#i've actually taken to archiving some of my tumblr posts and other ppl's tumblr posts that i link out to lest we lose that to blog deletion

[mybrainproblems]

i just absolutely adore a good sunday fandom spelunk

[mybrainproblems]

aaaand... adding even more to this post since some of it is a follow-up on the above, I want to keep it on the same post.

so after making the above post, @happilyfeatherafter reminded me that some of the times i remembered misha talking about returning to set were from a livestream and community texts, not from twitter.

in the livestream with michael sheen from 30 july 2020, he talks about taking cas' coat from set bc he wasn't sure if they'd be going back (gif set here) [disclaimer that i've only skipped around through that livestream and not watched it start to finish in its entirety.]

also, the 15x20 script was way sketchier than i remembered and @lets-steal-an-archive made a post about it back when it was being auctioned about why they wouldn't be bidding on it that goes into more detail. and yeah. with the additional context (and some x files script pics they sent for comparison), that script is super sketchy. i'm not about to waste the printer ink to sit down with a copy and do a read-along with an 11th watch of the finale, but it doesn't inspire confidence no matter how close it is to the final product.

also, the seller had the benefit of listing it post-finale airing but two months prior to the s15 DVD releasing with deleted scenes so... idk. this is super outside my wheelhouse so i won't spec further. the script is just really sketchily sourced and iirc the bidder got a refund since the seller then offered PDF scan versions for very cheap to others who asked... none of which inspires confidence.

further shenanigans from the past few days' life ruining research! not calling any of this a smoking gun, but based on the tumblr source time stamps; it looks like misha sent out the below pics as community texts post-finale but the pics themselves were taken during 15x18 filming - if anyone has the actual time stamps i'd love to know! even after half a day of searching, i couldn't find versions with a time stamp on them. in both cases, they seem to indicate that he knew this was his last day or last episode filming for the show. (he's also mentioned that they threw him a good bye party after 15x18 and idk why you'd do that if you intended for the actor to come back.)

(left pic source) (middle & right pic source)

whenever misha has talked about being in the finale, it's been in reference to an "original" pre-COVID version of the script where he would be jimmy novak and not cas. but given that 15x18 wrapped before shutdown, my guess is that it had already been settled that he wouldn't be in the finale. so yes this would have been a "pre-COVID" script, but probably not the prod draft script from march 2020.

(and having spoken with ppl who were already in the fandom when s15 started airing/looking at posts from fall 2020/pre-15x18... a good chunk of ppl didn't expect misha to be in the last two eps when it started airing again)

i would also like to note that when talking about "pre-COVID" scripts from s15... that could be anywhere from may/june 2019 to march 2020 when set shut down, which @swordofsun and I went back and forth on a bit discussing here wrt revisions of 15x20.

and i'm loathe to bring it up without a source, but i know there was something floating around about misha(?) saying in a m&g at the las vegas con in march 2020 that the finale script was still going through a lot of revisions. so at that point, a kinda short window before they returned to set to finish 15x19 and 15x20. iirc there was a tweet about it that has since been deleted but i tend to take m&g stuff with a grain of salt.

point being - the 15x20 script is way sketchier than i remembered and there's more actual evidence that misha wasn't intended to be in the finale from before set shut down (and the "misha filmed but was cut" conspiracy continues to be my personal bugbear)

hello, i'm finales georg...

i don't want to further clutter up the notes on this post while responding to the tags below but the persistence of the "finale is short/scenes are missing/extra ad break” conspiracies drives me absolutely bananas when i've watched the finale ten times and have posted about this A LOT trying to clear things up. (disclaimer that yes, i'm a goddamn destiel shipper but i care about Facts above all.)

ok but this is weird because i'd swear the episode was shorter (11 missing scenes!) but okay. maybe we all mandela effected ourselves into #beleving that. because it felt shorter. but i will die on the hill that it had another ad break. i understand this person has the thing #recorded with ads so i am thinking maybe different ad breaks in different idk time zones??? #because the finale did air an hour earlier in canada so maybe idk i am reaching here but maybe different states or whatever had different #ad breaks??? as for the last minute changes - wasn't the cover band asked for permission to use their version of carry on like a week before #the thing aired??? so even if the episode was 42 minutes and had no additional ad break - which i am side eying but lets say all was normal #i will always say they were changing thing until the absolute last minute (carry on my wayward son X 2 #the crew on the bridge which is not only giant 4th wall breaking but also wow they really got all those people in one place in times of #covid???) #anyway. tinfoil hat stays on sorry guys :/ (via @officialmisha)

short and snarky: there are plenty of real and sourced examples of network homophobia and scripted/directed destiel scenes being cut to point to. we don’t need to make this stuff up just bc the finale wasn’t what we wanted. so it’s not the mandela effect — it’s ppl repeating a conspiracy/rumor bc it supports their narrative and it’s easier and more fun to repeat something that supports a narrative they already believe (misha or something destiel was cut) vs the boring act of fact checking.

longer circumspect answer with links bc like many ppl i am in my debunking era and i rewatched "roblox_oof" last night.

like i said. i've watched the finale ten times. i’ve gone over the episode with a fine toothed comb and posted a detailed breakdown of timing marks on my blog. it’s actually extremely obvious where the ad breaks are once you know roughly where to look for them (they have a longer fade to black instead of a quick cut scene change). there’s no room for extra ad breaks and i think this conspiracy/rumor persists in part bc the episode feels so sparse in terms of cast and the fact that the episode’s momentum hits a barn post (and rebar) less than 20min into an hour-long programming block.

also i’m begging ppl to actually look at that timing mark post. it’s very straightforward and i spent a lot of time on it. i don’t care if ppl plagiarize it at this point if it means this conspiracy stops. i've got almost every second accounted for.

the "eleven missing scenes" that you're thinking of are probably from the finale script of questionable authenticity that @spnscripthunt acquired back in 2021 which can be found here. it's dated as the “final draft” from 11 sep 2020 and filming on 15x20 wrapped on 10 sep 2020. as noted at the bottom of this superwiki page "[the] script came from someone claiming to have been the person who did the closed captions for the show in Russia. There are some indications that it possibly may not be authentic, but this has not been confirmed."

if we go with the possibility that this was a transcript meant for subtitles, the "omitted" scenes were probably written but never filmed since it's the "final draft" and not a color revision (blue, green, yellow, etc). unfortunately, i’ve lost track of where i read it and a preliminary duckduckgo search isn’t bringing it up bc there's a program for script writing called final draft, but iirc the “final draft” version of a script is a transcript of what was filmed (e.g. there are parts of that 15x20 script that ended up being deleted scenes on the DVD). spnscripthunt also has an example of a confirmed final draft for 09x02 (funnily enough, also a dabb-penned ep). if anyone can confirm with a source that i have the purpose of the “final draft” version designation wrong, please let me know! i love being proven wrong with Facts.

i do want to acknowledge that the two “final drafts” do look different from each other and the 15x20 one doesn't look like a “real” final draft script since it lacks the revision/versioning dates that a script would normally have on the cover page. it could be that it was intended for subtitles; there's the chance it's been re-typed to anonymize it if there was anything indicating who the "owner" was, tho that seems a wee bit cloak and dagger to me. and again: it's considered of questionable authenticity. there are some things that don't quite line up but oh dear god i don't want to get even further out into the weeds than i already am.

i won't disagree that it's weird as hell that neoni only got asked about using their cover seven days prior to the episode airing (tiktok here). my personal theory is that they were hoping to get a more expensive song (maybe a zepp song, idk) and didn't manage to secure the rights in the end. again: this is pure conjecture on my part! but i could absolutely see someone working on the show hearing neoni’s cover and liking it and then maybe they were using it as a placeholder until it got down to the wire and they had to make a call/send the ep to networks. because yes, it is baffling they played a song and then a cover of it with only a 40 second break between. (i do actually really like the neoni cover! the placement is just weird and i think it could have worked if they had the kansas version at the beginning and closed with neoni's full cover.)

as to the 4th wall break COVID stuff: robert singer talked with variety magazine about filming the last two episodes and the logistics of filming during a pandemic. whether they should have been filming during a pandemic is a separate discussion but their use of office vs set pods, strict quarantining and daily testing meant that they had zero positive tests in the month they were filming (18 aug to 10 sep). so given all that, i personally don’t think it’s totally out of pocket to have everyone standing outdoors on a bridge for maybe an hour to get a drone shot of them together. (i won’t get into incubation periods and viral load, but if everyone tested negative that day and every day for a month prior, it was a fairly low risk scene to film outdoors and for all we know everyone was masked until the last possible second. there were plenty of outdoor masked protests in 2020 that weren't superspreader events.)

and before anyone brings up “but misha was in vancouver!” i know someone who looked into it and they said no dice, nothing matched up between the backgrounds in those pics and places in vancouver. his statements about “us” going back to set over the summer were pretty generic in hindsight and “we”/"us" could be him or the spn crew generally. unfortunately i’m not able to find those tweets but the use of “we” was likely so as not to give away he wouldn’t be returning to set. (bc we were absolutely casbaited!) and bc it comes up a lot: the "onion field pic" was from when they were filming 15x17 and was not taken while filming 15x19 and 15x20.

besides, it would be ridiculous to go through the financial and logistical headaches of bringing someone into the country to film during a pandemic, only to cut their scenes in the end! honestly, the script is pretty tight when the scenes are given so much breathing room! the only thing i could see being further cut down is The Monologue and even then, i don’t think there was any intent to cut it down given it was filmed in fairly long takes.

i’ve said it many times before, but i believe the finale was fucked long before they returned to set. walker got the green light in sep 2019 and it was being marketed heavily as a “follow on” show to spn given jared’s involvement. the demo they were courting for walker has little to no overlap with the demo for destiel fans — why would they want a finale that catered to a demo they weren't interested in courting? we just went through a historic double strike that exposed so much of the rot of business interests overriding creative vision. this isn't completely unfounded conjecture.

i will not apologize for the length of this bc i wanted to be thorough, but i do want to give context that i think the reason these conspiracies and rumors grind my gears so much is because anyone can fact check all of this. the truth is out there and absolutely none of it is that hard to find. the most time consuming/difficult part of this was finding someone who had a DVR’d copy of the finale from when it aired live and they actually found me themselves after i’d been low key asking around for a year!

and like. i get it. conspiracies are fun. but there are so many sourced instances of network homophobia and destiel being cut that it's like. why is this something folks are hanging onto? the cw is notorious for having upper level meddling with finales bc there's a follow-on show they want to shuffle fans along to and spn is no exception.