You know what, I can't even blame Jack for deciding to be a hands-off god, even independent of the bad example Chuck set and his logic of "I'm not going to write myself into the story."
The kid is, what, all of three? Four? Years old by 15x19, and in that time has:
lost his mom and had to deal with the fact that he was the reason she was dead;
lost his soul (and got it back),
lost his dad twice—the first before he even knew him and the second after he was perma-killed by the homophobic narrative that put Bury Your Gays as the solution to a nearly left-field screwball problem;
grappled with the fact that his actual father is The Devil From The Bible;
burnt his shitty deadbeat bio dad to a shrivelled, crispy husk after...
his blood was used in a ritual to try and resurrect said shitty deadbeat bio dad;
accidentally killed or was responsible for the deaths/grievous injuries of a good portion of his friends and a swath of innocent bystanders;
accidentally killed his quasi-grandmother and blamed himself after he got his soul back, and was continuously blamed for both the act and his response;
had multiple people ask "what are you", as though he is an abomination and not a person worthy of basic decency (like not being rude af to his face);
perpetually assumed to be Just Like His Father (he is. He is. He's everything Cas was when he and Gabriel stood on the shore and watched that stupid little not-fish wriggle its way onto land, perpetually awed and enamoured with the world) and that he's going to corrupt or hurt people on purpose;
was turned into a walking bomb;
had to hear one of his "more dads than most" parental figures say, out loud, that he wasn't family and that cosmic murder-suicide was the only way out and they should all be hunky-dory a-okay about it.
Like holy childhood trauma, Batman. He basically speed-ran the entirety of the show's emotional arc in three seasons. They had to ice both regular Bobby (and honestly even apocalypse world Bobby who knows first-hand how hard Jack tries) before the end because if either of them heard that shit Dean would have been seeing stars.
"What if we want to, you know, grab a beer or something," Sam asks, after his failure to respond appropriately to the 'not family' comment goes unacknowledged by the narrative, "would you be around?" And Jack says "I'm in everything, so I'm always around" like the polite young man he is, so much like his mother and raised by a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent hell bent on making the world a better place. He gives a non-answer instead of what should have been a resounding "fuck you guys, actually, for all of that, goodbye and good riddance," which honestly was more than Sam or Dean deserved. Any post-finale fix-it also needs to grapple with a lot of pent-up hurt and rightful divine anger instead of making Jack a totally goofy kid with sad/hurt feelings desperate for Dean's approval where he should be appropriately reserved and distant. Clare needs to take God to a rage room. They both deserve it. Quasi-sibling bonding, or whatever.
They should have done the whole 'Jack brings everyone back right at the exact moment they were raptured' bit and then when they're all walking to the car he just pops away without a goodbye. Smash-cut to him putting a little potted plant in the window of the house in Kelly's private heaven, or—the far more painful option—in a garden somewhere feeling all the life in it thrum and having a bee land on his hand. Jack cradles the bee in his palm and holds it up close to his face. Close-up of them "eye to eye" because. You know. It's a bee. But the bee is also a metaphor for how even if Cas isn't with him he isn't gone. Music swells into something bittersweet. Credits. But that would have required the writers to give a shit about anyone, including the audience.
I would say "Jack should have been meaner" but while both are incredibly powerful, and occasionally appropriately wrathful, neither he or Cas had a mean bone in their body and it would have been out of character. Stripping the boys of their narrative arc protection in the Episode We Don't Talk About and having Dean die in the most basic bitch-ass way was enough. I hate the death scene and the way they treated Cas' sacrifice from a writing perspective, but honestly Chuck would never have let Dean go out like that because it wasn't interesting. It was normal. It was like if Dean was just a regular degular hunter instead of hero who saves the world on the reg. Jack doesn't give a fuck though, even if he was offered a half-assed explanation.
"I am in everything, but I'm going to be a more hands-off god. I don't want to make the same mistakes Chuck did [like caring too much about what you, specifically, think of me]." So sayeth the Lord, indeed.
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
titsay
snowghoul
stormborns
kaledo-art
gummygunk
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
