i keep thinking about dean and mary having so many parallels but the one that really, really breaks my heart is how they are both people who never got to simply be themselves.
mary is a hunterâs daughter, johnâs wife, sam and deanâs mother. dean is johnâs soldier and partner, samâs protector, the older brother. they are both constantly defined by their relationships to other people. by what they offer to other people.
mary is not allowed to simply be mary.
dean is not allowed to simply be dean.
dean inherits not only maryâs appearance and characteristics but her tragedy , the tragedy of being loved for what you represent to others instead of being allowed to exist as your own person.
and the most heartbreaking thing about their dynamic is that when they confront each other, they hit each otherâs deepest wounds. they both unknowingly hold each otherâs biggest insecurities and the expectations placed on them.
dean begs mary to âfinallyâ be his mother but maryâs response âiâm not just a mother and youâre not a childâ is devastating because yes sheâs right about herself and it shows maryâs own wound. she refuses to become trapped by expectations again. she rightfully refuses to be reduced only to âsam and deanâs motherâ and yet, tragically, in protecting herself from that role, she ends up denying dean the one thing he has spent his whole life craving, permission to be her child, be a child. because to dean, being âa childâ means so much more than literally being young. it doesnât mean he wants to start again and be a kid just to have maryâs motherly affection, to him it means not having to carry every other role that was forced onto him. It means existing outside of expectations. it means being allowed to simply be dean, not johnâs soldier, not samâs protector, not the person who has to hold everything together. when dean says âi never was a childâ heâs talking about identity. heâs saying he never got the chance to be his own person before he became something for everyone else. he never got to exist without responsibility attached to him.
for mary, itâs a rejection of being reduced only to motherhood. she spent her whole life being defined by other people and she desperately wants to be seen as just ââmaryâ but for dean who is essentially asking her to acknowledge the child who was never given the chance to exist, its invalidation. and how awful it is that itâs coming from someone whoâs just like him.
they are both begging the other person to see them beyond what everyone needed them to be but theyâre so hurt that they canât recognize that theyâre asking for the same thing
And while mary seems to finally find her own voice and reclaim an identity beyond everyone elseâs expectations, dean never really gets that chance, instead, he dies thanking sam for standing up to their dad.
that line absolutely destroys me because it shows that the wound never actually closed. after everything dean lived through, his childhood is still the thing haunting him. his final moments reveal that the little boy who wished he could stand up to their father and have an identity outside of the roles forced on him.
he never finds the same resolution mary does. He never truly learns who dean winchester is outside of all those âroleâ. the roles simply end because his life ends.