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Dean as a Vengeful Ghost

Part 2 and Part 3

Okay so 10x13 made this a really blatant metaphor to the point where it wasn’t even fun to guess at any more since it’s basically text, but I’ve actually been sitting on this one for like a year, and that episode finally pushed me to put this all together, if only to grumble that I was there first and the show stole my meta. :P

(Pre-posting edit as I take 1000 years to write this: dangit 10x16. *shakes fist*

OKAY so this WAS just going to be a “collect the evidence that backs up this metaphor and make a vague argument about the brothers needing to sort their crap out” meta but NOW it’s probably going to have flavours of Destiel because like 100% of the stuff I wrote about Dean’s headspace was bulldozed by that confession.

I hate everything.)

It’s mostly just an exploration of the metaphor, and is the most bro-centric thing I’ll probably write BUT fair warning if you’re not familiar with my stance on the Winchesters as a unit, literally the hypothesis of this is that Dean is haunting Sam specifically and that is a Bad Thing so if you romanticise pretty much anything clingy they’ve said to each other in Carver Era you’re not going to want to click the read more.

Vengeful Ghosts:

The show makes it pretty easy to work out their definition of a vengeful ghost in its own tropes and language: we’ve been seeing vengeful ghosts from the first episode.

They’ve always tied metaphorically to the main story, not least because the boys are motivated constantly by new cycles of revenge any time their generic hero motivation flags. Dean in particular isn’t too far removed from Arya Stark muttering her list of names every night: many times when emotionally arguing for their further motivation Dean will throw in names of invariably dead people they need to keep on fighting for, and keeps a regularly updated shitlist of people to get revenge on (“Welcome to next time.”).

Case Study:

Though we get drabbles about how vengeful ghosts come to be from the start, we get a whole case study in Bobby's arc after he dies.

We start with his death, and see how his entire life was a struggle against anger and losing control, or gaining it back through violence and/or accidental death: not just by what happened with his father but how he left off with Karen before she died (and HOW she died), and even Rufus's re-introduction in Bobby's death is through a case where he almost died because of Bobby (and their mysterious past hinted in season 6 where someone Rufus cared about died because of Bobby is in the background of their interactions after the hints of it in the episode where Rufus died). Obviously these themes of accidental death and injury surround vengeful ghosts; though many were serial killers, others only began a pattern of killing or harming people after their death.

(The ghost in 10x13 never killed anyone until after he was dead. The ghost in Bad Boys is a good example of another ghost pushed to harm entirely on a misguided sense of protection, and she never, presumably, killed anyone in life. Both were able to let go naturally though they had gone vengeful.)

Bobby doesn’t find being a ghost so bad at first, all things considered: he helps his adopted family, reconnects with an old friend, and begins to take advantage of his supernatural ghost powers to participate on regular MotW cases. But he has a rage button (Dick Roman), which, on their first encounter, causes him to lose control and accidentally break Charlie's arm.

From there he becomes much more single-minded about Dick and goes down a dark revenge path with the collateral damage rapidly increasing in both random bystanders being put in harm’s way and his family's feelings. Finally he realises what he's become - rather than let go like with some spirits - even vengeful ones like the one in 10x13 - that we’ve seen reach self-realisation, they have to burn the flask to release his spirit as his motivation for revenge was still very present while Dick was alive and he was unable to move past it. There are multiple ways for a vengeful spirit to be moved on in the show, and few of them go peacefully or willingly.

SAM It wasn't your fault, Bobby – not really.

BOBBY Right. That's just what ghosts turn into. I really bet the farm I could outsmart that.

DEAN So, what's it feel like?

BOBBY What? Going vengeful? It's an itch you can't scratch out. Look... I'm done. Go get Dick. But don't do it 'cause you think it'll scratch the itch. Do it 'cause it's the job. And when it's your time... go.

‘He hasn’t been right since he got back from Purgatory.’

(Dean talking about Cas but hey I’m going to apply it to Dean instead.)

Dean and Cas both metaphorically die at the end of season 7. It half-counts on their death statistics... And importantly does 100% from Sam’s perspective while they’re out. Part of this whole metaphor only works as the perspective Sam and Dean have of each other, and I think it’s important to look at that, especially since with the start of Carver Era there was a lot of emphasis on how they see each other and relate to each other which sets off red flags from the start.

Sam has moved on, mourned Dean and attempted to build a new life - he may not have been coping perfectly and there are still arguments in the fandom going about why he stopped hunting, how right he was to do this, etc, but this is what he did.

Dean's return is like the return of a ghost that destroys the attempt to move on with life and makes letting go impossible while they’re there. This is most notably illustrated in Death Takes A Holiday (4x15) where the presence of the dead boy’s spirit was specifically tied to the mother’s grief, and we saw her ‘recover’ from the grief caused by it immediately when the kid (heh, he was called Cole) moves on. Obviously she would still be sad and need more time to recover if we’d seen her whole story; no one instantly bounces back, but the actual presence of the boy in her life was making recovery impossible.

In Sam and Dean’s case this is especially awkward because Dean is only metaphorically dead.

While neither Dean or Cas actually died, in many ways they did, not least because they both took a hard reset while they were gone. Cas comes back sort of metaphorically reborn, having been technically dead as a character we recognise since the end of season 6.

Dean was, meanwhile, metaphorically dying inside from whatever point you pick to begin his descent (e.g. anywhere from Faith or the first episode of season 2 through to losing Cas at the start of 7 as a final straw) until the end of 7 when he went to Purgatory and ‘died’. Dean is then metaphorically a ghost from the start of Carver Era onwards. (Cas has unfinished business too regarding his penance but despite that being a lot of his motivation early in Carver Era he doesn’t have the whole descent thing to go along with it, so isn’t heralded by ghost tropes.)

The beginning of season 8 sets Dean up as a ghost, explaining his ‘ghost motivation’ if you will - the thing that is still tying him to this world (what he came back for). Season 9 shows his path to vengefulness while season 10 is his vengeful stage and sets up how he might move on and let go.

Ghost Tropes:

Season 8 starts with Dean ‘manifesting’ in the woods (his moment of coming back to the land of the living). I’ve seen it discussed a lot about how the season opener was Dean as the monster, which has been a general theme for Dean seeing as it’s been non-stop descent for him since.

Sam had ditched the phones - Dean had trouble reaching out to him. They had no communication while Dean was ‘dead’ in Purgatory. You can compare Dean’s return and attempts to contact Sam with Bobby attempting to make himself known across multiple episodes in season 7, and also Kevin after his death until 9x14, AND Cas’s return from Purgatory in 8x07, all taking a long time to manifest fully, and struggling to make the first contact until physically present in the same room again.

The clearest timeline of events, taking into account the later Samelia flashbacks, is all that drama with Don happened, Sam was leaving anyway, and headed to the cabin for lack of a better place to go. There he was ambushed by Dean who had only just got back himself, with fate conspiring that it happened in the same span of time. Sam had no way of knowing how long Dean was there: we’re not actually told, and the fortuitous arrival is hand-waved despite Sam telling Dean he didn’t get his messages (part of a long-term theme of lack of communication focussed especially on the Winchesters through the Carver Era - in this case a lack of communication about lack of communication).

Sam returned to the cabin with no expectation of seeing Dean and, from his perspective, finds him haunting it: consider that last time they were there was saying goodbye to Bobby and seeing off the last vengeful ghost in the family. For Sam it’s one haunting to the next: Dean could literally have been dead and haunting the cabin the whole time, and on Sam’s return being ambushed by his supposedly dead brother would have that psychological effect, though he takes it on faith that it’s Dean returned in the flesh and all himself.

There’s a link with him just being there, with the cabin as their tentatively established season 7 base of operations, and with him having been continuing hunting (fighting in Purgatory, a distilled version of their MO) the whole time. Though he wasn’t actually at the cabin, he’s ‘haunting’ a place associated with hunting and Sam has returned to it as well - was he ready to jump back in after Amelia for lack of better things to do, symbolised by his own return to this place associated with their job, and would he have started hunting again anyway without Dean? Literally just rhetorical questions, sorry.

Dean, then...

It all comes back to the family business:

DEAN So you just turned tail on the family business.

SAM Nothing says "family" quite like the whole family being dead.

(8x01)

There is a link between Dean and the family business, hammered into your brain if you were unfortunate enough to marathon on DVDs that wouldn’t automatically skip the “THEN” in the early seasons.

CONTEXT FOR THAT ANNOYING SOUNDBITE BECAUSE CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT:

SAM Then let's get these people back to town and let's hit the road. Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?

DEAN This is why.

DEAN comes around to SAM's front and holds up John's journal.

DEAN This book. This is Dad's single most valuable possession—everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he's passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.

SAM shakes his head.

SAM That makes no sense. Why doesn't he just—call us? Why doesn't he—tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?

DEAN I dunno. But the way I see it, Dad's giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it.

SAM Dean...no. I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about.

(1x02)

No, but seriously: for Dean it is always much more about the ‘family’ business than it was for Sam. That soundbite (that Crowley reminds them of at the end of season 8 along with the actual callback to Wendigo in the cold open) was Dean pressing on Sam the importance of continuing the work in general, not following through with the A plot with no distractions (as Sam made clear he saw MotW episodes in season 1 and, it seems, often still does - as well as utilising them to distract Dean (e.g. in 10x12 when he wants Dean to stop mouldering in his room)).

I think for ghost!Dean the link to the ‘family business’ is the most unfortunate part. It is frequently stressed throughout the show that hunting monsters in the abstract is his reason to continue; that he will continue doing it until he can’t any more (the opening stretch of MotW episodes in season 10, especially highlighted in the broment at the start of 10x05, stresses this can’t-stop-moving feeling in particular, along with the line about it being Dean’s peace that follows the ghost moving on in 10x13, but it’s a constant theme that has just been highlighted this season along with every aspect of Dean being put under the spotlight).

This makes the family business double with the ghost-related concept of unfinished business.

His unfinished business is bound up in the ongoing never-ending family business, which, just like in the opening of season 1, Sam is dragged into by Dean’s arrival back in his normal life. Mirroring the start of their on-show relationship, Dean’s return as a ‘ghost’ in season 8 drags Sam back in identically, but this is the dark shadow of season 1 where Sam at least had motivation as drilled into him by John that avenging your blonde partner who dies in a white dress on the ceiling surrounded by fire requires grim pursuit - but Sam doesn't have that motivation to continue this time (You could say he never bought into the ‘family business’ thing as season 1 in particular features frequent fall outs from Sam wanting to move on with the main plot and Dean focussing on the episode by episode hunt - circumstances continually roll on until the end of season 7 which is the first time he finds himself without a plot hook to force him to continue).

Not to mention:

DEAN I can't believe what I'm hearing. Sam, we have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. We take Kevin to the tablet, he tells us the spell, we send every demon back to hell – forever. Every single bastard that destroyed our lives, killed our mother, killed Jess. And you're not sure?

(8x01)

Actual Jess reference. From Dean, not Sam.

John drilled the general mindset of hunting and looking after Sam into Dean so his motivation to follow the family business is much more consistent as it hinges on an idea, not a person. While Sam is what Dean is specifically haunting (e.g. Sam = Bobby’s flask), the family business is how Dean is haunting.

While Bobby’s unfinished business was with Dick in particular: something to take vengeance against with a clear face and end point, Dean’s is much murkier and his rage button is not hunting in general, but anything that threatens the status quo of eternal mindless Monster of the Week hunting with his brother, emphasis on anything that hurts/kills Sam.

This callback Dean comes up with of people they need to be constantly avenging also emphasises Dean’s never-let-go mindset. Sam has moved on and loved again a couple of times since then (he expressly uses the word ‘love’ to relate to Amelia); never forgetting Jess but she is at rest to him.

Just as Dean can’t let things even from that long ago that weren’t his battle rest, he can’t rest either.

SAM Look, I'm not saying I'm bailing on you. I'm just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something.

DEAN So, what we do doesn't count?

(8x03)

This is also part of the ongoing language that suggests death/funerals surrounding them. People mostly use the language of their time ‘counting’ in reference to thoughts of their own mortality or imagining looking back on their life from the end of it. Saying someone else’s time counted is of course a common thing to say at funerals and in the memory of someone’s death.

Sam and Dean both have a different feeling what what ‘counts’ in their life, and Sam's is something which can have resolution/end (and be an endgame): Dean’s trapped in an endless progression:

(a couple of lines earlier)

SAM Or... maybe you don't need me. I mean, maybe you're at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world's crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody.

Dean’s time can't ‘count’ with a neat conclusion and end point because he can’t see a way to break the cycle of what they do. Purgatory was an endless cycle of killing monsters to no specific point except to kill them (at least after they found Cas), but while he was there he was at his ‘peace’ in a way with the purity of it representing his simplest mode of functioning. He had motivations within there but day to day it was just killing monsters. And as long as they exist he will ALWAYS have unfinished business (putting him in Purgatory where only monsters exist just highlights this).

SAM Look, it wasn't like I was... just oblivious. I mean, I read the paper every day. I saw the weird stories… the kind of stuff we used to chase.

DEAN And you said what? "Not my problem"?

SAM Yes. And you know what? The world went on.

DEAN People died, Sam.

SAM People will always die, Dean. Or maybe another hunter took care of it. I don't know, but the point is, for the first time, I realized that it wasn't only up to me to stop it.

(8x01)

Sam has seen a way to break the cycle and mentally disassociate himself from the exact thing Dean can’t. His Amelia storyline served to show that the cycle can be broken, and though it was not perfect and he and Amelia mostly related because of how broken and messed up they both felt, they were on a healing path with Sam moving away from the exact cycle Dean is stuck in.

That Time Dean Was Actually A Vengeful Ghost

We actually did get to explore Dean-as-a-vengeful-ghost at the start of the Carver Era, in Southern Comfort.

It forced the issue by giving people literal vengeful ghost equivalent motivations and actions while they were still up and kicking, and caused the first real list-based litany of grievances from Dean. These parts stand out regarding the discussion of vengeful ghost Dean and his haunting of Sam:

DEAN You should have looked for me when I was in Purgatory.

DEAN You never even wanted this life. Always blamed me for pulling you back into it.

DEAN Yeah, I might have lied, but I never once betrayed you. I never once left you to die. And for what, a girl? You left me to die for a girl?

(8x06)

The phrasing is "always blamed me for dragging you back into it".

That this is said as part of his forced vengefulness is interesting - though he’s passive aggressively blaming Sam for not wanting to continue hunting with him (see above: their misunderstandings about what the other wants from them and what they want for the other that doesn’t match up to what they want for themselves), the focus with this phrasing seems to be much more on WHY they are together, and what would be keeping Dean there if he was a literal ghost. That, for Dean, is Sam (and at this point we’ve already seen him come untethered when Sam is dead early in the show.)

If Sam is what is tethering Dean then hearing that what tethers him doesn’t seem to be an equivalent exchange where if Sam died he’d come back and haunt Dean (metaphorically or not I can't even tell :P) upsets Dean.

DEAN Benny has been more of a brother to me this past year than you've ever been! That's right. Cas let me down. You let me down. The only person that hasn't let me down is Benny.

(I’ll get to Benny. Also, worth noting where Dean puts Cas on this list, given the list Sam gives back to Dean in 8x23, AND the phrasing ‘let me down’ considering this is one episode before Cas comes back and Dean spends half of it harping on how he thinks HE let CAS down.)

He’s seeing Sam supposedly value him less than he values Sam, which is messed up and kind of inaccurate on many levels because Sam -

A: has his own massively unhealthy problems with his relationship with Dean as the end of the season will show when he picks Dean over fixing the universe as much as Dean picks Sam over it, plus it's not like the stuff with Amelia was happy Sam, merely desperately trying to keep afloat and rediscover what normal is even meant to look like Sam. And -

B: Dean's issues with Sam are all bound up with the enormous unfair burden that he had in being forced to raise Sam with all the responsibility a kid shouldn't have had an how unhealthy being forced into a parental role to a sibling is etc etc, old argument, codependency is bad and so on.

So who can actually let go?

8x14 (Trial and Error) also has some serious arguing about their roles and endgame which reflect their opinions: after the early season 8 fighting about what they’re in it for, Dean has actually developed his views and picked up hope for Sam getting out, but this seems to have brought out the side of him that still can’t see himself in the same position (and as with their season 9 fight, shades of not being able to let go of Sam to let him go live the normal life and Dean continue on alone come into it), so he assumes his only way out is burning up fast. (Don’t worry I’ll get to 10x16.)

The Trials are the first opportunity that comes along for him to burn out and as a bonus, they put an actual genuine end to their endless unfinished business, and leave the world safe for Sam to have this ending he imagines:

SAM So, what -- you just up and decided it's gonna be you?

DEAN I'm a grunt, Sam. You're not. You've always been the brains of this operation.

DEAN And you told me yourself that you see a way out. You see a light at the end of this ugly-ass tunnel. I don't. But I tell you what I do know -- it's that I'm gonna die with a gun in my hand. 'Cause that's what I have waiting for me -- that's all I have waiting for me. I want you to get out. I want you to have a life -- become a man of Letters, whatever. You, with a wife and kids and -- and -- and grandkids, living till you're fat and bald and chugging Viagra -- that is my perfect ending, and it's the only one that I'm gonna get. So I'm gonna do these trials. I'm gonna do them alone -- end of story. You're staying here. I'm going out there. If landshark comes knocking, you call me. If you try to follow me, I'm gonna put a bullet in your damn leg.

[...]

SAM I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I'm sorry you don't -- I am. But it's there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it.

DEAN Sam, be smart.

SAM I AM smart, and so are you. You're not a grunt, Dean. You're a genius -- when it comes to lore, to -- you're the best damn hunter I have ever seen -- better than me, better than dad. I believe in you, Dean. So, please -- please believe in me, too.

Incidentally that last line is part of the Sam side of their endless issues which I’ll have to get to when I talk about 8x23 because Sam’s rebuttal is almost perfect until he gets to that point of not thinking Dean believes in him. We get less from Sam until it all comes bursting out at the end, but more than anything that one little line there underlines that, in fact, Sam is just as likely to end up haunting Dean as Dean is haunting Sam. I’m sure he’d be delighted to know.

(Part 2 here)

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