#been having these feelings since 15x18 sorry not sorry but billie was my girl

[ananke-xiii]

i'm having some billie feelings today. i'd definitely rescue her from the empty, seriously, i don't care about cas, but what about billie, huh? who wants to save billie? i do!

twice (second time kinda not technically) killed by castiel to save a (dean) winchester. it must hurt. like. a.lot. and then her death kinda got forgotten because of the love declaration. and then there was a new Death and she was a woman and she died too the very next episode. i'm sorry but i can't, really. justice for billie please.

[okaybutmakeitgayer]

An Angel’s Guide to Love

SPOILERS FOR 15X18!!

And then it was done.  Jack had killed God. Billie was trapped in the Empty. The Empty itself was back asleep. Everything was over.  But it felt like there was something missing. Or rather someone.  Sam has Eileen. Michael has Adam. Jack is currently thinking that he may be an ace/aro, but he has Heaven to run so he's too busy to be in a relationship just yet. Jody, Donna and the girls are busy hunting. Garth continues to let his family grow. Rowena happily rules Hell.  But Dean... Dean just doesn't fit in anymore.  The Winchester was changed when his best friend was taken from him. When his best friend chose to leave him behind. Dean constantly had to remind himself that Castiel was gone for good. His friend, his lover, was never coming back.  That was another thing. Dean never got to tell Cas that he loved him back. The only person- or rather angel- that ever made Dean feel completely human, died thinking that Dean didn't love him back. That was probably the most painful thing of all.  The Empty had taken Cas for good. Dean was never going to see his fallen angel ever again. 

January 24, 2021 It was early July 2019, that Castiel died. Dean barely contacted anyone anymore. It had been a year and a half since Cas was taken. He spent his time alone in the Bunker. Sam had moved out with Eileen a few months back. When Dean wasn't in the Bunker, he was out on quick hunts. That was how he got all his anger out, hunts.  The Bunker seemed quiet. Dean sat in the map room with a drink in his hand. His chin rested in his free hand and he was half asleep. 

"Hello, Dean," Jack greets. 

Jack's just like Cas, Dean notes. "Hey, Jack. You missed the cake," Dean says, informing the Nephilim that he had missed everyone. 

"I know." Jack pauses. "I just wanted to give you my gift after you were visited by everyone else." 

Dean shakes his head, "I appreciate the thought, but I'm really not in the mood to accept gifts right now." 

The Winchester starts to turn his back and walk away from Jack. However, Jack uses his wings and quickly reappears in front of Dean to stop him from walking away. "I think you'll like this gift," Jack says. 

And then there's another voice from behind them. A voice Dean thought he would never hear again. 

"Hello Dean."

Dean whips around. He had to check that he isn't just hearing things. "Cas?" Dean asks quietly, looking at the man now in front of him. 

The fallen angel steps towards his hunter, "it's really me." 

Dean turns to Jack, "what- how? How did you-?" 

Jack smiles at Dean. "I got Cas back from the Empty before and figured I could do it again. I made a deal with the Empty not to bother it again as long as it gave Cas back. It agreed.”

There’s a quick silence. The Nephilim looks at the two men. "I'll leave you two alone..." he says, sneaking out of the room to let them be. 

Dean looks back at Cas. 

The fallen angel walks over to his hunter. Silently, Cas looks Dean over his head tilting slightly as he does. Cas saw what everyone else saw. That Dean was broken. But Cas could do something no one else could. He could fix Dean, fix the hole in his heart. Castiel looks at Dean for a few moments longer before doing what Dean usually does and pulling the hunter into a hug.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Cas says.

The hunter pulls away and looks at Castiel. "It's okay, Cas. I'm just glad you're back." 

"I am too." 

There's no mention of what Castiel said before he let the Empty take him. That just isn't a topic that the two want to discuss just yet. 

Cas looks around. "How long has it been?" 

The hunter shakes his head. "Far too long. It's been a year and a half. Sam moved out a few months ago to be with Eileen. He's considering asking her to marry him. Jack's usually up to the tips of his wings in work. It's just me here most of the time." 

“A year and a half? I’m so sorry Dean...”

"Stop apologizing. It's what any of us would do," Dean assures him. If Dean had only been able to  do the same for Cas, this reunion would have happened a lot sooner. "Besides, I should be sorry. I let you rot in that place for so long." 

"No, you don't need to be sorry, Dean. You couldn't do anything, Dean. The Empty made it so I could almost never see the light of day again. It was luck that Jack managed to make that deal with the Empty," Cas says. 

Soon enough, the pair sits down and Dean catches Cas up on everything he missed. Dean told Cas everything from how Jack defeated God to every hunt Dean went on. Cas listened the entire time, a content look on the angel's face. Castiel was back. Whether Dean loved him in return or not, he was back with his best friend. Cas was back with the human who made him stronger than he ever was, even if Cas is no longer a full-powered angel. 

Before long, Jack comes back into the room. He joins the two of them, not bringing much attention to himself. 

"You aren't going to take him back, are you?" Dean asks suddenly, looking over to Jack. 

"No," Jack answers, "Cas is staying here. He's staying with us." 

About an hour later, Jack leaves to go back to Heaven. This leaves just Castiel and Dean to themselves again. When Jack leaves, Dean makes a burger for himself for dinner. Cas just watches him cook silently. When he finishes up cooking, he gets another beer for himself and one for Cas. 

When Dean sits back down at the table across from the angel, he asks a question. "What was it like- in the Empty? You weren't awake for most of it, were you?" 

Cas had been waiting for that question to pop up. The angel shuffles in his chair a bit. "Angels and demons, when they are sent to the Empty, they are forever forced to dream about their regrets." 

The hunter nods, silently asking him to go on. 

"On repeat, I dreamt of all the times I failed you, all the times I betrayed you." 

You're dead to me 

Cas, what the hell? 

I was there, where were you? 

I feel regret about what I did to you and Sam - yeah, well you should

Maybe if you didn't just up and leave us 

Cas has a sad look on his face. He betrayed Dean so many times. But each time, Dean would allow him to come back, to come home. Even if it did take Dean a couple years to forgive him, Cas always got to return. 

"Cas?" 

"Yes, Dean?" 

The Winchester hesitates before going on, "before you let yourself... before the Empty took you, what you said... was that true?" 

Castiel looks right at Dean. "Every word. I have loved you since the day I first met you. You taught me to love the world, to love humanity. Maybe you made me more human than any angel before The Fall, but you made me stronger too. Dean, you helped me to be better. And I-I know you don't feel the same; but just know that even if you don't love yourself, there is someone who does." 

There's silence in the room after Cas finishes up speaking. Dean doesn't know how to respond to that. 

The fallen angel looks at Dean's face. "Should I go? I should go-" He moves to leave but Dean stops him by grabbing on to the trench coat sleeve. Dean pulls Cas closer to him and connects their lips. The hunter kisses Cas for a few seconds before pulling away and muttering, "I love you too," against the angel's lips.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Supernatural: Inherit the Earth (15x19)

That was somehow simultaneously a crowded mess, and a complete anticlimax. I'm literally just like... super confused and afraid about what the finale is going to be now.

Cons:

Sam's the dog person. That's part of canon. I liked the moment when Dean found the dog, or whatever, but I wish Sam had gotten a moment with the puppy too, before Chuck took it away. A small thing, but one of those typical wrong details in Buckleming episodes, where it just honestly doesn't seem like they know the characters very well.

Lucifer and Michael have a fight in the Bunker and Michael takes Lucifer out really, really easily. So like. Remember when the first five seasons of the show were the buildup to the Apocalypse, and Sam sacrificed himself for an eternity in Lucifer's Cage to stop it from happening? Apparently a fight between the two archangels is just a bit of fisticuffs, nothing to get worked up about. That annoyed me. But I guess consistency has never been something this show has cared much about...

Also just... Lucifer in general, coming back for like five minutes so he can mug at the camera and then be unceremoniously killed? Here's the thing: we had Billie as Death, and she hated them but maybe it would have been interesting to see her and the boys team up to figure out Chuck's ending... but instead, she's gone, Lucifer gets a pointless return, provides us with another Death, who is there for two seconds, says a couple of vaguely funny lines, and then dies... and we still never find out what's in the book.

The fight with Chuck was so badly edited! It was so weird to see him just wail on Sam and Dean, and repeated shots of him hitting them, and them getting up, while he kept saying "okay fellas, enough, please stay down" over and over again. Given that the whole "erasing the people from the world" thing was so much like Infinity War, I kept comparing this fight with God to the climax of Endgame. In that instance, you have a small group of intrepid fighters going up against a big bad evil, and then just at the moment when they're run down and helpless, the whole crowd of friends returns and joins in the fight. Instead of that, it's just Jack showing up and absorbing God's powers, and then they leave him begging on the beach. Not a bad ending for Chuck, which I'll get to in a moment, but the epic-ness was seriously missing from this final showdown.

So, when Jack returned the world to its normal state, did he bring back all of their friends, too? I want to believe this was something that Covid took away from them, where instead of seeing shots of Charlie and her girlfriend, of Donna, Jody, the girls, Bobby, Eileen, they were forced to use stock footage of just random people around the world returning. Would have been cooler to see the epic return... and also super weird that Sam and Dean sit quietly in the bunker talking about free will, and we don't see Sam pull out his phone and call his girlfriend, like... I get not wanting to muddy the ending of the episode with a lot of fallout stuff, and I'm sure we'll get that next week? Like, I hope, anyway? But as it stood for this hour of television, it was super weird to me that the boys didn't immediately want to check on all of their friends to make sure everyone had returned from the dead.

Jack becoming the new God is actually a totally appropriate ending, people were speculating that he'd be the new God or Death or Empty, or some cosmic entity, anyway... and this honestly felt very fitting... BUT, I will say that there are two really, really stupid things about it. One, his "I'm everything and everywhere now" speech was super cheesy... "I'm in the air and the rocks and every drop of rain" or whatever. Such a cliche, I was almost painfully embarrassed listening to him. I honestly would have preferred less is more, here. Like, what if he'd said the stuff about how humans can be their best when they need to be, that was a good line... and then Sam says "what if we want to see you? Grab a beer?" And Jack just says "I'm around" and then vanishes, leaving it vague? I think the idea of a hands-off deity is perfect, of course... makes sense for the "free will wins the day" ending we've got going here, but I didn't think stating it outright was the best move.

The second reason Jack becoming God was rendered kind of comedically awful in the way it happened is... well, elephant in the room, let's talk about how Cas was handled in this episode.

Here's a quote from last week's review:

"I'm worried that Cas dying is gonna get swallowed up with everyone dying and not get its due, thus making the confession completely isolated. Like, here you go, gays, have this one scene, which, in isolation is quite heartfelt from Cas' perspective, but can be carefully boxed up and not touched for the last two hours of the show. If they don't want to touch on how this would affect Dean specifically, they don't have to. He can be generally angsty and sad about Cas, but they could get away with never bringing it up again, and that is some grade-A level bullshit right there, my friends."

And... yeah. Look, I know there are people on Tumblr right now saying that this episode being the "brothers only" ending means that next week we'll get Cas back and Dean will confess his love or whatever... but y'all, it's not going to happen. I'm sorry. I'd love to be wrong. If I'm wrong, I will gladly eat crow and celebrate along with the rest of you, but I just... I've been burned before. I know what's going on here, and it's not what you think it is.

Dean was undeniably devastated in this episode. We see him drinking to excess, falling asleep on the floor, grasping onto tiny moments of joy like with the dog and then being furious and upset when they fall through. But that devastation was not textually about Cas specifically. Sure, there were moments, like him telling God to bring everything back, and then namedropping Cas specifically. Or the way he ran up the stairs when Cas' voice was on the phone. But what I'm saying is? Those are crumbs, there for those of us who care to gobble up, easily ignored and subsumed by the larger losses the boys are suffering. Sam is devastated too, guys. About his girlfriend, about Charlie, about Donna, and Jody, etc. etc. etc. Who's to say their grief is any different from one another, even though they're handling it with different coping mechanisms? The "I love you" wasn't even on the "previously on".

Like. There's a universe where Dean does get a moment of Cas-related catharsis in the finale, even though Misha's not coming back. Maybe he has a private moment to grieve just for him, to contemplate that specific loss. But I'm telling you: I don't care if an openly gay man wrote 15x18, I don't care that Misha found it moving. The bottom line is, Cas confessing his love for Dean was the moment of catharsis the show was willing to offer us. We ain't getting much else.

So going back to Jack, why on earth does nobody suggest that maybe when he's popping the rest of the world back to the way it's supposed to be, he also brings Cas back? This is what I'm talking about with contrived sacrifices. Last week, they could have written a way for Dean to get out of that scrape without Cas dying. And this week, Jack's determination to be a "hands-off" God is not enough to explain why he wouldn't restore his father Castiel from the Empty. Especially since Chuck brought Lucifer back from the Empty, proving that God can do that. Even though that contradicts earlier lore but whatever. The point is, I'm saying it's sloppy. Cas' death, Cas staying dead, does not feel like an earned inevitability to me. I'm prepared to eat my words if they bring him back in the finale, but even if that happens (which it won't), he's not going to be smooching Dean Winchester on the mouth, y'all. He's just not.

So then that ending. "Finally free," says Dean, completely unaware that he's echoing the theme from the end of season five but making it hopeful now for some reason? And that end montage felt like an ending 100%, and I won't say it was bad to see it, see all the memories, the characters... I mean, Charlie dancing in the elevator, getting glimpses of Ellen and Jo, Bobby, Crowley... I'm not going to complain about that, it was honestly quite fun, but it also felt extremely anticlimactic and gave us no sense of where the characters are going to go from here. And yes, I know we have an episode next week, it's just...

Here's the thing I'm scared of, and I'm going to go ahead and put it here in the "cons" section because I don't know where it belongs yet. Despite my complaints about this episode, thematically there was one thing it got right: the answer to defeating Chuck wasn't destined, it wasn't in a book of preordained endings. They had to come up with it by themselves, using the tools at their disposal, and they won, and they get free will now, they get the release from having someone else tell their story. Great. So... what does that leave us next week?

As mentioned above, I really don't think the final 43 minutes is going to be an epic gay love story where Dean fights to get Cas back, I really don't. That leaves us two options: either a tepid re-tread of the themes already established, an epilogue of sorts where we just get to see a life in the day, a new normal for the boys. I wouldn't be furious about this, but I also think it won't really feel like closure for me. They just keep hunting? They keep saving people? That's fine, I guess, but they can't really walk back the fact that God is their son, can they? When they die the next time, do they go to the Empty? Who is Death, now? Are Heaven and Hell okay? Are we meant to be convinced that nothing will ever come back to bite them in the ass, they'll live long lives, and a benevolent afterlife is waiting for them when it's over? I'm not convinced I believe in things being that simple, so it sort of seems like the show would end by saying "okay, and more of the same."

The second possibility is worse, though, that being a total status-quo shift, like the end comes and the Empty is after them and they have to become the new Death and Empty as some speculated, or some wild harebrained plot twist gets thrown in at the last second and undoes the actual good parts of the theme established here. I hope for the first, but I don't know that it'll make me happy, to be quite honest. I really don't want it to feel this way, but Cas being gone is the big elephant in the room, for me. It truly is.

Pros:

I did like the earlier parts of the episode, the eeriness and the helplessness of them being alone. Continuing with the Avengers comparisons, it was very similar to the long, slow opening to Endgame, where we see a lot of grief, a lot of helplessness, an lot of directionless moping. That felt appropriate and it made it all the more invigorating when Michael showed up, giving us a spark of direction in which to move.

While I thought the fight with Chuck was edited really strangely and didn't work for me, I did like this ending for Chuck. Very much like the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Chuck doesn't die, which he honestly would have found a satisfying, creative ending for his story. Instead, he gets to live on as a normal human, sans powers, and be forgotten. Brutal and appropriate! It ties back into the free will thing. Chuck can do whatever he wants with his remaining time, but he can't steal other people's choices from them any longer. It's the black and the white, the good and the bad, of being just... human. Which ties in with Sam and Dean being more or less hopeful about their outlook moving forward. (God, I'm so fucking scared they're going to screw up the few things I liked about this episode in next week's finales.)

Like I said, I did find Jack becoming God an appropriate ending for him as a character. It's the right type of bittersweet: he's there, and we can imagine that in the future, he does go visit Sam and Dean for a beer. Or maybe he doesn't, and that's okay too. Knowing he's at peace, knowing he's benevolent, and that he'll do the best he can for the people of the world(s). It's nice, a comforting deity instead of a manipulative overlord. And the fact that his benevolence and kindness and compassion are born out of a human mother, and two human fathers, and an angel who embraced humanity with everything in himself... instead of from Lucifer, who tried to create him in his image? Well, that's a lovely resolution for a character that became a surprising favorite over the years.

As I think I mentioned last week, I'm willing to let this show manipulate my emotions here at the end, when it can manage to do so. So yeah, of course I loved that Cas and Jack's names are added to the table along with SW, DW, and MW. Obviously that's adorable as hell. And as I said, the montage worked for me, it was certainly quite lovely. I just... like I said at the start of this, I'm just frankly terrified of what's coming next week.

I mean, here's the thing, I want an ending that honors Sam and Dean as the protagonists of this show, but I want it where they live in the bunker, and Eileen and returned-from-the-dead-Castiel live with them as their partners. If someone told me I couldn't change a thing about what's happened so far, but I could decide how the last episode went, that's how I'd end it. Showing a network of hunters getting support and able to live more stable, reasonable lives while still doing a dangerous job. Sam embracing his intellectual prowess and running things from the bunker, Dean and Cas going out on the road, Sam and Eileen going out on the road, or any combination therein. Jack watching over them benevolently from above. Jody and Donna and the girls living their best lives. Kaia and Claire as a couple, onscreen. A glimpse of a more stable afterlife, now that Jack is there to run things, the confirmation of a peaceful ending whenever our human protagonists do finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Peace, but change, too.

I just don't believe that's what we're getting. I can't believe it, and that makes me really frightened for what comes next week. I'm prepared to be pissed off. Quite frankly, I'm expecting it.

6/10