#michael intentionally to distance himself from his family history after will disappeared

[metamatronic]

i love the idea of william actually being pretty decent at an american accent, but that, on occasion, he pronounces a word the british way with just. an american accent on top of it. i.e. matching the accent but still saying the syllables “mo-bye-uhl” instead of “mo-bull” for mobile.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

What is John and why his return?

As for how John comes back, let’s just say things get weird — don’t they always? — and there’s an altered reality at play. “Our guys are put in a position where they essentially can have a wish granted,” Dabb says. “They’re actually expecting something else, but [John’s return] comes from a place of want by Dean. The need for closure is really what brings John back into their lives.”

While we don’t know the details of the events that lead to John’s return, we can imagine that there’s something in play that is, at least theoretically, on the lines of the premise of the Djinn’s incident in 2x20: back then, Dean had wished for Mary to be alive and their lives to be free of the monsters and supernatural forces that plagued them; now, he apparently wishes - maybe not even fully realizing he’s doing so - for John to be alive, possibly to have some kind of “cathartic�� confrontation with him. (13x04 is central in this.)

Of course, as 2x20 dramatically showed us and Dean, wishes are double-edged swords, and you just can’t bend reality like that (a normal Djinn just factually can’t, time travel can’t, Michael-powered Djinns might create “real” projections but the scope of that effect is still limited to “fake” copies made of ash...) and even if you could, you can’t really get what you want without paying some sort of price. In the Djinn-induced hallucination, Dean had the things he had wished for... but other things just fell apart, like his relationship with Sam, his own role in the world, and so on. This time (whatever the cause of the reality bend is) Dean will figure out that having John back means a ripple effect that includes that Cas is taken away from him, or better he was never with him in the first place.

(It’s early to be sure of what the spoilers really mean, but from what we know, there seems to be a considerable chance that the narrative will present Dean with a choice: keep John and lose Cas, or let John go and keep Cas. Basically, John or Cas. Past or future. What John represents and what Cas represents. Are you excited? Because I am...)

But let’s go back to John. Why does it matter that he returns? What could a confrontation with John mean?

I’m seeing people talking about whether Dean and Sam should be “forgiving” John, but personally I don’t think that’s exactly the point on the question. I don’t expect the narrative to be about them “forgiving” John or not, rather I expect more of a “you’re dead, you’re gone, we’re our own people now” kind of situation. Basically, John alive is a tool to bury John once and for all - a cognitive step in fully acknowledging John as dead.

Several meta writers have been referring to the theme of John’s “presence” in their lives as “the ghost of John Winchester”, and the show also has made literal ghosts as mirrors for John and his effect of his sons. I think that’s a very valid interpretative lens: John Winchester is dead but his ghost - the lasting effects of his treatment of his sons and the traumatic repercussions in their psyches - lingers on, and needs to be put to rest if Dean and Sam want to reach a place where they’re at peace with their past.

Mind: I am not talking about fixing trauma and magically making it disappear. That’s something meta writers who have dealt with this kind of topic have been accused of -- that we supposedly want Dean’s and Sam’s trauma to be magically erased through some kind of resolution process that frees them of what is essentially a component of their personality and personal history. I know that’s not how trauma works -- I am talking about arriving to a place of understanding, acceptance and healing. Healing as in a realistic process of coming to terms with your trauma and dealing with it in a way that works for you as a person, not as in wave-magic-wand-and-poof. I don’t want a part of what makes Dean or Sam what they are to be thrown out of the window, either.

This said, let’s go back to the ghost of John Winchester. I think that the point of his return isn’t strictly to let Dean or Sam have a “confrontation” with him (of course that’s going to happen otherwise there would be no point to the whole thing, but the confrontation isn’t the goal itself) but to put the ghost out. To accept that John is dead in a profound, symbolical way: in the sense that what John represents is a closed chapter of their lives, or better, that they can consider it a closed chapter of their lives, that is there - like a past chapter is still in the book - but that doesn’t have to affect how the next chapter is going to be written. That they’re writing the story.

(Eventually, we always go back to the same thematic point: Dean and Sam as authors of their own story, not John, not God. Dabb hasn’t been able to kill God in the story -- although I suspect that he might try to get that by the time the show ends -- but he can bring back and re-kill what at the end of the day God is just a mirror for, i.e. John. Chuck is no longer writing, but the fans are; Dad’s journal is just a thing that might come in handy occasionally, but largely dated.)

Dean and Sam are now adults who are writing their own story -- they’re making their own choices, shaping their own path, and ultimately John... doesn’t matter. Even Mary is building a whole new John-less life -- and Mary is a blatant mirror for Dean in this sense. Dean, symbolically the wife of John after Mary’s death (please note the symbolical part, just in case), needs to let go of the widow role and build his life again in a healthy matter that can bring him happiness. Mary and Bobby have been almost comically presented as Dean and Cas parallels, and I’m not saying anything new here.

So, basically, I think that, through meeting John as a living person (in a situation that feels ‘wrong’ because of reasons), they’re going to genuinely accept that John isn’t a living person, if it makes sense. Of course they have processed his death in these twelve years, but the person John simply represents John’s upbringing, which means the trauma it caused them.

The patients of the grief counselor faced their grief by meeting “alternate reality versions” of their lost ones (in that case it was a shapeshifter taking their appearance but it’s not really relevant how that happened, just their emotional reaction to it) and that was a step towards accepting that their lost ones were gone, and they could reach an emotional place where they were at peace with the loss.

As I mentioned before, Dean and Sam have to accept that John is dead in the sense that they have to reach an emotional place where they’re at peace with what they are, where they come from and where they’re headed.

So, if John represents the trauma of their upbringing, and the “ghost” of John is the ways the trauma still shapes who they are and how they approach themselves, each other, others, relationships, the world in general -- confronting it, seeing it in a new light (the light of now, the persons they are now, the experiences they’ve had), will help them realize the distance that can be, that they can put, between John -- between their “John selves” so to speak -- and their current selves.

John’s return happens now because now they can see him in a particular light that they didn’t really have before. They are parents now. They have embraced the role of fathers to a child. They know what it means to be a father now. They have recently stated out loud that Jack is their kid and they’re parents to him. They are emotionally ready and invested to this role, and Dean especially has completed the journey from rejection of this new parental role to full acceptance. (Of course, Dean was the one that had reasons for which rejecting to be thrust upon a child to raise was an actual healthy choice, and a healthy foundation to build a positive parent-child relationship.)

Now Dean and Sam can look at John and say, there was another way all along. Dean and Sam are also traumatized, they have also lost so much; but they haven’t used it as an excuse to abuse Jack (again, Dean’s initial negative treatment of Jack was intentionally not in the context of a parental relationship). If John acted as a drill sergeant to toughen his sons up -- Jack literally fought a war in an apocalypse landscape without a parent acting as his drill sergeant. If John isolated them because he had realized that there was something supernaturally suspicious about Sam -- Jack is literally the devil’s spawn.

Dean’s case is interesting because he, so to speak, experimented different approaches towards Jack, including a performative* John-like behavior (*see this post for my interpretation of the scenes in 13x04), and of course he also has a previous chosen parental experience with Ben, so we could say that he has a rich history of putting himself in certain roles/dynamics and reflecting over them. We could even add how Dean himself drew comparisons between Cas’ complicated experiences with Claire a few years ago and his own experiences with John.

Basically, Dean has done a lot of reflecting about parenting -- John’s parenting and his own dabbles in it. And now he’s arrived at a point where he’s fully embraced the role of father to a child that, with all due differences, isn’t really less complicated to deal with than Sam was.

You could argue that Dean isn’t raising Jack alone. It’s Dean, Sam, Cas, and then there’s Bobby, Mary, other hunters, other people who are part of their extended family. John, on the other hand, raised Dean and Sam alone, so it was inevitably more difficult. But it didn’t have to be. Remember the first seasons where Dean and Sam comment on how they keep crossing path with people who used to be close to John, but then John managed to piss off and ruin his relationship with all of them? John did have people, but he isolated himself and his sons from them. Dean and Sam, on the other hand, have built a wonderful net of genuine, positive connections (especially “adopts everyone he meets as some kind of family member” Dean). One can also argue that John didn’t even really raise Sam, not in the concrete daily dynamics of a family life, because he relegated Dean to that -- which also means he didn’t raise Dean, not in the real parental meaning of the concept. Drill sergeant instead of parent, at John’s own admission, after all...

So, like I mentioned, now Dean can look at John and say, I know now. I know it didn’t have to be like that. I know that those excuses -- excuses I gave myself for you, excuses I believed for so long -- were just excuses. I understand and empathize with you, but I see now. I am no longer a kid, I am a grown man, and I am a father, an actual father of adult age to a kid. I know now. And I choose my own way, a way that I know I can follow. I see I am able to. I don’t need to cling to the idea of you, I have no use for the idea of you anymore. I don’t have to measure up with you to model myself into a man, because I am one. I have arrived where you also were, and I am doing it my own way -- better.

This is the closure Dean needs. To face his father as an equal.

And this is why John is returning at this point of the story -- because Dean can face him as an equal.