preface: I apologize that this became a novella!
I talked to another friend about this when I hit Swan Song on rewatch back in December, and one of the things that kills me is that narration is so warm and loving. he's not dictating what they do, but commenting on how remarkable they are. the devil doesn't know or car what kind of car the boys drive... when it was clear, they’d park her in the middle of nowhere, sit on the hood, and watch the stars for hours, without saying a word. it never occurred to them that, sure, maybe they never really had a roof and four walls, but they were never, in fact, homeless... up against good, evil, angels, devils, destiny, and God himself, they made their own choice. they chose family, and well, isn’t that kinda the whole point? no doubt, endings are hard. but then again, nothing ever really ends does it?
THEY MADE THEIR OWN CHOICE. and that was the point! the story itself is defined by that! Chuck is PROUD OF THEM FOR IT. Cas asks, what would you rather have, peace or freedom? the answer was ALWAYS FREEDOM, it was never ever "Dean can only find peace in desth, actually," and I know another decade passed and they went through literal and metaphorical hell over and over, and it ground them down and it re-traumatized Dean, and they all changed. the Swan Song ending is beautiful and important, and I cherish it. I also (mildly unpopular opinion) don't believe it was something feasible for Dean anymore, nor would he have chosen it again (not that he had a civilian life to go to this time around). if the boys had retired from hunting, which I do think was possible for them, it would've been a joint decision. I do believe Dean deserved some time and space to clear his head and sort through things on his own, I also believe he would always have come home, but I'd also get that not being what he'd do too - the fact remains that what he needed was the POSSIBILITY. (Sam "recovering" to marry blurry wife and have replacement goldfish after losing his brother like that is even more absurd to me than any idea about Dean, however. that's not what Sam wanted, and it's a hopelessly mundane, hollow ending for him as much as Dean's is brutal. Dabb thought reverting them to cutouts of the people they were in the pilot was "full circle"? Dabb thought murdering Dean on a hunt connected to John was full circle? lmao no. that's not what full circle means! that's erasure of fifteen years of storytelling and development, is what that is!) not wanting the "apple pie" life doesn't mean they couldn't have found other things to do and new ways to live! the beigeness of it all. it's suffocating. this is Supernatural!!! where is the supernatural, the intrigue and the flavor, in that ending?
I don't understand how a show so powerfully about free will, about making your decisions, choosing your own path and fate, finding hope amidst the darkness, asserting your agency...how a story with we're making it up as we go and the idea that love is the most radically free thing we can do...ended with it's heart run through and the idea of free will burned to the ground, nor how people think this is FITTING? (I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I've talked about this ad infinitum on my own blog, but HOW?! IT GUTS EVERYTHING.) the Chuck of S15 who was destroying worlds and "cancelling shows" and yelling in the Winchesters' faces about their defiance was not the character who gently narrated Swan Song. it's impossible to make that fit. he was an author self-insert there, yes, and that palpable warmth is part of that, but he was imo an author self-insert at the end too, used very differently, to convey disdain towards the characters, the story, and the audience. it's psychologically so bizarre if that's how Dabb chose to speak through the narrative. make yourself the villain, lay out the horrible ending, have the audience surrogate character say, no, this is awful, you can't do this, ELIMINATE HER, and then end it that way anyway.
Dean, particularly, lost so much and grappled in such serious ways with the road taken, with choices made, that making them puppets on Chuck's marionette strings was the cruelest possible thing that could be done to him, besides his horrible, pointless death itself (second is having his mother murdered again). I additionally don't understand how he got painted as the insane rage monster when Sam and Cas had their own very important themes of free will, too - THEY WERE TEAM FREE WILL - they should've all been losing their minds together. Sam had that brief bout of depression that he seemed to simply shake off (not how depression works, and it could be argued Sam was chronically having difficulty with that throughout Dabb era and that it's part of why his emotions seemed flattened, they just didn't care to explore it, but I digress). but Dean legitimately spiraling into a breakdown? yeah. that makes sense. he had the right to lose his mind over that, about not knowing what was true or real. what was even his. this could have been interesting except he was depicted as being wrong for clawing at it? he was depicted as not being able to survive? Dean?! THEE DEAN?! he was broken on the wheel of that and instead of giving him catharsis, it was, well, time for you to brutally die now that you finally have your freedom! what?! disrespectful is absolutely what it is. disrespectful is an understatement. I'm not letting some petty man who, for inexplicable reasons, seemed to want to smash all his toys, completely erase the narrative themes and truths that existed for eleven years prior. who seemed to want to slam every door and imaginative possibility shut. to put it bluntly, fuck that noise.
I simply reject the existence of this arc in the earlier seasons. Chuck was being vindictive in dabbera and lied in an attempt to destroy them, but they were always free. the finale? we don't know her. nothing ever really ends. they were, and always will be, their own. their choices, their fight, their variations of transformative love. isn't THAT kind of the whole point?
