#and look. i am and always will be an avid destiel shipper

[phynali]

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate how positive you've been about the SPN finale. You're probably the ONLY person I follow who has not been making fun of it. I confess I became super disenchanted with the show a long time ago, and definitely fell into the "mocking the ending" hole because of all the frustrations I'd had with it over the years. THAT BEING SAID I'm really glad that there are fans like you who really liked the ending. Thanks for helping me remember why I loved the show

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The finale had a lot of emotions. and I think I get why people are upset about some of the things. 

It’s hard to watch Dean die so unceremoniously, impaled on rebar (which - I don’t know why people are making tetanus and rusty nail jokes. rebar is what they build bridges and building foundations on, that shit isn’t moving and will and does impale people). But I think an extreme emotional response to that, with frustration and anger, is totally warranted. Except to me, that’s the whole point? It’s frustrating and upsetting to be human. It’s frustrating and tragic that people die in such inglorious and messy ways. That our mortality is so present. And Dean wanted to be human, to exist outside of god’s story, to write his own narrative. And he got that, messy as is it. He got the ending he always knew he would (and wanted), dying while saving others (children, specifically). And got the ending he always wanted for Sam, with his brother having a long life and a family.

Maybe it helps that before watching the last 5 episodes, I most recently watched 1x12 Faith, where Dean is heading toward his first death and gets saved by someone else dying. And what’s always struck me about that episode is how inglorious his death would have been there as well. He was saving children and got electrocuted on a routine hunt. If it weren’t for magic, Dean would be dead at 26 in a parallel way to how he actually finally died at 41.

And I can get people being disappointed we didn’t see Cas. Tbh I am too, because I do like his character, even if his solo storylines don’t tend to excite me. 

But I’m pretty sure that without covid, Dean’s pyre would have been surrounded by all the surviving hunters and friends they’ve made along the way (alt universe hunters, Garth’s family, Jodi and Donna and the girls, etc), whereas in heaven he would have been greeted by not just Bobby but the rest of the friends and family he’d lost along the way (parents, Ellen and Jo, others), including Cas. And then he’d have driven off on his own only after that welcome. And the message would have been that each of them were supported, in both death (for Dean) and life (for Sam) by others until they could return to one another.

Alas, we never got that, which made it all feel even more tragic because Sam seemed so goddamn alone and I was gutted by that. 

But I also really liked Cas’s ending too?

Because Cas was explicitly stated to be in heaven, to be rebuilding it to be better alongside his son. And that parallels the Season 5 Swan Song finale ending but in a more uplifting way? Because in Swan Song, heaven was in disarray and he left earth to go try and help fix that shit, facing an uphill battle to do so. And in Season 15 Carry On, heaven was in disarray and he was plucked from the Empty by his son to help fix that, facing an easy path forward because he’s doing it with family. 

Also -- this completes his story. Cas is restoring the order he’s always wanted/needed to restore, pretty much since the start of his narrative (from season 4, when he first has doubts and rebelled, to season 6-7 when he wages war and tries to become god, to trying to fix it again and getting played by Metatron to staying out of it to being brought back into it all, to taking on Lucifer to beyond). If you zoom out, his full arc involves destroying/dismantling all that is wrong about heaven and the angels, then ultimately helping rebuild it right, now with Jack (God) finally at his side. 

Cas did it -- the thing he set out to do in Season 5: he found (a loving) God.

(As an aside I’ve seen a lot of memes about how Cas went to superhell but the Impala went to heaven, and I get the joke but I think a lot of people who don’t watch the show now think Cas really stayed in the Empty when he was legit in heaven even before Dean was, probably from the second Jack disappeared in ep 19.)

But all that being said, my strong impression is that a lot of people expressly and vehemently hated the finale specifically due to destiel not having any screentime and not being interpretable as endgame. 

And I know how upsetting it is to get your hopes dashed, but I really wish people could allow themselves to watch the finale outside of that bitterness. Because the show writers and cast and the narrative itself really has not, in the past 6-7 years, so much as hinted it’s ever going to happen. I’ve looked for it, I’ve analyzed it, and I’ve read the shipper analyses out of curiosity. And as a writer and avid fan and person who analyzes media a lot, it wasn’t heading there except that people really really really wanted to convince themselves the story was going to do that.  

I think people built themselves up for something that wasn’t going to happen by feeding off each other and buying into the new-fangled idea that it has to be ‘canon’ to be valid. This made them disengage from or distort what was being said in the text and caused them to ignore or dismiss what was being said by the people creating it. And now they’re mad and “betrayed” because what they read was not actualized, but I fundamentally believe they betrayed each other by creating false expectations and hopes where none were ever promised nor written in.

Not that there’s any issue at all with shipping it! I always give full support to all shipping. Just that it makes me sad that so much of the ire I’m seeing directed toward the finale and show now is about that, about bitterness of false expectations, rather than it being about engaging with the actual storytelling.

All feelings toward the finale are valid (though hate and mean messages being sent to the cast and crew really isn’t), and I get being sad and bitter. But yeah, I really really loved it, and reflecting on it as a writer has just made me love it more and more each time I dig deeper into some aspect of it. Whether you loved it or hated it, it was thought out and considered and carefully plotted and beautifully acted.