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ananke-xiii · 17 days ago

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Epilogue: the Grim Reaper and the Sol Invictus.

My series about resurrection is over but I felt like I needed to “end” it by tying up the loose threads of my “Billie won theory”. I wanted to post this epilogue on the day of the Winter Solstice because I started this resurrection madness around the time of the Autumn Equinox so I thought it’d be cute <3.

As I’ve repeated many, many times, in this retrofitting fantasy of mine Billie and Chuck’s actual conflict is over the power of resurrection. There are rules in this universe that must be followed (and even bent if necessary) because the natural order must be preserved. For the majority of her time on screen Billie is strictly associated with rules as she seeks to contain damage for the sake of Order. She very much believes in Order but, for at least 4 seasons, she doesn’t want to take over it. On the contrary, Billie wants to re-establish the power of Death in the narrative. Thus, resurrections must be contained, controlled or even stopped. This is the “a place for everything and everything in its place” credo. Figuratively speaking, she wants stories to stop changing and start ending as they’re supposed to.

Chuck also knows about universal rules and he wants (or so he thinks) “his story” to end but he wants it to end the way that he had planned. He tampers with the rules of Time as he pleases but he doesn’t have complete control over them. He can control Time/the story up to a certain point. In the end, he rebels against the laws of the natural order but he’s also aware of his limitations and knows where he has to comply with them. He’s not omniscient nor omnipotent, he “just” has a very considerable amount of knowledge and power. Ultimately, however, he can write as many drafts and books as he wants but he can’t write the Death Books. Since his story never ends the way he wants, Chuck uses resurrections (or, rather, most of the time people doing the resurrections for him) as a tool that allows him to start anew. In a way, he keeps retelling “his” story and never allows it to end because he wants it to end the way that he wants.

Interestingly, the “resurrection as power struggle”- angle shows a side of Chuck-as-character that I hadn’t noticed before and that actually gives him more depth: Chuck is a rule breaker. Don’t worry, he’s no Robin Hood in this fantasy of mine because he’s a sly, slimy, treacherous disruptor of Order but it’s important to notice that he’s not the Order. But neither is Billie. In Billie’s mind Chuck is “just” another disruptor of the natural order who needs to be eliminated while she “just” happens to be the one who needs to clean up after his mess. On a very practical level She was right but… was she right?

I think that in her role as Death she had the right to re-claim her centrality. Literal death obviously kept happening on the show so that wasn’t the actual problem. In this resurrection fantasy of mine, the problem is that Death has lost its symbolical meaning. Resurrections, at a certain point, must end or, as Cas said, they might start feeling like punishments rather than chances. What’s gone, what’s past, what’s not there anymore must eventually be freed and let go. Otherwise resurrections risk to become ways to stay disconnected from reality. This doesn’t mean that the past will be forgotten, just that it needs to be unlocked and transformed. It comes a time when retellings must stop and people must face Death in its symbolic power, that is “the Great Transformation”. The highlight here is more on the word “Reaper” than on the word “Grim”: reaping is a very Life-related activity, wheat must be reaped so people can eat. It’s an image of abundance, reward and… success. It’s about continuing free from the chain of the past and about being ready to write something new.

On the other hand, in her role as Billie she got it all wrong. I can’t really pinpoint where the change happened but her character changed somewhere in S15. From a smart, scheming, enigmatic character she becomes this reactionary villain who wants to take over God for the sake of power. She’s convinced that Dean is her ultimate enemy (he’s very much not), consequently this makes her act blindly and a bit stupidly, imo. She had been using Dean since she brought him back in S13, the two even agree on a lot of stuff, she knew he was an important pawn. However, at the very last minute, Billie says that Dean is “human disorder incarnate” showing that, much like Chuck, she didn’t understand Dean at all.

Or, perhaps, this change in her attitude was the result of Chuck’s goading? To be honest I don’t know, I don’t quite understand her character’s change from rules-oriented to Order-oriented and I haven’t been able to find ways to retrofit this into my fantasy, lol. Taking over Chuck in order to become the new God doesn’t really make sense compared to the way she had been previously written. Maybe some important plot-point is eluding me right now, it could be, but I’m pretty sure that even Old Death knew that one day God would be reaped. Even as a reaper Billie knew about this and in S11 she says that she was close to reaping God. To me this pretty much establishes Death as something, if not necessarily bigger than God, definitely closer to how the natural order operates. Of which God is just a part of, like everybody else.

Honestly, to me, it totally makes sense that she wants to stop resurrections and wants to eliminate Chuck but it doesn’t exactly make sense that she wants both to become the “New God” and to go back to how things were. How things were when? From the Shadow’s and Sam’s words it seems to be an imprecise point in time before S4, but why would Billie-as-character want to restore that specific time is unclear to me. It seems very arbitrary. Perhaps what really changed the narrative was Dean’s resurrection in S4 (of which, incidentally, Castiel is key). Before (and after) that resurrection was possible but it came with a high cost since it was mainly done via demon deals. Dean’s resurrection, on the other hand, defies the rules of the natural order and establishes angels and Chuck as despotic and unruly towards its laws. Angels believe in prophecies that are never fully written, in Apocalypses that are constantly disconfirmed, in a God who’s sold them a lie: they want Time/the story to end as He promised them but Time/the story itself seems to have other plans. Clearly.

Again, according to the Shadow’s words, after becoming the New God, Billie would’ve killed anybody who got resurrected. Why? As a character she was written around the idea that she could interfere but she wouldn’t actively do it: just like Chuck, Billie was used to bend the rules by proxy in order to course-correct stuff. Things going off-script or “wrong” is not news to her. What’s important is minimizing damage and avoid huge escalations. As I said, it was her right and her actual job to do so.

I’m sure I’m missing something here but from what I remember Billie sort of turned into a “crazy villain” for no real reason. The funny thing is that the show itself reveals this contradiction when Sam and Dean thought that she was the one making people disappear while she wasn’t. And OF COURSE she wasn’t because if it was just about killing the resurrected people or the people from the AU she could’ve done it… any time? Before? Whenever she fancied? But she didn’t because that was not the real problem. Like, that was a concern of hers for sure, but it was clearly never her first goal. I feel like the show contradicted itself here but okay, let’s just label this as a “me problem”/ “I don’t remember stuff issue” and let’s move on.

Whatever the case may be, that happened and I’ve written a bit about my “Billie won theory” because, eventually, we see exactly what she wanted, i.e. a return to the “good old days”, back to when God wasn’t in the picture and where angels got back to where they belonged. The world stays the same, the world of hunting stays the same, Sam and Dean stay the same and then they die. There’s no mention of the other characters, there’s just Sam, Dean, the Impala and John’s journal. There’s no transformation. As a matter of fact, death is so literal in this back-to-factory-settings world that even former-god Chuck’s ending is very mundane: he’ll grow old, get sick and die. He’ll be forgotten and no one will care about him. Like everybody else. The highlight here is more on the word “Grim” because this is very sad, austere and sterile.

So Billie won as a character but lost as a symbol. The reversal happened to her “enemy” (who wasn’t actually Chuck but Castiel): Chuck lost as a character but won as a symbol.

As Chuck, the character and the writer, he lost because he didn’t get the ending he wanted: the first born doesn’t kill the second born, the father doesn’t kill the son. He doesn’t even get to experience “death by Dean” (which, I fear, he would’ve morbidly enjoyed) because Dean believes much more in Cas than in the hatred he has towards Chuck. It’s total defeat. Much ado about nothing. The story ended but it didn’t end like he wanted. As “Absent Father” he also lost because… well, turns out he wasn’t exactly absent, rather invisible. As a matter of fact, Chuck is found to be a rather invasive and intrusive Father/writer.

As God… well, as God He wins as “Sol Invictus”, “Invincible Sun”. His power still circulates in the universe via his nephew, aka His tradition continues. Jack might have restructured it but His structure of power (aka the Patriarchy), Heaven vs Hell, is still preserved. If you obey and follow the rules you’ll go to Heaven, if you disobey and do what you want you’ll end up in Hell. Supreme Invisible Invincible God stays invisible and invincible because we see Jack dissolve into nothing after having claimed that he’ll be in everything and everyone. It should sound poetic, instead it gives very creepy, panopticon vibes. There’s no more prison in Heaven but people on earth who have questions will have to suck it up ‘cause Jack ain’t staying around to give answers, folks.

I’m making this comparison because Winter Solstice was/is the celebration of the Sun that never dies, the invincible sun. It’s an old myth that doesn’t want to die while it should, I think, because… everything ends… in order to continue. The idea of an invincible power that will win every enemy, of a constant growth that will know no arrest, of lands that will never know the setting of the sun because the empire will be limitless… In other words this myth, I think, is actually about the fear of endings which, in turn, signals a bigger, comprehensible, human fear, that of literal death. But this fear, I think, causes so much harm and makes people live miserably and predicates on such an exploitative system (the patriarchy that, in my personal view, is rooted in the terror of literal death): there must be souls that go to Hell to be tortured and in pain forever in order for other people to experience fake-peace in Heaven. There must be souls that are very “good boys” and follow the rules in order for other people to “fuel” the pits of Hell. And there must be “in-between Things” like monsters, demons and angels who go somewhere else after death, away from human souls because they’re the Other that must never be met. Even in the after-life. If you think about it, Jack’s Heaven is just like Earth without monsters and demons and where angels benevolently watch over souls. It’s a naïve dream.

It’s therefore fitting that Chuck-as-character’s ending will be a human one, that is a certain one. Chuck will literally die like every other human being. He couldn’t fathom “his” story’s ending but he knows for sure how his own actual story will end. Chuck-as-God, however, is alive and kicking and it’ll continue to live inside everyone (brrrr). Billie-as-Death dies too and, with Her, the possibility of Death as Transformation, as change, as novelty. As a way to start dealing with literal death with awareness and compassion. Billie-as-character, however, lives on because things bleakly do get back as they were before. Death is, therefore, literal and final but God is symbolic and re-booted.

In this retrofitting imagination of mine, this is why Dean’s refusal to be brought back is so undeniably sad and feels... wrong? The way I see it, he “accepts” literal death (which, to be honest, was unfortunately never the real problem for him but I digress) but “rejects” the possibility of change. What the story is telling me is that Dean must accept his ending in order for Sam’s story to continue and… like… to me this is a big no and it’s unfair to both characters. The “key” for Sam to access “Normal life” is… Dean’s death? What? This is such an old-school type of ending for a show that was so meta and played so much with its material. It's storytelling nostalgia.

Dean’s literal death and refusal to be resurrected allows Sam to enter the Earth-version of Heaven, the blurry, nostalgic world of the undefeated Sun, aka the Patriarchy (well, its normalized, accepted version anyway since the hunting world wasn't that much different but it was, at least, a critique of that other, imagined world). In the end, then, The Grim Reaper stays grim and the Sun stays undefeated. Both the retelling and the story end.

This is where my resurrection series and my “Billie won theory” end. I wish I could give you a better ending but the power of my imagination fails to turn this show’s ending into something else than what I personally took from it. What I can share with you is what I would’ve liked.

So: the way I see it, everything ends but everything transforms and continues, too. This is why, I think, I would like more stories where Death is symbolic rather than literal and where Power (God) is deconstructed in favor of complete change and total newness rather than a return to how things were/are supposed to be. Perhaps there’s something to learn from Apocalypses: we need to imagine endings but since these are just imagined endings we can potentially end… and start anew… anytime we want.

Cyclicality, as I currently see it, is not a life sentence but a way to explore endless possibilities.

Resurrection, to go back to my main theme here, is a powerful tool of love and disobedience, a wonderful way of travelling through Time/the story and dimensions but, one day, we must be courageous enough to do the final act of Love which is… to integrate the past, let go of it and then… continue. Because we’re finally free from our past conditioning, we can see ourselves for who we really are. Our old, constructed, conditioned self finally dies and a new one is born from its ashes. To continue the journey. To co-write our story. To be co-authors of our life.

To use a myth about a failed resurrection as reference, there will be a time when Orpheus' Love, that's already made him capable of walking between dimensions, will be so strong and he'll have such faith in It that he won't care about gods' rules and about his own internal fears, too. A Love so strong that he'll be certain that Eurydice is with him as he continues his journey moving beyond Death and back into Life. He won't look back but he will nevertheless disobey because he will choose not to look back out of Love, not fear.

Or, perhaps, there'll be a time when Orpheus will look back at Eurydice because he Loves. And because he Loves he'll disobey the rule: he will look back in order to look at his past one last time to say his goodbyes. And then continue.

Or maybe there will be a time when it's Eurydice who stops and asks Orpheus to disobey and turn. She'll tell him that she doesn't want to follow, that she doesn't love him and that he has to let her go if he really loves her. And so Orpheus turns to look at her one last time. And they say their goodbyes.

There are so many possibilities! Stories, myths are repetion and creation that shape our identities! The key is that we can change them, we can imagine new stories to help us make sense of ourselves, to shed light on our hidden, dark corner or even just to look at these corners, contemplate their obscurity and let ourselves be fascinated by complexities and differences. They're here exactly for that!

In other words, I don’t want stories to return but to transform. “Re” is a prefix that indicates reiteration while “trans” means going beyond. These are two different kinds of movements and I prefer the latter. As I’ve said, Resurrections must end too before they become Restorations, nostalgic attempts to bring back the past as we would have liked it to be. I also don’t want stories that “return” to their origins by virtue of sterile narrative techniques rather than via said power of transformation. Briefly put: let me see characters deal with trauma, come to terms with it and finally heal from it in a way that doesn’t mean literal death nor a return to a “golden time” that never was that much golden (otherwise there wouldn’t be any trauma to begin with). Maybe other people don’t agree with me but this is the kind of story I’d like to see more of. The way I see it, in Supernatural (together with other shows that are about destiny/free will) the transformation was taken literally and the ending meant death. The same structure of Power that made the characters suffer stayed the same as things went back to how they were to an imagined “before”. Paraphrasing my girl Billie/Death, the show said “they died and then they got their happy ending in Heaven” but… “I say… you keep… living”. And changing. And continuing. And going beyond.

Happy Winter to one hemisphere and… Happy Summer to the other!

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