#Wincheter Family Psychodrama

[drsilverfish]

John Winchester’s Ghost and the Haunting of S12 cont...

The resurrection of Mary Winchester has brought with it the ghost of John Winchester, as the S12 writers’ room snakes the narrative back on itself to disinter its origins.

Here is his journal, as Mary reads its pages in The Foundry (12x03)

And here is his wire-wrapped baseball bat, which Dean had apparently been using in 12x15 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell - ”Man! Dad loved that thing.” (Also, apparently, a reference to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character on The Walking Dead).

It’s interesting, and deliberate on the part of the writers’ room, that Dean name-checks one of his father’s favorite weapons at a point in the story when, in working with the BMOL, Sam and Dean are taking a step backwards towards their father’s black and white view of the supernatural. A view which they have themselves evolved away from over the years, thanks to friendships and alliances with supernatural beings, from Amy the Kitsune (Sam was always ahead of the game in this regard) to Benny the Vampire.

As well as John’s diary and John’s baseball bat, we’ve also had Mary’s silent recollection of making out with John in Baby in 12x01 Keep Calm and Carry On.

If John has been physically manifest in objects imbued with his memory - journal, base-ball bat, Baby; Dean and Mary’s confrontation in 12x14 The Raid brings his less than stellar parenting close to being named in an actual conversation:

Mary: “I am your mother but I am not ‘just a mom’. And you are not a child.”

Dean: “I never was...” 

Meanwhile in the mirrors and parallels of S12, John’s ghost is everywhere.  

In The Foundry (my favourite episode of the season to date) we meet Lucas, the ghost boy murdered by and tethered to vengeful spirit Hugo Moriarty. The name Lucas recalls the kid Lucas from 1x03 Dead in the Water whom Dean had a special affinity for. Lucas was mute with grief after losing his Dad and Dean tells him that he was that way himself for a while after his own Mum died (Mary).

Hugo Moriarty is (in part) a mirror for John. Hugo lost his daughter in a car accident and went mad with grief, walling himself up in the house and starving to death then murdering children and tethering them to him. John lost Mary to Azaezel and he also went “mad” with grief, walling up himself, and his kids, in his obsessive revenge quest. 

In 12x04 American Nightmare (with its deliberate callback to 1x14 Nightmare, as signalled by Sam and Dean disguising themselves as priests on both occasions), Magda’s parents, fanatically religious and living off the grid, also mirror John Winchester (likewise fanatical, about revenge, and living off the grid with his kids, raising them as hunters on the road). 

 Magda is both a mirror for Sam, as a kid with special, supernatural powers (just as Max Miller mirrored Sam in 1x14 Nightmare) and for Dean (another layer of subtext down) as an abused queer kid. This second parallel is invoked by depicting Magda as a kid being punished by religious parents attempting to “cure” her (read “conversion” therapy). Like Sam’s parallel, this Dean mirroring in American Nightmare also invokes the old parallel from its twin episode, Nightmare, of Dean with Max Miller, whom we find out was beaten regularly throughout his childhood by his father and uncle. Remember that this (1x14) is the episode, where we get a hint that Dean may have protected Sam from a lot more than Sam knows regarding John’s drinking and (possible) violence. 

Back in our present, Sam and Dean set Magda free (a giant metaphor for being, or needing to be, on a path towards setting themselves free of some of the psychic baggage of their childhood) but, and here comes another John mirror, Mr. Ketch swoops in and murders her.

Mr. Ketch is a John mirror (although that’s not his only function in the narrative) in that we have seen him seduce Mary to the BMOL and attempt (and partially succeed for now) to seduce Dean likewise (12x14 The Raid). That’s partly why there have been two references to Sirens this season, because that particular supernatural creature works by seduction and thus provides an excellent metaphor for the BMOL and their seduction of the WInchesters.

Dean hero-worshipped his Dad when he was younger, Sam never did (which is partly why Ketch (semi) works on Dean, but not on Sam - his bike evoking the Easy Riders soundtrack Dean and Mary both share a love for, for instance. 

Moreover, we learn Mr. Ketch used to date Lady Toni Bevell in 12x14 The Raid, so, as others have pointed out, her kid might be his. Another neglectful / monstrous parent this season? Hmmmn.... hello John Winchester. 

Demonic father-to-be Lucifer is also, this season, paralleled with John. Not only is he on his way to becoming a Bad Daddy, but his minions want to “Make Hell Great Again”. He is an authoritarian and he is a purist (he hates humans) in the same way that the BMOL are (they hate the supernatural). Both mirror John’s black and white perspective, the one he raised his boys in, and against which they have come to rebel (Sam before Dean).

Here is Lucifer looking all corpsified and gross in 12x07 Rock Never Dies (hello corpse ghost of John Winchester:

In 12x05, The One You’ve Been Waiting For, we meet Nazi necromancer Nauhaus and his son Christoph, who have the following exchange:

NAUHAUS: “You were supposed to be my heir. Instead, you're an inconceivable disappointment.” CHRISTOPH: “You know, I used to look up to you. You conquered death. You did so many things. But now? (Sighs) Now all you wanna do is relive your glory days with Hitler.” NAUHAUS: (scoffs) “Your generation – you millennials – are too weak to steward the future. It needs a stronger hand. The world is divided and inflamed....”

This mirrors something of the history of Sam and Dean with their father - his insistence they call him “Sir” from the early seasons, Dean’s anxiety about living up to his father’s expectations, Sam’s rebellion and John’s anger (because Sam wanted to go to college), the way Dean used to look up to his father. Additionally, once again, we see a father-figure with an absolutist view of the world. What would John make of the grey area Sam and Dean now inhabit? Dean’s relationships with Benny, Cas, Crowley??

Nauhaus tries to have his son killed (remember when Dean was dying in 1x12  Faith and John didn’t show up?) and Dean actually refers to Nauhaus sarcastically as “Father of the Year”.

Here is “Father of the Year” Nauhaus-Hitler.

Nauhaus donates his body to Hitler (there’s a sentence) re-animated by Thule blood magic and Dean (it’s important it’s Dean) kills him. 

From a Winchester family psycho-drama perspective (the underlying theme of S12) Dean needs to kill the ghost of his father in his psyche. Particularly Dean, because Dean was the “good son” who repressed so much of who he was in order to be a care-taker to Sammy (a role his father persistently neglected as part of his obsession with hunting and revenge for Mary’s death).

Sadly, Hugo Moriarty is also a Dean mirror, because Dean’s co-dependency (the lesson he learned in childhood that his self-worth comes mostly from his role as family caretaker) means that he has some unhealthy patterns around trying to tether the people he loves too tightly to him and then watching them endlessly slip away.      

 Dean lost his childhood and he adopted a bravado, a machismo, in imitation of his father, which closeted his own more complex self (signalled by, for example, his secret love for soap operas like Dr. Sexy MD and for chick flicks). Dean felt the need to hide his appreciation for “feminine” coded thngs, that his Dad would likely disapprove of. Hence his continued anxiety about openly liking things like the fancy cucumber water in 12x07  Rock Never Dies.

This is why we get an episode titled Regarding Dean (12x11) which strips away what SPN meta fandom calls “performing Dean”. Memory-wiped Dean (regressed Dean, psychoanalytically) is soft with bunnies, exhibits a child-like quality and wants desperately to ride Larry the bull (in subtext - dick - i.e one of Dean’s represssions as a result of his father’s macho hunter upbringing is the repression of his bisexuality).

Here is Dean free of his father’s repression....

Another deadbeat Dad lurks at the edges of the narrative - namely Chuck - as Cas returns to Heaven with Kelvin on a promise to speak to Joshua in 12x15 Somewhere Bewteen Heaven and Hell. This reminds us that Joshua was the gardener angel Sam and Dean met in 5x16 Dark Side of the Moon, back when they all hoped that if they could just reach God he would intervene to stop the apocalypse.

That’s an interesting reference, Dark Side of the Moon, at this point, given that Dean’s Heaven back then contained an idealised vision of his mother feeding him pie, one he is now having to painfully deconstruct as he meets the real Mary, a woman who reveals she didn’t cook and who is all too ready to become obsessed with hunting in the way John was.  

We can now, looking back, explicitly parallel the BMOL’s supernatural genocide plan with the revived Nazism we revisited in The One You’ve Been Waiting For (Dabb’s political parallel to contemporary America also being at work this season). 

As Sam and Dean and Mary continue to work with the BMOL, eventually a clash of values will come to a head, between the old Winchester way (John’s) and the new one (that of his sons). 

In facing this conflict, the ghost of John Winchester, still lying mostly unspoken between Mary and her sons, will certainly manifest (whether spoken out loud or continuing to haunt the narrative in a variety of mirror guises).

We’ve had the return of demons with yellow eyes like Azaezel, namely the other Princes of Hell - Ramiel, Dagon and Asmodeus. 

This can’t help but (deliberately) remind us of Azaezel’s narrative in the early seasons. Remember his possession of John in 1x22 Devil’s Trap, and how Dean figured out that his Dad wasn’t in the driver’s seat, because the demon said “I’m proud of you”? 

John was a flawed man - he wasn’t literally Hugo Moriarty or Nauhaus or Hitler or Lucifer or even Mr. Ketch. However, this haunting of the S12 narrative by his ghost, in a plethora of dark mirrors, is about his effects on the psyches of his children. What a dark lake of unspoken things lies between the resurrected Mary and her sons in that regard. 

And in that sense, we can understand why John’s ghost looms so monstrously at the heart of the Winchester family psycho-drama this season, in tandem with the resurrection of “Mother Mary”.  

Thanks to Supernatural’s SuperWiki and to Home of the Nutty for most of the screen-caps.

www.homeofthenutty.com  and www.supernaturalwiki.com