#spn season 1 finale

[imapaintedwhore]

Every time I hear Bad Moon Rising I see that car crash, which imo is one of the best season finales of any tv show🙌🏻

Supernatural Soundtrack - Commenter's Edition

I made a list of classic rock songs from the Supernatural soundtrack, and ran out of space for some absolute classics. You guys were sure to tell me which one's I'd omitted. Here's some I missed...

Based on the comments of the last poll, I think I know what's going to win, but let's see how everything fares. Don't forget to share this poll and check out the others! There's a new poll every day.

[strawlessandbraless]

The Winchesters Season 1 Finale

The Winchesters Season 2

[t00muchheart]

John in 1x20 apologizing to Sam for stopping being a Dad at some point and becoming a drill sergeant, letting the mission become everything, and then immediately getting sucked back into that mission and not understanding why Sam didn’t kill him to get to Azazel in 1x22, framing it as I thought you of all people would understand, because when Sam told him that they were alike, that they understood each other, he accepted that Sam was all in, at any cost

VERSUS Dean seeing that Sam is in at all costs and reminding him that his life has worth too, telling him that just because they couldn’t get back the people they lost didn’t mean they needed to lose more people. When John tells Sam to kill him the scene is framed as Sam being ready to do it until Dean’s appeal convinces him not to, and Sam looking back at Dean before telling John that family is more important emphasizes that it is Dean holding things together, like he has since he was a child.

Because when John stopped being a dad and became a drill sergeant, Dean stopped being just a brother and became a dad.

[junefl0wers]

watching supernatural for the first time (yes in the year of 2024, leave me alone 😔) and i can’t wait till castiel appears on the show cuz you’re telling me dean ‘seems really straight’ winchester is part of the most popular gay ship from this show?? alright

(i just got done with season 1 btw so bear with me here)

[nym-wibbly]

Did you bother with SPN seasons 1-3 or start in just for Castiel?

Wut?! I started at the start!

I didn't know S4 was where Cas came in - I'd made huge efforts over the years to avoid sp*ilers.

I saved Supernatural until this year because I wanted to be in the right headspace to watch it right through, start to finish, without a break. I suspected Castiel would float my boat based on what little I knew of the show's premise (and of myself when faced with Fictional Men Who Happen to Have Wings), and because I knew how good Misha Collins is at selling a role, but it turned out to be the overall story arc that prostrated me at the altar of Supernatural - the meta arc with Chuck dicking the Winchesters around, the destiny vs free will thing. I was breathless with anticipation between Chuck's appearance in The Monster at the End of This Book - the first explicit suggestion that the boys are part of some in-universe controlled narrative working against their attempts to exercise free will - and the eventual reveal that Chuck was, indeed, writer!God (and a monster).

I won't say the early seasons are my favourites - I don't share Kripke's love of visceral horror and splatty onscreen violence for one thing, and the cool film night scenes are practically black on my crappy TV for another, so I kept having to turn on audio-describe to know what was happening - but they're completely unmissable.

[mlobsters]

supernatural s1e5 bloody mary / true detective s1e1 the long bright dark

You believe in ghosts?

other supernatural & true detective parallels

[sophieseals]

To me Kripe maybe intentionally or unintentionally running the boys in a similar way he ran S1-S5 of supernatural.

Stay with me but I said something to my friend about halfway through season 4 of the boys when people were feeling lukewarm about this season and, my theory was that this season is simply a two parter. As in season 4 is the part 1 and season 5 is the part 2. I think the majority agree where season 4 is still top quality and has its shining moments everything just felt tighter and shinier plot wise in season 3 and it reminded me of supernatural.

Now what happened with spn S3 was a mistake like a happy accident one of the best seasons came out from an awful set of circumstances which resulted in the writers strike and had the episodes be strictly reduced. Therefore Deans demon deal literally felt like a ticking time bomb because it literally was and him getting sent to hell early worked out very well with the set of episodes cut. The boys S3 hasn’t worked out obviously exactly like that but was also as strong and even stronger than Spn S3. But S4 of Spn is from my opinion not as strong as S3. Still good but it’s more of a season of set ups for the final conflict in S5. Obviously still has its own original plot lines that end but a lot continue. And that’s what I expected halfway from S4 of the boys.

I saw a lot of people complaining that it wasn’t as tighter plot wise season 3 and things came out of the blue, how were they going to wrap this all up and the answer is they can’t. But they’re not meant to. Like season 4 of Spn this is a two parter and the season 4 finale of the boys especially during the last five minutes solidified that. So if that means anything and we have Spn season 5 to look at as a very rough precursor for the season 5 of the Boys, this could become one of the best finales of a show yet.

[destiel-wings]

I've gathered some of my thoughts about The Winchesters season finale and here's why i think it gave me some peace

(yes, this does contain a destiel interpretation, too 💚💙)

Did i want to see Cas in it? Yes.

Was i disappointed that he wasn't? Actually, no (more on that later).

But I loved it. I was so stunned as I saw it and I felt like somehow it healed some of the wounds from the spn finale... but i couldn't quite understand why.

Here's why.

We basically watched Supernatural. Jensen reopened the finale and went further with it. What we saw in The Winchesters felt like a continuation of 15x20, even if it technically happened in between the last two scenes of the finale. But we got Bobby, we got Jack. They all actually talked, in a way that felt alive and real. Jack broke his rule of no interfering, showing that he still cared for Dean (just like he had broken his own rule off screen by saving Cas from the Empty). The Winchesters wasn't a prequel, but a sequel.

Dean got his own story, got to make something for himself (instead of just waiting for Sam on a bridge), and it's something that he wanted to do. He went back to look for hope and love, for a version of his parents where they could have a real chance.

We learn love (or we don't) and how to be in a happy relationship as kids by watching our parents, and Dean was doomed that way. He never had that example, to learn how to build a relationship and let himself be loved. He never learned that. So when he gets to heaven and he has the chance, before getting on that bridge, before meeting up with his family, with Sam... and yes, with Cas (even if we haven't seen him yet), he just needs a freaking minute. He needs a little time to himself. To reconnect. To understand. To reflect on love and what it means to love and be loved.

So he does what any fond child would do... he looks up at his parents. Only his parents that are right there in heaven didn't exactly have a happy ending (or even a happy middle), so he explores further, searching for a chance, a hope, a version of his own legacy where love was possible. Because if his parents can make it... so can he.

And we see all that through his own lenses (the weird use of the camera lenses with all those flares and glow resembles the aura of Dean's drive in heaven, thinking about it in retrospect).

screencaps of the glowy amber look and those camera flares, there's probably better examples but these are some of the best ones i could find

Dean's mission might have been the Akrida, but the reason he went looking, the real quest he was after, was hope. Hope for a happy ending. Hope for love, where said love was doomed from the start.

And it's not surprising that there were destiel parallels everywhere, because that was Dean's POV, and he's processing his own feelings. Which is something he needs to do before he sees Cas again.

And personally, I think Dean loves Cas back and he knew that before dying, but still, that doesn't mean that he's not afraid of messing it up. That he knows how to approach him, or face Cas, after all that's happened.

He may not even be doing all of this thinking consciously, but the Castiel subtext we've seen in The Winchesters, from a narrative POV, is Dean's.

We're seeing the parallels because he's seeing them, making them, it's his way of processing. Of seeing what he and Cas had, and what they could have. Looking for hope.

And, as he himself said before leaving again... i think he found it.

So i don't know how things are going to go on from here. I can't imagine how we could have Dean in a season two. I've been saying all along that The Winchesters might open the story for a SPN revival/s16, and i think it is perfectly possible that this might happen here.

The Winchesters might not have Dean anymore, becoming its own show (but still having lots of references and guest stars from Supernatural) and *as Jensen loves to say* when we get the revival, there will be the space to address Castiel's confession and give his character the importance that it needs.

It wouldn't have made sense to see Cas here in a little cameo, it wouldn't have been enough. But what we saw here, was the confirmation of Jensen reopening the finale, and his willingness to bring Dean back (as he's always stated), for whatever more he's allowed to do.

I love the way they handled it, we still got peace and hope (even if there were to be no s2), and i feel like we're all more confident that the bridge scene is not an ending, but a beginning of something more. Dean has said he's gonna go look for his family. That's not just Sam.

Of course he's gonna see Cas too. But i don't think any of us would've been satisfied to see him pop up randomly for a couple of minutes in TW, with little to no mention of what happened between them.

Also, i want to point out that this was supposed to be the midseason finale but they had to adapt it when they found out they didn't get a full season, we could've had much more (like more narrating voices as Jensen had teased) or even seeing more of Dean, instead of just seeing him in the pilot and the season finale. They even asked Misha to be there (and he refused for scheduling conflicts since he was busy filming Gotham Knights *but said he's absolutely willing to appear later*).

So i think there's still so much story to tell here and i am absolutely hopeful and trust that we will love it.

I think they did an amazing job in 13 episodes, and I can't wait to see what's next 💖

[monstermoviedean]

the reaper's name is jessica??? the death that started this whole series is here to bookend dean's final death?

[incesthemes]

one more thing about phantom traveler that excited me: the ending scene where sam and dean call john's phone and hear his answering machine.

dean is upset by this confirmation. it's the first time dean has had to really grapple with the truth: that john is intentionally avoiding them, that he's fine, actually, and that he's not in danger. it shatters the illusions that have driven him since the first episode, and this is disappointing. it's a betrayal of the expectations he had for his father.

phantom traveler is an episode about fear—dean's fear, specifically. the A story introduces his fear of flying, but it also gives indications of what else he's afraid of.

the episode hints at the perhaps surprising rigidity of their roles in hunting, with dean as the more active fighter and sam as the more passive intellectual, even when dean is scared stiff on the plane. given further context throughout the season, this can very well be extrapolated to mean that dean is afraid of sam getting hurt. he has to protect sam; that's his job, and taking on the more physically dangerous role and leaving sam in a safer position allows him to ensure that protection.

in other words, dean is afraid of losing sam.

the end of this episode hints at another, similar fear. if the episode is about fear, then dean's reaction to john's betrayal should logically also be about fear. the betrayal here is that john is running away from them, leaving them behind, avoiding them. he's intentionally breaking apart the family unit, and since john presumably doesn't know that sam is with him, that means john is intentionally leaving dean alone.

so dean is also afraid of losing john, and of being alone (aka, without a family).

we've seen this before, and we'll see it again.

dean's desire to be surrounded by his family also informs his fear of being alone, abandoned by his family or separated from them. it informs what he's willing to do to avoid that outcome, by, as seen in this episode, shoving his fear aside to perform his role (and as we later learn about him, by remaining blindly loyal to john, a result of his failure to protect sam from the shtriga).

this is the episode that truly begins dean's narrative arc, pushes him out of his comfort zone both through the A story with the plane demon and through the B story with john's answering machine. dean will not be able to return to the comfort and security of his loyalty and will instead have to confront his fears as they become more and more inescapable. sam's overarching conflict between family and freedom began with the pilot, and now four episodes in dean's conflict has been forcefully dug up and he can no longer avoid the choices he'll have to make.

[souporsaladnatural]

Season 12 Cas is literally spiralling so fucking hard for the whole season i love it, go off my mentally and emotionally unwell king <3

[cherryblossomclaire]

And the other thing is...it's wild to me when people post script or episode screencaps of a character saying a thing to prove something when there is also canonical dialogue of them saying the opposite thing. Especially for a show where every character is epically repressed and a known liar.

[antigonewinchester]

15x20

And we come to it... The End of Supernatural.

But we’ve got a double feature this time: because I watched 1x20 too. With 15x20 calling back to that ep so specifically, I thought I’d see what the finale looked like in its context.

There’s a lot of talk of how the early vs. later seasons differ visually in terms of lighting, cinematography, etc., but I was also struck in their difference in tone. There’s a sincerity to 1x20, not just in what’s happening but in how the writing takes itself & the situation seriously, while 15x20 is much lighter and humorous, verging into bathos at points. It’s exactly the same as the contemporary MCU/Disney blockbuster humor: never letting the tension build for too long and breaking it was jokes. Maybe I’m just a bit too earnest but this kind of humor rings really hollow to me. It often feels self-defensive, like the writer(s) are hyper aware of their audience & its reaction and so they make fun of themselves before the audience can make fun of them.

I’d forgotten The Twilight Zone reference early in 1x20; love that. All of the John - Sam - Dean family drama is so compelling -- Sam still hotheaded & angry, John caring but not willing to give up his authority, Dean the peacemaker in the middle of it all. (The rest under a cut because it got long.)

DEAN: What happens if you die? Dad, what happens if you die, and we coulda done something about it? You know I been thinking. I ...think maybe Sammy's right about this one. We should do this together. [SAM nods.] DEAN: We're stronger as a family, Dad. We just are. You know it. JOHN: We're running out of time. You do your job and you get out of the area. That's an order.

Kripke’s idea of ‘family as everything’ is the foundation of this ep. It’s also obviously about healing the original family estrangement in Sam leaving and John rejecting him for it--John has to relearn how to “believe” in family again, which first starts to happen when Sam & Dean rush into save him, and then he saves Sam, using a bullet from the Colt to kill Luther holding Sam hostage, even though it means one less chance to get the YED. If, as SW analyzed, Dean takes on John’s narrative role in S4/5 with Sam, then Dean is in this narrative position thru the entire rest of the show. For ex, in Dabb’s seasons, so much of the writing focuses on Dean not “believing” in or resenting/rejecting family, which drives almost all the emotional conflict. And then cue Dean’s heartfelt deathbed speech in 15x20 about how much he loves Sam & thinks Sam is such an amazing guy, right? The ultimate “I believe in family & love you so much” speech. Dean’s speech even parallels what Sam’s son tell him as he’s dying, so framing Dean in a parental role to the end: (”SAM No. / DEAN (softly pleading): Look at me. Look at me. I need... I need... I need you to tell me that it's okay. I need you to tell me... Tell me it's okay. / SAM (through tears) Dean... it's okay. You can go now.” versus “DEAN II: Dad. It's okay. You can go now.”)

With the Colt, what stood out on this watch was how even though it’s a weapon that can “kill anything,” it’s not divine or blessed or anything like that; it was just a gun made by Samuel Colt for ordinary human hunters. Given how fantastical the show gets by the end, the Colt is grounded in a satisfying way. In order to fight creatures stronger than they are, people will make a tool that’ll allow them to overcome all that, just through sheer human ingenuity & stubbornness.

Jenny is the obvious throughline between these two eps, but there’s also John being integral to both (returning in 1x20, Sam & Dean figuring out the case thru his journal in 15x20) and both eps dealing with vampires. In 15x20, the situation is clearly meant to be a mirror reflection of Sam and Dean’s family tragedy: vampires invade a house, kill the father instead of the mother (but leaving her traumatized and unable to speak, literally & metaphorically) and steal the 2 kids away, but ending more happily with Sam & Dean saving the kids. There’s also again shades of sexual violence against children, in the vampires not just killing the kids but keeping them alive for years, both to feed and feed on them. If it’s more alluded to in 15x20, then it’s literal in 1x20, with vampires intertwined with sexual violence all over the ep: Kate & Luther making out / getting ready to have sex while Jenny watches, with Kate then turning Jenny by assaulting her with a kiss (complete w/ incestuous undertones in Luther then saying “Welcome home”); John looming over Kate and Luther like a creepy stalker when they all invade the vampires’s nest; Dean playing bait and drawing the vamps out, with Kate assaulting Dean very similarly to how she did Jenny. The ‘Dean playing bait’ scene was also interesting in that Dean is very much vulnerable (what if Kate had just gone for his neck?) while the masculine violence of the Winchesters is highlighted as well... John & Sam shooting Kate and the other vamp, John coming in with “sweetheart” to Kate when he confronts her, Dean taking Kate off in a bridal carry, a parody of the real thing. They’re both the hunted and hunters.

SAM (crying) Then don't leave me. Don't leave me. I can't do this alone. DEAN Yes, you can. SAM Well, I don't want to. DEAN Hey. I'm not leaving you. I'm gonna be with you... [DEAN is crying as he places his fist over SAM’S heart.] Right here... every day. ... DEAN Goodbye, Sam. Goodbye.

Telling that it was Jackles and Jarpad who added in those callbacks to Sam & Dean’s dialogue in the pilot, not Dabb. Good for them, tho.

I’m surprised I’ve never seen a comparison made between Dean’s death and Jack’s departure in 15x19! If Jack is a Christ figure, then Dean is a messiah figure, and those figures very often die; both Dean and Jack gave up a chance at a normal life to save the world & protect the people they love, Dean as a hunter & Jack as God; they both do the “I’ll still be with you, in your heart” gesture; it ends with both Jack and Dean saying goodbye, and they both then go onto to ascend to Heaven or a heavenly place. People talk about how Jack’s ending is messed up because he’s just a kid with too much responsibility put on his head, but the show idealizes / does the same thing with Dean, in how much it valorizes Dean’s protection of Sam. I think back to Jarpad’s quote talking about the finale that got people in a huff (“It was a success story — it was Dean’s success story,” Padalecki reflects on the “Supernatural” series finale. “This guy gave his life for years and years and years and ultimately gave his life to have his No. 1 on the planet live as normal a life as possible.”) but like? Doesn’t this attitude seem exactly how the show viewed Sam & Dean at this point?

I’ve also seen people talk pretty cynically about Dean’s death and as much as I’m not a fan of Dean dying I also just cannot read it as cynically as some people do. Dean didn’t die because he “couldn’t live a normal life,” he died because the show set up the “Dean = chooses the hunting life, Sam = wants a normal life” framing back in S12, Dabb’s first season, which culminates here in Dabb’s last, with Dean dying on a hunt after saving 2 kids from something horrible, and Sam going on to live without Dean and having a ‘normal’ life, wife, a son, even if he deep down he longs to be with Dean again. If Dean most represents “the family” in the narrative, then of course he couldn’t get a wife and kid like Sam could; that would be Dean choosing to have another family over Sam, and that wouldn’t work with Dean’s narrative role. In S15 too, Dean’s death also fits thematically with the emphasis within the last season on making sacrifices and dying for what you love and the people you saved living on after that sacrifice. Ketch, Rowena, Cas, Jack (sort of), Dean, to name some major ones. There’s also that Sam dying & Dean living on would be a repeat of Swan Song, so I can see why they would’ve wanted to avoid that plot beat because they’d already done it once. If anything, I’d say Dean’s death echoes his one in 3x16: telling Sam to carry on without him, Sam being unable to prevent his death, but this time instead of going to Hell, Dean ends up in Heaven. And Dean gets narratively rewarded with the perfect, best Heaven ever! The one that is stated he deserves!! I just don’t see how that translates into the writers seeing Dean as not normal or having something wrong with him?

OKAY last few things: I actually like the regular “Carry On Wayward Son” and then the cover version, what can I say. Despite ppl saying Dean spent however many odd decades in Heaven waiting for Sam, it’s clearly implied he only waited a short time in Bobby saying “Time up here, it's... it's different,” which is calling back to Hell’s time dilation, Dean’s 40′s years, and his now only spending a few minutes separate from Sam in comparison. And while I 100% understand not liking the finale, it’s kind of fascinating to me that the finale basically framed it as a final, fantastic Happy Ending for Sam & Dean, they are at peace for all eternity, isn’t that so nice, and parts of the fandom somehow read it as a tragic or unhappy ending. It’s just... so clearly not. It is if you wanted to the story to end another way, but c’mon, the story wasn’t going to end another way. It ended as it started, the Epic Love Story of Sam & Dean.

[the-church-of-beatles]

Please why is SPN s1 using YouTube sound effects💀 It’s happened so often but this one just took me out

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

5oclock in the morning about to watch Past Prologue for the very first time let’s fucking Go 

[supernatural-rewatch-666]

Episode 22 of 327.

It's finale time! Feels weird without Kansas playing haha.

Devil's Trap and most importantly... Bobby!!!

He's so consistent I love him.

His "a storms coming" line! And the devil's Trap on the roof aaaaaa. Iconicccc. How did the brothers get anything done without him.

Gosh the whole scene with John possessed by Yelloweyes was quality! I might hate John but damn Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a fantastic job holy fuck.

And that cliffhanger man I can't believe people had to wait for the next season after that. Lord.

10/10.