Thoughts on “Dean deserved better” and “the writers betrayed their fanbase”
Alright. Yes, hello, I’m apparently writing Supernatural meta in the year 2020; this is where we’re at. I have so many goddamn things to say about the finale (and more specifically, fandom’s reaction to it) but that seems like a huge fucking topic, so let’s just take it one piece at a time I guess, starting here:
“Dean deserved better.”
That’s a take I keep seeing floating around. Don’t get me wrong, Dean’s death was tragic. I’ve seen close-ups on the papers lining his desk at the beginning of the finale, and they appear to be job applications. That, coupled with his domestic, pie festival montage with Sam, makes his death so fucking sad. What a knife to the heart, for real.
But “Dean deserved better” as an argument for why the finale should have gone a different way is… odd to me.
Of course Dean deserved better. They both did. Sam and Dean have deserved better their entire lives. They deserved to be raised as something besides child soldiers. They deserved to have a future to look forward to beyond a young, bloody death. They deserved to have lives made of things beyond constant fighting, pain, and driving from one end of the country to another.
Those lives, those things they deserved, were sacrificed at every turn, first by John (and arguably by God himself), and frequently by Sam and Dean themselves. They gave up what they deserved for each other and the greater good. This sacrifice is at the heart of their heroism. Happiness and peace was never part of the bargain, and I would say Dean knew that, maybe better than anyone else on the show.
Speaking of better, do you know who else deserved better? Bobby. Ellen and Jo. Charlie. Kevin. Basically every single person who has died on this show, because that’s the point of the show. Everyone dies too young and bloody: that’s the life of a hunter. It was never meant to be aspirational. There is no comfort here.
Dean has been passively suicidal since season 1, ready to die for any noble cause because death was the only way he could think of to stop. (It’s tragic; it really is. That tragedy is one of the pieces at the center of my own particular fascination with Dean.)
Dean’s death wasn’t a surprise to Dean, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to us. Shocking? Absolutely. But Dean knew the risks, and so did we. Frankly, it’s a fucking miracle that he and Sam have managed to stay alive this long, and they mostly haven’t. Dean has died 114 times over the course of the show. He was once killed by a bad taco and faulty electrical wiring. Those deaths carried different narrative weight because they weren’t final, and yet. Signs of the times.
Dean was only ever meant to be human. Personally, I love how utterly random and low-stakes his death was, because to me, that’s at the heart of the show. The aesthetic of the show changed over the years, and with it, so did Sam and Dean—they went from two average dudes from Kansas to Men of Letters legacies—but no matter what they were, they were never meant to be anything more than human. Hunting was always a dangerous job. It could have always ended at any time, on any hunt. I’ve seen people complaining that Dean went out on a run-of-the-mill MOTW hunt, and if anything, I think the fact that we lost the stakes in MOTW hunts is an indictment of the show. Remember how dangerous the first few MOTW monsters felt? The woman in white? The wendigo? Bloody Mary?
Yeah. Yeah, that. I missed that. It was nice to go back.
I’m not even going to touch the “Dean died of tetanus” takes. If they’re jokes, they’re jokes meant for someone who isn’t me. If they’re serious takes, they’re bad takes probably tossed out by people whose only experience of the finale comes through the grapevine, and I’m not particularly interested in engaging with them.
Moving on:
“The writers betrayed their fanbase.”
I see this general sentiment being expressed from a few different angles, but this is perhaps the one I’m most interested in: the idea that the people involved in the creation of this show owed viewers the kind of ending they wanted to see. I’ve seen complaints that this has harmed people’s mental health, especially people who particularly identified with Dean or those who wanted to see a Destiel endgame.
I’m not unsympathetic to mental anguish brought on by fiction. Sometimes it blindsides you. Sometimes it turns out that your love for the thing has roots way down deep in your psyche, and that shit hurts more than you ever imagined it would. I get it, I do.
But the short version of my thoughts on the idea that the writers owe any of us anything is, “No, you’re wrong.”
I’m saying this as both a writer and someone who is highly invested in Supernatural, as someone with mental illness diagnoses of my own and a person who has been in a sadness funk ever since the finale came out (5 days and counting). There is no contractual writer/viewer obligation. You are free to leave whenever you want; you can turn off the TV at any time. The writers don’t owe you anything for the time and love you have put into this show; your devotion has bought you nothing. That isn’t to say that your devotion or your love for this media is worthless. I would never, ever say that. However, it does not represent any sort of buy-in that the CW or any of its staff would recognize.
The boys’ deaths (and Sam’s life without Dean) are devastating, but I’m not sure who gave anyone the idea that the ending wouldn’t hurt us. This entire show has been steeped in tragedy from the jump. It’s a Hobbesian hellscape that buys into the idea that life is nasty, brutish, and short. Problems are solved with fists here. Even the one who loves you best, who’d sell his soul for you, might punch you in the face, might betray you to save you. God is a man-child who can’t even be evil elegantly; instead, he’s a writing hack who’s full of himself and petty as the day is long. This is the show we’ve been watching.
And yet the ending was, somehow, elegant. Hallelujah, I’m fucking surprised.
This show was momentous. It had a fifteen year runtime, longer than any other live-action fantasy series. The writers and actors had the chance to tell the kind of deep, heart-wrenching ending that very few people ever get to tell, one that has all the weight of fifteen years of love and devotion behind it. We grew with these characters. Many of us literally grew up with them. They feel like familiar, old friends. Our love brought the rocketfuel that made that ending explosive.
Frankly, I find that amazing.
You couldn’t have paid me enough to give up the chance to write an ending that resonated that deeply, that shook the hearts of so many people. Fifteen years of buildup is a writer’s dream. That we got a happily ever after on top of that is just the icing on the cake. (Look at Swan Song as the original intended ending: that’s a real tragedy. We all got off easy.)
