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ananke-xiii · 1 month ago

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Missing Mothers and Missed Opportunities

Or: There can be three, four fathers in this show but there can only be one mother (and she doesn’t even want to be there, lol)!

One way that I like to see the first episodes of s13 is focusing on missed opportunities. Sam’s mind is in the past, he is very much ruminating about his missed opportunity with his mother while Dean’s mind is in the future as he is trying to deal with the fact that Cas is dead (although, to be honest, I think Cas’s death is a catalyst for Dean's much deeper issues related to his identity. As I’ve already said, in s12 Dean was in the process of understanding who he was regardless of his relationships and while he had some sort of reconciliation with Mary, he didn’t have any with Cas).

It’s no wonder, then, that Sam thinks that Cas and Mary might still be alive while Dean doesn’t. In Supernatural the past can come back and if it’s come back once why can’t it come back again? Past is hope. The future, however, is always “doom and gloom” in this series, it’s apocalypses, it’s “it ends bad, it ends bloody”, it is, in other words, super pessimistic. And “The Future” is impersonated in Jack and in the visions of the future he transmitted to Castiel which Dean blames for his death.

Sam is smart but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that if Jack has opened the rift once he might be able to open it again. Therefore, Sam sees in Jack an opportunity: if Jack can control and manage his powers he might open the rift again and Sam could get his mother back. What’s more, he also starts to see (what he thinks he’s) himself in Jack.

Dean: I told him the truth. See, you think you can use this freak but I know how this ends and it ends bad. Sam: I didn’t. Dean: What? Sam: I didn’t ‘end bad’. When I was the freak, when I was drinking demon blood. Dean: Come on man, that’s totally different. Sam: Was it? Because you could’ve put a bullet in me. Dad told you to put a bullet in me, but you didn’t! You saved me! So help me save him! Dean: You deserved to be saved, he doesn’t! Sam: Yes he does, Dean, of course he does!

The “What?” shows how the two are talking about completely different things. Maybe it was the word “freak” that triggered Sam, however I tend to agree with Dean here: Sam and Jack are not “totally different” but they are different. What I disagree with is when Dean says that Jack doesn’t deserve to be saved (Dean, Dean, Dean… you, just like everybody else, don’t need to “de-serve” anything. I swear to God the day we realize what the words we use actually mean maybe the world will really start changing). Because the thing is that Jack doesn’t need to be saved. He’s not a human who drank demon blood for what he thought was “the greater good” but turned out to be the beginning of his end. He was not part of a gigantic, messy, blatant scam involving Heaven and Hell. Jack’s partially the result of both Lucifer’s delusions of grandeur regarding Creation and Kelly’s conservative and dreamy desire to have a baby with the President of the USA (he was never gonna put any ring on it, girl and you knew it. Btw, Kelly is the baby-trapper in this story and no one else, I won’t change my mind ever), but he is nevertheless one of the most powerful beings in all existence. I honestly think that the only character who has ever understood Jack was Donatello.

Donatello: Oh. Speaking not as a prophet but as a scientist, I don’t think teaching him is in the cards. It’s like asking a lion not to be a lion. Sam: But this is not a lion! This is a human! Donatello: With a strong dose of God juice.

It’s not a strong dose of demon blood, Sam. It’s God juice, okay? LOL. Anyway, Donatello is super on point here: Jack is human and not-human. He’s a living aporia, the character where all the false dichotomies of the series show their fallacies. He’s “both… and” incarnated. He’s born and he’s already in his 20s. He’s a child and he’s a not-child. He has an age and he’s without age. Nobody will ever come close to understanding him if they cling close to a “black or white, good or evil” mentality. And this is why the show totally failed (for me) in s14 and how Sam is also failing here because he projects his own (respectable and very real) Lucifer-related issues with evilness onto Jack. Jack is beyond “good and evil” because he’s both human and angel, he embodies two different moralities and also transcends both of them because he’s neither only human nor only angel. To sum up, I don’t think that Supernatural, with its structure and its specific morality, could have handled a character like Jack. And this is why the show has to de-power him, de-soul him, make him die and resurrect etc.

Back to Sam and his failings. He projects his own stuff onto Jack, he wants to use him as a “can-opener”, he thinks Jack can be saved from “evil” because he can teach him. My question is: how much can Sam be negatively judged for these actions? My answer is: not so much.

As far as projections go, this is what he’s been doing from S1. Per SPN structure, both Sam and Dean have been projecting and identifying their issues onto the monsters of the weeks for 15 seasons. Jack is just the “Monster of the Season”. Projection and identification, identification and projection… I mean, this is what the show is about. If all of sudden Sam had woken up and miraculously solved all his identity-related issues the show would have been over.

As far as the utilitarian aspect goes, Sam has actually made some progress here. He “only” surveils Jack via cameras and tries to convince him to do some stupid exercises with a pencil. Previously on Supernatural Sam had literally enslaved, chained and imprisoned the people/creatures he wanted to use. These kids, they grow up so fast :”).

As far as the “do no evil” teaching goes, now here’s what’s really interesting to me.

The episode is “The Rising Son” and Sam’s passionate plea for Jack’s goodness via his teachings is paralleled to Asmodeus’s attempt at locating Jack in order to find him and harness his “timeless knowledge and unschooled power”. Asmodeus acts like Lucifer acted with Sam in S11 in that he pushes Jack to open up the earth “for God” (“I speak the words of God”, “God has a message for you”, “Do it for God” etc). Since Lucifer’s not here, though, Asmodeus wants to “[have]him (Jack) found and trained to rule. With me as his humble advisor, of course”. Of course we know he will fail because he himself says that he had tried to train the Shedim in the past and utterly failed.

ASMODEUS: I know the perils of Lucifer’s disappointment. DREXEL: He—he did that? ASMODEUS: Long ago. Eager to please, I freed the shedim. DREXEL: You… Oh, I’ve heard stories about— ASMODEUS: Oh, I’m sure you have. Hell’s most savage. Things so dark, and base, God himself would not allow them into the light. But I, in my pride, believed that I could train them. Use them. But Lucifer feared them, as well he should, so he forbade it, locked them up again.

This, of course, means that Sam will fail to train Jack/the Shedim too.

The parallel between Asmodeus and Sam must be explored because the show seems to pass it as an Evil (Asmodeus) vs Good (Sam) training but it’s not as simple as that. There’s even a scene where Asmodeus-as-Donatello talks about Jack with Sam and he seems to agree with Sam’s theory that Jack can be molded. While Sam thinks so because “Kelly was a good person”, Asmodeus-as-Donatello is obviously more interested in his evil father’s lineage.

While it’s true that both of them don’t even consider to give Jack a choice, to ask him questions and to try to understand him, they’re not exactly wrong when they agree that Jack’s powers do need some training, regardless of why they’re interested in his powers, Jack doesn’t have a grip on how his powers work. The show insistence on “good vs evil", however, completely ignores the very valid point where Jack’s powers are simply neither good or evil per se but they are “only” a(nother) force to be reckoned with.

This “good vs evil” thing obscures something very important and I think a distinction must be made here about what "training" really means in this context: Sam wants Jack to learn to master his powers, so that he (Jack) can be in control of them; on the other hand, Asmodeus wants to exploit Jack because of his powers, he wants to be the one who’s in control of them.

Both Sam and Asmodeus have an agenda, clearly, they’re also two characters very much interested in power. But when Asmodeus says that he wants to train Jack what he really has in mind is to groom him. Asmodeus’ techniques are very similar to Crowley’s with baby Amara and Demon Dean (I know Dean was not a child but he was one metaphorically because Crowley calls himself “Father�� and “daddy” while he calls Dean “a rather scrumptious altar boy”. Ugh). These are predators’ techniques: their intent is to create intimacy with a person (for instance, Asmodeus takes on Donatello’s resemblance to lure Jack and take him to the Hell’s Gate), usually a child, to make them do what they want and abuse their victims, victims who usually don’t even realize they’re victims (Jack doesn’t know he’s being manipulated).

This is NOT what Sam means when he says he can teach Jack. Sam’s utilitarian mindset can be reproachable but his intent is not the same as Asmodeus. Sure, it’s still absolutely problematic but, again, his intent is not to open up the earth to release the Shedim and use Jack to rule Hell. He wants to open the rift to the Apocalypse World to find his mother. He is, in other words, being a softer version of John Winchester. In fact, he is replicating John’s methods because this is what he grew up with and this is what he knows. Avenging Mary’s death, finding Mary in the AU… even if the intent might be comprehensible it doesn’t justify both John and Sam’s attitude towards the reaching of their ends. Yet, their ways are still not the same ways of a Crowley or an Asmodeus.

The other thing is that John was Sam’s father. He was father to two human children whom he raised as if their childhood was a huge, endless military training. Training someone, as a concept, is not evil: if you have a skill or a talent or whatever, you need to train and learn and explore your limits. Having someone who believes in you and wants to help you in your training is not evil too: in fact, it might be a very good thing. It’s a problematic thing, however, when your caregiver is more focused on the training than the care. It’s even more problematic if said caregiver is a paranoid who raised his sons as soldiers. But this is still NOT the same thing as demons such as Crowley and Asmodeus do.

The differences in "training" and what Sam fails to understand about what happened with Asmodeus is explained in "Patience":

SAM: Even with Asmodeus, that just happened?

JACK: No, he made me. It was like, like he was in my head.

SAM: Okay um, then uh… Imagine him doing that.

JACK: No!

SAM: No? Why not?

JACK: Because I don’t want to! It’s just… I can’t do this! And you keep staring at me, waiting!

Asmodeus made Jack use his powers, he was in his head. He had also abducted him, manipulated him: he wasn't trying to train him, he was trying to groom him. Of course Jack doesn't want that.

If Sam is replicating his father's teachings we must then ask: who is Jack to Sam in this moment in the narrative? He’s definitely not his son nor his sibling. But he's not someone Sam keeps in locks either. As I’ve said, Sam has never been above imprisoning people in his dungeon to reach his goal, yet he takes another road with Jack, maybe precisely because he’s identifying with him and projecting onto him his own fears and issues with “being evil” and “being a freak”. There is something very similar between the two but what is it? And why is it not expressed? Maybe Sam is not Jack the way he thinks he is but they do share one thing: they have both missed the opportunity to create a bond with their respective mothers.

Sam only really utterly fails Jack when he’s dishonest with him. He eventually understands that and comes clean with him but I think that a lot of the initial issues happened because he was not communicating with Jack at all. And he didn’t even give him a choice. I think that if Sam were honest with Jack and gave him the choice to help him he would have discovered another thing that make them veeeery similar: both of them are okay with twisting human morality and… sort of… manipulate people a little to get what they want. Does this make them evil villains? To me, no. Does this make them human, layered, compelling characters that raise interesting moral questions more than give black and white answers? Totally yes!

Sam and Jack are not “totally different” but they are different. Conversely, they are not “totally similar” but they are similar. The Rescuing of the Mother can happen because The Loss of the Mother is something that Jack can deeply understand and relate to. He doesn’t want to save Mary just to please Sam and Dean. I think it’s deeper than that.

In case it wasn't clear, the conflation of Mary and Kelly is very clear in "The Big Empty":

MIA: You’ve lost someone recently? DEAN: No. JACK: My mother. SAM: Uh, our mother. We’ve having a difficult time.

Mary-as-Missed/Missing-Mother is such a central theme in this season that the Apocalypse World is a literal ramification of the Original World that's solely dependent on Mary Winchester’s choice to not deal with Azazel. John is never brought back and, more importantly, Sam and Dean are never born. This is a world where she’s not the mother. But why is Mary’s choice so vital it can create different timelines?

S12 and S13 implicitly seem to tell that everything that happened was because of Mary’s choice and… it’s, like, not true? Sometimes Sam and Dean are so ultra-focused on “free will” and “making the right choices” that tend to forget the part where both them and their parents were part of a larger scheme that was predicated on people ultimately being herd towards a designed pen. Like, while I think that Dean and Sam having issues with their mother is completely real and plausible, I don’t understand why the narrative re-frames itself in this way… I understand that they were going for a specific retelling of the first seasons but this is not just retelling, this is demolishing the premises of those series. S4-5 were precisely about the mystification and the perils of a glorified, Grand Destiny that in reality was nothing but a Big Scam. It’s not your destiny if your destiny is something that somebody else is telling you about and when this somebody else has a vested interest in you believing that you have that specific destiny. Or if somebody else is removing all of your choices leaving you with close to nothing to choose from.

Apocalypse World is, thus, such an unfair double-edged sword, cause on the one hand, it gives Mary agency but on the other it shows us that both choices resulted in… well, frankly, catastrophes. And I think it’s unfair to throw this huge weight onto her shoulders after they had dug her up from her grave while completely ignoring the whole thing about senior management angels playing puppeteers with the Winchesters.

Kelly-as-Missed/Missing-Mother is the other side of the coin of this little argument of mine because in s13 the writers demonstrated how Kelly must stay dead because one mother is enough and they didn’t know what to make of Kelly since she was not a hunter. She was just, as a character, Jack’s mother. The rift to the Apocalypse World was even possible in the first place because she (more or less, it’s complicated) decided that she would.have.her.baby. But, just like Mary before her resurrection, if his actual mother were back in the game it either meant that Jack was out of the game or that they had to include her in some capacity into the Winchesters dynamics and they didn’t want any of that. Mary’s death meant that Sam and Dean entered the hunters’ life, Kelly’s death assures the same for Jack. Plus, they all have an angel watching over them, isn't it just great? But hey, wait, this is the absent fathers show so we’re gonna give this kid three, four, five fathers!!! (sarcastic). Also, Alive Kelly wouldn’t be the Good, Perfect, Dead Mother that she is to Jack because, well, she would be a Real Character, not a memory on a pen drive and Alive Kelly would be so faaaar from the Good and Perfect Mother. Do we have to try to write another complex mother? One is enough!!! (sarcastic).

In conclusion, in s13 Sam’s (and Jack’s) huge missed opportunity stays… missing. Jack will go to the Apocalypse World and fight the angels with Mary whereas Mary decides to stay there (lol!) to help with the fight. They literally have to find a bus and move all the remaining AU people to the Original World because Mary has decided that she wanted to stay in a world where she didn’t choose John and she didn’t give birth to her sons (me asking Sam who has just died and was resurrected by Lucifer only to find out that his mother didn’t want to be saved: are you REALLY okay? LOL). I’ll stop here cause this is getting way too long but maybe, just maybe, s13 as a whole was a giant missed opportunity.

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