Hello! I’m fairly new to Supernatural so forgive me if there’s an obvious answer to this question. But. If there’s no Dean in AU world, how did the apocalypse start? Who was the Righteous Man? Or does it even matter?
Hi hi! And welcome to the wackiness. :)
Honestly, though? We don’t really know. I personally don’t enjoy discussing Dean as the “Righteous Man,” because the person who gave Dean that title was literally the demon who tortured him in Hell. It literally was a quote from the prophecy that he would break the first seal on Lucifer’s cage and begin the apocalypse. It’s not exactly a “nice thing to be.” :P
But I assume that universe had a different set of “prophecies” than our world did. Will we ever learn the full details of it all? Seems unlikely at this point. I’m personally still grumpy that we never learned more about AU Mary’s original deal with Azazel, because nothing will convince me that it was not the same deal OUR Mary accepted.
But yeah, barring any further clarification on the metaphysics of the AU, I don’t know if it does matter in the long run, especially if they end up “closing the door” to that particular world by the end of the next episode.
I suppose whatever AU Michael has looked like all season long was that universe’s version of the Righteous Man? Maybe he was supposed to be Jake Talley’s older brother or something? Who knows?
Or maybe that world’s angels don’t need vessels the same way this universe’s angels do? Maybe those bodies we see there are actually their true forms? Or they are “manufactured by grace” so that angels can manifest themselves that way? I mean we already know they travel via flaming fireball in the sky, unlike angels we’ve always known, you know?
At this point, knowing there’s a good chance that world will be “resealed” by the end of the season finale, there’s not a lot of time left to explore the differences. If we’re never gonna learn about that history, it might be interesting if at least one of the AU people decided to stay in this world, just to give us a “culture shock” sort of viewpoint later on down the line if they were to revisit that person in a future episode, you know? But aside from that, I don’t know if we’ll ever really learn anything more about that world, despite my everlasting disappointment over the fact. :P