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I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired.

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

15x09 promo — OH BOY!!!!!

The Return to Purgaytory, friends.

I can’t even begin to speculate (and I typically don’t base my spec on promos considering they aren’t always accurate :P)

We know Dean’s prayer to Cas takes place in 15x09. Everything, past and present, unsaid wounds and badly healed bonds, will culminate in the next few eps, and I’m READY to clown around *blows kazoo*

Your tears, Dean. They’re streaming down your face. You ‘can’t stop it’, ‘no matter how bad you want to’ what? Stop being angry at Cas? Can’t stop loving him? Can’t stop thinking none of this — your family, your feelings — is real?

What will it take for Dean to open his self-perceived unworthy heart? Losing Cas one final time?

Rowena told Cas and Dean to “fix it”, before it’s too late.

It’s never too late to start all over again.

Or is it?

I’m ready to die by Bobo Berens’ emotive, talented hand.

Oh. My. Gosh.

I plan to write something tomorrow, but all I can say for now is -- YOCKEY KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK. WHAT A FITTING EXIT FOR HIM!!

Another major thing 15x05 inferred --> CAS IS THE KEY.

He’s the driving force, the narrative impetus, who shall unlock Dean and Sam (especially DEAN)’s free will.

He’s MONUMENTAL to this narrative, to this long-running story, and always has been.

Silent storytelling returns!!

Cas is visually “perched” on Dean’s left shoulder, looking on despite the raw marital discord they’re experiencing...despite Dean’s hopeless thoughts of their absent free will.

In the face of everything God exploited, Cas is BEYOND adamant to tell his spouse, with conviction, that what they have — who they are together — is real. They’ll find a way. *clutches chest in PRIDE at Cas’ extremely humanized self-awareness*

As in all good, complex storytelling, the storm must pass first. These two still aren’t on the same page *rips hair out* (but there was significant progress—hell, the D/C school scene in itself was something I was looking forward to!! Dean FINALLY used his words, verbalizing that he was mad at Chuck, at all of it. They were guinea pigs. The very scene itself enforced nothing else except their powerful friendship, which, after a nearly-decade long amalgamation of rich romance tropes, runs much deeper than platonic relations...encapsulates hot domestic, angsty, classically archetypal spousal tension, plus the ambient swell of orchestral music as per usual. GAH.)

Dean and Cas haven’t mended their differences, friends. Their conjoined arc is coming to the narrative forefront again. In other words, pretty important things are on the horizon, and again I do expect the tension to keep mounting from this point onwards—it’s quite incredible how Dean and Cas’ interpersonal relationship continues to stretch and stretch, then snap back into place!! We’re coming full circle. *swims in cyclism*

Basically, this episode was an INTERESTING visual goldmine/visual narrative in terms of character pairings:

Rowena and Cas positioned in the frame behind their respective partners (platonic or potentially non-platonic Sam/Rowena continuing to mirror Dean/Cas as a separate unit again, carrying over from S14). Then next week’s BERENS-TRADEMARK EMOTIVE promo just punched me in the gut because we shall see if Sam is really “willing to let the world die so [Rowena] can live”.

I have to say, I got a bit emotional at the sight of this: heartbroken Sam refusing to accept whatever Rowena chooses to do (for the good of humanity). She integrated herself into the Winchesters’ found family, forging meaningful bonds, humanized and freely autonomous, after living out a lonely, unfulfilled life of lost purpose and misguided self-concept. At the end of it all, Rowena chose allyship. She chose to embody human bravery. She did it all for the Winchesters. Sound (at least) familiar?

Over and over again, canon reconsolidates the suffering (and the intimate, romantic, sweet joy) of Human/Supernatural dynamics and the obstacle of duality, especially when it comes to Cas’ ever-dualistic nature as angel and Found human. What is the last straw (alongside long-standing fatherly issues) that causes Cas to break it off? To walk away from the Winchesters (Dean) in the upcoming weeks, dissolve his headspace, and mentally deconstruct/reconcile what he currently thinks (his ideals are) with what he used to think?

My lord. I can’t wait to watch the extent of Berens & Co’s narrative progress for TFW/Destiel’s endgames.

Gird y’alls loins.

14x18 First Watch Thoughts: Mary Winchester the Mirror, TFW and Destiel

**FLAILS**

My thoughts are practically incoherent because I’m having BIG FEELS right now...VERY big feels re: TFW/Destiel narratives.

I am SUPER glad Berens was the one who penned Mary’s death!! The episode was just well-done all around from start to finish and intensely executed, with the proper solid balance of angst, emotional insight from the characters placed inside Mary’s cathartic contextual role, and the consistent reiteration of Mary as TFW’s overall Parental Catharsis in 14x18′s storytelling (and S12-14′s whole parental premise in conjunction with John Winchester’s ghost).

Mary was portrayed as the singular contrasting foil to TFW’s individual and combined arcs. Absence was, obviously, a core theme, with Mary’s absence -- her death -- playing out as A. familial purpose (accountability and her death as the impetus to work together --> forgive each other, forgive yourself), B. self-purpose (self-realization via Jack: what did I do? Why did I do it? Why do we do things?), and C. romantic purpose on the Dean/Cas front.

Let me explain C. -- well, WE BEEN KNEW. The metasphere wrote about this (my post x).

Dean was HEAVILY subtextually framed as the angry spouse undergoing a rough patch with Cas over Mary’s death (the tension, juxtaposed by sad orchestral strings and soft lighting, Dean lashing out at Cas, romantic framing via Dean’s back turned to Cas, their interactions holding frustration yet still underpinned by certain tenderness etc *sighhhhh*) and Dean continuing down the route of giving Cas, not Sam, frosty shoulders -- emphasized by the romantic visual framing of space between them e.g. Sam preventing Cas from comforting Dean during Mary’s funeral, backs again facing each other, Dean and Cas interacting sparsely, Dean bitter and disengaged, Cas longing for forgiveness from Dean, Sam as the overt brother caught in the middle as he embodies the role of mediator and stable thinker for both of them etc -- just strengthens my belief that Destiel is going to experience another (hopefully) intense romance-coded confrontation as intense as the one they had in the cabin -- one that leads up to a lover’s make-up or some kind of emotional breakthrough/realization which has Cas happy enough to be taken by the Empty (remember, DEAN STILL DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CAS’ DEAL. Cas’ life to save his son’s life, harking back to Dean’s own fatherly self-sacrificial deal by saying Yes to Michael. He is utterly unaware that he’ll lose Cas) and it’s a double punch here, because Dean will realize how stupid he is for not appreciating Cas -- more accurately, trying to be mutually transparent and honest with him (he has, though, and he’s made leaps and bounds) before it’s too late but failing (final regression before progression). He does appreciate Cas, and Cas means more to him than anyone could ever describe *points at his Mind!Bar 14x10* yet their love languages still don’t align. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, DEAN! 14x19 is written by BL so I additionally hope the D/C subtext from this point onwards works in our favour!!

As I said in above and in my liveblog posts, a summary:

The differences in Dean’s grieving are a COMPLETE visual comparison to 12x23, complete with overhead 📸 shots and differing funeral pyre scenes: when he grieved over Cas, he was alone, kneeling on the ground, and was blatantly numb/emotionally incapacitated – Dean mourned the loss of his lover. When he’s grieving Mary, Sam is by his side. Brothers mourning the loss of their mother. Romantic vs familial.

Overt romance-coded parallels with Sam/Rowena keeping constant contact just like Dean/Cas do both offscreen and onscreen

Sam telling Dean IT WASN’T JUST CAS and his own emotional pull in this ep as expressing accountability for TFW’s actions in general – besides internalizing/talking about the self-guilt, shame, and the inevitable pain of losing people despite saving people (also re: the 🔑 theme of doing the wrong, stupid thing for the right reasons) -- was character development on a marvelous scale. Dean was enlightened and began to admit it himself. Honest, open words. Dean and Cas should learn from him!!

Cas was absolutely humanized, subsuming the Winchester Way of Bringing Family Back, and he additionally evoked honesty/an emotional justification while admitting his mistakes and again representing FAITH: faith in Jack narratively linked to FAITH IN HIMSELF and the season-long theme of believing there’s another way -- in believing that good things shall come. As he appropriately told Anael last episode -- loneliness is a construct misconstrued by her; not being in one’s physical presence doesn’t mean they aren’t there -- they are there. They are there for you. Narrative symmetry with 14x17′s presence of emotional acknowledgement despite physical absence re: God (and TFW; just because Cas wasn’t with the Winchesters did not mean he loved them any less) vs 14x18′s absence of full-frontal communication despite physical presence re: Dean and Cas/TFW (being physically present also entails being emotionally present through HONESTY). Berens interlinked the subtext. Negative spaces are being filled. And there’s also an Evil/dark dimension added to this Presence vs Absence commentary: Lucifer’s a visage in Jack’s mind, just like Sam. Jack’s soullessness has come to a psychological crux. He’s teeter-tottering – tried desperately to bring Mary back, and now he might have fucked up the natural order (if BTS pics of zombies in 14x20 is linked to this). Furthermore:

(*clutches chest* There’s the heartbreaking spousal-coded visual narrative.)

Oh, Cas...Jack is BOTH good and evil. This is the intrinsic dualism of human nature. It’s what makes Jack human. And goodness involves badness.

CAS: [Jack] was good for us. Indeed, we know he was. The unhealthily-codependent-abusive notion of family TFW used to possess (where their overarching parental issues -- Chuck’s absence, John’s abuse and Mary’s absence -- crippled their early formative growth, extending into decades) was deconstructed and rebuilt in healthier ways. Being a parent to Jack offset their true capabilities/qualities: FAITH (Cas), HOPE (Sam), and LOVE (Dean), alongside all the stickiness that came with his birth. By direct association, Cas learned (is learning) how to believe in himself. Sam learned (is learning) how to hope in himself. Dean learned (is learning) how to love himself. Mental/emotional release from their internal chains took place (will come to its final culmination in S15). In other words, Jack the Unifying TFW Mirror -- like Mary -- was the great interpersonal conduit for (a Jesus-figure-representation) honesty, appreciation (spending time with your loved ones), positive vs negative self-process, and self-awareness. Keep in mind that Jack has characteristically taken the place of Dean, Cas and Sam’s own dark arcs (Soulless!Sam, in particular) with what looks like a Godstiel mirror in 14x19 -- he’s literally becoming textualized as TFW’s mirror -- and, like his parents, he is going to make his independent (wayward) choices and question the primacy of human nature: good, evil, and the grey in-between. Will he listen to his head or his heart? Most of all, Jack taught them that HuntingTM is filled with pain, horror, and death, but genuine purpose lies beyond it. The lives they live are also innumerably interlinked with joy and happiness. These positive things aren’t as sparse as they think: they have each other.

Mary Winchester is ⚰️ and resides in Heaven (her death successfully made me emotional and packed a deep personal punch; the black and white flashbacks interspersed throughout 14x18 relative to Mary’s influence on TFW was A++). She disappeared right when TFW’s arcs came together to display character progression. Her purpose – pushing TFW to engage in self-introspection, personal growth, and honesty with the Self and others – is done.

Mary, the Cas mirror, carved M.W. into the table with S.W and D.W. You know who should be next, right? CASTIEL W. (and Jack W.) (recall that in 14x17, Mary relayed to Dean that she treasured and enjoyed her time with him and Sam -- channeling Cas’ 14x12 farewell speech. Mary has always embodied LOVE, both romantic and familial, with the great virtue of honesty, and Dean, by proxy, has been telling his family he loves them. Again, who is the next family member he’ll say I LOVE YOU to? What do Dean and Cas WANT? Time to answer this question!!)

WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. Narrative cyclism, y’all. Mary and John Winchester are finally at ✌️, and by so doing, TFW will experience emotional/personal/psychological ✌️ as they leave their past behind to create their own optimistic self-actualized future. THERE’LL BE GENUINE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

TFW MUST TALK

I mean, I’ll probably reblog this with new thoughts during the next few days, but yes, ENDGAME’S UPON US, and all the extensive meta regarding Dabb Era Love and...Love, Unity, Family, Honesty, the centrality of interpersonal relationships and Reconciliation of the Past & Future since Season New Beginnings 12/13 over Season Who Am I 14 should be realized in the final two ANGST-filled eps. TL;DR a gigantic multilayered soup of character-positive/relationship growth-positive meta coming to fruition for the main plot.

Berens has killed us all. 14x18 is one of my favourite Emotion-centric episodes yet!

RATING: 10/10

Thank you for reading my sloppier-than-usual word-vomit!

Do you think that Dean and Cas will finally have a heart to heart conversation this season that has a beginning, middle, and end without being interrupted? Where they finally get to talk about everything and mend the rift between them? I really hope so

2/2 I’m the heart to heart anon! Like I would love if there was a moment where someone sat them down to air their grievances the way Sam and Dean did for Chuck and Lucifer in s11, bc it actually worked and was incredibly promising

HI nonnie!!

I’m on the run and have a busy Canadian thanksgiving dinner to get to (and I’ll most likely add to this once I have time), but WHAT A GREAT QUESTION, because frankly, this is what we’ve been anticipating for…a while.

We’ve seen 15x01. The rift between Dean and Cas = NECESSARY spousal discord. Dabb & Co know what they’re doing here, and pretty much most meta writers in the Destiel community gleefully watched the EVER-heightening intensity of D/C’s romance-coded arguments unfold in their conjoined emotional arc for the better part of 11 years!! Dabb era, dudes. Family struggles. DEEP EMOTIONAL BONDS, frayed, to be repaired in the endgame.

English 101: writing an external conflict between two characters can inherently convey INTERNAL CONFLICT — character vs the self, thus introducing significant elements of character development and self-reflection that two characters, intentionally written as romantic star-crossed counterparts to each other, will think about, then either NOT act on or WILL act on.

In short, the metanarrative focus on Dean and Cas fighting means they’re gonna need to RESOLVE it, and exactly, anon – since it’s the final story countdown, this also means there should be a subversion of every other instance in which they’ve almost hashed things out but were: A. always interrupted, B. gave outside forces priority, not their interpersonal relationship, or C. just plain ol’ avoiding addressing it.

HOW MANY TIMES CAN THEY SURVIVE THAT? How many times can we survive the drawing-out of WILL THEY WON’T THEY/USING THEIR WORDS?

Lemme tell ya, I do believe we’re going to see the D/C narrative focus grow more potent the closer we get to 15x20, if not earlier. Again, PR isn’t showrunning, but Jensen and Misha are fully aware and informed of their roles as Dean and Cas; they know their tension is a key emotional plot point driving the physical plot, always has been. I mean, it’s already amplified, right in the first episode of the final season!!

After finding out that God is the Big Bad, Dean and Cas must re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other. Again, did they inadvertently play into God’s Angst Plot for them? Did they think they were saving the world on their own terms of free will when in fact, God wanted them to do exactly that – to ignore their self-consciousness and each other’s emotional needs in the process?? *rips hair out*

Keeping up the awfully sad vibe of arguing ex-husbands a la 14x17/18/19/20, Sam continues to represent all of us. Currently, we don’t see any resolution in sight; once S14 came to a close, they were still clashing. The negative spaces are NOISY! Once again, D/C = divorcees at odds, with what looks like irreconcilable differences. Sigh.

It’s the classic trope of setting aside personal conflict to get the important crap done, yet not realizing that personal conflict is inevitably going to implode.

To get on the same page, Dean and Cas’ preconceived notions of FREE WILL must be challenged, and true free will –> LOVE. God couldn’t control the existence of love...the most powerful force in the world. The ultimate manifestation of free will. TFW threw a wrench into His plans when Dean, out of LOVE, refused to shoot his son, Isaac-mirror Jack – when Cas, out of LOVE, also raised Jack as his own humanized child alongside psychologically nurturing him with Dean – when Sam, out of LOVE, chose to be his teacher in the ways of survival and human difficulty.

TFW singularly chose to destroy God’s script when they started loving the Nephilim, the TFW mirror, God’s OG Big Bad for his cut-and-paste SPN series of The Winchester Brothers and the Angel Castiel: Same Mistakes Never Learned.

*Back to the point, sorry I went on a whole TFW-lovey-dovey tangent there lol – YEAH, I hope and expect that Dean and Cas will engage in a genuine heart to heart without interruptions, where they no longer let God perch on their shoulders. It’s time for them to set their cards on the table. It’s time for them to USE THEIR WORDS.

Romantic or not (lbr a non-romantic resolution –> greatest cop-out for a 15-year iconic institution, because why even implement consistent, constant tropes of a damn non-platonic nature without any proper follow-through, even in subtext?!), the fact remains that Dean and Cas are longggg overdue for a discussion – a deconstruction of their tension, clearing the air of ALL the stuff they’ve hidden from each other, and with bated breath, I wait.

(The visual D/C narrative also holds: they stand as a unit together, Sam positioned apart from them. Like, we been knew.) *trots around in clown mask*

Seriously. I’m Destiel-positive so far. 15x01 simply strengthened my (cautious) optimism. If you want to read more about the D/C rift, with Jack at the core of it all (oh man, how fitting that Belphegor, who’s taking up Jack’s image by possessing his body – and remember, Jack was the catalyst for both heavily marital-code unity and conflict in Dean and Cas’ relationship – will seemingly take over Jack’s role as metanarrative exposition/mirror for now), I wrote these late S14/beginning of the last hiatus (below), plus x x

I discuss the Dean/Cas argument here, here and here – it’s both a break-up and argument entrenched in parental mistakes, self-guilt, and their ultimate bond with/trust in each other (particularly in relation to Jack, their subtextual son), where the lying and the dishonesty (a redux of S5/6 and S12) are combined spiral narratives of their relationship that they eventually have to break together. COMMUNICATE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

I’ll emphasize this again too – still highly relevant lol (14x18):

Cas is telling himself: if I was completely honest with my husband, without holding back, we could’ve been able to avoid this. I wasn’t honest because I knew how much Jack meant to us. I was 😨. I did it for myself…I did it for Dean.

Dean is telling himself: I dunno, why am I taking my husband’s dishonesty so hard? Because I 😍 him a lot, and I 😍 my son. I trusted Cas to be honest with me. We could’ve worked together. But, 💩, I guess I wasn’t as open with him as I was supposed to be…about what I wanted, and what I felt.

Me: *slaps notebook closed* *coughs* Uh, it’s a — really long — work in progress. KEEP TALKING.

14x20 FULL CIRCLE

Guys I’m so sorry, I usually pump out some coherent words after episodes, but you won’t be getting anything 100% cohesive from me (I need to sleep on this). I’ll probs write quick review/a full S14 and 14x20 review over this weekend and Hellatus!! I’M EXCITED. SO EXCITED FOR S15!!!!! Here’s a few things I barely managed to write down:

Basically, in one sentence --> WOW FRIENDS: we’ve literally cycled back to the beginning. SPIRAL NARRATIVE.

THE ENDING IS THE BEGINNING.

This has been a wild philosophical Emotion-centric Agency-tied ride, and there’s HUGE mountains to unpack re: Chuck’s character/role in this multilayered narrative. CHUCK, THE ULTIMATE WRITER AND SIMULTANEOUS DEADBEAT FATHERLY FIGURE AND HARBINGER OF “I GAVE YOU FREE WILL”, TURNS OUT TO BE THE ANTITHESIS OF IT BECAUSE (as other awesome people have screamed about minutes before me) HIS CHARACTERS have REBELLED (yes, Team Free Will indeed) and NO LONGER WANT TO FOLLOW THE SCRIPT, additionally symbolized by Chuck “killing” Jack the Team Free Will mirror; Jack shall now attempt to restore order with Billie and the Empty and break out of his own prison -- also a prison that encompasses TFW’s respective prisons because he reflects them, in return. Jack undergoing character development, juxtaposed by TFW releasing themselves, in one last penultimate spiral, from their own prisons of low self-hope/opportunity (Sam), self-faith/self-expendability (Cas), and self-acceptance/self-love (Dean)? I love it!!

And remember that Jack literally -- for a period of time -- MADE PEOPLE TELL THE TRUTH (YES COMMUNICATION!! FORESHADOWING FOR TRANSPARENCY AND HONESTY), which GOD DIDN'T WANT.

TFW want to conquer their own lives -- live their own lives -- themselves, and they have, and they’ll continue to do so. As Dean poetically put it: God or No God, go to Hell, Chuck. Humanity: Sam, Dean and Cas, comprise and revise and write their own futures, as thematically reiterated by Season Who Am I 14 over and over and over again. THE META! I LOVE THIS CAKE!!!

Now, with S15 seemingly calling back to Good Ol SPN Yore/S1, I’m SO CURIOUS to see what will happen, especially now that TFW -- Sam, Dean and Cas -- are no longer the same individuals they were before...no longer the same entities who were not oriented towards their pure truthful selves alongside engaging in healthy (non-toxically-codependent) sustainable interpersonal relationships. SPN ending with a truly genuine New Beginning of Free Will and Family (both romantic and familial) by defeating (not literally killing, but personally reforming) UNIVERSAL AUTHORITY FIGURE GOD? BRING IT ON!

Well, I’m literally incoherent right now, but Dean’s hit an AWFUL rock bottom over Jack. Chuck textualized that there must be BALANCE in the universe: Good vs Evil (Nature vs Nurture). Sam and Cas are unified in not wanting to kill Jack but to SAVE him, while Dean’s taking up the hardest-ever task of choosing to kill Jack (by proxy killing himself; an 11x23 redux), thinking it’s the only way; and we’ve seen how split apart Dean and Cas are (in other words, Dean and Cas are currently divorced.)

We called TFW going against each other. Bad and Terrible ThingsTM. S14′s Big Bad is the Dishonest Self-Hating Toxic Entity: Yourself; Your Repressed Emotions. All of them still hate themselves to some extent (Sam’s sense of low self-hope/opportunity, Cas’ sense of self-expendability), specifically Dean (his sense of self-worthlessness). I mentioned how breaking/“killing” Jack breaks TFW’s toxic spiral of self-toxicity.

Also, Jack mirrors Dean in that he ‘wants to love [Cas], but can’t’. Cas in turn pleads that they can fix this. LOVE YOURSELF, TFW. LOVE YOURSELF, DEAN.

There’s some good meta flowing inside this 14x20 cup and I need to unpack this over more than one rewatch!