeds of subversion are already there in the story; Veronica’s secret and subversive sleuthing (slash her subtextual queerness), Becky’s emotionally open, subversive, fan-fic, and the continued yearning of the Winchesters for true free will (not yet knowing Chuck is still actively f-ing with them) despite the burden of their grief,  

If gold is the result of the final alchemical synthesis, of “masculine” and “feminine” principles, of the conscious and the unconscious mind, here represented by Chuck-the-author and Becky-the-fan-fic writer (who were once a couple, but are now broken up, just as Chuck and Amara, Dean and Cas, are currently broken up).... Then, the alchemical symbolism suggests, the darkness of the break-up stage (The Abyss, which we are currently in) can be overcome by the red (rubedo) power of the heart - Sam’s God-wound trial, his heart-connection to Chuck, and Dean’s own heart-wound trial, the loss of his (heart) connection to Cas.

Yes, we are still working on the power of love.

Love ultimately confounded Chuck’s apocalypse in S5, when TFW went “off script” and, Ouroboros-style, it can do so again in S15.

Chuck can be overthrown (transformed), Perez tells us, by his own story; and thus the story can find its own (heart-filled) free will ending. 

Perhaps, after all, something gold can stay.*   

*My usual disclaimer applies - none of this suggests or implies an inevitable Dean/ Cas romantic (unequivocal) textualisation. 

Although, I would like to think that Perez, by including the by now all too formulaic Dean-is-bisexual subtext via bisexual (subtextual) mirroring in 15x04, is commenting, meta-fictionally, on Chuck’s (aka TPTB’s) (wearisome) eternal tendency to do this, thereby suggesting that the over-turning of Chuck’s narrative control should, by rights, also include the overturning of this formula into... something new. 

[drsilverfish]

Dante’s Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova and S15

It occurs to me that S15 might be having our heroes follow the journey of Dante in his medieval literary work The Divine Comedy (1308-1320).

Dante inserts a character representing himself as the protagonist of The Divine Comedy.

That  rings bells in terms of SPN’s God and his Chuck Shurley persona, and also checks with Vonnegut (who also used this device) whom we know is loved by both Dean and Chuck from 4x18 The Monster at the End of This Book, and whose novel, Breakfast of Champions, is name-checked by Dean at the start of 15x06 Golden Time (and which I think might provide the road-map for SPN’s ending).

The Divine Comedy is an allegory for the soul’s journey to God. So is medieval alchemy, as I’ve discussed in various SPN, Jung and alchemy posts previously. And we can see the writers’ room is drawing on alchemical imagery (e.g. see the link to my Rowena post below). 

Dante first travels through the realms of Hell, then the realms of Purgatory and finally travels through the realms of Paradise. So there are three books:

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

His guide is the poet Virgil through Inferno and Purgatorio, but he meets his beloved, Beatrice, in the final realm of Purgatory and she guides him through Paradiso. 

We have seen Sam, Dean and Cas all journey to Hell, last episode 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven, in search of Michael, where they meet Rowena in her new Ouroboros (death and rebirth) incarnation as the Queen of Hell. I’ve written about the alchemical imagery associated with this new version of Rowna here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/189671968369/rowenas-symbolic-and-alchemical-return-of-the

Now, Dean and Cas are about to journey to Purgatory in the upcoming 15x09 The Trap.

These are both return journeys. Dean and Sam and Cas have all been in Hell before, and Cas and Dean have been in Purgatory before. This fits with Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative structure for SPN, in which it swallows its own tail to reach its resolution.

It makes sense therefore, and following Dante, that there must be, at some point, a return to Heaven, and/ or a visit (most likely by Cas) to The Empty, in order to enlist Jack’s help against God. 

Dante wrote another famous poem La Vita Nuova (1294) in which the character of Beatrice appears (she was based on a real Beatrice, whom Dante loved). That poem is a courtly love poem (medieval courtly love was both sacred and profane, but was often understood, likewise, as an allegory for the soul’s journey to God).

I’ve written before about how the tradition of courtly love has resonance for Supernatural:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/44110505167/mytharc-vs-heart-arc-dean-as-medieval

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/181231154654/the-dean-cas-spiral-narrative-s13-and-14-edition

We could think about Dean as Cas and Dante and Beatrice. 

Here is Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s painting “Dante’s Dream” (1871) (and remember the pre-Raphaelites were all about a return to find inspiration in the medieval):

Beatrice dies in La Vita Nuova and the poet mourns her deeply.

I’m not saying Cas is definitely going to die in Purgatory, BUT there is a helluva lot of death imagery in that spell Michael gave to Cas:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/189656694954/the-purgatory-spell-in-15x08-love-death-and-an

As, I’ve said before, Purgatory in S8, is where Dean let himself love Castiel again without guilt - “It felt pure”, after the suffering Cas had caused to Sam and to the world as a result of his deal with Crowley and his Godstiel/ Levi!Cas arc.

This is Dante, in La Vita Nuova talking about how love entered his heart:

“Since Love took hold of me it’s been so long,

 He’s made me so used to his sovereignty,  

That though at first he felt all harsh in me,      

Now he is in my heart as soft as dawn,  

When he so drains strength that it’s nearly gone

And it seems my spirits all have turned to flee,    

Then my fragile soul can only be 

Infused with sweetness till my face goes wan.” 

That’s how Dean greeted Cas in Purgatory in S8 - his face was filled with such joy when he found and hugged his angel by the river in 8x02 What’s Up Tiger Mommy:

And this is Dante mourning Beatrice’s death:

“My sighing leaves me anguished gasps for breath,

When in my memory a sad conceit brings back, 

What made my heart feel self-estranged, 

And often when I have my thoughts on death, 

A longing comes to me so mild and sweet, 

My face’s color is completely changed. 

And once her image in me is arranged, 

Such pain comes over me in every part, 

I shudder suddenly awake with woe: 

And I am altered so, 

Shame cuts me off from people; I depart. 

In mourning then, alone as my tears flow, 

I call, “Beatrice, are you really dead?” 

 And calling out her name, I’m comforted.” 

We have seen Dean mourn Cas like this in S13 - here as he burns Cas’ body in 13x01 Lost and Found:

It’s really worth listening to the music in both these scenes again:

The Purgatory reunion in 8x02 What’s Up Tiger Mommy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7RaQvZj2l4

The burning of Cas’ body in 13x01 Lost and Found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH3KeYXvlaE

because in each case it’s deeply emotive. 

So, in conclusion, we can productively think about S15 as a mirror of Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in The Divine Comedy. And that naturally leads us to consider Dante’s other great work, of medieval courtly love, which also features his beloved, Beatrice; La Vita Nuova and it’s relevance to Dean and Cas. 

SPN is, in one sense, the story of the soul’s journey to God, like The Divine Comedy (and out the other side to freedom, as ultimately this is more Vonnegut than Dante) and it is also (in subtext - but remember subtext IS part of narrative) a courtly love romance, like La Vita Nuova.

Tagging @postmodernmulticoloredcloak​ because you might enjoy the Dante!

La Vita Nuova (Digital Dante): https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/la-vita-nuova-frisardi/

[drsilverfish]

Monsters vs Domesticity in 15x07

It’s interesting isn’t it, in terms of the conversation which Chuck and Becky had in 15x04 Atomic Monsters, about what’s important in the stories they both write about Sam and Dean, that the monster in the basement in 15x07 was an unfortunate rubbery green creature we didn’t give two shits about (except for its symbolic value as a monster in a closet) whereas the emotional journeys of the characters were absolutely at the heart of the story in Last Call:

Sam and Eileen, doing domestic things together - making breakfast, holding hands over books. 

Dean, bumping into an old flame and singing karaoke in a bar, all the while being reminded of his current painful break-up with Cas.

Cas, returning to the Bunker, despite his upset over his break-up with Dean, to help in the fight against Chuck anyway, and his desperate emotional rollercoaster blackmail of Sergei, to salvage Sam, after his reckless “probing” of the God-wound.

This reinforces what S15 has already told us - Becky is right, and Chuck is wrong. The heart of Supernatural isn’t monsters, it’s emotion. And in fact, the monsters are there to externalise and reflect on that emotion, because this show has always been a melodrama (frequently derided as a “feminine” form of narrative). 

What show does Chuck think he’s writing? Well, 15x07 suggests it’s The Dukes of Hazzard :-)

Chuck, as I’ve mentioned before, keeps trying to write the “feminine” out of his muscle car and monsters dude-bro show, about two conflicted brothers who are eventually gonna murder-suicide. Whereas, the writers’ room in our world (the narrative is also telling us) are here, in this final season, to fully acknoweldge the true, emotional, heart of the show.  

Our S15 writers’ room, contra Chuck, is here to write the “feminine” back into the story and to fully acknowledge its importance (using our culturally arcane, but potent, codes, where the “feminine” is used to signal emotion). 

To that end, Chuck, it’s confirmed in 15x07, has a piece of Sam’s soul inside of him, after being shot with his own Equaliser/ Revenge gun.

That should not only make Chuck weaker, as Sam exclaims hopefully in Last Call, but it should also, eventually, make him nicer - right? It’s the ultimate empathy-shot. Sam has been through literal Hell thanks to Chuck’s shitty Lucifer!Sam vs Michael!Dean boner. And maybe, if Sam is getting visions of Chuck’s preferred endings, Chuck is getting visions of Sam’s preferred endings? Either way, Chuck is being imbued with humanity (however unwillingly) - in other words, he is becoming more connected to human emotion. 

Which ties back to all the Dean/ Amara and Sam/ Chuck “as above, so below” cosmic arcs of our characters and their roles in the universe. Amara became a better cosmic entity thanks to her emotional connection to Dean. The same should (hopefully) occur with her God-brother via his connection to Sam, enabling Chuck to be both a better writer (especially in relation to endings and letting go of his characters) and a better ineffable entity. 

[neven-ebrez]

The Matrix of S15

I’m rewatching a lot of old comparative narrative stuff that was popular to discuss when S8 was airing and so I’m rewatching The Matrix on Netflix and Neo’s final words to the AI controllers are a lot like I imagine we’ll get from Sam/Dean/Cas at the end.

“I know you are out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”

I honestly can’t remember if this was something I, myself, wrote or something I just read. But the Matrix and S15 have a lot more in common than the movie and S8 does. In The Matrix Neo must first come to grips with the reality of the world before he can even begin to realize where he goes from there. He struggles with realizing everything he’s ever known has been nothing but a construct, a digital story crafted within the limits of free will, and that he’s been nothing more than a slave to it his whole life. There’s discussions about what qualifies as “real” and what doesn’t. It’s perception. It’s why what physically happens in the Matrix effects the people in the “real world”. It’s all “real” but one world is more rooted in the physical than the other while one hides “the truth”.

Well, Dean and Sam aren’t in the Matrix in the sense that’s there’s one world and a digital “other”, but they are struggling with the same basic thing Neo was. Dean moreso than Sam. Dean is currently having an existential crisis. He thinks none of his choices are real because the world has been designed around him without his best interest in mind. Both Winchesters are then tasked in the role of Neo, where he exists as a check against the machines as “the one”. This makes the Oracle a lot like Billie. That’s looking at the first Matrix movie in stand alone tho. The Oracle and the Architect function closer to Amara and Chuck respectively. Trinity is a lot like Cas in that she has been “woke to reality” a lot longer than the rest. Loosely, Jack is like Morpheus, but he might be closer to being like Neo, depending on how the show decides to work out the details there.

If there was ever a time for an Alice in Wonderland episode, it’s now. The Matrix was rife with this imagery as the question of how your experiences and how you view them craft you absolutely hang over everything. Later Neo learns that humanity has been destroyed over and over again and that it’s a decision the One makes every single time, in order to continue. This is a lot like how Chuck forces worlds to live out the same story over and over. Only Sam and Dean are different, important like Neo. In the Matrix Neo falls in love with someone and doesn’t do what his predecessors do. He changes the game, forcing everyone into the future as Trinity dies. He then shortly follows. There’s also all this imagery involving keys and doors as gateways, with one of my favorite characters being the key maker. Jack is also like him, an opener of doors. Dabb era features, along with alchemy references, a lot of thematic references to this movie trilogy. Gates as doorways to Heaven and Hell in S8, doorways as paths to other whole universes in Dabb era.

Changing the future, destroying the system... in The Matrix this involves a lot of sacrifice. From everyone. With Supernatural it’s a price that’s been paid again and again. So. Who is ultimately going to be “The One”?

[neven-ebrez]

Okay so we’ve all been crying about the S15 poster yeah?

And as we wind on down the road

Our shadows taller than our soul

There walks a lady we all know

Who shines white light and wants to show

How everything still turns to gold

And if you listen very hard

The tune will come to you at last

When all are one and one is all

To be a rock and not to roll

And she's buying the stairway to heaven

—

So Laura and me are talking about my Chuck singing at a con crack spec and just Chuck doing a musical performance in general and LAURA said this:

And the lyrics to this song are so very the things Supernatural has invested itself in (right down to things often having two meanings, lol) and very much outline the realization Chuck needs to have. The touch on gold is a thematic association to alchemy’s ultimate power being able to turn things into gold. And we all know how big Dabb era is on alchemy. When this promo image dropped I didn’t really join in on the hype discussing how it maybe or maybe not had foreshadowing in it and now I’m so invested in my theory regarding the resolution of Chuck that it’s all I can see!!

Alright that’s all for music and S15 on that one post. I’m not going to torture OP’s mentions anymore. Anyway I do think getting rid of all monsters will still fall somewhere into S15’s ending, since the narrative is focusing on how much Chuck is obsessed with monsters (by like... a lot). He needs to let go of the monster obsession, and he needs to stop writing so he can start creating with humanity’s greatest creation: music. Maybe instead of my crack spec of rob playing at a spn con in the actual show we’ll simply have Dean and Chuck sing together? A girl has dreams.

[EDIT]

I added onto that other post about what Dabb said here

And MEL mentioned Jensen singing the song plugged into 15x04. A studio song playing over a scene is different to me than the term “musical performance” because Dabb is specifically talking about Cas singing here. Maybe Dabb sees it (musical performance) differently tho idk. I’m holding onto this for now tho. 😂

[neven-ebrez]

Guess who is bringing this shit back again because now I have a good idea of where I think Sam and Rowena are going. In 15x02 Ketch calls magic alchemy. And I haven’t talked about that yet so here we go. I seriously can’t recommend this series as a prerequisite to watching S15 enough. And Rowena is tied into the alchemy bits so much, both with Jack and Sam. For SPN magic (and the theory of creation, the tapestry of the system) is treated just like how Fullmetal Alchemist treats the laws of alchemy. And this feels like it’s mostly a story about Sam and Rowena.

In Fullmetal Alchemist Alphonse loses his body and his brother attaches his soul to a suit of armor in order to keep him physically with him. This is a lot like what happened with the witch twins on SPN however many seasons ago, with a heart exchanged for a soul. Again, magic and alchemy (more specifically FMA) have these very specific narrative ties throughout when it comes to SPN’s exploration of magic and personal relationships. I think the show may pull something similar with Rowena and Sam here, where Sam is able to hold onto some of Rowena but not all. She, like Alphonse, will essentially become “trapped” in a way and must be retrieved by Sam. Ideally, instead of losing a body like Alphonse, Rowena will instead lose her magic. Sam would then finish out the series with Edward’s problem of figuring out what can be sacrificed outside of death that functions on a scale equal to life. Restoring Rowena’s magic (or reordering magic and/or the universe on a grand scale) would become like restoring Alphonse to his body. I hope that’s what happens anyway, as the FMA narrative continues to be closest structural comparison to SPN (in Dabb era) that I know of.

The more I think about it, the more I think Supernatural will be heading the way of @larinah’s old post here. In this scenario Cas would be wholly uninterested in living his existence as an angel. He would definitely want to cut out his grace and just live the time he has with his family, feeling life, emotions, to the fullest, the good and the bad. We’d have life but no more afterlife. And with this plotline, this trajectory, SPN could bring back as many familiar faces to serve it as it wished. And it would all be relevant to the problem of the current system under Chuck. Prior to the season airing I thought we could be looking at the end of monsters maybe. I don’t think that anymore. Against my better judgment of trying not to have expectations of the final season this is where I now expect us to head.

I guess I’ll talk about the episode titles since I’ve done shot some stuff at Mel. Golden time in Japan is when most people vacation in April. Manga goes on hold for the week so any fans of manga who read scanalations know this. “Golden Time” then becomes about a happy pause in a job, a vacation. Then there’s “Last Call” which happens at bars before a places closes, making people leave. Pretty straight forward. The “Proverbs 13:7” title is also straight forward and deals with God testing hearts.

So.

We have a test of the heart, a happy pause, then someone(s) leaving.

[magnificent-winged-beast]

Wonderful. I like the idea of the femenine taking power.

Rowena’s Symbolic and Alchemical “Return of the Feminine” in 15x08

I’ve been talking for a while about how Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of his version of the grim-dark bros murder-suicide conflict narrative he’s writing:

1) Pouffing Becky somewhere unknown (an AU?) in 15x04 Atomic Monsters

2) Mary Winchester’s second (apparent) death in S14

3) Threatening more women Dean and Sam care about, Eileen, Donna and Jodie, in 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven

By contrast, we’ve also had the return of the feminine in S15 (contra Chuck):

1) Amara’s triumphant return, clothed in an f-you glorious shade of yellow like the sun (casting off her type-casting as The DarknessTM)

2) Eileen’s return from the dead, thanks to Rowena and Sam’s magic

3) Rowena’s return, after her sacrifice to save the world from Chuck’s rift into Hell, as the new Queen of Hell

The symbolism of Rowena’s attire and throne in 15x08, the episode of her return, is interesting.

She’s dressed in red, which is, in Western culture, a symbol of harlotry (the “scarlet woman”) which feels like a kind of f-you to Chuck’s (and the earlier writers’ room’s) shitty writing of the feminine as monstrous: Ruby as an evil sexual temptress archetype; Eve as monstrous; the Whore of Babylon as monstrous; Abaddon as a bitch femme-fatale - and all “righteously” “ganked” by our male heroes (basically a bunch of Biblical fan-fiction reproducing Chuck’s patriarchal BS). 

Whilst Rowena was likewise killed by one of our heroes, she chose the manner of her death, and Sam acted (reluctantly) on her instructions. The pattern was broken. Just as it was previously and most dramatically broken in S11 when Amara turned out not to be the next evil villainess in need of ganking (hurrah) but a wronged God-entity entitled to an apology from Chuck himself. That was the origin-point for the great turn-to-the-feminine in Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative, which also brought Mary Winchester back from the dead and into the narrative again (whose fridging was the original inciting incident for the Winchesters’ bro-story).

Rowena’s red dress therefore also symbolises a stage (rubedo) in the alchemical process, for those of you who’ve been following my alchemical meta and discussions on S14 and S15, which is the stage which comes before the “great work”, symbolised by the “sacred marriage”. In Jung’s configuration/ reinterpretation of medieval alchemy, the sacred marriage symbolises the integration of the masculine and feminine (the anima and the animus, the self and the Shadow) in the psyche.

The universe needs both Amara and Chuck, for balance (beginnings and endings, dark and light) but Chuck keeps trying to write the feminine out of the story, following his original, Ur-sin, of locking away his God-sister unjustly. 

But despite him, the feminine is returning, filled with power, both on a cosmic level AND in the psyche’s of our heroes, as they encounter their Shadow-selves and achieve (or rather, are in the process of achieving) psychic growth, emotional maturity and wholeness.    

Rowena is sitting on a three-headed serpent throne. 

Firstly, the serpent is the symbol in the Bible of The Fall, which places the blame on the feminine, on Eve, as the original temptress. So we can read this as a reclamation of that symbol in the service of feminine power.

Secondly, three headed serpents or dragons appear in alchemical symbolism:

The heads are often coloured in three of the colour stages of alchemy (black,white, yellow, red).

Nazari’s “Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals” (1599)

https://www.alchemywebsite.com/Alchemical_Symbolism_Triple_headed_snakes.html

The three-headed dragon/ snake symbolises, in alchemical texts, the integration of the three elements (of the universe and of “man”); of soul, spirit (or mind) and body, symbolised by mercury, sulfur and salt. 

And, as you can see, the three-headed dragon/ snake is sometimes depicted (as in the first image) in conjunction with an Ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail) which is a symbol of death and rebirth as the ascendance of the soul to God in the allegorical undertanding of medieval alchemy or, in Jung’s later interpretation, of the integration of the psyche, after the underworld journey to encounter the Shadow. 

Rowena of course has, in dying, returned, transformed and more powerful than before - her own Ouroboros narrative. 

So, cosmically and internally, the SPN narrative, drawing on alchemical themes,  is progressing towards the re-integration of the feminine, both above and below, so Rowena’s powerful return tells us. And thus, towards the union of the earthly and the divine (as currently evident in the God-wound connection between Sam and Chuck), light and dark, self and Shadow, beginning and end.

[neven-ebrez]

Okay so I wrote this when 15x02 aired. Rowena did end up dying (losing her body) but I still think she’s about to be transformed (like with alchemy and because of the souls she took in). Also after talking last night about how I think Chuck moving on to performing music is somehow key to ending the show I’m going to take the final part of this post back and say that I still think the end of monsters is still coming. Because we’ve seen up to 15x05 atm and Chuck’s obsession with dumb monsters has been mentioned twice in the past two episodes. And being monsterous, more than ever now, is being defined by actions. The werewolf brother (who was already a “monster”) only called himself a monster once his actions with his brother started destroying lives.

So!

As it currently stands it looks to me like the show recognizes these things needs to happen regarding Chuck in S15

Chuck gives up his monster obsession

Chuck (or Rowena, coming back) reorders Hell into something other than a place of eternal torment

Chuck gives up writing in favor of creating something truly for himself (like Becky): music

And there’s my expectations, despite me trying not to have any.

I guess I’ll talk about the episode titles since I’ve done shot some stuff at Mel. Golden time in Japan is when most people vacation in April. Manga goes on hold for the week so any fans of manga who read scanalations know this. “Golden Time” then becomes about a happy pause in a job, a vacation. Then there’s “Last Call” which happens at bars before a places closes, making people leave. Pretty straight forward. The “Proverbs 13:7” title is also straight forward and deals with God testing hearts.

So.

We have a test of the heart, a happy pause, then someone(s) leaving.