Shout out to the Fan Fiction episode (10x5) for literally stating what SPN is about as a show:
Free Will.
A line that they sing during the play’s first half, specifically regarding John’s raising of the boys into hunters:
"He took away our own free will".
This is an echo that the show itself has already spoken to us on numerous occasions throughout the story so far:
Dean’s struggle with free will and identity once John is gone and no longer giving orders for him to follow. This also directly parallels what Cas goes through in his search for God in later seasons.
Sam choosing to be good despite the pre-determined role of ‘cursed child’ being thrust upon him as a baby, a fight that also reflects free will versus a scripted ending.
Castiel having to consistently choose between following the part he was picked to play as Chuck’s pawn or choosing free will to help Sam and Dean fight back against the script.
The famous ‘Team Free Will’ and ‘Team Free Will 2.0’ titles that Dean himself claims for them as protagonists.
But the Fan Fiction episode is the first time I feel it is so explicitly stated as an overall theme of ‘Supernatural’ as a story.
It draws the parallels again for us, and then has these very specific lines that almost jump out and scream ‘its literally being said now!’
So, you can definitely claim that it’s a show about two brothers, hunting monsters, family doesn’t end in blood, finding peace when they’re done, chuck won, etc… which is all technically true!
But in the end, the simplest way to describe the theme of Supernatural is actually Free Will.
Simply fighting to have the freedom to choose for yourself what ending you get, what choices you make, who you are as a person; which is exactly why the ending we got was not connected to the story.
In the end, they never really got to pick or choose anything about their lives - the network did.
Or rather, they did try and choose, over the course of 15 years, and the network decided to make all of those choices obsolete.
And what I find so funny is that this specific episode also predicted that for us as well:
Marie tells Dean, “As you know, Chuck stopped writing after "Swan Song." I just... I couldn't leave it the way that it was. I mean, Dean not hunting anymore, Living with *Lisa*, Sam somehow back from Hell but not with Dean? So, um, I wrote my own ending.”
When Dean tells Marie what actually happened, she responds by laughing and calling it the “worst fan-fiction she’s ever heard”, asking where his friend found that garbage.
And then we got an ending where: Sam was not with Dean, Dean was not with Cas, and while Dean was hunting, he died from a rookie mistake and was clearly miserable with his newfound freedom. Not to mention, by Season 15, we knew that Dean did not actually view hunting as his preferred life, but rather something he felt he had to do to be worthy of surviving through all the loss.
Anyways, thats my rant for the night as my current rewatch spins around in my head untethered by what-if futures - we were robbed by the finale, and they know it.
