what drives me a little insane about Charming Acres is that it's a male fantasy created by a scared white old man but it's also enforced by women (specifically the labor of women, more on Ms Dowling vs Cindy Smith later) who act a little bit like Mary/Eve, aka as regulators deciding who must stay (Cindy) and who must leave (Sunny). Much to think about that but also! It connects so wonderfully with my obession with the themes of "the danger/charm of families one marries into" and "access to the Normal World in SPN is always via a woman (and her labor)". The first pertains to John Winchester whose whole life was founded on lies upon lies, the second to his sons who seem to follow in his footsteps thinking that a woman would "fix" their issues and allow them to "escape" from their world, their reality. Women are fictions that can save (or damn), that can lock you out of heaven or welcome you back in. And, of course, these are all invented narratives (the madonna/whore dichotomy) but they also show how much these ideas are ingrained in the (male) characters' minds. They don't actually need a psychic making them "buy into" a fiction because, in a way, they've mind-controlled themselves into being slaves of these narratives . But they're also the perpetrators (the authors, if you will) of these narratives that they inflict upon others (for example, the women and men of Charming Acres) and, primarily, upon themselves (hence, Chip getting trapped in his own mind where he can be happy without harming others which, if we want to go there, can also translate into: in order to be happy you will inevitably hurt people). In other words, there is a "chip" inside these characters' minds that must be destroyed. So apart from madonna/whore (which is more related to possession and consent) the second interesting dichotomy in SPN is that of the master/slave (which is more related to mind control) which is, basically, the blueprint for all the other dichotomies in the show.
When, at the end of S14, Jack wills a world without lies into existence (committing yet another act of mind control) three things become violently apparent: the world itself is not as it is but it's as we narrate it to ourselves first and to others second, aka a fiction ("Breakdown" is also about this as well); lies are not only necessary but inherently essential for the world to function, aka lies are the basis of Order; Chuck doesn't simply act as a deus ex machina because, on the meta level, he's also an author here, an author that's actually needed in order to keep the illusion going, aka the world ceases to operate without a white man telling lies and pushing buttons. This means that there is no other option beyond the master/slave dichotomy which in turns means that the whole of S15 is just a display of suffering leading nowhere. Like, the show had made up its mind about the message it wanted to convey by "Moriah": you need an author because, without one, the world is in Chaos from which stories are impossible to tell because they need imagined and arbitrary beginnings and endings, aka they need some sort of Order AND "lies". Not only that, you need a hands-on God because without an author planning, scheming, deviating, inventing, interfering, aka being present, the story either ceases to exist or, if it still does exist, it's a boring story, a re-run nobody's really interested in anymore.
And this is why, to me, all the meta madness of S15 is both cool (to a certain point) and dangerous (very much so) because it literalizes fiction which is always something very dangerous to do (see: the whole history of Christianity). But it also fictionalizes reality which is also very harmful, especially if the author god in question is a white man with close to limitless power and full-on unhingedness. So, in the end, women are fictions invented by men, about men and for other men, but so are men: fictions by men, about men and for other men. Ultimate reality is, therefore, the Fiction of Man, precisely of a white man, and there is no escape from that because the show cannot imagine power other than a relation between master and slave. And, look, my intentions are not to shit on SPN because at least a good 80% of TV shows are white man-centered and can't imagine power in any other way, but I hold a grudge towards its finale because I think SPN could've done a tiny bit better than describing Jack as "top dog" (which is in total and absolute contradiction with the fact that, apparently, Amara and Jack are in "harmony". I mean, come on, this is bad writing, period).
So Chuck's story, the Fiction of (White) Man can only "end" the same way it "began", which is to go back to the "In the beginning..." (and how many Genesis do we have in SPN?, it is a bit exhuasting, really, lol). In "Inherit the Earth" (and let's quickly remember who the subject of that sentence is: the meek, the meek shall inherit the earth), Chuck, not so subtly, reverted Earth to its "origins" and what we are left with are Dean, Sam and Jack, aka Adam, Eve and the snake. But this time there is no escape from this "Paradise" because, as I said above, the only ways to "escape" are via marrying into another family or via a woman's labor. In this episode, however, there is no "escape" because 1. the only family you can marry into is your own family (:|) and 2. there are no women (brrr). The only solution is, then, to go back to how things were before, to the status quo, by cheating and self-sacrifice.
Finally, in this light the "destiny/free will" dichotomy is reduced as follows: "destiny" is perceived as being (ab)used and controlled by a master (aka being a slave), therefore "free will" is being the one who (ab)uses and is in control (aka being the master). Which means that "free will" for one means "destiny" for another. Or: there is no real sense of collectiveness and community in the show (this is why the world must disappear and the only characters left are the ones mentioned above). I think, maybe, the answer is that, ultimately, control is never questioned because fundamentally the show thinks that control in the hands of one IS not only possible but necessary. And while it can go as far as to at least explore (to a very limited degree) why controlling someone else's body is (possession/consent etc), indeed, wrong, it just cannot do the same when it comes to a more "invisible" control, that of the mind. Which means that the show cannot imagine anything past the master/slave dichotomy. And I think this limitation was reinforced by the meta-fication of the show: on one hand it's a cool concept, on the other they put themselves into a corner because there is no show without someone actually controlling and performing the narrative both for an audience and for profit. Hence, the final shot where the fourth wall is broken, all masks are revealed and we're back to "Moriah" where Jack tells people to "stop lying": what remains is the audience feeling disappointed and realizing that we do want an Author because we want more fiction and we want our stories to make sense. We can even yield control for more fiction which is, of course, a human but also horrifying attitude (and by the way this is 100% relevant to contemporary discourses about generative AI and authorship so I predict SPN will keep interest people in the near future, mark my words).
Ultimately SPN feels "scammy" to me because it feels like Charming Acres: we as audience have been lured into this interesting fiction, the fiction we craved, but, at the very last second, the show has closed itself off into his own "fictionality". It's like "The Truman Show" where Truman is actually SPN that "excused" itself and went out the fake-sky door. Which turns us, the audience, into Christoff, the author/god/director who gets "defeated" by Truman leaving the stage, who gets to "spy" on the "author-less" characters against their fight for... "free will". SPN finale basically removes the author (here to be read as the people who create the story) as "filter" and leaves, on a meta level, the characters alone with the audience who, obvi, reveal themselves as actors because it's fiction, not reality, baby.
In other words, the audience can't "own" the story. We might be like Becky and, perhaps, even be better at writing that story but we're not its authors. Of course, this is totally an uncool way to end a story and a cruel low blow to the audience that actually made it even possible but, again, very relevant to the current scenario we live in: there is a metaphorical "chip" that feeds on our info, shapes our reality and is also generating our fictions. We're becoming authors, characters and audience of our own fictions but.... are they really our own? What do we see when we see our own narratives played out in front of our eyes? Can we claim authorship? Why do we want authorship and how fair is it to claim it as our own? Aren't we all a little bit characters trapped inside our minds? Can we escape from this? How does a manifest, individual "author" fare against an immanent, occult one? What are the alternatives we can come up with? Can we imagine power differently? These and many other questions may legitimately arise :P.
