#and literally any denial/criticism that people throw at destiel

[norahastuff]

So I’ve been meaning to look back at this post. I always intended on following up on it after the show was over because narratively and structurally the parallels were really interesting to me and I wanted to see how it would all play out in the end. I’ll explain.

It was back when we were having a discussion about slow burn couples and how they compared to what Spn was doing with Dean and Cas. I always maintained that they were following the same kind of model that the Ugly Betty writers did with Daniel and Betty, in that they were an endgame romance, and not endgame in the sense that they got together and broke up a bunch of times over the course of the show a la Ross and Rachel, but rather endgame in the sense that the fact that they had romantic feelings for each other wasn’t addressed until the end of the show. You can look at that post for more details about the parallels between the two. 

Well in the end Dean and Cas went almost exactly the same way as Daniel and Betty, but as it turns out, Destiel was much more explicitly romantic. Daniel never confessed his love for Betty. It was pretty clear how he felt, but he never outright said it. And it was Daniel’s mother who indirectly told Betty how he felt by saying “losing you is very hard for him I don’t even think he quite understands why yet.” So yeah not nearly as explicit as Cas’ confession but people had no problem accepting that he had feelings for her, wonder what the difference between Dean and Cas and Daniel and Betty is? 

The emotional heart of the finale wasn’t even Daniel and Betty, it was Betty saying goodbye to her family as she left for a life away from them. As important as Daniel and Betty’s relationship was, it was always her family that were the most important people in her life and so it makes sense that that goodbye would be the main focus. Seems relevant...especially to anyone who tries to shoot back at the people unsatisfied with Dean and Cas’ ending by saying the finale was always going to focus on the brothers. Those two things are not mutually exclusive? Nobody was expecting the whole episode to be the adventures of Dean and Cas, that doesn’t mean it still should not have been a part of it.

There was even a montage of Betty and her new life, we saw her thriving, busy, fulfilled and all seemed well...and then out of the blue, she bumps into Daniel. Because it wouldn’t have made sense for them to end the show with their relationship left unaddressed. Because despite everything else they were best friends and each others’ confidantes and romantic or not they needed to acknowledge how important that relationship was to both of them as well as the show. So Daniel gave up everything because Betty had taught him he could be more and he came to see her in her new life to thank her and to say goodbye. And possibly say hello. The show ends with Daniel asking her to have dinner and her saying yes. It’s not clear what that means. As friends? They’ve had dinner hundreds of times before. As something else? Seems likely. People had no problem extrapolating that he meant it romantically although it’s not made clear. 

Betty’s feelings are not addressed at all, at least not textually. Subtextually the implication is that she feels the same way, but there’s no outright indication that she did - and honestly it’s nowhere close to what we’ve been shown Dean feels for Cas. Betty never made Daniel a mixtape. 

I’m actually a little shocked at how similar it turned out that parallel was for both relationships. It really does feel like they followed the same blueprint. The crucial difference? That one missing scene. Daniel and Betty got to meet again one final time. They’d finally grown and changed enough that they could perhaps both find happiness with each other. Nothing was made explicit, in the actor who plays Daniel Eric Mabius’ own words “the possibilities are endless.” But they met. They acknowledged that this bond between them whatever you chose to call it, was important - both to Betty and to the show. They changed each other and they wouldn’t be the people they eventually grew to be if they hadn’t been in each others lives, and that final meeting was vital in order to acknowledge this, even though it was a short scene where not too much was said. 

What Supernatural did, it’s what would have happened if Ugly Betty ended without Daniel going to talk to Betty again. If he’d just left everything unaddressed and ultimately let their whole relationship fall away without it meaning anything in the end. If they’d introduced this additional element of Daniel’s feelings for Betty (and vice versa even if it was more subtextual) and then just never acknowledged it. 15x18 took Dean and Cas further than Daniel and Betty...and then 15x20 just refused to follow up on it. So it’s not like they fall behind or anything, there’s literally just a page missing from their story. It’s hard to compare the endings because Dean and Cas just didn’t get one. 

It’s unfortunate because I expected to be following up on this after the finale with the conversation centring more around how despite Daniel and Betty’s resolution being low key and not explicitly romantic, people (especially PR/interviewers/articles etc) had no problem accepting the two of them ending the series as a couple/potential couple, but Dean and Cas aren’t afforded the same consideration. And while that’s still true, turns out it’s so besides the point. We can’t discuss a resolution if they didn’t even get one.