#fascinatingly this is a horrible explanation of what characters i actually enjoy and care about the most | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hypermania · 3 years ago

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So classes are over for the summer and I need a new hyperfixation and I want to get into Supernatural for the Destiel angst but 15 seasons is a lot so do I need to watch all of them or can I skip all the episodes without Cas? Or do you have like an overview of what happens or what the angstiest parts are so that I can just watch those (I don't care about spoilers)? I'm not necessarily against watching all of it. I just don't want to watch stuff I don't need to.

okay so i just wanna say for the record that i'm not recommending you get into spn. but if that's what you want to do, i'm not going to stop you. so. with that being said: there are definitely episodes you can skip (and in my opinion, episodes you should skip for the sake of your mental health and emotional well being. hello dog dean afternoon). unfortunately, i don't think you can just jump right into season 4 when castiel shows up.

personally, i don't really enjoy the first three seasons. i think they're largely boring and very dated (and i find the show to be the most tedious when it's focused solely on the brothers, which the first three seasons are exclusively, obviously) but they are essential to setting up the plot for seasons 4 and 5 when cas does show up and more importantly they're essential to understanding why dean and sam are the way they are. there's a lot established in those seasons about how they were raised and how that influences the dynamic between them as adults (and how they interact with and form relationships/bonds with other people) and all of that information is important, in my opinion, to understanding why dean's relationship with cas is so special. so. yeah. you kinda need to trudge through that. (and hey a lot of people really enjoy that era of the show so you might actually like it.)

as for an overview? well it's fifteen seasons so i'm not sure how that’s even possible tbh but here is a rundown of the deancas saga based on what's immediately relevant to their relationship in my mind (and by immediately relevant i mean what i can remember in this moment), starting with the foundational stuff:

when dean is 4yo and sam is 6mo, a demon gets into their house and burns their mother, mary, alive

their father, john, hands a 4yo child his infant brother and basically says "this baby is your responsibility for the rest of your life" and that is not an exaggeration and it is crucial to understanding the rest of the show

john becomes obsessed with finding the demon that killed mary and drags his kids all over the country, hunting monsters and tracking down the demon. he often leaves them alone in motels for days/weeks at a time without enough food and/or money to pay for food. he is dangerously negligent at best.

he drinks too much and it’s implied that he is sometimes physically abusive (although only with dean)

dean shields sam from a lot of the worst parts of their childhood (though not all of it because he is also a child) to the point that sam didn't even know about the supernatural until he was a fair bit older, did not know that dean was the one who carried him out of the burning house until some time during the first season of the show, did not seem to know that john was physically abusive, and did not know that sometimes when dean would be "gone" for periods of time it would be because john would send dean away out of anger (there is an entire episode centered around a boy's home that dean lived at for a time as a teenager after he was arrested for stealing food because he didn't have enough money to feed him and sam, and when john found out about it he told the cops to "let him rot" in juvie)

dean is largely defensive of john, saying things like "he did the best he could"

sam is very critical of john; they did not get along (sam's first steps were to dean. which is very cute. that's his mommy :) )

sam left to go to stanford when he was 18yo and john did not like that at all. he was like ‘hey kid fuck you and don't come back. how dare you want a life of your own and any kind of happiness.’

the pilot starts four years later, towards the end of sam's final year at stanford. he hasn't spoken to dean or john since he left. dean shows up at the home sam shares with his very normal girlfriend, jessica. he has normal friends who don't know anything about the supernatural. he's living a normal life. everything is great. he's happy. and very normal. so normal.

sam is like 'what are you doing here, brother??' and jessica is like 'brother? i thought you were an orphan?' and dean is like 'ouch!' (im jk. kind of. but you get the picture.) dean says the very iconic line "dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days" and sam's like cool whatever and dean's like no dude i'm actually worried and sam's like UGH fine whatever i'll hang out with you for the weekend you very sad and lonely man (it is SO sad how lonely dean is... but he pastes on a pretty smile and by golly does he try to play it cool) and in what will set the precedent for the entire fifteen season run of this show, they introduce what could be a truly compelling narrative parallel and manage to completely miss the mark by unnecessarily sexualizing the situation (the first episode is about a woman in white who killed her kids and then herself and can't pass on or find peace and instead of using that to make some commentary about how mary's death has essentially doomed sam and dean to this life of misery and pain that they can't move on from, they just make it about hot ghost sarah shahi trying to fuck unsuspecting dudes and then killing them but this is irrelevant to anything really).

so anyway. they solve this supernatural case. find out some information about where john might be or might have gone. and sam's like 'okay cool well now that you have a lead i'm going back to my very normal life' and dean is like 'but.... but....' because he is SO sad and SO lonely but then when sam does go back to his home, jessica is on the ceiling burning, the same way mary was. and so... sam is back in the supernatural game. he leaves his normal, standford life behind.

gonna be honest: i don't really remember the specifics of what happens in s1-3. sam and dean hunt supernatural things while trying to follow the trail their piece of shit father is leaving for them while he refuses to return any phone calls. (they do eventually at some point kill the demon.)

dean leaves their dad tearful voicemails like 'dad i'm scared and i don't know what to do. please help' and john just doesn't care. dean is dying at one point and john just doesn't care. but dean still defends him and sam still hates him (every once in awhile sam is like 'you know maybe dad was just doing his best' and dean gets very quiet and looks away and you just KNOW that deep down he's like 'actually fuck that guy maybe')

at some point it is revealed that the demon that killed mary was in their house to feed sam some of his blood and mary basically just got in the way; he also fed his blood to other babies (we'll come back to that)

at one point the demon possesses john and dean realizes that john is possessed because he tells dean he's proud of him lmaooo

ummmm. dean is going to die at one point (i don't even remember why anymore) and john trades his soul for dean's life but before he dies he tells dean that if he can't "save" sam, he'll have to kill him and dean is like what the fuck does that mean!!! but of course john doesn't tell him. so dean is just left with this burden of maybe having to kill the brother that he's spent his entire life being responsible for. john winchester is the worst is what i'm saying.

so the demon blood babies. they're all sam's age and obviously grown now. they've all got some weird power. sam's is psychic visions at this point i think. in one episode all the grown demon blood babies are in this abandoned town where they're playing survival of the fittest and have to kill each other off for some reason and sam is like 'hey what if we don't kill each other???' because he's actually a very kind and empathetic and good boy but the rest of them are like 'nah murder seems cool' and they pick each other off one by one and then it's just him and hardison from leverage and hardison kills him just before dean finally shows up to the abandoned town and, well, dean thinks his entire purpose in life is to take care of sam so that just can't do. so he summons a crossroads demon to make a deal and trade his soul for sam's life. a deal like that is supposed to give him ten more years on earth (don't remember why john's was immediate but who cares fuck that guy) but the demon is like 'hmm no you can have one year' and dean is like 'fine i'll take it because i don't value my life or myself at all.'

the entire third season is about trying to get dean out of that deal i think. they become frenemies with a demon named ruby who appears to be helping them (spoiler alert: she’s not!).

other things happen that aren't unimportant but that don't necessarily matter to the deancas plot too crucially so i'm not going to get into any of it but there are some excellent and fun characters along the way

the 2007-2008 writers guild of america strike happens and spn s3 is cut short and they aren't able to write dean getting out of his deal so at the end of s3... dean gets dragged to hell (and it's the best damn thing to ever happen to this show tbh)

s4 starts four months later (apparently time passes differently in hell so four months on earth is the equivalent of forty years in hell so dean has spent forty years in hell and he is... well, he's very obviously not okay and he's kind of never really the same again)

dean crawls out of his grave (marked by a cross which is fucking hilarious because this is a man who thus far does not believe in god and does not believe in the existence of angels)

he's got a mysterious handprint burned into his shoulder/arm that basically says "property of castiel"

he has no idea how or why he got out of hell

sam's been hanging out with ruby (and by hanging out with i mean he's been having crazy hot sex with her and drinking her demon blood because it boosts his demon blood baby powers) and dean is not happy about this; there is an obvious rift between sam and dean because dean can't talk about his time in hell and sam is doing... well he's hanging out with a demon and doing what seems like really bad things (but tbh sam actually is totally in the right imo, even if the narrative bends over backwards to make sam wrong and dean right but whatever)

nobody, including ruby, knows how or why dean got out of hell and everybody is shaking in their boots over it

then castiel walks into a barn like a badass while dean shoots at him and stabs him in the chest and cas just looks down at the knife like 'thats cute, sweetheart' and dean says "who are you" and cas says, "i'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition" and they just expected everyone to be normal about that for the next eleven or so years???

also, cas looks right into dean's soul and says, "you don't think you deserve to be saved" and dean straight up does not know what to do with that because it's true but also here is an ANGEL telling him that actually he does

so. cas is obviously an angel and he’s the one who pulled dean out of hell. the angels, in general, are not exactly.... great. they are self-serving and they��re dicks, generally speaking. they pulled dean out of hell because they want him to stop the apocalypse by helping to keep lucifer locked in the cage he's trapped in in hell. that's what s4 is about.

dean and cas bond. it's... intense. they put a lot of trust in each other for how little they know each other and how little they've been through together at this point. but it is very interesting to watch dean develop this sort of friendship with someone who is not sam and who he does not have to take care of or be responsible for (especially while watching the chasm between sam and dean grow). it’s also interesting to watch a faithless man start to have faith in something (someone).

we also watch cas start to fall from heaven and develop feelings in general and specifically about dean.

there is a narrative parallel that the show never fully dives into about john as an absent father and god as an absent father but it is compelling

s4 also has the absolute banger of an episode on the head of a pin which is... well. one of THEE episodes of all time.

s4 ends with lucifer being released from the cage, despite everything they did to try and prevent it.

(we also find out that a lot of the angels wanted it to happen and so cas is obviously having even more of a crisis of faith than he was just from starting to care about dean/humanity)

s5 is about preventing the actual apocalypse now that lucifer is out of his cage. there's a lot of plot to this but i'm not gonna go through it. it's a lot.

dean and cas continue to be besties who stand way too close together and look at each other for way too long and throw each other up against walls and generally make the people around them uncomfortable ("not for nothing cas but the last time someone looked at me like that i got laid" etc)

they also have fun together and laugh

they just like each other!

legendary episode the end happens in s5 (and it comes right after the absolute banger that is free to be you and me)

i mean a lot happens in s5. you really have to watch it

but s5 ends with sam jumping into the cage in hell and bringing lucifer with him to save the world, leaving dean by himself but before he does that he makes dean promise that he won't try to bring sam back and that he will go live a normal life

and since dean is so completely fucked in the head he's like ‘yup yeah gotta keep my promise to sam because i am not a person with wants or needs of my own’ (actually literally in s5 there is an episode where Famine tells dean that he's not hungry for anything and it's very sad) so he goes to lisa, who is a woman he spent ONE weekend with like ten years ago and has seen approximately two more times since then and is like ‘yeah guess i'll settle down with this person and help her raise her kid who may or may not be mine’

i think the writers actually want us to believe that dean loves lisa and wants to be with lisa but that he can’t ever really be with her because hunting and the supernatural is too ingrained in him and not because.. you know... they never actually spent any time establishing an actual relationship between the two of them. whatever.

(it doesn't work because dean doesn't know her and also it's very weird for her to let this man who is effectively a stranger and who has been on the fbi's most wanted list come live in her home and raise her son just because he shows up on her doorstep and is sad but whatever)

ANYWAY

s6 starts a year after sam jumps into the pit with lucifer

it SEEMS like dean is living a normal life with lisa and her son ben but it becomes clear that he’s not actually happy (i mean even if he actually did love her how could he possibly be happy in this situation? his brother is trapped in hell with satan for eternity and he's cut himself off from the supernatural world completely which means he’s cut himself off from everything and everyone he knows. he doesn't have a relationship with his father figure anymore and he hasn't seen or spoken to cas who has very much become his best friend in a year. like?? how is that sustainable in any way).

so. dean is struggling. but !!!! sam shows back up!!! and dean is like dude??? and sam is like i know!!!!!

this stuff happens over a lot of episodes but the gist is this: sam was pulled out of hell almost immediately but doesn't know by who. he went to lisa's to get dean but saw dean was living a "normal" life and was like ‘nah ill let him be happy’ except obvi dean wasn't happy. so sam has been alive this whole time and dean has been suffering

except! turns out sam doesn't have his soul anymore which is honestly one of the funnest arcs. there is an episode where dean is abducted by faeries and sam doesn't have his soul so he kind of doesn't really care and it's so much fun. anyway. before they figure out what the problem is they're like 'shit something is wrong we should call cas and figure out whats going on here.' and sam is like 'dude i've been praying to cas for a year he ain't coming' and then dean is like 'fine ill try' and before he even finishes his prayer cas is like OH MY GOD DEAN MY BESTIE!!!!!! (exaggeration but still) and it's very funny and sam says, "so, what you like dean more?" and cas, because he is an angel and has no tact, looks directly at sam and very bluntly says, "dean and i do share a more profound bond." it's great.

anyway. cas pretends to not know what is wrong with sam. it is later revealed that he is very much aware that sam does not have a soul because he is the one that pulled sam out of hell and whoopsie he just forgot to bring sam's soul with him. slapped a big ol' 'property of castiel' stamp on dean and counted each freckle on his naked bum when he pulled him out of hell, but just haphazardly yanked sammy-boy out by his follicles and straight-up forgot his whole ass soul lmaooo

anyway sam gets his soul back at some point. other plot stuff happens.

cas is very busy during s6. there is a civil war going on in heaven and dean is like 'oh no why doesn't my bestie cas wanna hang out with me'

eventually dean and lisa break-up because dean can't ever have a normal life and he's dangerous to lisa and ben (and it has nothing to do with the fact that dean doesn't actually love this woman who he didn't know before he moved in to her home) he also has cas wipe their memories of him completely which is 1. insanely violating and 2. a huge plot hole because dean lived with them for a year and literally every single other person in their life still knows dean exists but whatever. i think lisa is mentioned ONE more time for the entire rest of supernatural's run after this lol

towards the end of the season there is an episode from cas' point of view. the man who would be king. it is a game-changing episode for several reasons:

1.) it is the first time, in my opinion, that cas and dean's relationship is framed romantically in a way that is not for laughs. 2.) it is the turning point in their relationship in that cas is no longer someone dean doesn't feel responsible for. from this point forward, cas is always someone dean has to look after/worry about (which is not a good thing). 3.) it is the beginning of the argument/misunderstanding that will define the rest of their relationship (which is that cas thinks he needs to go out and find solutions to problems all on his own and come back with "wins" for dean and that dean desperately just wants cas to stay and for them to solve the problems together)

in the episode we learn that cas has been struggling with the civil war for the entirety of the season and that he actually did go to dean for help early on but he saw that dean was living a "normal" life and couldn't bring himself to ask dean to sacrifice more than he already had so he just sadly watched him rake leaves and then made a deal with the king of hell, crowley, instead

so cas has been working with crowley all season

sam and dean and bobby hate crowley very specifically for some reason that i honestly can't remember; like i know he's a demon but i don't remember what he did to them specifically and i personally am very fond of crowley so idk

anyway. this episode is all about how cas "betrayed" dean by going behind his back to work with crowley but it's all framed very romantically

feat. lines likes "and the worst part was dean trying so hard to be loyal with every instinct telling him otherwise"

and it's got dean trying to defend cas to sam and bobby

it's got the infamous shot of dean looking back at cas

it's just... it's a lot

but it does end with a rift between them and it's maybe the first time that they are really truly on opposite sides

so s6 ends with cas swallowing a bunch of leviathan souls from purgatory (don't worry about how that happens. doesn't matter) and becoming so powerful that he is the new "god" and he goes on a bit of a power trip.

personally i think godstiel is fun. he dismantles the kkk and goes after the westboro baptist church. sure he commits atrocities but they're cool, hip atrocities.

he also is.. a little bit scary. i guess he poses a legitimate physical threat to dean and sam and bobby. whatever. maybe if they weren't such negative nancies it wouldn't be a problem. i'm just saying.

anyway. the end of s6 and first few eps of s7 have dean and godstiel facing off against each other. dean tries to get Death to kill godstiel. it's kinda sad, yo. it doesn't work. cas is god. he's got too much power. but turns out he's not actually god so his vessel can't contain all that power and he dies by wading into a lake thingy and disappearing and releasing the leviathan unto the world.

this was supposed to be the end of cas forever. after he goes into the lake his trench coat floats back up and dean plucks it out of the water and he is visibly Not Okay. like sure him and cas were fighting but that was his best friend and now he's dead and dean is distraught.

dean spends the next dozen or so episodes being such a Mess™ that bobby looks at him and says 'boy you better find a reason to start wanting to live again because if you don't you are going to get yourself killed'

fellas... is it gay to stop having a reason to live when your totally platonic best bro who you weren't even on good terms with dies?

anyway. dean keeps cas' trench coat with him. like he literally carries it from car to car to car, keeping it with him no matter what. totally normal. totally straight.

a character named dick roman is introduced. there are a lot of dick jokes made and they are almost exclusively aimed at dean.

honestly all of the gay jokes in the show are aimed at dean.

have i mentioned the siren episode? i don’t remember what season it happens but there is an episode with a siren that takes a male form to seduce dean. but don’t read into that. dean is definitely straight. a real ladies man. anyway.

kevin tran is introduced in s7 and severely underutilized.

charlie bradbury is introduced and is terrible lesbian rep but is amazing little sister rep and dean finally gets a completely uncomplicated platonic friend. their friendship is very cute. it means a lot to me.

bobby dies. it's sad. i guess.

so remember when cas pulled sam out of hell without his soul? well that means sam's soul was hanging out in hell with lucifer for approximately a thousand years in hell time. sam's psyche is not doing too great right about now. in fact, he's hanging out in a mental ward because he's losing it.

dean hears about some sort of faith healer named emmanuel and is like 'well might as well go see if this dude can help fix my brother because if my brother doesn't get better i'm gonna blow my fucking brains out for sure. my best friend is dead. my father figure is dead. sure i've got a super cool lesbian bestie but i am hanging on by a thread here.'

so he shows up to emmanuel's house where ruh roh! there are demons lurking on the porch! he kills the demons only to drop them at the feet of a man... wearing cas' face! GASP. the man looks at dean like 'um sir you just killed some people?' and dean looks at the man with cas' face like 'i love you'

the guy introduces himself as emmanuel and then says 'oh btw this is my wife daphne' and dean makes THIS face which is a totally normal and straight thing to do. emmanuel says that he lost his memory but that daphne found him naked one day and they just got married (because THATS a normal thing to do???) but that he can heal people so he spends his time doing that.

so it's obviously cas (the writers brought him back because the ratings suffered so much after they killed him off that they had no choice lol). and despite having just watched dean kill some people he's like 'yeah sure i'll get in a car with you and go wherever you want me to go' and so they do and cas literally never returns to his wife and daphne is literally never mentioned again

by the end of the episode cas remembers who he is

dean gives cas his trench coat back (because he STILL has it and is still carrying it around with him everywhere)

it's clear things are not exactly okay between dean and cas. but cas is alive. cas is going to fix sam. he does it by taking on sam's hell trauma. it's dumb. but it gives us honey!cas who doesn't want to fight and he just wants to hang out with the bees.

dean is frustrated with this but it's largely because he feels guilty about a lot of stuff and is incapable of confronting his emotions so he just gets kind of angry and mean.

more plot stuff happens with the leviathans

s7 ends with them solving the leviathan problem but accidentally transporting dean and cas to purgatory. dun dun dun.

and so begins the gayest season of television ever created: season eight. it's incredibly homosexual.

like. what were they thinking.

cas and dean are magically transported to purgatory, which is just a desaturated forest where there are zero women or children for some reason. just a bunch of dude-shaped monsters who want to eat them.

dean is like 'fuck. at least we're in this together, right? cas?' but oh no! cas has disappeared!

dean meets a vampire named benny who's like 'hey guess what! you're human which means there's a way out of purgatory for you because purgatory is a place for monsters and because we're trying to make this the gayest possible storyline ever i'm going to help you get out as long as you let me 'ride' you out' and dean is like 'yeah that sounds reasonable and also let's imply that maybe we've been fucking while we're trapped here in purgatory but hey also i won't leave here without cas so we have to find him' and benny is like 'honestly dude who gives a fuck about the angel' and dean is like 'i literally do not care about anything else at all in the world i will stay here forever if i have to i am not leaving here without him he is my everything'

meanwhile sam has settled down with the most boring lady of all time who feeds him boxed mac and cheese with cut-up hot dogs. also her husband is in the military and i think she thought he was killed in action but then he shows back up and this plot sounds way more interesting than it actually is. point is—dean and cas disappear for a year and sam is like 'i’m gonna fuck a soldier's wife and adopt the dog i accidentally ran over and not even look for my brother' which i think is incredibly hilarious of him.

meanwhile, back in purgatory, dean is searching high and low for cas. he's killing monsters left and right, asking where the angel is. finally, he finds cas and he is SO HAPPY TO SEE HIM but cas is not happy back and dean is like [notebook voice] 'i wrote to you, cas, every day. it wasnt over for me. it still isnt over' and cas is like 'yes, dear, i read your letters' and dean is like 'oh you read them? and you just... return to sender-ed them???' and he is PISSED

and benny, who honestly is just here for a laugh, is like 'maybe you and i should just go give each other handies one last time and then blow this popsicle stand, just the two of us' and cas is silently beaming 'i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you' thoughts at the vampire who is trying to steal his boyfriend

but then cas explains that he was specifically trying to stay away from dean to keep dean safe from all the leviathan that are after cas and then dean's face says 'i love you' and benny's face says 'what in the gay hell have i gotten myself into' and then dean's mouth says 'i'm not leaving here without you'

so the three of them trek through purgatory to find the portal that will let dean pass through since he's human. cas and benny do not think it will work for cas because he is an angel. dean does not care. he will not leave cas and that’s final.

they find the portal. somehow benny shloops himself into dean's forearm (the logistics don't matter. all you need to know is it's hella gay.) dean hops through the portal and reaches for cas to pull him through but cas doesn't make it!!! oh no!!!! dean gets sucked through and cas gets left behind :'(

dean does not cope well

on earth, dean finds benny's grave and pours benny's blood or essence or whatever out over his bones. benny rematerializes as a vampire on earth. they hug. it's gay. they say goodbye and wish each other well. it's gay.

plot stuff happens in s8 but who cares.

at some point aaron bass shows up. he’s not important to the plot but he is dean’s gay thing. apparently dean does not say the word “gay” again after dean’s gay thing. legendary character.

back to the dean not coping well.

dean keeps having ~visions~ of cas like he’s in fucking wuthering heights.

turns out it's because cas gets out of purgatory!!! and he's trying to reach out to dean but he doesn't have his full angel juice so he's struggling at first. but finally he makes it to him!! and dean is relieved!!!! but also skeptical because how???? cas doesn't have any answers.

this insane interaction happens when cas cleans up.

over the course of the rest of the season we find out that actually dean misremembered the whole getting out of purgatory thing. cas didn't get left behind. he chose to stay behind and dean rewrote that memory because he couldn't bear the thought of cas not wanting to come with him. fellas....

the angel, naomi, pulled cas out of purgatory because she wanted to use him for plot reasons. she ends up performing a whole bunch of lobotomies on him in order to make him stop caring about dean (doesn't work)

she also has him kill dean replicas hundreds of times so that when it comes time to kill the real dean, he'll be able to do it. (doesn't work)

"we need you. i need you." homosexuality ensues.

oh at some point during s8 sam and dean find "the bunker" which is where they live from here on out. it's like an underground building type thing with a bunch of rooms and shit and a library and whatever. so. they don't live out of motels anymore.

other plot stuff happens. there's more with benny. it's very gay. blah blah blah. he dies/goes back to purgatory. all of the angels fall from heaven to earth. cas becomes human. there’s some very gay implications with that plot but i don’t want to get into it.

we're at s9.

cas is human. he's a very cute human. very vulnerable which means we have to find a way to keep him and dean apart otherwise dean is going to risk it all and fuck his brains out. so for convoluted plot reasons dean tells cas he can't stay in the bunker. he has to leave. he does not want to do this. he is very upset about having to do this. he feels extremely guilty. but it's to save sam's life and sam's life is still dean's number one priority. this show will never let the brothers move past their toxic codependency. so. dean kicks cas out. they are both very sad.

eventually cas finds himself a little job at a gas n' sip and several episodes later dean shows up like an asshole ex-boyfriend and cas is clearly bitter and hurt and it's such a fun episode (arguably one of the more queerbaity) honestly just look at the whole tag. there are a LOT of looks shared and a lot of glances and just a lot of longing going on in general.

ummmmmmm i honestly don't remember a lot of this season because i don't care???? cas gets his grace back, kind of. dean takes on the mark of cain (murder curse) for plot reasons. cas chooses dean over an entire army of angels. plot stuff.... happens...

"to save dean winchester, that was your goal, right? i mean, you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately it was all about saving one human, right?" is a thing that happens

at the end of the season dean "dies"

but the mark of cain won't let him die so he wakes up with black eyes. GASP. he's a demon.

the first few episodes of s10 are just dean being a demon. it's kind of disappointing because they could've had way more fun with it. but. he does canonically have group sex with crowley during their hot girl summer. they are BFFs now. they have been for awhile. dean pretends like he hates crowley but he doesn't. everybody else does. but dean's got a soft spot for him. crowley is straight-up in love with dean.

dean's milkshake brings all the monster boys to the yard.

sam's milkshake brings all the milfs to the yard. that's not really relevant right now though.

anyway dean's a demon for a few episode. they cure him of that though because that's a thing they can do now. whatever.

when he’s no longer a demon this happens.

the rest of the season is spent trying to cure dean of the mark of cain despite him not really wanting to be cured of the mark of cain, mainly because he realizes that whatever the "cure" is will unleash something worse.

at some point this conversation happens which is not relevant to the plot but it is relevant to how married dean and cas are

also at some point dean goes to confession and has this insane monologue where he says, “there’s things, there’s…people, feelings that I-I-I want to experience differently than I have before, or maybe even for the first time.”

instead of casting abel (of cain and abel fame) they give cain a wife named colette and intentionally parallel cain/colette with dean/cas

“then you'd kill the angel, castiel. now that one—that i suspect would hurt something awful.”

charlie dies. dean does not take it well.

top tier episode for me personally the prisoner happens, in which dean goes on a revenge murdering spree for charlie’s death.

it culminates in a fight between him and cas in which cas is trying to reason with dean and he says “sam, and everyone you know, everyone you love, they could be long dead. everyone except me. i’m the one that’ll have to watch you murder the world.”

they get into a physical altercation in which dean almost succumbs to the effects of the murder impulses of the mark of cain but is able to control it enough not to kill cas

truly an Episode!

anyway. they eventually get the mark off of dean but in doing so unleash The Darkness which is... god’s sister. yeah. it’s as dumb as it sounds. and it brings us to s11.

the darkness, whose name is amara, imprints on dean like a baby duckling.

this is the first real love interest they give dean since lisa in s6. she is also the last love interest they give him.

amara and dean have some sort of psychic connection something or other. idk. he is deeply uncomfortable with it. he doesn’t want it. he is ashamed of it (though tbh that particular line/scene is vague and can easily be interpreted as a sexuality thing and imo works far better that way because he doesn’t actually love amara but that’s neither here nor there). they have ZERO chemistry. that part is kind of funny. but essentially what is happening is that despite not actually wanting her or anything to do with her, he is sort of compelled to want her?? and can’t bring himself to hurt her. it’s kind of rape-y.

they spend the season trying to take her on so she doesn’t destroy the world.

this happens

cas lets lucifer use him as a vessel.

dean spends a lot of time worrying about cas. nobody else seems to be quite as concerned.

typically anything with lucifer in the later seasons is tedious and a snoozefest but casifer is quite delightful because he spends a lot of time hate crime-ing dean and cas specifically lmao.

idk more plot stuff happens

lucifer gets expelled from cas so cas is just cas

they defeat amara with the power of love by which i mean that amara is like ‘yes dean you are right humanity IS good maybe me and my brother god (who is actually just some guy named chuck) can work things out and i don’t have to destroy the world also what if i bring your mother back to life, only the situation is super weird because you were four when she died and now you’re a grown ass man who is older than her and she has no idea who you are’

so that’s how s11 ends

also i didn’t mention this before but they learned in s4 that mary was actually a hunter from a family of hunters and the reason that one demon fed sam his blood in the first place was because mary made a deal with him to save john’s life so like. everything is a LITTLE bit her fault (it’s not. mary’s a milf and she can do no wrong. but like. she jump started every thing. but she didn’t really because heaven interfered to make it happen. it’s complicated. mary is complicated. she’s an actual person. not just the vague shape of a dead mother they spent their lives avenging.) (also she very specifically did not want her children to be raised as hunters.) (john didn’t know she was a hunter.)

anyway. things are very awkward.

she looks at dean and cas for 2 seconds and immediately clocks them as homos which is funny

anyway things are very weird for much of the season because mary is a person and dean very specifically cannot reconcile that with the memory he has of her and sam has no memories of her so she’s not really anyone to him and mary can’t reconcile the fact that her babies are suddenly these two grown men who are hunters and she is having a hard time

she kind of doesn’t stick around or act stereotypically motherly and dean does not handle it well AT ALL.

in fact by the end of the season they have a confrontation where he tells her he hates her (and that he loves her). it’s a lot.

anyway this isn’t particularly relevant to the deancas of it all except for the fact that cas is dean’s bestie and so they sometimes talk about it

okay so back to what’s happening during the season.

lucifer is still running around. at some point he ends up in rick springfield’s body because why not. cas and crowley are trying to track him down and this is only relevant because they are both pathetically in love with dean and the entire time crowley is like ‘yeah dean might love you back but at least i’ve had sex with him’ and cas is like ‘i’m gonna smite you’ and dean is like ‘there’s no time for this i’m having mommy issues!’

at one point lucifer ends up possessing the president of the united states who is sleeping with his pro-life girlfriend kelly kline who is a member of his staff. this results in kelly getting knocked up with a half-human, half-angel baby (a nephilim). apparently all angels can sense when a nephilim is created and for some reason the scene of cas sensing this is shot as if 1.) cas is the one who got knocked up himself and 2.) as if maybe dean is the father. it’s a good time for me personally.

so nephilim are like super powered and abominations and shouldn’t exist and this nephilim in particular is lucifer’s (yikes!) so they try to track down kelly to convince her to get an abortion and in the process dean and sam get arrested by the sercret service and it results in four back-to-back top tier episodes

first blood where dean and sam are in solitary confinement and nobody can figure out where they’re being held. they’re gone for months(?). eventually they make a deal with billie the reaper to help get them out. the deal is that they have until the end of the day to decide which winchester she will permanently reap, no take-backsies this time. this episode is good mostly because it’s fun to watch but also because this happens when dean is on his way to what he thinks is his death.

anyway instead of letting dean or sam (or mary) offer themselves up to billie, cas just kills billie. (this upsets dean. they spend the rest of the season fighting like an old married couple)

up next is lily sunder has some regrets. truly an episode. the premise is that somebody is going around killing a certain group of angels. turns out it’s some lady named lily sunder who is getting revenge on a garrison of angels (cas’ former garrison. he was a hot girl at the time) that thought they killed an angel who fell in love with a human and created a nephilim. turns out they actually just helped this crazy angel kill the very human children of his unrequited human love. (cas is obviously deeply ashamed).

i cannot stress enough how married dean and cas are in this episode.

they are still bickering over the whole billie thing.

but they love each other and dean will not let anything happen to cas

there’s just so much love despite the bickering

the crazy angel refers to dean as cas’ human weakness

this hand flex thing happens??

you get the point. lily sunder has some regrets is a great episode.

next up is regarding dean. cas is not in this episode but it’s a very cute episode where dean is hit with a spell that makes him start to lose his memory. it’s just fun.

and then comes stuck in the middle (with you). a lot of plot stuff happens in this episode but what’s important is that dean calls cas devastatingly handsome and that, while dying, cas says “i love you” (shot cuts to dean and only dean) and then says “i love all of you.”

cas doesn’t die.

the arc of back-to-back banger episodes ends.

dean and cas continue to fight but in the way that only people who are very close and care about each other can.

at some point dean makes cas a mixtape which is even more deeply romantic than it sounds but if i talk about it i will lose my mind.

cas goes out looking for kelly kline because there is still the issue of lucifer’s unborn nephilim that needs to be aborted. eventually he finds her and like... psychically bonds with the fetus who assigns cas as his dad. dean is very concerned about this and spends a lot of time worrying about and trying to track cas down. when he finally does catch up to cas he pins him against a wall because he is worried but he is also horny and they haven’t performed any of their intricate rituals for awhile. cas lets it happen despite the fact that he could literally smite dean if he wanted to. he doesn’t want to. he is also horny. but he’s going to be a dad. so. he steals dean’s car because his truck is broken down and takes off. dean is.. not even mad about this. he just fixes cas’ truck for him like a good husband.

plot stuff happens. cas takes off with kelly for good. dean is sad and still very worried about the situation.

cas spends this time reading parenting books and buying diapers and painting a nursery because he’s gonna be a dad!! and kelly is gonna die in childbirth because she is merely human and can’t possibly survive the birth of a nephilim. but she is at peace with this because she is a weirdo republican pro life nut job and trusts the angel castiel who tried to force her to have an abortion to raise the son she shares with lucifer to be a good man. (to be clear: kelly is not actually framed as crazy but if you think about it for more than a second she is whackadoodle)

i guess i should mention that during all this time lucifer is also trying to track kelly down (for obvious reasons) and so are all the other angels (because nephilim are not supposed to be allowed to exist. they’re too powerful and this one is lucifer’s).

kelly goes into labor and it like... creates a tear in the fabric of the universe that leads to a parallel dimension where mary never made the demon deal that saves john winchester’s life and therefore sam and dean were never born and never stopped the apocalypse from happening. that world is decimated from the apocalypse and from here on out will be referred to as apocalypse!world.

dean, sam, and mary catch up to cas and kelly where mary immediately goes to help kelly through childbirth and cas and dean immediately perform husband rituals. sam, as always, is caught halfway between thinking this is normal friend behavior and wanting to die from the tension.

plot plot plot lucifer shows up fight fight fight

crowley shows up and sacrifices himself to save the boys (dean) from lucifer

cas tries to take on lucifer in apocalypse!world and sam has to physically drag dean away while dean screams cas’ name

cas makes it back to their world but so does lucifer and he kills cas

right before taking mary with him into apocalypse!world right before the tear/portal closes

but dean can’t think about that because... cas is dead... and they linger on that reaction for SO LONG while sam is like ‘damn that sucks’ and then runs into the house to deal with the whole kelly giving birth to the son of lucifer thing. dean falls to his knees.

cannot emphasize enough just how much dean’s reaction is the focus of this situation and how devastated he is. according to the script he is shattered.

the nephilim is born. his name is jack. he is in the body of a fully grown alexander calvert because reasons. kelly dies.

let s13 and the widower arc commence!

so uh. dean ain’t too fond of jack. he thinks jack is the reason cas is dead and, like every other time cas has died, he is not coping. except this time he is extra not coping. sam even offers to take him to a strip club in the most hilariously misplaced attempt at comfort ever.

the dean and jack stuff is complicated and it continues to be complicated for the rest of the show but it’s handled poorly in my opinion so i’m not going to focus on it.

so let’s just talk about how dean, for the first time ever (i think?), prays to god and it’s to ask him to bring cas back

it doesn’t work. god is a dick and doesn’t even respond (despite the fact that dean like... fixed his relationship with his sister for him, you might remember).

dean prepares cas’ body for his funeral pyre by himself, despite the fact that both sam and jack are also there.

this is what dean’s face looks like while he’s watching cas’ body burn. like i said:

he’s not handling it well. he continues to not handle it well for the next however many episodes. there’s a lot of drinking involved.

sam and dean and jack go to family therapy for a case. it is 10% hilarious 90% depressing.

i feel like it’s also important to note that during this time sam is coping fine with cas’ death (he always does) but is having a hard time with mary’s “death.” dean does not really seem to be???? this is weird because dean was undoubtedly closer to her and undoubtedly worse at coping with the loss of family members in general. (it also becomes even weirder later in hind sight but that doesn’t matter right now.)

ughhh dean actually kills himself (for a case but come on, dude). and billie the reaper (who is now Death) looks at him and says, “you want to die” because... say it with me... he is not coping well.

billie’s like ‘ya know as much as i would love to never have to look at your face again it’s not your time’ and sends his ass back to the land of the living and dean is just. so tired. and him and sam are driving home at night and he’s shrouded in darkness and he gets a phone call and suddenly his face is lit up (like. literally. good job lighting department)

and it’s because? CAS IS BACK!

sam and dean drive to where cas called dean from a pay phone.

dean says “welcome home” to cas while they’re standing in the middle of nowhere and takes him into his arms. there’s a cross lit up in the background. suddenly dean doesn’t look like he wants to die anymore.

dean is the happiest little idiot in the next episode. he dresses cas up as a cowboy. they are very married. it is insane how much his entire outlook on life has turned around.

that’s the end of the widower arc but damn what a good arc.

other stuff happens for the rest of the season but honestly who cares?

they are casually intimate like when cas just digs into the backpack dean’s carrying

mary and other people come back from apocalypse!world

i honestly cannot remember so much of the plot that happens between the back half of s13 and s14

jack dies at some point and cas makes his infamous deal with The Empty to save him (the deal is that The Empty will come for cas but not until he experiences one true moment of happiness)

uhhhhh. there are a lot of cute hashtag family moments?

dean tells his father he has a family (don’t worry about how that happens. it’s stupid and infuriating and it doesn’t matter. the important part is that dean says he has a family)

dean is still happy to just be around cas

the archangel michael is released from apocalypse!world and takes dean as his vessel and traps dean in a dream world in his mind so sam and cas go into dean’s mind to try and find him and do you know what dean’s little dream world is in his mind? he owns a bar where he flirts with a psychic woman he isn’t actually attracted to who calls him on his bullshit because she KNOWS he doesn’t want her, and he hangs out there waiting for his boys to come home. seriously.

sam and cas get through and dean traps michael in a closet (lmao) in his mind so that michael can’t control him. he struggles with that for awhile.

dean and cas have a heart to heart over the situation

that plot gets resolved

jack loses his soul at some point

that doesn’t go too well

he accidentally kills mary

dean blames cas for this which is... a choice... but it does lead to the divorce arc which, while existing for dumb reasons, is great for me personally

in addition to existing because of the jack killing mary thing, it also exists because god/chuck has been pulling the strings on things all along and dean is convinced that nothing any of them have ever done/felt/been was real

dean almost kills jack but he doesn’t

but then chuck just kills him anyway

then chuck tears hell open and unleashes thousands upon thousands of demons and ghosts and fucked up souls and they have to deal with that

one of the souls is a demon named belphegor who decides to inhabit jack’s body and then hit on dean. it should not be as funny as it is.

dean and cas have a hard time.

cas tells dean that they are real. dean still struggles. he’s still pissed.

they break-up and it is actually framed as a break-up. the dialogue and the angles and the lighting and just everything about it. cas leaves.

dean doesn’t cope too well. shocking!

cas isn’t having a great time either.

there is an awkward phone call

then the greatest episode of all time happens. last call, my beloved.

in this episode dean wakes up and immediately starts drinking. he’s already surrounded by empty bottles everywhere. he decides to go on a hunt by himself because he can’t really handle being around sam and his girlfriend while they’re all happy and in love.

dean shows up at a bar where a waitress starts flirting with him and he doesn’t flirt back??? (and she’s hot, y’all. and he always flirts.)

THEN it turns out the dude who owns the bar is an old hunting buddy of his named lee. (it’s eliot from leverage). it is implied that they’ve fucked. they sing a song together with the bisexual pride flag colors as the backdrop and lee slaps dean’s ass.

dean spends the entire episode talking about how best friends don’t just leave/give-up and how you stay and fight for/fix shit and how somebody has to care about the world and i mean it is really just dean not so subtly saying cas is the only motherfucker in this world for him and it MAKES ME EMOTIONAL

meanwhile cas shows back up at the bunker and him and sam fuck around and find out and sam almost dies and cas keeps trying to call dean but it keeps going to voicemail because dean is busy reminiscing with slash having to kill his old bestie (obvi sam is fine) (eileen is also there and i adore eileen and she is very important to me personally but she is not really important to the deancas saga so that’s why i’m not really mentioning her [or a lot of other characters tbh—what up claire jody donna garth etc]).

finally dean makes it home to the bunker and comes face to face with cas for the first time since their break-up. they stand on opposite sides of a table that has a map of the world printed on it. it’s tense and there is longing. it’s also awkward.

man i really love that episode.

anyway.

dean and cas are still fighting but also they still love each other so cas still heals dean

the queen of hell gives them couples counseling

something something “since when do we get what we deserve” with longing looks

then dean and cas go back to purgatory!!!!! the gayest place of all!!! but on purpose this time! they only have a certain amount of time they can be there before they’re trapped there permanently and all they’re trying to do is find a flower.

in true deancas fashion, they make everyone around them uncomfortable, this time by airing our their dirty laundry in front of the leviathan that’s leading them to the rare flower they’re looking for. they finally get to the crux of the argument they’ve been having since s6. “i left but you didn’t stop me.”

so turns out the leviathan was leading them to a trap. dean gets knocked out and when he wakes up cas is gone. he searches everywhere for him but time’s-a-ticking and finally dean starts to realize this might be it. he’s not gonna find cas in time. he’s gonna lose him again.

so what does homie do? he drops to his old ass arthritic knees in the middle of monster land and starts praying to cas and he cries and i swear dean is in love with cas. “i should’ve stopped you. you’re my best friend and i just let you go”

so dean prays and he hopes cas can hear him because what else can he do? he’s gotta get back.

but wait! cas is waiting for him (a little worse for the wear) at the opening back to earth and boy oh boy is dean relieved to see him.

dean tells cas that he needs to tell him something and cas says, “you don’t have to say it. i heard your prayer.” dean's face does something peculiar. whatever dean was going to say.. it was not what he said in that prayer. too bad we never get to find out what he really wanted to say.

anyway dean and cas are back together, even though everything else in the world still sucks.

while they were renewing their wedding vows in purgatory sam was having visions of what happens in the future if they kill god/chuck (i think?). dean loses cas and doesn’t take it very well.

more plot stuff happens

i hate it all

jack comes back at some point

dean dances with a lamp (there are implications) and holds a baby named cas

the most famous human man of all time adam (of adam and eve fame) is alive and living in bliss with his angel lover so that’s a thing they decided to let everyone know in the last few episodes of this show’s run for no reason at all. where’s eve? who knows. but adam is happy with his angel.

more plot stuff happens

honestly who cares let’s just get to the confession

bille the reaper who as you will recall is now Death is dying and is pissed at dean and wants to kill him so she’s chasing him and cas through the bunker. they lock themselves in the dungeon but she’s pounding on the door and they have no way to hold her off. they’re going to die.

except cas has that little deal he made with The Empty in his back pocket and decides now would be the time to invoke it and in order to invoke it—in order to experience a true moment of happiness—he’s going to tell dean he loves him.

i’m going to be honest—i don’t really have a lot of feelings about the confession itself. i think it’s clunky and the words themselves are sort of off but i DO have a lot of feelings about the best moment of cas’ life being the absolute worst moment of dean’s.

cas leaves him AGAIN. cas saves dean’s life and then dean has to watch, helplessly, as cas dies AGAIN except this time it’s after learning that cas is in love with him and dean never got to process it or say anything back.

this moment is paralleled with several other character’s losing their love interests during the episode btw.

after The Empty comes and takes cas (and billie) dean sits on the floor with his back against the wall and sobs. he ignores calls from sam, despite the fact that they are literally in the middle of fighting chuck/god for the fate of the world.

dean doesn’t tell anybody about what happened. all he says is “he saved me. cas is gone.”

he doesn’t cope well. you know the drill.

at one point dean is sitting around failing to cope and his phone starts ringing with a call from cas and he answers it and it’s cas’ voice asking to let him in the bunker and dean runs right up the stairs, no questions asked, doesn’t even hesitate, and opens the door. turns out it was just lucifer playing a mean trick though. that’s literally the last time we hear cas’ voice on the show.

umm. plot stuff. they defeat lucifer and chuck/god and save the world.

jack becomes the new god. it’s dumb.

dean pretends to be all well-adjusted and then dies on a regular vampire hunt that i don’t think is supposed to come across as him just giving up but very much does. it’s a fucked up narrative, man.

he goes to heaven and he runs into bobby and bobby is like ‘hey i know you were expecting heaven to just be a bunch of memories because that’s what it used to be but jack is making some changes. with some help from cas.’ dean smiles at that. it’s... not nothing but it is definitely not enough after the past eleven years. then bobby tells dean that his mother and his father live just up the road and dean is like ‘cool i’m gonna drive in the opposite direction for forty years while my brother lives out a weird heterosexual fantasy in an offensive party city wig’ and then they reunite in heaven and that’s how the show ends.

luckily fanfiction exists

for the record, because i don’t think it’s clear from anything i’ve said: technically sam is the main character of this show lol

soooo. this honestly leaves out a LOT but hopefully it’ll give you an idea of what parts of the show you’ll be interested in (or maybe it’s enough info that you don’t even need to watch the show now!). also i know some people have made episode viewing guides that tell you which episodes you should watch and which ones you can skip but i don’t remember who made them or how to find them unfortunately : /

#spn #did i spend all of my downtime at work today making this? yes #but i actually had fun so i don't regret it #fascinatingly this is a horrible explanation of what characters i actually enjoy and care about the most #anonymous #replies #mp

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