#and chuck amara jack billie the empty all of it makes no sense

[monstermoviedean]

and now i can conclusively say it. none of season 15 makes any goddamn sense. at all

[shallowseeker]

Do you have any thoughts on the Empty's "you made it loud?"

The two things that come to mind are some old-school religious systems where elder gods find humans "noisy."

Enlil comes to mind, finding humans so noisy and annoying, that he can't sleep, so he sent plagues, drought, and flood.

The country was as noisy as a bellowing bull The God grew restless at their racket, Enlil had to listen to their noise. He addressed the great gods, 'The noise of mankind has become too much, I am losing sleep over their racket. Give the order [to kill] (Dalley 18)

This of course makes me think of the Shadow's need for peace as well as Amara's complaint in season 11, that she wanted peace and quiet.

AMARA: Spoiled brat. I needed solitude and he needed a fan club, so he made all that. Then when I complained, he stuffed me in a hole for eons – with your help.

///

The other more ominous association is Jack from Lord of the Flies. The story terminates with Jack as authoritarian ruler over the brainy-and-shelter oriented characters Ralph and Piggy.

This has some...implications for how Jack Kline terminates his journey with a Castiel-coded destiny, doing what Godstiel could not...becoming a better, more powerful God, and taking up Castiel's family's tragic motif of becoming absent, distant.

It's a great tragedy, I think, that the end of his journey illuminates the very worst of Cas and Dean:

CAS: What sounds good to me is Jack fulfilling his destiny. DEAN: Okay, yeah, but… icing on the cake? I mean, Chuck wanted Cain and Abel, and… now we’re going all Biblical on him. Killed by his own grandson. That sounds right to me.

//

Ultimately, it is the military tribe of Heaven that maintains its ultimate power, even moreso than the hunters.

from 14x19 script

///

Jack ends the story, not as a human or a hunter for "the little guy" and championing small-time survival, but as a supreme authoritarian motif, a Heavenly King. (The Good king fallacy, imho.)

You'd think the conch motif from Lord of the Flies is a reach when it comes to SPN, except that Belphagor takes on the motif, using Lillth's Crook in a similar manner to the conch, drowning everything out as he moves to take power.

Cas destroys the crook in a fit of overpowered rage (per script), going so far as to incinerate Jack beyond any hope of recovering him into his body.

Since Belphagor is of Hell, and Cas can more easily see the problem of Heavenly-authoritarian power here. All the same, time and again, like most of us tragically, we're often okay with our own child taking power. And Jack ultimately does just that, from the questionable practice of eating hearts to going along with Billie's self-annihilatory plan.

CAS: And I know now that this child must be born with all of his power. (12x19)

And

SAM: Jack, you… you ate their hearts? JACK: I… I had to. DEAN (to CAS): And you let him? [CAS nods.] DEAN [frowning but unwilling to have an argument] Hmm. (15x11)

I actually think Castiel has a very lovely come-to-Jesus moment in 15x18 Despair with, "We don't care about you because you fit into some grand plan...but because you're you." But like with Dean, he only comes to his senses after Jack's died twice. And it's too late!

I'm sure there's more I can think of, but it's been a very long time since I've read Lord of the Flies. :-) I'll add to this if I think of anything else, but those are the main two that come to mind!

[vaicomcas]

One More Bitter Cas Girl Vent Fic

I fulfilled my promise in my tags and wrote a ficlet to incorporate my own version of Castiel's "confession" for a redo of 15x18. (I did change it a bit to fit the story) Because I can't stand how that confession took everything good Castiel ever did and gave all the credit to Dean Winchester.

This is not a proper fic; it's badly written, it's pure self-indulgence, it's contrived and doesn't make too much sense, but it's my truth. You've been warned.

CW: subverting 15x18. hostile to Dean Winchester. Does not have a happy ending. Cas still sacrificed himself, but at least he was the hero who saved the world and Jack.

This can be considered a companion piece to my other bitter Cas girl vent fic The Miracle that is an alternate explanation of 15x20.

synopsis:

In shock and disillusion from Dean's betrayal Amara let herself be absorbed into Chuck, but in the last moment, she realized she wanted to be free and could use the darkness of the Empty to power herself. If was too late but she transmitted the message to the next celestiel being which happened to be Cas.

Cas used Dean's attack of Billie as opportunity to draw Billie out of her library to the bunker, where Chuck killed Billie. Then Cas summoned the Empty, knowing that Amara could use the Empty to bury Chuck forever. His happiness came from: he let go of his self-hate and asserted his own worth to Dean; he knew that his action would lead to a world without Chuck where Jack will be free.

The Truth

scene 1 is from 15x17 Unity. The other 2 are from 15x18 Despair. Lines from the show are in italics.

---------------------------------------------

Amara

“Sam and Dean, they are using Jack to destroy us.”

Amara knew then already.  But she still didn’t want to believe it.

“No, but…Dean can’t hurt me.”

Chuck looked at his sister with pity.

“No, but he could send you to the meat grinder with a wink and a smile.”

Amara was stunned. 

Dean lied to her.  Dean had looked her in the eye with such sincerity, and told her he could never hurt her.

She had cared about Dean.  She had cared about the world.  She was willing to put her own eternal life on the line to fight God.

Her love meant nothing, less than nothing.  It was turned into a weapon against both her brother and herself.  A disposable weapon at that.

Amara was surprised that it wasn’t anger she felt.  It was exhaustion. Everything in sight exhausted her.  The mildewed walls.  The dented shelves.  The dim lights. 

Every sensation in this world that she had cherished, now felt like an assault on her being.  An ugly, cold, hateful assault that came at her relentlessly.

She was the darkness.  Darkness at the beginning of time.  Darkness without end.  She longed for that all-encompassing darkness now. Away from this ugly deceitful world.

But there was no going back.  She had allowed herself to be entangled with her omnipotent twin.  She had been betrayed, and now she was trapped. 

Chuck said words about balance, about a fresh start.  But she didn’t bother listening. 

When Chuck smiled at her and held out his hand, Amara took it.  And let herself be absorbed into her brother.  What else was left for her?

Yet, in the millisecond before their hands touched, a spark of self-preservation broke through her disillusionment.  No, this was not what she wanted.

 Too late, she realized how she could find her strength.  How she could find her peace.  How she could become herself once again. 

Not how, but where.

She didn’t have time to act with her powerful brother right there.  But in the last microsecond of the last millisecond, she sent out a cloaked message to the nearest celestial being capable of receiving it.

“Take me to eternal darkness, and there will be peace for all of us.”

The nearest celestial being was right next door. 

Castiel didn’t have time to wonder what the message meant.  At that moment, he was preoccupied with Jack’s agony, as cracks of light spread on the Nephilim's face. Then the next moment, his father burst through the door, one eye glowing silver, one eye glowing black.

A sickening realization hit Castiel.  God was so powerful, he was capable of consuming his sister, his equal.  Billie’s plan was never going to work.  They could never have killed God using Jack, using anything that was part of this world, part of God’s creation. 

-----------------

2. Jack

“How are you feeling? You’ve been quiet.”

Cas looked at Jack while they leaned on the Impala, waiting for Sam and Dean.

“How long have you been waiting to ask me that?” 

Jack was expecting it.  He could tell Cas was worried in the few hours of relative peace since he was brought back from the Empty.  Not that Cas showed it.  But Jack could feel it the whole time.

Jack could always feel how Castiel was feeling, even when he was soulless.  Even now, when he had lost his powers.

At his question, Castiel lowered his head and chuckled at himself.  A wave of affection radiated out, as if he was proud of Jack for seeing through him. 

For some reason, it made tears well up in Jack’s eyes.

Jack wanted to confess.  He wanted Cas to know that his pride and affection were misplaced.

“I was ready to die, and I wanted to. For Sam, for Dean, for the world. I wanted to make things right. And now... I don't know why I'm even here.”

Jack’s words hit Castiel like a tsunami of pain.  

Castiel knew this feeling all too well.   He knew what it was like to feel worthless and hopeless.  He had made peace with it.  He thought he deserved it.

With an agonizing horror that pierced his very core, he recognized that Jack had been in the same hell.  It broke Castiel’s heart.  He could never make peace with that. He never will.

He steeled himself to conceal his sorrow.  He turned to Jack, reaching out with his grace, his mind, his voice.  He spoke urgently and forcefully.

“Jack, you never needed absolution from Sam or Dean, or from me.  We don’t care about you because you are useful or because you fit into some grand design.  We care about you because you are you.”

Jack felt Castiel’s wings wrapped around him in the etheric plane, the way Cas embraced him so many times before. He heard Castiel’s heartbeat, sure and strong.  He saw Castiel’s wavelengths, gently illuminating the world for him. 

With his father next to him, he realized, he didn’t want to die.

Jack let his tears fall.  “God, the Empty, Billie…everyone is so mad at us.  There is nothing I can do to protect us.  I am scared.”

Cas put a consoling hand on Jack’s shoulder, not knowing what more to say.  Jack shouldn’t be trying to protect them.  He was supposed to protect Jack. 

How could he do that?  How could he stop the most powerful forces in this universe?  How could they protect Jack from God when they were all part of God’s creation?

Suddenly Castiel’s eyes lit up. Not everything was God’s creation.

He remembered Amara’s message.  “Take me to eternal darkness, and there will be peace for all of us.”  He understood it.

It didn’t matter that he was an insignificant cog of his father’s machinations. It didn’t matter that his power had been failing him.  It didn’t matter that he no longer had any celestial allies left.  There was still something he could do.  And he had to do something, to keep Jack from every kind of harm.  It was his promise.  It would be his happiness.

----------------

3. Cas

The sigil glowed on the door of room 7B.  Death was pounding on the other side of the door.

“She’s gonna get through that door, she’s gonna kill you, then she’s gonna kill me.”  Dean despaired in utter defeat, seeing no way out.

“No.” Castiel said calmly.  “That is not going to happen.  I will not let that happen.”

“Com’on, Cas.”  Dean groaned.  “You need to accept reality.”

Castiel smiled.  “Billie is exactly where I want her.  She is weakened, dying, and you have drawn her away from the library which is a source of her power.”

“I drew her away?  What the hell are you talking about?”

“I knew you’d want to kill Billie.  I knew you didn’t stand a chance, and would have to retreat. And Billie would follow you to the bunker.”

Dean’s face turned stony.  Cas made screwed-up plans behind his back, yet again.  

“You planned this? You are using me as bait?  What’s wrong with you?”

“Dean, I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t risk Billie sensing your thoughts.  I would never endanger you.  Billie can’t kill you.  Chuck-my father- wouldn’t allow it.   I know him, Dean.  You and Sam were always the only ones he was obsessed with.  He still wants you to be his story.  He will always want that.  Billie plotted to kill him.  And now she is trying to kill you.  Chuck wouldn’t let it stand.”

The building shook violently.  The banging on the door stopped.  It sounded like a storm was raging outside the dungeon. 

Castiel heard Billie grunting.  He saw the sigil on the door flickering.  He could feel two cosmic entities clashing.  Their blows sent shock waves pounding on his true form.  He didn’t waver.

“Chuck is here.  He and Death are engaged in battle.”

“And that’s your plan?”  Dean’s shock turned into incredulity, then anger.  “It’s not enough we got one cosmic big bad gunning after us, you want two?”

“I want them to fight each other.”

“That’s a stupid plan!  Whoever wins, they are coming for us next!”

“They will.  And whoever that is, I will destroy them.”

Dean sighed.  “Cas.  You are really losing it.  Even back when you had the power of the purgatory souls inside you, you could never have taken on Death or God.  Now…”

Cas smiled again.  “Now I am just a broken angel with barely any power left.  I know, Dean.”

Cas casted his eyes down, as if preparing a confession.  To accomplish what he has set out to do, he needed to set himself free.

 He returned his gaze to Dean, light of the truth shining in his blue eyes. 

“Dean, I know how you see me. You think I am impulsive, misguided, the reason why things go wrong.  You think I try to be the good guy, but I failed more often than I succeeded.  You think I am only strong when I fight by your side, as your blunt weapon.  I am not. Everything I have ever done, the good and the bad, I did for love.  I raised you and Sam from perdition for love.  I led my angel armies for love. And I made a deal with the Empty for love.”

Dean stared at him, dumbfounded.  “What are you talking about?”.

“When Jack was dying, I made the deal to save him.  The price was my life.  When I experience a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned, and it would take me forever.  The Empty that is eternal darkness.  The Empty that was not created by God, and could be used against him.”  

Outside, Cas could hear Billie gasping and wheezing.   Despite the claim of the original Death that in the end he would reap God, this Death had been weakened.  God was about to destroy Billie.  He didn’t have much time left.

He no longer paid attention to Dean.  His eyes glowed softly as he prayed to Jack.  He could feel Jack’s grace responding to him across the etheric plane. 

“Jack, remember what I said to you earlier.  You don’t need anybody’s absolution, you don’t need anybody’s approval.  With or without a soul, with or without power, you always just wanted to do good. Jack, you ARE good, and you are important. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.”

There.  He felt it.  Jack believed him.  Although still faint, a wave of hope reverberated in Jack’s soul. That hope amplified in Castiel’s grace, endlessly, triumphantly.

Death has been destroyed.  God will be next.  Evil will rot in the Empty.  A new day is coming for heaven and earth. It will be Jack’s world, finally and truly.

Jack will be free. The whole world will be free.

The door exploded.  Chuck walked in, smiling smugly. But it was too late for him.

Happiness flooded Castiel's grace. His wings rose with joy and reverence, saluting the new world to come.

Pools of amorphous black goo seeped in through the ceiling and formed a swirling portal.

The black tendrils hissed and spread, enveloping Castiel and Chuck.

Inside Chuck, Amara sighed with relief. Darkness. Eternal darkness. Its incomparable power was coursing through her now.   She took control. "Let's go home, brother."

Cas smiled, head held high. He prayed one last time.

"I love you, Jack."

[soullessjack]

and I’ll yell with you 🫶🫶

my thing is, the specific cycle of abuse in Supernatural is fathers using their sons as tools for personal means, making them into weapons and all that. John did it to Sam and Dean, Chuck did it to Lucifer and Michael and Castiel and every other angel, and it’s repeated in the similar vein of Sam and Dean being vessels. Sam and Dean also incidentally did it to Jack by way of the “inter-dimensional can opener” thing and even AU Bobby has a turn when he only accepts Jack into the camp after seeing the kid’s firepower against other angels.

but on Jack’s paternal side specifically, the cycle seems to not only be one of weaponization, but of usurpation and power hunger as well. Chuck uses Lucifer as a tool to seal away Amara and assume total omniscient authority, then uses Michael as a tool to seal away Lucifer (again, for authority). Lucifer then uses both Sam and Jack as tools for his own grabs at power, via a vessel for the apocalypse and consuming Jack’s grace, and without going into the absolute depths of it for the sake of time and an ongoing headache, Sam and Dean repeat the cycle again when using Jack as a weapon to free themselves from Chuck via the cosmic kamikaze plan (which fails in the initial sense, but Jack does go on to then usurp Chuck and his power).

And then there’s the free will part of it all. Sam and Dean didn’t want to be hunters avenging their mother or vessels to start the Apocalypse. Cas doesn’t want to be a blind soldier aiding in the start of the Apocalypse, and Jack didn’t want to be an all-powerful messiah figure; his arc very much focuses on identity, as he’s naturally more human and like his mother than was expected, but still retains archangelic traits from Lucifer because that’s just how genetics work, even with biblical abominations. I know it’s already in the tags but Jack is shown numerous times to want to be more human; when Lucifer insults humans, he very agitatedly responds “My mother was human,” and later on says “I’m human, too.”

And when he’s dying, he says “Since I’ve been born, everyone’s assumed I’d be this special person that goes on forever. Only now it looks like it might be a couple of weeks. What I know is I’m done being special, and before my life is over, I wanna actually live it.” And then his idea of actually living is a rattle-off of mundane human experiences, like getting bored and going to hockey games. And how does his story end? He becomes a special person that goes on forever. He’s not living as he wanted to. And to make it all the worse, the entire plot leading up to him becoming God is driven by his own suicidal ideation and guilt.

Jack was never supposed to replace Chuck in Billie’s plan. He was turned into a bomb to detonate and kill the three of them, and when it goes wrong as it always does, when he detonates in the Empty instead of his ancient relatives’ faces, he’s completely lost. He tells Cas he was ready to die and that he wanted to die as atonement for everything he’s done. Cas tells him he doesn’t need absolution or a purpose to be loved, but that is rendered entirely null by him being weaponized against Chuck yet again in 15x19.

And that’s not even going into the whole destiny thing of it all. Team Free Will is explicitly founded on the rejection of destiny, and as the 2.0 addition to it, Jack tracks with his rejection of Lucifer’s purpose for him and the rejection of being a “special person” coveted by Heaven and Hell. But then in S15 Cas is weirdly adamant that Jack follow his destiny of becoming the second plane to hit the cosmic sibling towers, and as we know Jack fulfills it, which renders it null again because this is another cycle left perpetuated.

I don’t fully keep up with the Orphic egg theory mainly because it’s difficult to process for some reason, but whatever it entails about destiny and free will and cycles just falls short to me because of the show’s canon and my own feelings about Jack in general, so I can’t agree that this was a good ending for him even out of courtesy, but despite my vehement essay I do respect your outlook :D

Jack is fine. Not a damn thing wrong with him. Only people too attached to tragedy, or not understanding his arc. Sweetpea is SPN’s version of Phanes.

Learning is fun!

[sortasirius]

“Unity” and the Broken Boys

BOY Y’ALL BETTER SIT DOWN BECAUSE THIS IS AS LONG AS CAN BE AND I TOOK OFF WORK TOMORROW SO I’VE GOT TIME

This is....one of the best episodes in the show.  Yeah, in all 325 of them, this is hands down one of the best.

First of all, stan Amara for clear skin.

That silent treatment babey, right out the gate with the Angst.  Tbh Dean deserves it.

“Like I said, killing Amara, Jack dying...that’s the only way.”

“The only way.  Our one shot.  Our Last chance.  You ever get tired of saying stuff like that?”

“We don’t have to like it, alright?  But you and me, we gotta get it done.”

Amara is such a welcome energy in this whole episode.  She’s warm and understanding, whip-smart and probably more powerful than Chuck.  I love her.

Sam is a wonderful, understanding, loving dad.  I love him eternally.  He loves Jack so much, he’s trying so desperately to do what’s right for Jack but also what’s right for the world.  Jack made this choice, but he can’t live with it.  How do you support your child when their life is at stake?

“Come on man.  Blindly following orders, lying to Amara, sending her to her death. Does any of this feel right to you??”

“It doesn’t matter how we feel!  You know what?  Stay.  Stay.  Someone has to be the grown up here.”

“Yeah well someone has to keep fighting for Jack!”

“He knows what he signed up for!”

“Last I checked, we don’t give up on family.”

“Jack’s not family.”

Y’all should have heard the noise I made.  What a fucking line.

“I know how you feel about the kid, I care for him too, I do, but he’s not like you.  He’s not like Cas.  He’s just not.”

“I’m- I’m ready.”

You can see the regret, the heartbreak in Dean’s eyes.  You can see how he wants to take those words back the moment he said them, and for Jack to hear them?  It’s unthinkable.

Sam and Cas I’m just so fucking emo dude.

“Sam, you stayed behind to find another way huh?  I woulda done the same.”

AMARA

First of all, LOVE this structure.

Amara and Chuck have such a fascinating dynamic.  Rob and Emily do a great job (as they have all along) by clearly being siblings but...heightened.  You can just tell they both exude power, and the other is the only one they consider an equal.

“You and Dean had that whole weird...thing.”

“That wasn’t you writing?”

“Ugh, not that part.  Gross.”

What I took away from this is what I’ve suspected all along.  They HAVE free will, just not total free will.  Dean and Amara’s connection wasn’t Chuck, there are parts of the story he didn’t write.  Obviously, this comes into play later. 

I also have a hunch that Chuck doesn’t write romance.  I also think that in particular will come into play.

“Balance.  Something we’ve never tried before.  Creation and destruction, light and dark, brother and sister united again, but on behalf of one world, this world.  True balance.  The way it was always meant to be.  But you can’t.  You only care about your pleasure, your story.  Well, I guess that makes you the villain.”

“Villains get all the best lines.”

We see again and again this season, Chuck is irredeemable.  He doesn’t care about the angels, he doesn’t care about the world, he doesn’t care about anything.  He is a petulant toddler who has broken his toys. And when he realizes he’s trapped, he gets angry, he shouts and screams, completely at odds with Amara’s peace.

“You can’t hold me here forever.”

“I can hold you long enough.”

DEAN

Pain is the name of the game in this section homies.  Because not only are we dealing with Dean’s pain, we’re also dealing with Jack’s.  Jack says he understands why Cas and Sam mean more to Dean, but Dean clearly doesn’t, he, once again, wants to say more, but is stopped, still stopped by his fear: his fear of not beating Chuck.

Alright guys, gals, and non-binary pals.  Let’s talk about Adam and Seraphina.

Adam.  The first man.  And Seraphina.  The angel.

“My old lady.  She’s the only one who could put up with me all these years.”

Yeah okay.  Volume at 100 I get it lmao.

But also: Adam wants God dead not because he and Eve were kicked out of the Garden, but because he went after their sons.  The theme of protecting the children strikes again.

“Killing God is your plan?”

“Yeah, Billie’s been giving us a hand but Sera and me, this is our baby.”

This juxtaposed directly with Dean’s own pain at what he has to do to kill Chuck, to gain his free will: the cost of his child.

Adam’s rib.

And who else might get his ribs hurt, only to be likely healed by an angel?

It’s fine, that’s fine.  I’m fine with that.

“Jack, I don’t know how to explain it but, when I found out about Chuck, it’s like I wasn’t alive.  Not really.  You know like my whole life I’ve never been free, but like really free.  But now?  Now me and Sam, we got a shot at living a life, without all this crap on our backs.  And that’s, that’s because of you.  So, I want to say, I need to say...thank you, Jack.  Thank you.”

I’m gonna have to do a separate post about just Dean in this episode, because there is so fucking much to talk about, but there are a couple of things that I think are important:  Dean realizes how wrong he was, to say what he said.  He knows that it’s not true, this is the way he’s always coped with loss, by pushing the person to be lost away, but for Jack to hear it?  He can’t stand for that.

And:

Dean has finally pushed through the barrier.  He won’t be quiet in the face of his doubts anymore.  This is a breakthrough for him, and, of course, there are more to come.

SAM

Sam and Cas, my chaos duo.

The box, the inscription, the door.

Death’s library, filled with dead reapers.

And there it is.  The Empty.

It tells Sam the plan, the plan for Billie to take God’s place.  For everything to go back to the way it’s “supposed to be.”

This has always been the game, since season 13.  This is the longest of long games.

Sam fuckin Winchester, lying his way out of a confrontation with the Empty like the legend that he is.

He comes back with a new purpose: to stop Billie’s plan, and here’s where we get to the heart of the episode and maybe the heart of the season.

“You hear that?  Dean, brought to the edge of doubt.  His sense of duty, his rage winning out in the end.  And poor Sam, always gotta know everything.  Can’t leave well enough alone.  This is my ending, my real ending.”

The gun comes out, pointed at Sam.

Hmm...what did I say during 15x05?  Oh yeah, this.

And:

Dean would never survive killing Sam, but he’s willing to do anything, anything to earn his freedom.  His ending, where one brother kills the other and then kill himself.

Why, you might ask, did Sam not mention that the angels would be sent back to Heaven, why does he not mention Cas?  I’ll tell you why, or rather, Becky will.

Plus, Dean looks back at Cas IMMEDIATELY when Sam says that, when he mentions Eileen, and THAT’S the first time he hesitates.  He can’t lose Cas.  But at the same time, he’s willing to do anything to have his freedom.

“Sam we don’t have a choice, Jack’s about to blow!”

“We always have a choice!”

You know me, just sitting here thinking about choice, the ability to choose, and how that translates to their free will.

And Sam...I don’t think there will ever be characters I love as much as these.

“I don’t care if Billie gets what she wants!  I don’t man, I’d trade it all, I’d trade em all for Chuck.  In a heartbeat!”

“What about me?”

“You’d trade me?”

“Chuck has to die.  He has to!  Otherwise he’ll keep us tap dancing forever, and I can’t live like that man, I can’t live like that, I won’t!”

“I know you feel like that right now, okay? I know you do, but you gotta trust me.  My entire life, you’ve protected me.  From Dad, from Lucifer, from everything.  I didn’t always like it, you know?  But it’s the one thing in the whole world that I could always count on.  It’s the only thing I’ve ever known that was true.  So please, put the gun away.  Just put it away.  We’ll figure it out, Dean, we’ll find another way, you and me.  We always do.”

Okay I feel like this is going to be one of those scenes that I cry watching for years to come.  Because fuck.  After fifteen years they finally admit that not only did Dean protect Sam from Lucifer, but he protected him from John.  John.  On a par with Lucifer.

Dean and Sam have, for so many years, sacrificed themselves for the other.  Dean’s demon deal, Sam and the trials, every season they have fought to see who can die the quickest for the other.  But this?  This is them fighting to stop the violence, to stop from killing the big bad.  This is them growing, in our eyes, in real time.  Sam has always been able to get through to Dean when no one else had a prayer, but for Dean to listen, for Dean to take his words to heart, to stop the hunt for Sam, for their family, that’s how you know they do have free will.

(Btw Chuck’s eye effect when he dusted Amara was sick as fuck but I’m emo for my boys so.)

Chuck knows it’s a loss, he knows that his story has, once again, been thwarted by the boys making their own choices.  And he’s pissed, but in his anger, we get a bomb dropped on us.

“Spare me your contempt Castiel, the self-hating angel of Thursday.  You know what every other version of you did after “gripping him tight and raising him from perdition”?  They did what they were told.  But not you.  Not the one off the line with a crack in his chassis.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Also, just worth bringing up this one as well:

Every Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell.  Every one told him the same thing.  And yet, immediately, with this Cas and this Dean, something was different.  Because what has everyone seen about Cas, from the moment he met Dean?

And there’s our endgame people.  Laid out on the line.

But we ain’t done yet, fam.

We’ve talked about the handprint, but you know:

So there you have it, our prep into the “monumental” 15x18.  I have spec on that, of course, but I think a novel is long enough for this.

What to take away: Dean’s rage was always Chuck’s plan, they do have free will, their love for each other, for their family, is what will stop Chuck’s control, Death is about to come back with a vengeance, Cas’ deal is at play, and, most importantly, Castiel and Dean Winchester are a blind spot for Chuck, something he has never, not once, controlled.

[earbuds-and-hightops]

How I would have ended Supernatural

15x16: Drag Me Away (From You)

Condense/cut most of the Monster of the Week stuff and instead focus on the Chuckmara storyline [that was told in 15x17] and possibly add some more connection between Jack and Amara for foreshadowing purposes

Keep the parts where we find out that this is the only world left and that Jack will die

15x17: Unity

Condense/cut some of the beginning and introduce Billie's master plan

Billie opens Deaths Book and Team Free Will discover it to be useless but formulates a plan anyway.

About halfway through the episode, Jack explodes in the Empty (and why not do this before a comercial break for dramatics)

Have Cas's goodbye speech and sacrifice

Have Sam and Jack discover everyone gone

Still end the episode with Sam calling Dean and Dean not answering

15x18: Despair

Sam and Jack go back to the bunker and find that Dean hasn't moved from that spot on the floor

Dean fully explains what happened, and the three of them sit on the floor and mourn the loss of their family member. They do a small "service" where Castiel's name is carved into the table.

Then we move into their acknowledgement that everyone is gone

Keep the part where the find Miracle, because it's wholesome

Lucifer sneaks in, pretending to be Cas on the phone (running up the staircase clip) and he and Michael do their thing, minus creating a new Death

Flesh out that storyline and possibly emphasize the themes of sons loyal to their fathers and brothers who aren't

End the group going to whatever location to trap God

15x19: Inherit the Earth

Dedicate a good portion of this episode to fighting God and dealing with Michael, using more than fists (I'm talking angel blades at the very least) and dialogue more clever than repeating "seriously guys, stay down"

Right before Jack is able to take away Chuck's godliness (?) Chuck does something powerful (something that only a very powerful being could do) that ends up killing Dean

I don't think Dean's death should necessarily be a sacrifice, but I think it just makes sense that since they're fighting such a powerful being that they be unable to fully keep up, if that makes sense

Jack does his thing and the "we're not gonna kill you" speech, and Sam cries over Dean and does his little speech

Jack becomes the new God and brings people back

Sam and Jack hold an Endgame-esque hunter's funeral for Dean with a ton of familiar faces (Eileen, Jody, Other Dimention People, etc.)

Fade to black; it's finale time

15x20: Carry On

The Road So Far, but it's the entire song (if not extended a bit) and recaps all 15 seasons starting with "Dad's on a hunting trip"

Open on Sam and Eileen in the bunker with Miracle and show their routine and whatnot; casually show that Jack's name has been added to the table, and there's some sort of tribute to Dean in the library or map room

I would even be on board with them going to the pie-fest in Dean's honor

Cut to Dean in Heaven; he talks with Bobby and Castiel shows up with the explanation that he and Jack remodeled Heaven together

Dean and Cas acknowledge / work through what happened before Cas went to the Empty -- kiss scene???

Montage to "Carry On My Wayward Son" (not a cover) that shows Sam and Eileen and their kid (I'm thinking cute, curly haired, and deaf) and Dean visiting other people in Heaven

There's so much potential in this montage: Sam (and his kid, I guess) learning sign language from Eileen, Dean seeing Charlie again and their sibling-like dynamic, Sam's kid applying to Stanford, Jared not wearing a wig, Dean and Cas sharing drinks with Ellen, Jo, and Ash, the possibilities, people

The final scene is Dean and Cas driving around, and they see something up ahead (on the bridge, why not) and they turn down the music (montage music ends)

They step out of the car to find Sam there, they all reunite and hug, look out at the mountains, fade to black, Executive Producer title card

Thank you message from Jensen, Misha, and Jared, and same drone shot of the crew (but they're wearing masks).

Bonus points if Misha releases his essay on Cas's queerness.

[wormstacheangel]

15x18 coda fic...?

I had an idea that bugged me so I wrote it. What if Dean just...threw himself at Cas while the Empty was taking him? Then this happened. (comfort/fluff/first kiss)

No.

Cas looked back at him. A smile so big and loving but heartbreaking all at once was still on his lips.  

No. No. No.

Dean watched it all from the ground where Cas had shoved him to protect him again because that’s what Cas does. He protects him. He saves him time after time. Everything he has done has been for...him. He always knew that Cas made it pretty clear but he could never accept it. It made no sense for an angel of the lord to sacrifice so much for him, for him specifically, but here he was doing it again. Sacrificing his life once again but it’s so much different this time. 

“No!” A shaky cry came out of him as he half lunged and crawled to take a hold of Cas’s legs that were already covered in black goo. 

Dean can feel the goo start to envelop him as well and while fear was completely eating at him, there was nothing in the damn universe that could make him let go. He held his breath as he pressed his face into Cas’s thigh and felt the goo crawling up his neck to finally swallow them. 

Then it was silent. 

Dean felt like he just woke up but he knew only a few seconds had passed. His grip was still tight on Cas’s legs but the goo was gone now. He let out the breath of air that was burning his lungs before he even dared to look up, the glare was so clearly burning into the top of his head.

“Dean?”

Dean still wasn’t thinking clearly as he hid his face into Cas’s thigh. Clinging to him as he kneeled at his feet because Cas was still with him. He could feel a sob trying to escape from his throat but he just buried his face deeper into Cas. Letting the tears fall but still, the goodbye was not processing with him. He was about to lose Cas again but he’s right here. He was still with him.

“Dean?”

Cas pulled his white-knuckled grip off of him as he kneeled down to look at him but Dean couldn’t stand the separation so he pulled Cas into a strong hug. One that must have surprised Cas as he made a gasping noise while Dean hid his face into the side of Cas’s face. Feeling the tickle of his hair on his lips and nose. Breathing in the scent of rain, Cas always carries and lets one of his hands buried themselves into his hair while the other wrapped around his shoulders to hold him close. He has him. 

Then he felt Cas’s shoulders shake. His arms remained at his side as his chin rested on Dean’s shoulder. He could just picture Cas’s face and it made him squeeze his eyes shut as he let out his own gasping sob. His hand grasping at Cas’s coat afraid to let go. Afraid he would really disappear again if his hold loosens because he has his own confession to say but everything was overwhelming him. 

“Cas,” Dean took a shaky breath against Cas’s skin before he rested his forehead on Cas’s shoulder. “Tell me again. Say it again. I need to know...I need to know it’s really you.”

Dean didn’t move as Cas’s hands finally touched him. He started making soft strokes down his spine, comforting and warm. Not at all desperate the way Dean was holding him. 

“Dean, Chuck has no hold on me. You know that. I’m real. My feelings are real. We… we are real.” His voice was still calm but he could hear softness in them still. The way he was still holding back cries.

“Then say it again.” Dean pushed back just enough to take Cas’s face in between his shaky hands. Their eyes meet for the first time since being here and Dean had to fight back another sob as he meets those watery blue eyes. With his thumbs, he wiped Cas’s tears away and desperately said, “Please. I need to hear you say it again.”

He smiled again as he started saying his name but Dean shook his head as he let his head hang between them. A shaky breath or laugh escaping him as his mind still fogged up, nothing making sense anymore.

“No, wait, shh!” He shook his head as if everything would clear up but he was still feeling a bit dizzy. Not ready to hear the words and finally accept them. “Shit, fuck, I’m not ready. Wait”

He heard Cas chuckle, felt the shaking in between his hands, before he said, “You’re so stupid.”

“Gee thanks, Cas, and here I thought you loved me.” The teasing came out so naturally that it shocked Dean when those words escaped his lips. 

Of course, Cas would not skip a beat as he said, “I do - love you I mean - but I also think you’re an idiot at times. Like right now for instance.” He pulled Dean’s hands off of him but held them tightly on his lap. Dean looked up to meet his glare. “Jumping into the grasp of The Empty? Really, Dean?”

“Cas, I-I can’t lose you again.” Dean shook his head as he looked back at him. Watching Cas strain to hold back his emotions as tears continued to flow. 

“Dean, it’s fine. I was at peace with my decision. If it meant saving you,” Cas looked down at their hands moving them just enough so the desperation wasn’t showing. Cas sat back on the black hollow floor and held one of Dean’s hands. Held it as if they were going to go for a nice walk instead of discussing his own sacrifice. “I’ll do anything.”

Dean sat next to him, shoulder to shoulder as their hands rested on Cas’s knee. “So what? I’m supposed to willingly let you go?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Cas rolls his eyes as he uses his free hand to wipe his face. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Well, I do.”

“No.” Cas says firmly as he shakes his head. He made a move to let go of their hands but Dean only tightened his grip. Cas sighs as he looks down at their hands again before looking back at Dean. Softer but still an edge. “No, you need to leave.”

“He’s right you know.” Dean turns towards the familiar voice and sees Meg appear before them. Her smile wild and manic as she glared down at them. He instantly stood up to block Cas from her view. “No humans in my void.”

“I’m not leaving without, Cas.” He could feel Cas’s hand gripping at the back of his shirt, ready to yank him out of the way at the first sign of trouble. 

“Dean,” Cas started but Dean reached behind him to squeeze his wrist.

“Shut up.” Dean tells him before looking back at Meg or not Meg. “We’re kind of a package deal so you might as well throw us both back.”

She chuckles before she takes a shaky step towards them. “Humans aren’t supposed to be here. You shouldn’t be here. You’re being too noisy. Everything is too loud now!”

Dean pulled at Cas’s wrist to pull him in close. To just make sure he was there. “Then let us continue our conversation back at home and we’ll leave you alone.”

“No! Castiel and I had a deal.”

“Fine! Send me back alone but you’ll never get peace.” Dean threatened as he pulled Cas along with him when he took a step towards Meg. “You’re gonna deal with my stubborn ass poking at you again and again until I get him back. Cause trust me, sweetheart, I’m not someone who gives up easily. I killed Death already, twice, and you’re going to be next on my list.”

Meg just started to giggle, low and deep, before she started to full-on laugh. Throwing her head back before she looked back at them with her wild smile. She grabbed her head as she closed her eyes. “I just...I want to sleep! Let me sleep.”

“What if we promised not to bother you?” Cas stepped forward and away from Dean’s grasp. “We were all betrayed by Billie but what if we work together again. Help each other get what we want. You get your peace again and we-”

“You guys walk out of here?” Cas only nodded while Dean couldn’t stop himself from reaching for Cas, his hands grasping at his trench coat. She eyed them both. “I never want either of you or that...Jack, here again.”

“Got it. We can do that.” Dean says as he stands beside Cas. Looking over at him while Cas kept his eyes forward. Standing strong and confident while his face was a blank stare but Dean could see his mind running. “Cas?”

“We still need to defeat Chuck. I can’t promise I’ll make it out of that alive. I may be back here in a few hours or days after we return.” Cas doesn’t look at him as he talked but at Meg who was glaring back at him. “If you help us defeat him maybe we can all finally have peace.”

“How?”

“I summon you again.” 

Dean opened his mouth to argue but Cas shook his head at him, holding his hand out to stop him from talking but Dean instead took it. Intertwining their fingers together to let Cas know that if it’s a dumb suicidal plan again then he better be ready for him to follow him into the damn dark again. 

“I summon you when I am close to Chuck and you-”

“And I’ll bring him here.” Meg finished Cas’s sentence with a smirk. “Where he is powerless.”

“He has Amara in him so that would keep them both alive. Keep the balance.” Dean adds as Cas eyes finally turn to look at him with a smile on his lips as things start to fall in place. He squeezes his hand with a hopeful look because maybe, just maybe, they had a chance for some real happiness. 

“We got work to do then.” Cas tells Dean before turning back to Meg.

She looks back at them with a less strained and creepy smile before she says, “I’ll be waiting for your summon then? I’m still connected to you, Castiel, so I’ll hear you.”

Cas gave a solid nod while Dean didn’t like the sound of that at all. He was about to open his mouth to ask what that meant but then Meg waved her hand and they were in the dark again. 

Dean woke up face down back in the dungeon. He blinked awake as he sat up trying to get his head on straight when he sprang up to look for Cas, afraid he was left behind. That he was tricked and this was how he finds out that he actually lost Cas. He lost him before he could even-

“Oh.” Dean turns to find Cas passed out behind him. He was laying on his back with his tie draped across his face. He couldn’t help but chuckle wanting to add another picture to his collection but there were more important things to do, to say, right now. “Cas?”

He crawled over to him and moved his tie as he shook his shoulders to wake him. “Come on, sleeping beauty, time to get up.”

Cas groaned as his eyes tighten up before he opens them, squinting up at Dean with a confused haze. “Dean?”

“Yeah, buddy, come on.” Dean helped sit him but then he was pulled into an overwhelming hug. The relief that was running out of Cas was heavy as his grip was tight but for the first time, Cas turned his head to hide his face into Dean’s neck. “Cas?”

Cas shook his head and once again Dean felt the angel shake with silent cries. 

Dean held on to him as he tried to comfort him but his own tears were blinding him. Cas was here, alive and in his arms. He almost lost him again and just like every other time he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to go on. How was he supposed to care about saving a world that he wanted to escape from? Now, now everything was right again. Well, almost everything.

Dean pulled back just enough to look back at Cas’s red-rimmed eyes, the most he has ever seen the angel cry. 

“You’re a mess.” He reached over to wipe Cas’s face with his sleeve and that made Cas slowly smile before a choke of a laugh escaped him.

“Yeah, well you don’t look so hot either.” Cas copied him, Dean’s face being wiped clean by the rough fabric of the dirty old trench coat. His smile slow-growing before he was grinning, dazzling, and beautiful as his fingers then replaced the fabric. Then the smile became a pout again as he tried to fight back more tears. “I’m so sorry, Dean. I didn’t want to leave you but I saw no other way to save you.”

His fingers reached to caress Dean’s face with no hesitation. Dean cloaked Cas’s hands with his own before he asked again. “Tell me now.”

Cas rolled his eyes as he shared his you’re-such-an-idiot smile. “Dean, are you sure this time?”

“Yeah, Cas, say it again.”

Cas features all soften as he relaxed while he looked into his eyes. There was never fear in Cas’s eyes while he took a deep breath. He looked so happy so...in love.

“I love you, Dean.”

Dean let go of the breath he must have been holding as he read Cas’s lips. His voice echoing in his head, trying to compare both of the confessions but they both sounded so confident. This time though it wasn’t a goodbye. No, this was just the beginning for them. 

Dean let his forehead fall against Cas’s own, a move that surprised Cas as he froze under the touch. He felt too overwhelmed with it all but it’s true. His angel loved him, the words that always were unspoken between them were finally out in the open. That whole speech was Cas. It was how he truly felt about Dean and maybe he wasn’t as good with his words as Cas but he could at least say it.

“I love you, Cas.” Dean fought the lump in his throat. “I love you. You...you have me. You always had me.”

“Dean.” Cas gasped out still unmoving as all of this was new territory for them but it wasn’t weird. It wasn’t uncomfortable but just unsure. Still hesitant. As if they both couldn’t believe they finally crossed this dumb line they drew themselves. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, dumbass,” Dean pulled back just enough that their noses touched but he wasn’t ready to be so far away from him just yet. “Are you?”

“Yes!” Cas said sounding half annoyed that Dean ever doubted him in the first place and half thrilled that he could finally say it. “It’s one of the few things I know for certain. I love you, Dean.”

“Cool. Can I…?” Dean wanted to ask but now he finally felt the embarrassment, the one that always crawled up his neck when they were found too close together. Lost in each other’s gaze and always drifting closer without words.

“Please do.”

Dean watched Cas's eyes drift closed and just when he got the confidence to lean in he heard his name being called out in the halls. Desperate and scared.

“Sam?” Cas turned towards the hall and heard Jack call back to him. “Jack!”

Dean let himself be pulled up by Cas before they were both almost tackled down by their kid. “You’re alive!”

“Barely,” Dean mumbled as Cas turned to narrow his eyes at him, telling him not to worry the kid so much. “We’re fine. How are you guys?”

Sam walked in then and they get the cliff notes of Sam and Jack’s missing person’s case. Then it was their turn to do the same, leaving out the whole them part out of it. Now they had to figure out how they can make Chuck bring all these people back before they shove his ass into the Empty. 

“Come on, we can check the town out.” Sam tells them and Jack follows right behind him. 

Cas was going to follow them right out the door but Dean then grabbed his arm to pull him back to him. Taking his face in his hands and before Cas could say anything, though his wide eyes made him believe that Cas wasn’t about to say anything to stop him, Dean leaned in to finally kiss him.

Letting himself melt against Cas as he has always wanted to. Moving his hands to wrap around his waist, under the coat and jacket, to hold him close to his chest. Wanting more as Cas carefully rested his hands on his shoulders as if not knowing what to do with them but he was so confident in the kiss as he moved his lips along with his own with the same eagerness.  

Then he pulled away too quickly as his hot breath tickled Dean’s lips. His bright eyes looking down at his lips then back at his eyes. “We have to go, Dean.”

“Okay,” Dean leaned down for a quick peek and he couldn’t stop his chuckle as Cas chased after his lips. “Let’s go save the world and then we can pick this up later. Deal?”

Cas nodded, flashing Dean a smile before he said, “Of course, Dean.”

“Guys! Come on!” 

Dean takes Cas’s hand squeezing it before they raced back down the hall to meet up with Sam. A last chapter in Chuck’s story starting but they knew they had the power to write their own ending because they are real. This is real. 

[mittensmorgul]

So for the most part, I outright reject the finale. But I do think, in light of the whole "Jimmy was supposed to be in the bar, and Dean was disappointed by that because his perfect heaven would have Cas in it" just makes me all the more convinced that the final episode was some kind of djinn dream. Like.... There's no other explanation in my opinion. If Dean's perfect heaven was supposed to have Cas, and he tragically gets faked out by Jimmy (????? Why tf would jimmy be there anyway), it just proves that it's not ACTUALLY heaven. That, along with he El Sol beer he's drinking is all the evidence I need. I think after 15x19, Dean and Sam got whammied by some monster, and are stuck in a hallucination, and that's what we're seeing. (My headcanon is that it's actually The Empty doing it, because it knows if it doesn't keep Dean and Sam occupied and spinning in circles, they'll invade the Empty to save Cas. So its trying to prevent that) :)

Hello, anon friendo! I am gonna start by offering the socially distanced version of a high five, because yeah... There is just so much to unpack here, and you provided such a succinct and all-encompassing series of statements to start from. Thank you!

*flings open array of questionable suitcases*

First off, Congrats on having rejected the finale. I know a lot of folks are still struggling with that one, for many reasons. But you have hit upon so many of the points I’ve been trying to make about the finale since it aired. I’d just like to start with some of the assumptions I’ve heard from folks about the finale that make it impossible for me to consider it fully honestly canon. Because so much about it just makes no goshdang sense... like... not at all...

One of the biggest issues I have surrounding the reception of the finale in parts of fandom is that it portrayed a “happy ending.” The show itself spent the entire final season telling us that a gravestone marked Winchester was not and never would be a happy ending (thank you Becky Rosen-- words I never thought I’d say, but honestly and most sincerely meant). Let’s break this down a bit.

Starting from the assumption that “heaven was fixed” so that characters could have true free will there, making it satisfying in any way that Dean died so young and never got to truly experience happiness during life, I would like anyone who has adopted this attitude to then explain Kansas the band. I mean... explain that in any satisfactory canon-compliant way. (hint: you can’t. it makes zero sense in canon, if heaven is truly reformed and “happy” with everyone in possession of free will.)

Which brings me to Misha’s comments about Jimmy being in the Roadhouse. Why, if heaven were truly fixed, would Jimmy ever in a bazillion years attend a party for Dean Winchester? If Heaven were truly a “happy” ending for Dean, why introduce this element of eternal tragedy and heartbreak to his heaven experience? Why taunt him with the eternal loss of Cas-- even if you don’t think he reciprocated Cas’s romantic feelings, he was canonically the best friend Dean ever had, and being forced to exist forever in a place where he had everyone else he ever cared for except for Cas? Is frankly horrific.

How the actual fuck is that a happy ending, in any sense of the word?

How is this the sort of heaven that Dean would’ve made for himself before it was “fixed?” At least in the memorex heaven, he could’ve lived in oblivious peace with Cas, even if it was always just his own memories and not ~actually Cas~. I honestly think that would’ve been happier than the abject tragedy of what we did get, and what we would’ve gotten had the original script played out.

All of this kind of makes me wonder if they ever even actually defeated Chuck. Like... it feels more like Dean got pulled into the Empty at that moment with Cas and Billie, and everything else after that point was the Empty’s endless experience of sorrow and despair we knew it subject its charges to. So that’s one potential for what could’ve actually happened. I mean, everything about the finale was sorrow and despair, you know? Dean didn’t even get to enjoy his pie at a pie festival because Sam smashed in in his face. How is any of it happy, in any way?

Because if that was actually heaven, there wasn’t actually any free will (because why tf would Kansas the band have chosen to put on that concert? why tf would Jimmy have been there, just to torment Dean with the taunt of Cas returning to him only to have that hope snatched away again? It’s cruel. It’s, in fact, a source of intense despair).

The djinn theory could also work, and I’ve read some excellent fix-it fic using that as a premise. But that doesn’t really explain what happened to Jack (and Amara, since she was in there with them) after hoovering up Chuck’s power, you know? I think the simplest explanations in canon are that Chuck actually won via the unified power of Light and Dark being transferred into Jack and effectively using him as a vessel. With Sam and Dean convinced they’d won, they effectively stopped resisting Chuck’s story for them, and using Jack’s understanding of humanity and the Winchesters specifically, Chuck finally was able to implement a version of his story that the Winchesters would just waltz into without thinking it was supernaturally influenced at all. Going bigger and bigger with monsters and cosmic troubles hadn’t worked, but going so small Sam and Dean would barely even notice the influence-- even with the incongruous reappearance of a vampire that appeared in their lives once, for like two whole minutes 15 years ago, and an unsolved case from the journal from more than 30 years ago that John had never even linked to vampires at all.

At this point, I need to mention that I’m watching 10.23 as I type this up. An episode in which we confront the Mark, along with Death, and Dean’s despair, where he learns a version of the truth (but by no means the full truth, or even accurate truth in some respects) about Chuck’s Story, Amara/The Darkness, etc. That would unfold more fully over the next five seasons. And what was the case Dean took in this episode? Vampires. LOLOL omg this show is nothing if not horrifically consistent, yes?

So because of this, I went haring off through my own blog looking for a post I made a long time ago about the symbolism of how various monsters are used on this show (because again, consistency). I got sidetracked by other posts in my monsters tag, including this from after 15.09 aired, which feels particularly awfully relevant. This was my reaction to Chuck’s Story he showed Sam in that episode, about what the future would look like should he successfully trap Chuck with a Mark, and which... yeah is basically exactly thematically consistent with what we saw in the finale, right down to a cheesy twist on vampires. Read the whole post right here, but this is the part that reached up and punched me in the face:

this is how Dean personally reacts when he loses Cas. We know how he reacts when he loses anyone else– think about what he did when Charlie died. He went on a murder rampage against the Stynes for killing her. When Mary died he broke some furniture and went full bore toward both resurrecting her and stopping Jack. But without Cas, Dean loses the will to fight. Sam has… always been different. He referenced Jess in 15.04 to remind us of how he was after she died in the pilot episode. Just like John, he picked up the revenge mission and ran with it. But for Dean, Cas is different. Without Cas… Dean gives up.

Because... Dean gave up. Sure, he and Sam weren’t overrun by vampires in the end. Chuck knew they’d never stop fighting the monsters, one way or another. The only way to get Dean to give up is something Chuck hadn’t quite figured out yet... maybe not until after 15.17, after confronting Cas in the hallway of the bunker, after absorbing Amara’s power, knowledge, and perspective on Dean.

Chuck needed Dean to give up, and honestly? Pushing Billie to clear him off the table and send him (and Cas, that pesky angel who never did what he was told) to the Empty would’ve been a direct way to deal with that... pretty much akin to having one sibling locked in a cage forever, yes?

Also, still looking through my monsters tag, I’m reminded of 14.15, and still cannot differentiate the version of Heaven in 15.20 from what was done to the people of that town. This... is not... paradise. This is actively what Dean has been insisting is the OPPOSITE of paradise since like… 4.22… No ending where Dean was a “Stepford bitch in paradise” ever had the possibility of being “happy,” at the core of things, and this “fixed” version of Heaven just doesn’t hold up to any degree of inspection. Something is seriously wrong here. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/183465650390/so-can-we-talk-about-this-monster-of-the-week-for

And since I was unable to find the post I wrote who knows how long ago about Monsters and how they’re symbolically used on Supernatural to represent larger themes in the episode, I’ll just attempt to sum up what Vampires have been used for. Revenge. Vampires are always, in some way connected to themes of revenge.

(and hooray, I found at least a post adjacent to the one I’ve spent the last four hours trying to find... https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/187207052080/i-obviously-did-not-think-this-through, where I mention that shapeshifters are about revealing hidden truths (mostly about Dean since most shapeshifters are connected to Dean), zombies are about grief and the inability to move past it.)

So why... why at the end of their road is the monster that comes after them-- literally FOR REVENGE for something that had never been blamed on Sam or Dean to begin with, from season 1, directly connected to John’s revenge mission and the first time they learned about the Colt AND the first time they learned in canon that Vampires were even real... like... this feels very specifically like some kind of layers-of-meta levels of shade on them, you know? Vampires are for revenge, so what vengeance exactly is being visited upon Sam and Dean in this episode? If not Chuck’s entire story for them itself?

So yeah, 100% agree, something is incredibly rotten in the finale. And I am sick to effing death of people trying to convince us that anything about this was “good” or “happy” or “satisfying” in any way. Or even “how it was always supposed to end” with Dean dead bloody, as if the entire back half of the series hadn’t been suggesting that a true win was the subversion of all of Chuck’s story for them, and Dean finally being able to have his chosen family all alive, happy, and chilling on a beach somewhere watching the sunset. Nothing will ever convince me that the ending portrayed in 15.20 wasn’t exactly how Chuck thought he “won,” rendering it entirely irrelevant to the rest of canon, unless all of canon was ultimately the tragedy we’d been encouraged to believe would be firmly defeated in the end.

Folks, you can’t have it both ways. 

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I would love for you to talk more indepth about the montage. To me it feels so off and weird. Almost like a parody? So many scenes in it are "funny" moments that just don't make sense in the context of an emotional overview of the road so far... (Like all the scenes where Dean is eating, Donna with donut dust on her face, Sam getting hit during the game show.) I don't know. Isn't the montage supposed to make me nostalgic, teary-eyed? This one definitely doesn't do it for me!

Here I am! Yes, I absolutely agree. The montage is Weird(TM). It’s kind of a tone rollercoaster. It’s very full of funny/silly moments, with some serious moments smacked in. And it definitely looks like... there’s something about it.

For an easier consultation I will reference the gifs I have made of the montage sequence here.

[Gif 1] It starts pretty much like I’d expect a Supernatural goodbye montage to start. The two brothers meeting for the first time in the pilot, a reminder of their childhood with John, their banter still from the pilot, a couple moments of them driving in the car in the first seasons, Dean saving Lucas in 1x03 which is the first Dean-heavy episode and also an extremely symbolic moment for Dean’s entire journey - just think at how Lucas as a mirror was still relevent during the “drowning” Michael possession arc. Everything feels normal so far. We’re starting from the beginning! Now--

[Gif 2] Interesting and weird choices start here. Them pretending to be high school teachers from After School Special 4x13 - actually a very iconic moment for the fandom, remember that post of Dean in shorts from that episode that you had to reblog when it came on your dash? (Actually I’m not sure if I ever reblogged it lol.) Dean celebrating getting young again from The Curious Case of Dean Winchester 5x07 (and Jensen showing off his agility). The two of them showing their FBI badges to Jesse Turner’s biological mother in 5x06. Dean mowing the lawn of Mary’s house in the Djinn dream and immediately after Jess and Sam kissing also in the Djinn dream, from What Is And What Should Never Be 2x20. Then Dean after killing the witch when he was under the memory loss spell, in Regarding Dean 12x11. Sam happy when they celebrate Christmas in A Very Supernatural Christmas 3x08. Them being “lucky” under the effect of the rabbit’s foot in Bad Day At Black Rock 3x03. Sam also happy in Baby 11x04.

Again the present, then the montage starts again with the water-related ghost from Red Sky At Morning 3x06, a Bela episode, and then Bela herself from her first episode, 3x03 again.

What do these moments have in common? Not all of them, but for many of them I’d say reality being manipulated. The Djinn dream, the rabbit foot, Dean’s aging, the Antichrist... and it’s not over yet. Also, them pretending to be teachers, agents etc - not “real”.

[Gif 3] The tone suddenly gets more serious and relevant to current events: Chuck in The Monster at the End of This Book 4x18 (eh). Death in Two Minutes to Midnight 5x21 (the first appearance of Death, while now we’ve had Billie’s last and a very short-lived new one), and then two major moments from Lazarus Rising - Dean emerging from the grave and finding the handprint on his shoulder. Crowley’s first episode, Abandon All Hope 5x10. Zachariah’s death in Point Of No Return 5x18. Anna from The Song Remains The Same 5x13, where she is the antagonist having been brainwashed successfully by heaven. Michael burning and Sam jumping in the cage with Michael in 5x22, then another moment from 4x01 (the brothers hugging after reuniting). A moment from The French Mistake 6x15 (reality fuckery again!). Sam in Frontierland 6x18.

[Gif 4] Reality fuckery continues with Becky marrying Sam in 7x08. Funnily enough, this is the peak of Becky’s obsessive behavior which she went to therapy for and grew away of - it definitely emphasizes how far Becky has come. Donna’s first appeance in 9x13. That iconic shot of Dean in Bloodlust 2x03 because he’s pretty. Charlie’s first appearance in 7x20 while she dances to Walking On Sunshine (relevant?), Kevin’s first appearance in 7x21 when he becomes a prophet (lots of firsts). Abaddon’s first appearance in As Time Goes By 8x12. Then there’s the first appearance of the bunker, in the next episode, a couple shots in fact. Then more 4x01, Ruby pretending to mistake Dean for the pizza man (eh). Then more present...

This section seems to be mostly “first appearances” - including Ruby’s s4 meatsuit, i.e. Genevieve’s first appearance.

[Gif 5] We suddenly jump to more recent events with Kelly and Jack in heaven in Byzanthium 4x08. Jack’s iconic hello from 4x16 Don’t Go In The Woods. Dean teaching Jack how to drive in 14x07 Unhuman Nature. But then we suddenly go from Jack things to something completely different on the surface: two consecutive moments from Changing Channels 5x08, including the iconic Nutcracker scene, and Sully from Just My Imagination. We are actually back to the previous theme: reality fuckery. Gabriel’s episode was about placing them in “television shows”, Sully, while real, is literally a child’s “imaginary friend”. And then... a moment from the cartoon part of Scoobynatural! It doesn’t get more reality fuckery than that. Oh, wait! Charlie and Dorothy going to Oz in 9x04. That’s a pretty strong contender. Dean being hit in the face by a fairy in 6x09 - also about a realm Dean briefly went to. And, in case we felt like we hadn’t gotten enough 4x01 yet, Pamela’s first appearance (her last, albeit a hallucination, was about the whole “How come you only want what you can't have?” thing).

[Gif 6] We continue again with a mixture of firsts and weird things. Ellen’s first appearance in 2x02, Dean and Cas in 4x18 (we saw Chuck from that episode earlier), Jody’s first appearance in 5x15 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Rufus in 6x04 Weekend At Bobby’s (not his first but a good episode...), Garth in 9x12 Sharp Teeth (not his first but the first in which he is a werewolf and is married... relevant to recent lamp events??), Missouri in 1x09 (her first appearance).

Then Gabriel from 13x21 Beat The Devil (an episode where he plays a trick on Lucifer) and Rowena from the same scene (in fact a scene where they’re flirting).  Then Eileen coming back to life in 15x06 and smiling at Sam. Jo flirting with Dean in 2x02 - her first appearance, again. Funnily enough, she had been introduced as a love interest, but ended up being repurposed as a sisterly figure. Tempted to say it’s relevant in an ironic way. Mary in 14x11 Damaged Goods, when Dean has a goodbye mother-son moment with her. Amara in 11x09 Oh Brother Where Art Thou when she was looking for her brother. Then Lucifer in two different vessels (12x07 Rock Never Dies and 12x21, when Lucifer regains control over the vessel).

Then Metatron doing the find a wife make babies speech to Cas in 8x23! Relevant??? Dun dun dun. Then Ketch for some reason (the first episode where we see his face, 12x08 LOTUS).

[Gif 7] Then Jo/Anael in 13x13, another first appearance. (I cropped these horribly I should have cut them when the present happens lol.)

Sandwiched between two shots from the present, Dean Sam Mary and John having dinner together in 14x13 Lebanon.

Then we start again with Dean riding Larry in 12x11, Dean and Cas dressed as cowboys in 13x06 (mini pattern here...), Asmodeus with the archangel blade in 13x13 (insert meta about Asmodeus in Christian lore here), and the really intriguing “Intermission” shot from the play in 10x05.

[Gif 8] To continue a certain pattern we might be tempted to see, Dean eating piecake from 14x06 Optimism (an episode about a distorted version of romantic love), then Dean eating noodles from 10x13 Halt & Catch Fire (the ghost is a husband that passes on thanks to his wife). Dean after his dentistry session with Garth in 15x10. Meg from 6x10 Caged Heat (the episode with the pizza man porn). Dean and Sam investigating in 4x12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag (an episode about growing old poorly). Crowley in 10x16 Paint It Black (that episode). Dean playing that game in 14x17 Game Night (the episode Cas calls for God, and when Mary dies - the one playing the game was God...). Sam and Dean getting out of the car in 13x05 when they visit the traumatized kid (peak mourning Dean episode...). Then we go into reality fuckery territory again with 14x15 Peace of Mind, Sam under the psychic’s control and Cas disgruntled about it.

[Gif 9] Mick Davies from 12x16 Ladies Drink Free, when he learnt a lesson about monsters. Dean geeking out about the Hatchet Man - so heavy with mirror significances - in 14x04 Mint Condition. Belphegor - Jack’s dark mirror - in 15x03 The Rupture, the break-up episode. Donna’s first episode again, this time Dean and she eating donuts. Dean, Sam and Mary hugging in 12x22 after the confrontation in Mary’s head. Kaia in 13x09 The Bad Place, when Jack uses her to find the way to where Mary is (Mary pattern?). Claire&co rescuing Jody and Donna in 13x10 Wayward Sisters. Dean in 1944 dresses as a sailor in 11x14 The Vessel. Baby nyooming in 15x11 The Gamblers...

Aaand more Changing Channels, the genital herpes ad. It’s almost like reality fuckery is a theme. Followed by Sam drinking the anti-cold concoction at Garth’s in 15x10 and the two of them outside the monster fighting pit in the same episode. Then Cas, Dean, Sam and Jack on a video call with Ketch in 14x09 The Spear when they talk about the egg to trap Michael.

[Gif 10] We stay in the same episode with the four of them heading to Michael. Then the four of them celebrating Jack’s return to life (after Cas’ deal with the Empty). More present, and then the iconic “we’ve got work to do” [trunk closes] moment from the pilot.

So: some of these moments seem like genuine moments you’ll want to put in a montage, but there’s a weird predominance of characters smiling and looking happy or goofy. It’s kind of... not exactly representative of the show as a whole, you know? There are moments that fit as, you know, iconic steps in the story, but surprisingly few, and many moments you’d expect to be in a “final” montage are blatantly not there. Several moments with, let’s put it like this, suspicious meta connotations. Moments that, well, we don’t know what happens in the finale yet, but smell like they might be relevant to future developments. (Metatron’s speech to newly human Cas anyone?)

What really strikes me is the amount of moments connected to reality being manipulated or distorted in some way. Lots of Changing Channels, fantasy elements of various kinds (the Djinn dream, Scoobynatural, Oz, the imaginary friend Becky’s wedding to Sam, the fairy, ...), them acquiring luck (s3) or losing it (s15), and so on. It’s almost like the sequence is telling us something...

Thoughts?

[hen-of-letters]

Series 15 gives all of the characters you could ever care about their worst possible endings, but presents these endings as somehow good or satisfying or acceptable.  Here's a list.

The short version: they're Chuck's endings, and Chuck is a bad writer.  

None of the characters can escape the fate set out for them or break the cycle of trauma begun by Chuck.  The show itself doesn't even realise how truly awful these endings are - it dresses up a tragedy in pie gags and pretty colours and calls it a happy ending.  And in order to inflict these worst possible endings on its characters, the narrative has to be twisted and contorted in the most absurd of ways.

So, onto the list:

Adam: Forgotten and left to languish in the pit, he's finally freed, only to suffer an anticlimactic offscreen death and be forgotten again.  Michael, his only companion for so long, is also killed off.  In the finale, blood family seems to be all that matters - and yet he isn't mentioned.

Alternate Kaia: She helps rescue Kaia from the Bad Place, but chooses to remain there to face certain destruction rather than return to earth with Kaia, Dean and Sam.  This world is so hostile to her that death is preferable.  Her horrible, pointless death stands as a powerful statement about the real harm caused by exclusion, but the text doesn't seem to acknowledge the full horror of this.  Her death isn't remarked upon; it seems to suggest that both Kaia and her double are returned to their rightful places.  It's just one example of the show creating awful endings without seeming to understand how awful they truly are.  (I rant a lot more about Alternate Kaia here.)

Amara: After being betrayed and locked away for millennia, we see Amara's initial impulse for revenge and destruction transform into an admiration for creation.  She becomes an advocate for humanity and the world.  And yet she ends up being betrayed (by both the Winchesters and Chuck) and locked away again.  She's absorbed by Chuck in a way that doesn't fit within the logic of the show.  Chuck and Amara are equals - it doesn't make any sense that Chuck could overpower her.  Wouldn't they become a blend of the two of them?  And, since their separation caused the Big Bang, wouldn't their unity end the world?  Anyway, having the cosmic feminine be voiceless and invisible is the worst way for Amara's story to end.  Having Jack speak for her, saying that they are 'in harmony' tries to make this an acceptable fate for her, but only makes it worse.

Benny:  Another offscreen death, and this one feels particularly spiteful.  It really seems like he was killed just to be a conversation-starter for Cas and Dean.  However, if his fate can be sealed by a line of dialogue, then it only proves that confirmation of the fates of Eileen, AU Charlie and the other hunters could have been given in the same way.  Just one line could have done it - "I just spoke to Eileen, everyone's back."  Instead, at the end of 15.19 we're in the absurd position of having Sam and Dean toast the people they've lost without them even bothering to check who that may or not be.

Billie: The bizarre thing about Billie being revealed as a villain at the end of Season 15 was that she was supposed to be acting in self-interest - that she wanted to be the new God.  It made no sense.  What would make sense to me, though, would be if Chuck was controlling her (as Lucifer bound Death in Season 5).  Season 15 has strong echoes of Season 4 - and Billie took on both the role of Ruby (feeding Jack hearts rather than demon blood, but nevertheless making him into a weapon, with the price being the loss of his sense of self and ultimately his life) and Heaven (persuading Dean that it had to be this way, and telling him to go along with the plan).  We only have the Shadow's word for Billie's motivation, and we know she wasn't responsible for the deaths of the AU hunters, so in the end her status is ambiguous - she really seems to be a victim of Chuck's bad writing.  She's erased from the narrative along with Castiel, when really she should have been freed from Chuck's control and fighting on the side of nature and free will alongside the Winchesters.  Supernatural also concludes with nobody in the role of Death, which is a crazy loose thread left dangling.

Castiel: His confession was a thing of beauty, perfectly summing up the truth of both his and Dean's characters.  Both of them are made of and motivated by love.  And yet after speaking his truth, he is silenced.  He never gets to hear that he is loved in return (when the previous twelve seasons have made it abundantly clear to the audience that Dean loves Cas just as much as Cas loves Dean).  His capacity for love made him the only thing that Chuck could not control; as an agent of free will, he should have had a central role in Chuck's defeat.  

In 15x13, when Cas is in the Empty to see Ruby, the Shadow says: "funny thing about [Death's] plan, though... she didn't say anything about needing you. Baby, you can't just traipse in and out of here. It upsets the order of things."  To me, this sounded so much like 4x22's "you're not in this story" that I saw it as a pretty clear indication that Cas would play an important part in Chuck's defeat.  Because Team Free Will wouldn't follow the plan, would they?  They would find another way, wouldn't they?  Wouldn't they?

However, after the confession, he's never seen on screen again.  He's barely mentioned.  Eventually we're told he "helped" Jack, so he ends up where he started: as a servant of heaven.  He deserved to complete his fall, to become human, to live as well as speak his truth.  Making him a silent, unseen instrument of heaven undoes his entire arc.  Erasing him from the narrative requires the extraordinary warping of that narrative: nothing about his death suggests that it should be accepted as a permanent 'sacrifice', when we know that there is a spell that can return angels from the Empty (and, thanks to the handprint, we have his blood for it) and that Lucifer was brought back by Chuck in 15x19.  And the idea that Sam, Jack and Dean wouldn't try everything in their power to bring him back is utterly ludicrous.

Cas' confession scene to so closely mirrors 4x01's barn scene that the narrative is crying out for the parallel to be completed by Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty just as Cas rescued Dean from hell.  However, we're never given that narrative closure - just like we are never given the reunions demanded by the scenes of Sam losing Eileen and Charlie losing Stevie.

Chuck:  Okay, so he might not make your list of characters you could ever care about, but my point about his ending is that while it's fitting, for it to really work we also needed Cas to become human, too.  For Chuck, being human is a punishment, but for Cas it would be a reward.  We really needed this balance, otherwise all we have is humanity as the worst thing that could happen to you, which is not exactly a great parting message for the show.  (Also, how precisely is it possible to make him human?)  Not only is being human the worst fate possible, but, specifically, so is growing old and being forgotten.  Again, this is a punishment for Chuck, but it would have been a reward for Dean: growing old when the story (and his own self-loathing) constantly told him that he would die young; and being forgotten, not in a negative sense, but in terms of not being a character in a story any more: remembered fondly by his friends but no longer a legend, just a man living an insignificant little life exactly the way he chooses.  

Dean: Where do I even start.  Let's be clear: ending the story with his death (by any means and in any scenario) was always going to be the absolute worst possible ending for him and for the show.

In 15x19 we have the glorious moment when Chuck calls him the ultimate killer, and Dean (heeding Cas' words from 15x18) says "that's not who I am".  Now, I mean no disrespect to Dean here (because he is, canonically, a genius) but I don't think that he was in any way necessary to the Michael double-cross plot that eventually saw the defeat of Chuck.  Honestly, if he had died in 15x18, then 15x19 could still have played out in exactly the same way.  It's as if he wasn't saved so that he could save the world - he was saved so that he could have this moment of self-realisation.  He was saved so that he could stand up to Chuck (God, and the author, and parallelled with John) and tell him that he's not the person that he tried to force him to be.  

And yet by the next episode, this revelation is entirely forgotten.  He doesn't get to continue his self-actualisation by speaking his truth to Cas.  Instead, 15x20 presents Dean as almost a caricature of himself.  Dean loves pie.  Dean loves his brother.  Dean loves his car.  All of his complexity (present right from Season 1) is stripped away.

Finally free to write his own story, he ends up giving Chuck the ending he always wanted: one dead Winchester - killed, you could argue, by his brother (Sam fails to call for help and instead tells Dean to "go".)  Told by Cas that he's not "Daddy's blunt instrument" and accepting that he's not "the ultimate killer", Dean goes right back to killing (even threatening torture) and following his father's words (in the form of the journal).  

For Dean to die exactly as the story has always told him, and as he's always told himself in his worst moments of self loathing, is brutal and tragic.  What makes it truly appalling is the way in which both Dean and Sam accept his death and say it's "okay".  For Dean to say "always keep fighting" at the very moment when he gives up and when Sam gives up on him is bitterly ironic.  (Interestingly, when Cas said "you have to keep fighting" in his 12x12 death speech, exhorting Sam and Dean to save themselves and leave him behind, Sam replied with "we are fighting.  We're fighting for you, Cas" and Dean followed with "and like you said, you're family.  And we don't leave family behind".)   

Dean has always been the symbol of humanity in Supernatural: he stood for earth against the forces of heaven and hell.  He'd rather live with pain and guilt than exist as a "Stepford bitch in paradise", and yet that's exactly what he becomes, driving mindlessly through Jack's new heaven where everyone is "happy".  Dean previously dismissed heaven's happiness as "Memorex", and after Mary's death he was the only one not consoled by the confirmation that she was in heaven and happy.  Having Dean being content in heaven is utterly out of character.  He's always fought for free will, and in heaven - where there's no agency, where he's cut off from the world - this is the one thing that he does not have.

Eileen: An interesting, complex, kickass character, Eileen deserved so much better than being erased from the storyline.  A Men of Letters legacy, I imagine her working with Sam to share the knowledge contained within the bunker whilst also dismantling the patriarchy, elitism and colonialism of its past.  Her disappearance from the narrative makes absolutely no sense - 15x09, 15x17 and 15x18 confirm just how significant she is to Sam, and yet we never see them reunited or see Sam mourning her death.  The audience's love for Eileen is totally disregarded, too - she's ripped away from us with no further explanation.

Emma: Okay, so she wasn't actually in season 15, but that's sort of my point.  I have a lot to say about Emma, but here I'll just say that her significance has grown massively since Season 7.  The narrative has shifted from Team Free Will being sons to being fathers.  Even if she wasn't brought back, just a mention of her would have been significant.  (I can't stop thinking about the massive potential of a conversation about Emma between Dean and Jack.)  She didn't deserve to be forgotten.  

Season 15 was Supernatural's last opportunity to bring back characters from the past - such as Meg, original Charlie, Crowley, and Bela Talbot - and give them better endings.  Sadly this opportunity was wasted.

Garth: He actually seems to get his happy ending, on several levels.  He finds a family; he finds happiness; he's acknowledged as a hero by the Winchesters, who had previously mocked him.  Dean's words to him about embracing happiness are powerful.  Garth lives as his full, authentic self - monstrosity now included.  It's that monstrosity that's the issue here, though - as werewolves, Garth, Bess and little Sam and Castiel are doomed to go to purgatory when they die.  Mia Vallens said to Jack that "it doesn't matter what you are - it matters what you do", but in this case the opposite is true.  It's hideously unfair, but again the show never acknowledges this.  It would have been simple to change in a line or two - just a quick mention about how purgatory has been fixed, so that only truly monstrous beasts like the leviathan are kept trapped there - but the injustice remains.

Jack:  From his birth, his destiny was either to be the monstrous destroyer or the divine saviour of the world, which is precisely why he should have side-stepped it and found another way.  He deserved to live without the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Instead, he was forced to take on the power of God - and since when has someone suddenly taking on a huge amount of power ever ended well for Team Free Will?  Then, he repeats the exact same pattern set up by Chuck.  First, he abandons his creation by walking away and disappearing off to, in the words of Bobby, "wherever he went".  Like Chuck, he ignores earthly suffering: if he's now omniscient and omnipotent, is he in fact complicit in Dean's death?  Secondly, he's controlling: he remodels Heaven as he sees fit, making it a place where everyone's together and everyone's happy, with its inhabitants given absolutely no choice in the matter.  There's also no reason why Jack had to vanish from the story - Chuck was capable of spending time on Earth.

The mechanics of the bomb plot also irks me no end.  We're told by Death that the bomb will kill Jack.  However, their plan fails, and Jack survives the blast.  In 15x19, Dean tells Chuck that all the work done to turn Jack into a "cosmic bomb" has turned him instead into a "power vacuum."  It makes it seem like a side-effect, and also that "sucking up bits of power" has been charging him up to the point where he's "unstoppable".  He's able to both absorb and appropriate Chuck's power.  However, in 15x17 Adam and Serafina explain that the bomb will create a "metaphysical supernova" that will make Jack into "a living black hole for divine energy" - which suggests that, actually, the bomb worked as intended.  

But if the plan worked, why is Jack still alive?  Billie made it clear that Jack wouldn't survive.  And "nothing can escape" a black hole - so how is Jack able to use Chuck's powers to bring back Earth's population? Besides which, didn't 15x17 reveal that Chuck himself had "orchestrated" the entire thing?  Which makes the theory that Chuck possessed Jack really the only outcome that makes sense.  (Particularly as Serafina talks about Jack making his "vessel" strong.  Jack is a nephil, not an angel - he has a body, not a vessel.  Also, the bomb is made by fusing his soul with his grace - so, the two things that make up Jack, his humanity and his divinity, are annihilated.)  Deliberately making Chuck win, however (with no tease at the end that this might be the case), makes no sense either.  My head hurts.

Kevin: As if he hadn't been treated badly enough by the story already, we find that Kevin hasn't been in Heaven since we last saw him, but rather hell.  He ends up as an untethered ghost, presumably just wandering about for all eternity.  His fate comes courtesy of a bizarre new rule that souls from hell can't go to heaven - when previously both Bobby and John have done exactly that.  Again, just one line telling us that he's now in heaven could have changed his ending.

Michael: Bringing back Adam and Michael was a brilliant move, and this version of Michael was utterly compelling - struggling with his faith in his father after being abandoned, torn between his loyalty to Heaven and his relationship with Adam.  I thought that his handing over of the spell was very similar to Cas' "just so you understand … why I can't help" moment, and it seemed the precursor to Michael becoming an advocate for humanity, even a member of Team Free Will.  However, instead Michael was doomed to play out his father's narrative: killing his brother and repeating the cycle of sibling conflict and trauma that Chuck began when he betrayed Amara.  (And we'll credit Chuck's bad writing with the fact that the battle between Michael and Lucifer that was once predicted to wipe out millions and scorch the globe can now happen in the bunker without so much as a chair being knocked over - and without wires as well.)

Rowena: She seems to be relishing her reign as Queen of Hell, but the way she's so casually condemned is jarring.  Surely her previous good deeds and her final act of self sacrifice would be enough to tip the scales in a heavenly direction?  (It worked for Lily Sunder - another woman who vowed never to be powerless again.)  They could easily have said it was Chuck's fault that she had to remain in hell - but instead it just seems like a foregone conclusion.  She deserved better.

Sam: If we're supposed to believe that having a "normal" life is Sam's idea of writing his own story, why doesn't he do it as soon as Chuck is defeated?   Instead, his suburban "apple pie" life only happens after Dean dies, which makes it seem more of a grief arc than a happy ending.  (Just as he escaped into a self-professed "fantasy" life with Amelia after Dean's death, or when he succumbed to the comfort of a fake married life in Charming Acres after the trauma of losing all the AU hunters).  

The idea that he'd keep hunting for Dean doesn't ring true - Dean had been the one openly craving retirement and domesticity for several seasons.  After all, the idea of Dean as a hunter and Sam as the brother who wants to be normal is Chuck's story.  Dean wasn't the "ultimate killer" that Chuck wanted him to be, and Sam too had been forging his own identity as a leader, a Man of Letters, and a powerful witch.  He'd also found love - and with Eileen, he could be his full, authentic self.  The idea that he would leave her is absurd, as is the idea that he would abandon his entire extended found family, who seem to have no part in his new life.  When Dean returned from purgatory, he was furious that Sam had failed to help Kevin.  Would Sam really do the exact same thing again - walk away from Jody and the girls when they are mourning both Cas and Dean and need his support?  Would he just abandon Rowena's entire witchy collection and leave the huge store of knowledge in the Bunker locked up in the dark?

The Shadow: again, dubious on a list of characters you care about, but hey - all they ever really wanted was to go back to sleep, and can't we all relate to that?  Anyway, they made the list for being one of the most frustrating open endings of the show.  What did it mean for the Empty to be "loud"?  Who is the Shadow, anyway?  Just how did this cosmic entity fit in with the mythology of Chuck and Amara?  It's maddening that the Shadow and the Empty were made central to several seasons only to be suddenly dropped.

The Wayward Sisters: my beloveds. Such a brilliant cast of characters and such wasted potential.  They're an important part of the Winchesters' family and Team Free Will, but, in the end, they're forgotten.  Claire may have gotten her happy ending with the return of Kaia, but this happens off screen.  We never see her reaction to the deaths of Castiel or Dean.

The final few episodes seem to be about stripping away all of the characters except Sam and Dean, so they are completely alone by 15x20. Phrases such as "just us" and "just you and me" and "it's always been you and me" seem to suggest that this is a good thing, but previously the idea of them being isolated and alone has seemed like the worst case scenario (for example in Season 8, when Sam and Dean are forced to give up Amelia and Benny, respectively, or in Chuck's vision of a future in which the brothers lose Eileen and Cas along with Jody and the girls, give up hope, and end up as vampires, killed by their remaining friends). 

Anyway, the whole idea of just Sam and Dean going wherever the road takes them is Chuck's story.  It's on the cover of his books.  By making Chuck the villain, Season 15 itself makes it impossible for a return to this idea to be a satisfying conclusion to the story.

In fact, Supernatural was never about just Sam and Dean.  It was always about family.  Season 1 was about Sam, Dean and John.  Bobby introduced the phrase "family don't end with blood" in Season 3 and Dean coined the phrase "Team Free Will" in Season 4.  It's an ethos that has spread into the fandom, too.  Didn't the SPN Family deserve a finale that celebrated that idea, of banding together, of caring about the whole world, of love being the ultimate expression of free will?

You can't help but pick up on a theme: characters that were forgotten are forgotten again.  Characters who were locked away are locked away again.  The same narratives and the same traumas play out again and again.  No-one escapes their miserable, predestined fate.  It's Chuck's ending.  And it's Chuck's spiteful ending.

It's the ending that kills off its beloved characters, and also destroys their whole world.  The bunker is left in darkness.  Time has moved forward by so much in order to accommodate Sam's natural death that we can't even imagine the ongoing stories of other characters like Garth or the Sioux Falls family (ironic, given the episode's title).

It's the kind of ending you get when a show is cancelled and the writer decides to kill off their characters and wreck their world so that there's no possibility of another network or another writer taking over their story.  (And yet outside of the show, there's no evidence to suggest this - you would think that the ending had been designed to make a reboot impossible, but it has already been talked about.)

If we were not going to get a sense of the world continuing, then we could have been given a more radical and satisfying ending.  We could have had Death collect on their promise to one day reap God.  We could have had a world freed from the supernatural entirely: heaven, hell and purgatory obliterated, and Team Free Will finding peace in life on earth.

Because Chuck has been the author and the narrator the entire time, it makes no sense for the story to continue past the point of his defeat.  (It makes even less sense for that story to revert back to Chuck's ideal narrative.)  So, really we should have been given a more open ending: Team Free Will triumphant over Chuck and their future left open, the author dead and the characters' stories entrusted to the audience.

Instead, in the end, it's a bizarre mix of needlessly closed-down endings (killing off Cas, Sam and Dean, and vanishing Jack) and frustrating open ones (the loud Empty, there being no Death, Kevin wandering, the ambiguous fate of Eileen, Adam, Donna and the AU hunters).  

And the final two episodes are also objectively bad.  The double-cross plot in 15x19 is lame when the resolution of the Chuck storyline should have been profound. (It invites comparisons with the Season 11 finale, which was excellent.) 15x20 feels weirdly empty and flat.  Dean's death is unrealistic; it echoes Sam's death in Season 2 and Dean's in Season 9 (which, if you think about it, would only be possible if Chuck was still writing it), but lacks the emotional punch of either.  Dean's "I'm proud of us," in his Season 9 death scene is so much more powerful than his "I'm proud of you" in the finale.  And let's not even mention that wig.

In conclusion: every single character deserved better.  The actors deserved better.  The audience deserved better.  Because the ending we were given was not the ending that the season, or the entire series, had been building towards.

The ending tries to destroy every good thing that Supernatural has ever given us - vibrant characters, the fight for free will, the value of found family, the power of love - but it fails. Ultimately the characters and themes are too powerful to be contained by that terrible, flimsy ending. So now I've gotten all of that off my chest, I'm going right back to finale denialism.

[nikadd]

*drake’s voice* chuck’s plan, chuck’s plan

general disclaimer of “yes i know a lot of things on spn are due to bad writing so most of the happy accidents are just that. accidents”

going back to the “chuck has taken over jack’s body and won in the end” theory bc it’s making my brain melt by how much it would have made sense if the writers actually gave a textual follow-through (like what is the standard for that now? it’s so low.)

15x17, aka unity, establishes chuck as privy to all of their plans. he’s the capital-G God, all-knowing, almighty. “what part of omniscient do you people not understand?” kind of character. for him to be tricked, to be outsmarted by the winchesters is so laughably out of character. c’mon! this is gabriel’s father we are talking about!

what does chuck want? unity with amara. not out of the goodness of his heart, obviously, but to have her power. to have the eternal balance of light and darkness... so he is now even More powerful than ever before. literally the most powerful being in all of the creation to ever exist - past, present, or future; in every single world and iteration imaginable... and for what? to just... not use it? to hang the chekhov’s gun?

i can’t think of anything chuck does in 15x17 and later as anything less than planned. “so i can't read my "death book." so what? i control space and time. just plant a few visions, goad death a little... mess with a few outcomes... and... bada-bing! they think they can kill me?”

you’re telling me he gets rid of almost everyone in existence in 15x18 and then... doesn’t watch what the 2.5 remaining humans do? after he spent forever trying to get to this point. is no one suspicious we did not see what he’d been doing that entire time?

like, okay. he frees lucifer to hatecrime dean make a new death read his book. but then doesn’t even let that happen. and we know chuck can’t read the book. so he doesn’t Really care what’s in there. then why send lucifer there at all? oh, well, isn’t it Just So Convenient that michael - also? somehow kept alive? for what purpose, pray tell? - can fight him, charging little ol’ jack.

AND JACK... i refuse to believe chuck didn’t know what was going on there. he speeds up the bomb, forcing billie’s hand to save him by making him blow up in the empty and getting the power vacuum ability. it’s a chess move! you put your opposition in check and force them to make moves in the only way that allows them to keep the strongest pieces on board. if the empty was the only thing that could handle jack, chuck had to know. maybe making it loud was a way for chuck to punish the empty as well, hitting both birds at once. in FACT, i wanna say that the whole make-jack-into-a-bomb plan was his all along, what’s with the “goading death” and “messing with outcomes” bit. i mean, one of the first things that chuck did as the self-proclaimed villain is kill jack.

so he makes jack into a divine power hoover. what next? he has to get rid of billie somehow. how? oh, maybe with the empty, which we have just learned is also under his control. so. how is he going to do it?

enter: cas. what else does 15x17 establish? chuck Hates cas for being the annoying cogwheel in his plans, the One thing that always messes with his plans. it’s not too much of a reach to think that chuck wants him gone.

what do cas and billie have in common besides wanting dean’s heart? they can See what jack is. sure, cas’s grace has been dwindling, which is why he might not have seen what Exactly was happening to jack in 15x18, but they didn’t even get enough time together for cas to see what’s up. billie already knew what was going on from reading the revision in chuck’s death book. if cas stayed alive, he would have been the first to figure it out.

so, to recap/restate this point:

chuck kills jack, sending him into the empty.

billie wakes jack, telling him that she has a plan.

billie makes jack into a bomb.

billie convinces dean that this is the only way + that they also need to get amara involved, kiling both amara and chuck at the same time.

(cannot state this enough. billie puts in So Much Effort into making dean specifically very mad at chuck. almost as if she - and maybe someone else. idk. someone omniscient. - knows just how easy it is to make dean angry and determined and self-righteous)

dean convinces amara to join them.

jack tells cas about billie’s plan’s implications for him, and then cas tells dean about it.

(wanna say that if the divorce arc did not happen, cas wouldn’t have told him about it. it’s like. an example of trust and growth.)

dean, influenced by billie, is suddenly fine with going through with it, even if it means jack has to die.

sam goes after god’s book, finding the shadow there, and finding out about billie’s ~secret villain plans~, and the fact that chuck actually does have control over the empty.

amara and chuck reunite. chuck goes along with amara’s pretense, and then convinces her to give herself up for him.

dean and jack set off the bomb.

dean and sam face-off in a typical “dean is Angry but is Doing What Is Right, and sam is There To Guilt Dean Into Not Doing It”, but when it doesn’t work, chuck is mad at them.

(i know that he goes “you know, i tried and i tried and i tried, but you're all just too stupid, too stubborn. too broken. you know what? i'm over it. i'm over you.” but like. it’s just one plan that didn’t work. that’s the same dude who literally just a few minutes ago said “mess with a few outcomes” and you’re telling me he’s “giving up” after one more plan to get one of the winchesters dead didn’t pan out?)

chuck speeds up the explosion, forcing billie to send jack into the empty

jack blows up in the empty, getting the power-sucking ability

billie brings jack back and reads the updated chapter on how chuck is going to die

billie tries to take jack with her, but dean attacks, making a fatal hit, but she is able to get away, leaving her scythe behind with dean.

chuck starts making people disappear, but only after billie’s plan is revealed. charlie is one of the first people affected, so she’s surely to let sam and dean know about it

sam, the de-facto leader of the hunters, sets off to get everyone who is still there to a safe house. dean, saying “i started this. i'm gonna end it.”, decides to go after billie, as they believe it’s her fault that people are being thanos-snapped.

(jack is weak, so he’s going with sam. cas goes with dean, as he always would.)

jack pulls the energy out of the plant.

cas and dean arrive at death’s library and confront billie. she tells them that 1)  it’s chuck who’s taking people, 2) she’s dying, 3) she’s going to take dean with her.

dean and cas get back to the bunker, and billie attacks dean.

cas takes dean to a room and wards the door.

cas remembers his deal with the empty. it is STRESSED that it’s THE ONLY thing that can solve the problem.

cas confesses to dean, summoning the empty, which takes out both cas and billie.

chuck tells sam, dean, and jack that this is it. he’s just gonna leave them to suffer alone, but then...

chuck leaves michael alive, and lets jack sense him - basically giving them michael on a silver platter.

(did jack have this power before? we don’t know. it is convenient now. also, the fact that chuck took adam out of the equation is important as well, as he could have probably convinced michael to let things go.)

chuck brings back lucifer, making it all about the book he doesn’t even need at this point, basically orchestrating the fight between the two archangels, charging jack.

kills michael and beats up sam and dean, charging jack even more.

(like, he could have just killed them. he could have easily just killed them right then and there. steve rogers voice You Chose To Do That. like, jack was just Standing there.)

lets jack absorb his powers... absorb him. the light, the darkness, everything. literally just backed up the hard drive.

gives a cope-out speech about wanting dean to kill him.

(c’mon this man probably thought dean letting him live was poetic.)

jack - behaving Not Like Jack At All Whatsoever (like please alcal tell me was that your acting choices? did you just decide to play god the same way rob played god? or was it a purposeful thing? was it scripted? was it the director’s decision?) - brings back the missing people (though we don’t see any of the important ones grrrrr).

jack does not bring cas back to the winchesters. and dean does not ask for him? when he did so earlier in the same episode? yelling at chuck? saying that he’d kill sam and himself to bring cas back along with everyone else?

jack goes on a Weird speech, the kind that chuck would 100% have written.

...15x20.

dean dies young, on his father’s unfinished hunt; sam grows old, without purpose; ~heaven~ is rebuilt in both literal sense and also what it means to the characters, bc none of them ever cared abt it really before; cas is Finally in his place, working for god.

tl;dr: to quote cas from 15x18, “...it’s a chain reaction.” most - if not all - of these things happened because they were the only possible outcome of the cause-effect consequence of the characters’ actions, going back all the way to chuck killing jack in the end of s14.

i s2g so much on spn feels like doing all the wrong math and then somehow getting the correct answer. i hate this. i’m supposed to be working on my last final rn and instead i’m letting my brain worms do this to me.

[shallowseeker]

so there's a theory that chuck's alternate future in "the trap" was a lie and i just. realized that if it was, it's interesting how chuck didnt show cas going to the empty in order to protect sam and dean from his corruption. like burying him in a mal'ak box seems more work than cas confessing and going to the empty where god will never be able to return and cas won't be a threat anymore. which makes me think that chuck was purposefully hiding the empty deal from sam.

like there's also a theory that the trap was set up so cas or dean would end up confessing in purgatory after reuniting and trigger the deal, so i gotta wonder if chuck was hiding information about the deal so that dean and sam couldn't attempt to break it before castiel triggered it.

idk if this makes sense i just wanted to share it.

Firstly, thanks for entertaining me with all your takes. It's so fun!

I completely agree with you that Chuck's a known liar. And that casts this veneer of doubt over everything we get from him. I'm not even sure how much how much he can see when it comes to The Empty and its deals!

For example, he seems baffled by the AU angel blade in 14x20, telling Sam, "I haven't seen one of these in ages. Where did you get it?" Now, it could've been a stalling technique... or it could've been a slip that he's not as omniscient as he wants us to think. When Amara calls him 'God,' she does so like she's taunting him. "God."

///

In my opinion, if anyone seems like they were trying to set up Cas's Empty deal to trigger in a premeditated way, it's Billie, leaving her scythe on the table like she did, and even joking with Dean at some point, "Have to watch this scythe around you." Plus her, "Good thing. It can't reach me. HERE." Then, her uncharacteristic pursuit of them.

I wonder...

///

But yeah, another thought I had re: Mark Cas is that I don't think Cas would necessarily "[go] to the empty in order to protect sam and dean from his corruption" in that scenario.

I don't think Cas's happiness is necessarily univariate. Dean is a part of it, sure, but in a world where he's lost both Jack AND Claire, I'm not sure a loving testament would be "enough" to bless him with sunshiney happiness. I could see a scenario where he actually tries to trigger his deal, and does tell Dean, but he's shocked to learn that it isn't enough.

I can even see a scenario where they overtly get together, and it's still not enough. (That would devastate them both, I think.) But happiness is like that, interwoven with many different aspects of our lives.

///

There's also that perhaps the mark itself sucks up happiness, exerting its angry will and creating the same disinhibited "numbing effect" that Demon Dean faced. "[human Dean] felt strong emotions and also tremendous pain," unlike Demon Dean. Perhaps it could cause the same disconnect from his emotions for Cas? (He's already a bit disconnected as an angel, and it would undo so much of his progress, perhaps.)

[amwritingmeta]

S15: Dean and Cas

Pardon my lateness. Life is mental at the moment! I haven’t watched 15x17 yet but hope to do so today or tomorrow. Gods preserve me, for then there will be only three more episodes left. *is this real life??*

Okay, leaving that, let’s talk about Dean and Cas, shall we? Yes, we shall!

Dean and Cas’ relationship, or rather, how they relate themselves to each other, has been in focus this season, because it’s been pivotal to both of their arcs in canonically straightforward ways. Ways so straightforward that we haven’t really seen the likes of them since S11, and with the very heavy-duty callbacks to S11 these last two episodes, it all seems quite fitting.

I mean, Jack is a bomb like Dean was a bomb and Dean got to ask Amara why she would bring Mary back, and she got to clarify she meant it as a gift, a thank you at the end of S11, because Dean didn’t blow himself to kingdom come and her along with him, because instead he realised how he could broker peace and allow for light and dark to find balance.

Which is what Dean needs to find right now.

He needs to balance out the light and dark, the masculine and the feminine, the conscious and unconscious, the ego and the shadow. He needs to balance himself out in order to let go of his fury. Why does he need that? Why would the narrative continuously hit on him needing to let go of his anger? Because that’s the reason why he was put on this journey to begin with, this slow and steady coming-of-age-coming-into-his-own progression of finding forgiveness and feeling worthy and having faith that he deserves good things.

How do we know this?

Well, arguably this season through what happens to Dean whenever he gives his fury free range, whenever he allows it to hollow out his faith, his trust, making him one-track minded, suspicious and controlling: he loses something.

He loses Cas.

This season has been all about highlighting what happens when Dean is unable to be even the slightest bit self-aware, when he veers off the path of self-acceptance. This season, Dean has had Cas disappear out of his life twice: first when Cas walked out of the bunker and second in Purgatory, when Cas went with the Leviathan. (to get them away from Dean)

The first time Dean almost lost Cas was really all about highlighting Cas’ independence (thank fuck for that), letting us see how far they’ve come in their relationship, because Dean didn’t dig himself a grave this time, perhaps having faith, in spite of it all, that Cas would come back to him, and Cas went off on his own, feeling like there was nothing left for him at the bunker when there was no forgiveness to be had from Dean.

Except, Cas thought better of it. He realised it wasn’t just on Dean to push for change—it was on him as well. And, knowing Dean, Cas had the epiphany that he would have to lead the way. 

Dean, of course, not being able to forgive and forget all that easily, needed a final push, which is why the second time he almost lost Cas was all about Dean. He had to confront his anger. He had to, because naming it and admitting it as the root cause of so many of his actions (and reactions) is a cornerstone for him to begin letting that anger go.

Almost losing Cas brought him to a moment of clarity, brought him to take a knee and admit to being wrong and offering the forgiveness he’d been holding back, because being angry is easier, especially when, it could be argued, you were beginning to feel that trust in good things lasting.

Yeah, speaking of good things lasting, it brings us to this question: Why is Dean so angry? 

He doesn’t know why (or so he claims) and he probably does need to have his eyes opened for him, the way Amara tried to open them, the way his conversation with her was a highlighter for the point he’s being pushed to finally reach in his progression: forgiving the past, embracing the present, trusting in the future and in the fact that he deserves to live a long and happy rest of his life. 

The fact that she’s completely dressed in pink - hello positive femininity representative who kicks ass and who once almost killed God and then was balanced out so that she instead healed him with her light and they twisted into dark and light smoke and went off together - is just delicious icing on the cake.

Yeah, and that’s the issue, Dean, alright, buddy?

Dean is angry because his mother died and her death meant that he lost his father too, it meant that he didn’t get to have a childhood, it meant that he stopped believing that he could have good things that would last, because of a confused sense of identity and a crippled sense of self-worth—why did bad things happen to him if he didn’t deserve it somehow?— and pushed him to mold himself into what would make him feel strong and brave: the image that his father projected. 

The soldier.

The weapon and the shield.

And now it seems Protect Sammy has morphed into Sacrifice Jack, all because Dean’s fury at Chuck’s manipulation isn’t containable, and there’s no way Dean’s going to let Chuck live. Even if it means Jack dies in the process. As Dean said to Sam in 15x16: at least it’s not them this time. 

All the while we just sit here and witness Dean morphing into the revenge thirsty spitting image of his father one last time, for one final, big ole push towards the line he’ll have to cross if he’s to finally understand once and for all where it’s actually drawn.

At Cas’ feet.

Remember back in S12, before Cas died, there was that subtle (erm) motif of pointy things going through people’s hearts from behind? Yeah. It happened twice, if I remember correctly, before the pointy end of an angel blade went through Cas’ heart and he died an angel death in the season finale.

Yeah. That.

So.

So now, in S15, we have Cas caught in a motif again, only this time Dean is right there with him, because it involves both of them. 

We’ve had anger and loss, and then honesty and forgiveness.

We’re back to anger, we’re back to Dean seeing red, blinded by it, and the only thing—we’ve been shown—that can unblind him is…?

That’s right: losing Cas.

So he will lose Cas again. We’ve been on the precepice of this as fact for a good long while now, haven’t we, my merry macarons? We have indeed! The question becomes how will Dean lose Cas again? Is Cas actually going to die? Again??

I still sincerely doubt it.

I think Cas will find another way, and that other way will equal a sacrifice on his part. His life? I mean, it could be, but what about the Empty? What about allowing himself to be happy? It could add up somehow, I guess I just can’t see it. So I think the sacrifice will somehow involve Heaven, because we know Michael will be back, and I hope it will involve Hell and all of the forces God has brought into being working against him—together.

S p e c.

Now, I’m a sadist. No, not like that -> I’m a sadist when it comes to characters. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a sadist. (Misha Collins is one, as we all know) (I joke!) (down Bessie!) What I’m getting at is that I want Cas having no other recourse but to do whatever it is he’ll have to do to save Jack to, quite literally, break Dean. 

We know they’re all teary eyed in 15x18 (feels like it’s Billie whom Dean is glaring at) and we’ve seen Dean crying against a wall and omfg I want it to be explicit and over Cas. Yeah? 

We ain’t getting them driving off in the Impala together (which is fine btw because the final episode should focus on the brothers more than anything else) (I mean, a hint that they will be driving around in that Impala post season finale while Sam goes to be with Eileen would be fab, but we can only hope and wish, yeah?) (horses held), so let’s get Dean broken over thinking he’ll never see Cas again. 

Let it be done with a big fat black marker in enormous circles around his emotional state. Let him TELL Cas to stay this time, like he should’ve done when Cas walked out the door in 15x03, only for Cas to be unable to comply, because this is all to teach Dean a lesson that this is where his anger gets him, and what he needs to do to save Cas is let that anger go, stop thinking Jack is expendable, and find a better way.

I mean, this is speculation, guys. This is hoping and wishing all over this narrative. But glory effing be if it’s anywhere in the ballpark.

It would be mind-blowing if there was a God intervention of some sort, a talking down off the ledge, as it were, as per end of S11, but I’m not going to hold my breath for *rainbows*…

I’ll hold it for balance, though. :)

Cas has waited for Dean for a long time. Dean being dismissive of Cas in 15x15 can, once again— because whenever he acts like a dick it comes back to bite him on the ass (there’s a visual for you)— be looked at as part of the tapestry that makes Cas feel there’s nothing more for him but being a father to Jack. 

Dean did nothing but instill this feeling in Cas after Cas came back from the black hole that is the Empty in S13, Dean being all “You were brought back because we needed you”—Dean saying zero things about how he was basically ripping apart at the seams from the grief of losing Cas just hours before Cas made that phone call. 

And of course not. Why would Dean admit that? Even to himself, once Cas was back. 

He wouldn’t! 

Ignoring how he really feels about stuff and taking Cas for granted is kinda what he does, so back to normal it all went. So normal and so leveled out that something had to happen, right? Because, in Dean’s mind, good things don’t last.

And then Mary happened.

Oh, my heart!

And Dean went off and cried, by himself, because he still couldn’t show emotion that openly, even to the people closest to him. But he went down on his knees and he cried in Cas’ ear during that prayer, and that really was something.

That said, Mary’s death was Dean proven right once again, and this person, who is the source of faith and hope and that budding belief that maybe, this time, everything was going to actually get better and stay that way, became the target of Dean’s anger over the injustice of it all. Because Cas was the root of it. He’s always been the root of Dean’s slow-to-grow hope that could bloom into belief and trust, if he just dared let it, that he deserves to be happy.

I wrote in an ask reply that I doubt we’ll get human!Cas, but then I remembered that Cas is still status quo-ing it. It’s why he almost left the bunker without telling anyone again, that choice of skedaddling without checking in getting interrupted by Dean, and Cas being brought into a situation where he had to divulge the information, not only that he was leaving and might not make it back (Dean’s face though!), but that Jack is going through a trial that will ultimately destroy him, which was a nice shift in this dynamic of theirs.

Now, look it, the writers may end Cas’ journey on him status quo-ing it... but for the Empty. 

And I would shrug at the Empty and think, well, maybe that won’t come into play... but for the fact that the deal was brought up just a few episodes back. 

So. Happiness.  

Somehow something will need to push Cas toward a moment of happiness. And letting himself be happy is such a climactic moment for his entire journey—and look at how it perfectly mirrors what Dean is being pushed toward—that I find it difficult to see how that moment would bring an eternity in the Empty.

But I’ve written a lot of words on why I just can’t make sense of why they would choose to kill him or have his moment of happiness be tied to a narrative punishment so I’m not getting into all that again, but because both Dean and Cas are being pushed toward happiness, I’m curious to see which route the writers have chosen to take with it.

It would be thrilling and satisfying in equal measure if we finally get Dean crying over Cas, and only Cas. No filter of Bobby or Mary to take away focus and allow for an argument that he’s not actually grieving Cas. 

It would be thrilling and satisfying for it to be very baseline Just Cas. As it has been just Cas this entire season. Cas at the center of Dean’s anger. Cas at the center of Dean’s push toward healing. Cas having had enough, drawing a line—the one that is still there, at his feet—and doing what he’s always done best: calling Dean out on his bullshit behaviour. Cas making Dean put words to his anger, express forgiveness and say that he’s sorry and all within the same moment to boot.

What all this will amount to, we’ll have to wait and see. 

In a few weeks. Or next week. Or maybe there will be strong indicators where the pendulum is actually swinging in 15x17!

Holy. Hell.

But I can’t see it ending somewhere tragic. If it does, it does. And it will be what it will be. And I’ll mourn a little, and accept it and move on. But I do believe it will end somewhere hopeful. Somewhere that leaves things quite tied up, but also open to interpretation, so that we can pick and choose who ends up where and how these men decide to continue on their journeys, now that this enormous leg of their progression is done, and they’ve learned to put the past to rest.

And if S11 is anything to go by, then the echoes of that ending would be a powerful way to tie everything up, as S11 was meant to be the end of the road, until Andrew Dabb picked up the reins with an idea of how to continue the show for a few more seasons. Or so I’ve heard.

11x23 also gave us the most gloriously frustrating exchange ever written for two characters in a car. Omg. Dean we-ing the absolute hell out of his speech when it was him, he was the one, the entire time Cas was possessed by Lucifer, who insisted they make sure Cas came back unscathed. “You’re the best friend we ever had” my ass, Dean! 

I wanted to talk about Dean and Sam as well, but there’s too little time at the moment for me to write more. And it’s painful, but I have to concede or hit a wall and hitting walls fucken hurts. 

I will mention that Sam telling Dean off at the end of 15x16 still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Finally, Sam. Finally.

As ever, sprinklings of salt all over this meta and speculation, my dearlings, but omfg it’s beautiful.

Right then. I’m off to watch 15x17! Wish me luck! *gah!*

[katsidhe]

15.17 Final Thoughts (2/2)

Part one here. OKAY, let’s Talk About Dean™, shall we?

Dean has been flatly angry this season—really, he hasn’t meaningfully moved past the place he was in at 14.20 or 15.01. This empty rage, clawing for moral high ground, searching for some vicious place of agency and righteousness, has manifested in ugly ways all season, from the way he’s treated Cas and Jack, to stuff like executing the vampire kid in 15.04 or the bar dude in 15.07. Sam has not been exempt from complicity in this pattern; we’ve seen a lot more unthinking hunts, like in 15.10 or 15.15, wherein the motive and the story is secondary to the necessity of the Success of the Justified Kill at the end of the book. The shorthand for hunting this season has been killing things, not saving people.

Dean saying Jack isn’t family: FINALLY. thank you. It’s true, it’s always been true, this has always been Dean’s opinion, since season 13: his affection for Jack has always been fundamentally conditional. And I’m so glad to hear him openly acknowledge it in a way neither Jack nor Sam can make excuses for. (even though poor Jack, bless his heart, still tries—in the sense that he understands Dean’s straightforward hostility in a simple way that is nearly a comfort. More on that in a separate post.)

Dean’s speech to Jack in the car: wowowowow. Dean pushing Jack to suicide SURE IS SOMETHING, ain’t it? Amazing. He tells Jack, with no sense of irony or illusion, thank you for killing yourself so that Sam and I can finally be free to have a life. What’s so FUNNY here is that Dean easily could have said many things that would have been more sympathetic—like, thanks for doing this to save the world. Instead, the way he contextualizes the worth of Jack’s sacrifice is in exactly the same terms Billie used last episode: what it means for him personally.  

This is an unsightly peak of selfishness. Even during the sporadic times Dean tries in this episode and in 15.16 to contextualize his need to be free of Chuck as something for Sam’s sake as much as his own, his protectiveness is much more explicitly and significantly of Their Lives. And Their Lives are not equally Sam’s: their little world’s status quo, the car the hunt the music, belongs to Dean. The amount of ownership that Dean’s had? Made him more vulnerable to the revelation of Chuck’s control, and more unhinged as he seeks to win it back. Dean’s sense of self is much less relentlessly internal than Sam’s, going back even to childhood.

I know you feel that way about Chuck, Sam says, because he has known this feeling since season 5, the revelation that every choice he made, every tiny rebellion he thought he managed, was in service to a dark plan. He knows, and he knows Dean is not dealing well, and he knows why.  

I’ve already written a lot about the rest of Sam’s speech, but I gotta repeat anyway how much I LOVE Sam’s stubborn insistence that, yeah, Dean, you definitely protected me from Dad and Lucifer both, and it is in fact the only thing I’m 100% certain of.

Dean threatens Sam with lethal violence. This is not the first time, obviously, but the way it happened actually is a pretty fascinating break from tradition!

For one, this is not a Moral High Ground Thing. Dean is making no judgment here; he’s not killing Sam For His Own Good. Sam isn’t on his knees. It’s not that Dean thinks Sam is in the grip of some dark power. Dean knows Sam is just, y’know, disagreeing with him over Jack’s suicide.

This is also not an Under the Influence thing. Dean isn’t a demon, he isn’t possessed, he isn’t bearing the Mark of Cain. This is straight up, unthinking rage and frustration, unleashed in destructiveness.

If Dean HAD gone through with shooting Sam here, I’m certain he would have regretted it instantly and view it as an awful mistake [and probably we’d be watching him castigate himself over this terrible sad unavoidable tragedy]. Ironically enough, Jack’s accidental killing of Mary in 14.17 would then be the closest point of comparison—and that’s being way too generous to Dean. Jack didn’t actually intend to point lethal power at anyone, whereas Dean very much chose to aim and cock his gun.

Dean…. isn’t really a very good agent of free will, historically. In times of crisis, Dean has a pattern of being willing to go along with the first plan that gives him some kind of autonomy or power, even if it takes away more of his or someone else’s autonomy in the long term (see: selling his soul in s2; signing up for Team Heaven in s4; nearly saying yes to Michael in s5; letting Gadreel possess Sam in s9; accepting the Mark of Cain in s9; agreeing to throw himself into space and kill Sam for Death in s10; saying yes to Michael to kill Lucifer in s13; nearly caging himself in the Ma’lak box in s14; nearly shooting Jack on Chuck’s orders in s14; going along with Billie’s plan in s15). He often finds himself willing to give up freedom for security. Which isn’t always the wrong decision, sometimes it’s prudent! But he’s much less of a contrarian than what he sells himself as.

Sam, actually, for all the times that he’s lost his autonomy, and for all that he is often narratively subordinated, is the one who’s the eternal spanner in the works. He talks Dean down from a bunch of the previous examples. He’s the guy whose dramatic speeches are ruining all of Chuck’s fratricide fics—expressions of Chuck’s issues with his own sister. It’s Sam who had the bullet wound connection to Chuck’s mind, and it’s Sam who paralleled Amara this episode. Sam is a placater, Sam is the guy that Chuck really, really has a problem with, and I want to see this explored more.

Dean threatened to kill Sam because Sam was refusing to accept his fate. The destiny that Sam refused was killing Jack, who has been Sam’s investment, Sam’s kid, and Sam’s parallel, to help Dean escape his destiny. This feels like a thesis, or something like it: it’s an encapsulation of how Sam and Dean’s fates are tied together not just by love, but by an undeniable core of violence and a chilling imbalance of emotional power: love and protection inosculated with harm. Dean’s angry, he’s breaking down, he’s going off the rails, and it’s in the face of this that Sam, with blood on his face, offers unity: he tearfully makes his pitch, insists that Dean is good, that Dean won’t sacrifice Sam, that his protection is true.

[sortasirius]

“Inherit the Earth” and the Fakeout

Absolutely genius.  Amazing, iconic, legendary, something only our showrunner Andrew Dabb can pull off.

"But Lilly, the episode was so bad!  It was just the brothers, they didn’t look for Cas and Eileen!”

YES.  THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT.  THIS WAS A FAKE ENDING, THE END OF THE SEASON, NOT OF THE SERIES.

Let’s get into it.

An empty world.  No one left but Sam, Dean, and Jack.

So Dean ran, he somehow managed to pick himself up off the floor of the dungeon and meet up with Sam and Jack.  That jacket was this silent reminder.  Remember what I’ve been saying, Cas has occupied the negative space all season, this is no exception.

Dean can’t look either of them in the face, he’s doing that thing, where his eyes move everywhere BUT where he should look. 

“I couldn’t save anybody.”

Sam couldn’t save the world and Dean couldn’t save the one person that means the world to him.

“Where’s Cas?”

“Dean?”

I think it’s there, in that pause where Dean tries to push down the emotions, continue the fight, not think about the memories he left in the bunker, that Jack realizes what must have happened. Jack is the only one that knows about the deal, he has to know what Cas not being there must mean.

“He saved me.  Billie was coming after us.  Cas summoned the Empty.  It took her...and took him.  Cas is gone.”

This may shock you, but I am GLAD they didn’t talk about Cas, especially with what happens at the end of the episode.  Cas is allowed to just take up unsaid space.  It’s obvious he’s missing with the way they blocked things, obvious he’s missing here.  This whole “oh well they don’t care about Cas because they didn’t talk about him”?  Malarkey.

“Jack I’m sorry.”

Guilt.  Regret.  Pain.  Dean will carry this with him for the rest of his life.  Not only that he lost Cas, but that Sam lost Cas, that Jack lost Cas.

That SHOT, with the distance between Jack and Sam where Cas is SUPPOSED TO BE, and then a zoom out to...THE WORLD.

Okay, as usual, Bucklemming has the subtlety of a sledgehammer lmao.

Jack crying???  Praying to Cas????  Bruh?????

Also it’s just straight-up frightening for everything around my boy to die he is my baby son.

Also not to point out the incredibly obvious, but Dean starts drinking immediately, and continues drinking throughout the whole episode.  Grief arc 2.0 babey.

“We can what, Dean?  There’s no one left to save!  Everybody’s gone!”

“You can’t just give up.”

“What other choice do we have!”

Idk why, but for Sam, who’s the constant, the one who’s always had hope, through everything, through all these years, when he finally says this, when he finally loses his hope?  It hits the hardest.  Sam is the leader, so not only is he grieving the loss of Eileen, he is a general grieving the loss of his soldiers, his friends, the world that he feels the duty to save.

When they go to meet Chuck, I just can’t get that image of Dean, leaning against the car, handprint still on his jacket, staring at the ground out of my head.  It takes him a few seconds to catch up to Sam, like he’s pulled out of thoughts like deep dark water.  Remember friends, it doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful.

Chuck wearing BLACK?  FEAR.

“That’s right, the whole Cain and Abel thing.  Us dead, whatever.  I’ll kill Sam, Sam’ll kill me, we’ll kill each other.  Okay, you pick.  But first?  You gotta put everything back the way it was.  The people, the birds...Cas.  You gotta bring him back.”

Willing to kill his brother.  Willing to die.  Tears in his eyes, begging God to bring Cas back.

And Chuck?  Chuck doesn’t care about their surrender, he knows he’s already got them beaten.  He cares about their pain, he cares about them suffering, because to him?  That’s the entertainment.  He’s not entertained by their found family, by their happiness, by their joy.  He wants them to suffer, all of them.

“Eternal shame.  Suffering.  And loneliness.”

And he leaves them with just that.  No hope, no family, just the three of them, broken, alone.  Jack locked in his bedroom, Sam trying desperately to make life “normal” again.  And Dean.  Dean who drank so much he passed out on the floor.

He doesn’t feel terrific, he feels like shit, because not only is he dealing with the shame of an empty planet, he’s dealing with the guilt of being back in the place where the Empty took Cas.

This whole thing with the dog was just absolutely heartwrenching shit and if I didn’t hate Chuck before, him snapping Miracle right in front of an already fragile Dean would seal that deal.

I just want everyone to know that this is a Jake Abel stan account.

“Daddy’s boy” is a big insult for my boy Dean to use considering his own past with his trash abusive father but I’ll allow it.

I do think it’s interesting, ending of his arc aside, that Michael is willing to help them now.  What changed?  Sure, he ended up trying to help Chuck, running back to his father, but why get back in the game?  I wonder if it has anything to do with the loss of Adam.  It’s an interesting parallel, a man loses his angel while an angel loses his human.

Everything is so DARK in the Bunker now too, even the lighting is loud.

When I tell you I lost my shit when I saw Cas was calling Dean, when I heard Misha’s voice??  I knew it didn’t make any sense but I didn’t care, I would’ve been one step behind Dean as he sprinted towards the door.

Fuck you, Eugenie.

I mean it’s torture not only to Dean, who looks beyond fucking crushed when it’s damn Lucifer at the door, but for us too.  Who the FUCK wanted Lucifer back?  And to tease Cas???  Garbage.

I mean...fam.  Listen, we know who’s writing this episode, this whole Betty thing is just like blatantly unnecessary but again, Eugenie loves Lucifer, gotta distract her with a shiny toy lmao.

It was cool to see Michael and Lucifer onscreen together.  It was a cool dynamic that we rarely got to see.

The whole episode is just twist after twist.  Listen, it’s their last episode so I guess they needed to fit in a season worth of twists in one episode.

Bye Lucifer.  We know Eugenie can’t bring him back.  Blessings to all.

This scene with Adam is the FOURTH scene where Dean is drinking...big yikes to my guy’s liver.

Here’s the thing about Michael.  He’s a mirror for Dean in season 5.  Loyal to an absent father.  He has never changed, but Dean has.  Dean is able to acknowledge now, the trauma that his father put him through, he was able to move past the need for pleasing him at any cost.  Michael and Chuck?  Are John and Dean, if Dean had never been allowed to grow.  And Chuck proves, like John did, that he would always put his wants (in John’s case “the mission”) over his children.

Also not to beat a dead horse but Michael’s death was also peak Eugenie.

Sam getting to punch Chuck in the face?  Thank you, he deserves that.

Obviously I don’t love any scene of my boys getting brutally beaten.  But what I love, what I will always love about them, is what Chuck hates about them:  they won’t ever give up.  They know they won’t win against him, they don’t even land any hits, but that’s not what matters.  What matters is their controller doesn’t control them anymore, that they really are free.  No matter how hard they get hit, the get back up.  It is their choice to stand up to him, no matter the cost.

The moment where Sam and Dean are supporting each other, covered in blood, and they look God in the face, and they laugh.  That is why I will love them unconditionally for the rest of my life.  That is who they are, they will never cow to the villain, whether that’s Azazel or Alastair or Zachariah or Lucifer or Amara or Death or Metatron or Cain or God.  They will always choose to stand up.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because.  You lose.”

Chills.  What a line.

And Chuck is left, small, human, no longer a villain, no longer anything.

Gotta be real, woulda been nice to, idk, not see all this essential plot in a flashback, but I know I can only ask so much of Bucklemming.

For Dean to walk away from killing Chuck, right after he’s called him “the ultimate killer” is quite simply the most beautifully heartwrenching thing I could ever ask for.  Because that’s who Dean was under Chuck, that’s who Chuck wanted him to be.

And he would have before:

But he’s heard some things since then, heard some things about how others see him.  Not as the killer, not as a monster, not as angry and broken or his daddy’s blunt instrument:

I’m not saying that Dean doesn’t kill Chuck for Cas.  He doesn’t kill Chuck because he doesn’t think he has to anymore, he doesn’t kill Chuck because he listened to Cas, he took Cas’ words to heart.  He made the choice not to be the killer.

“See that’s not who I am, that’s not who we are.”

And Chuck is angry, because he thought, after everything, even after losing, that he would still know Dean well enough to know that he would kill him.  But Chuck has never really known Dean, he has never understood where he’s really come from.  Cas understood, Sam and Jack understand, but Chuck never did, and writing off Dean as angry and broken is his biggest mistake, because that’s never been Dean.

“It’s not his power anymore.”

And it’s not just his physical power, it’s his power over the story, over the boys that’s the real power taken from him.

For Jack to be the one to bring everyone back, for him to be the hero of the story?  That’s poetic right there.  Now, I will say, I don’t think this story ends with him as God, because for him, the child, to take on this burden, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me for his arc, but we shall see next week.  It felt pretty tied up, but there’s one major loose end: and that’s Jack seeing Cas again.

“Just you and me, going wherever the story takes us.  Just us.”

“Finally free.”

This doesn’t feel triumphant to me, it doesn’t feel like relief.  It feels like they’ve settled, like this is the best they’re going to get, so they might as well make the best of it, at least they have each other.

For Cas and Jack to be carved into the table?  I cry.

And for the montage, very similar to “Swan Song” to be set to “Runnin on Empty”?  Sorry but that’s just too sus to be ignored.

They packaged this episode as an ending, because for many, it might be.  The season’s story, the season about fighting Chuck is over.  So, you might be asking (or, well, screaming, judging by my replies lol), what’s left?  And that’s a good question, Chuck has been defeated, so what is left?  What’s left is what’s really mattered all season: the relationships that have been crafted over the years.  Dean and Sam’s unhappiness at the end of the episode, where “just you and me” sounded more of a grudging acceptance than anything else, is one of the clues that has to be looked at.  Why didn’t Sam find Eileen, why didn’t Jack bring back Cas?  Those two characters specifically are the ones we need to watch out for.  As I’ve said over and over again, peace, contentment, satisfaction, those don’t come from Sam and Dean on the open road together anymore.  They have a family, more of a family than they did when they started hunting together all those years ago, and that family is what holds them together.  They need each other, of course, but each other isn’t enough anymore.  Sam needs Eileen, Dean needs Cas.  That is where they will find their peace.

This episode, as many written by Bucklemming was sloppy, rushed, packed full of shit, and had little gems that we can talk about forever, but that was the end of the season, and next week?  Andrew Dabb brings us home, where Dean and Sam will finally be able to choose what they want for themselves, and that, my friends, is Eileen and Cas.

[shirtlesssammy]

15x17 Bullet Point Rambles

We MAY be doing some squeaking during this THEN sequence. Billie! Cas! The Empty! WE’RE FINE

Boris: Amara is reading Murakami? That’s the ONE book of his I haven’t read

The stars begin to fall and Amara knows Chuck HATH ARRIVED (We like Amara even more now)

Sam’s giving Dean the silent treatment. (Boris: Boys you have 4 episodes to GET IT TOGETHER)

Amara wishes she could get to know Jack. The SECRETS in this crew, people. Also…AUNTIE AMARA!

Sam is Jack’s sad dad :(

Sam uses the phrase BLINDLY FOLLOWING ORDERS to accuse Dean of doing the wrong thing and we are LIVING

Dean THEN says “Jack’s not family” and we both gasp in shock. DEAN! You wash your goddamn fucking mouth out right now. Anyway, he takes Jack out to meet his doom and we sarcastically slow clap under Dean’s nose

Sam and Cas connect in the bunker, bonding over trying to find another way. ALL THE HEARTS

Amara and Chuck reconnect and…we get an “Amara” title card? Iiiiiiinteresting

Chuck asks Amara’s help to do a hard reset (Chuck is grossed out by Amara/Dean? Excuse us as we cry/laugh at this) Amara wants to defend the world and we shout PROTECT

“Why did I go with carbon based life?” Chuck laments. Humans ruin everything!

Amara zaps Chuck up to Heaven. I like that Amara’s doing the ghost of Christmas present schtick

FANDOM please make us a million gifs of Amara’s reaction shots from this episode for reasons

Amara proposes “balance” between herself and Chuck, but he’s not into sharing. She zaps Chuck into the Winchester’s bunker trap. DAMN GIRL

Me: DON’T KILL our precious sunflower, Amara!

Dean enjoys awkward moments with Jack and we get our next title card: “Dean”

Jack tells Dean that he understands that he’s not family and I love Dean but ALSO hope he feels like SHIT right now. Yessss YESSSSS give me that sweet angst

Dean and Jack end up at a “Southwest jewelry” shop - featuring Adam and————- Serafina. SERAFINA IS AN ANGEL whaaaat is happening

Adam’s ready for vengeance against Chuck and he’s partnering with Billie to do it

Jack has to pick a crystal - one touched by God. (Boris: this is like the tradition of picking the Dalai Lama like in King of the Hill, right?)

Jack sees all the crystals as being touched by God. Their existence makes them divine, because God is in everything. “At least he should be,” Adam grumbles

Serafina stabs the heck out of Adam and he actually says, “DUDES, chill” and I can’t even. She pulls out his rib

Adam’s rib is strong enough to create life OR destroy God. It will turn Jack into a bomb if he touches it. <Insert meta about his rib aka women being the strongest life force>

Boris: Hey, Jack. Sweetie? Maybe hand the bag with the power rib over to Dean to hold for safe keeping

Dean “apologizes” in his own special half ass way for what Jack overheard in the bunker. He tries to explain that learning about Chuck’s control meant that he felt like he wasn’t alive. He thanks Jack for what he’s about to do. (Me: NOT ENOUGH, DEAN-O) (He’ll get there, I know, I know)

“Sam” is our next title card and we are ready for feelings. He and Cas commiserate about their feelings of hopelessness and yet…immense sense of wrongness in the situation. Sam remembers the key to Death’s library from that one time Sergei was visiting (because he operates best under major trauma?)

We get a MONTAGE of box opening until they find the KEY. Yes, please! I am always down for a trip to a library!

Sam tells Cas to stay behind to stop Dean (Us: Distract him with a sexy strip-tease!)

Sam finds a whole bunch of dead reapers in the library. Guessing that’s not by design. Someone shrieks in the distance, which can only mean wholesome things!

Meg as the Empty is holding court! God, I love that they brought Rachel Miner back <3 She dead-ifies another reaper while Sam looks on

The Empty is pissed at all the manipulation from Death, from God. (We love that the sweetest person plays these dark characters. QUEEN)

Only Billie can read Death’s books, so the Empty can’t read Chuck’s book

Sam LIES HIS ASS OFF and tells the Empty that Billie sent him so, like, plz don’t kill him or hurt him? SAM FUCKING WINCHESTER tells The Empty that he needs to fetch Chuck’s book. BALLS OF STEEL, THIS ONE (Boris: That was a very beautiful Sam moment)

Meanwhile, Chuck and Amara exchange broody looks. She tries to convince him to make the right choice and then he tells her to “shut up.” We’ll have to slap him, now

Chuck feeds on Dean shoving Jack to his end. He is SUPER PLEASED with his manipulation

Dean PULLS. A. GUN. on Sam. FFS

Chuck reveals the truth about their plan to Amara OUR SUNFLOWER and Dean and Sam engage in fisticuffs. WELL SHIT

Amara’s heart gets broken and WE ARE DECEASED NOOOOO how did we come to care for her so much? Chuck implores Amara to create something new and beautiful with him. Ooooooo honey you can’t trust him. She takes his hand and gets absorbed into him. Gross

Dean attempts to lose his shit at Sam, but Sam implores him to remember how he’s protected him from Dad, Lucifer, everything. EYEBALLS EMOJI. Sam cries and we are EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED

Sam talks Dean down but it’s too fucking late, baby boys! Chuck emerges all juiced up with his sister’s essence, and complains that they’ve ruined his story AGAIN

Jack collapses and the next stop is dead baby boy central! WE ARE SHOCKED that the episode is over! When is next week? Oh god, next week is the US election. We need to be…encased in some very soft blankets. Please, join us in our blanket fort WHERE NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS! See ya next week, babes