Mary's "angels are watching over you" is a great line that makes full use of dramatic irony. We, the audience, know that having angels "watching over" you is NOT a good thing. So from our perspective "watching over" takes the meaning of "keeping under survellaince" and it's not pretty: it reminds us that angels are soldiers, they have a plan and a war to win. However, Mary doesn't know that when she says it, for her "watching over" means "protecting, taking care" and it's associated with the image of angels as guardians and protectors. What's even better is the fact tha later in the series, the show will strongly associate the "watching over" part with Castiel. And honestly? It works SO well 'cause the dramatic irony still works. Cas still doesn't incarnate the preconcevied notion of "guardian angel" and, at the same time, he stil sees himself as a solider. He shapes his own way of caring and protecting in a military fashion rather than a family-oriented one. It's not a "I'm here for you", more like "I'll go to battle so you won't have to". And this basically sums up the BIG issue he has in his relationship with Dean but that's for another story. Anyway, I'm just so fascinated with some lines in this show, I'll take the good ones when I can, lol!
Metatron's line "he's in love with humanity" is SO fucking great because it's both true and false at the same time and I love it.
It's false because we know that Cas is not in love with humanity as in "human beings collectively". He loves them as God's creatures and he appreciates them etc but he's not IN love with the whole concept. So ofc in this context Metatron is fucking with him and being all subtext-y because humanity IS Dean. He is IN love with Dean/Humanity.
But it's ALSO true, because yes, Cas is IN love with the "quality of BEING human", of feeling things for the first time, art, hope, love, dreams... the whole shebang. And ofc this is ALL connected to Dean but it's also SO connected to just Cas... being Cas and him being able to feel and love and experience LIFE. And he's totally IN love with THIS whole concept even though it's super scary and he doesn't know half of it but it's still so tempting and beautiful and enticing and it's something that HE wants.
Gossssssssh, the more I think about it, the more I just love this line. It's so beautiful and clever. Also, Metratron one of the best villains in SPN, will not debate.
I love when Sam and Dean fight and the reason why they fight is Cas. I love it for two main reasons.
One, Dean's quick-fire brain is at its best in these instances. One mention of Cas and Dean goes all pew-pew-pew on basically anybody and everybody calls his bluff. Crowley, of course, knew. Even Naomi knew. Lucifer fucking knew it. Well, everybody but Sam.
Two, these fights conveniently happen when Sam is going through his own shit (and doesn't know how to deal with it) to care about his brother's emotional state, making it even more painfully obvious that he severely lacks emotional intelligence/recognition skills. It's "Sam knows and doesn't know" at its best.
I've talked about how the "It’s not an “it,” Sam. It’s Cas" scene in s11 is an interesting example of Dean's rhetoric skills: that man can be on the losing side and still win an argument without breaking a sweat. Sam, on the other hand, not so much. He has a tendency to hyperfocus on one thing and lose sight of the plethora of other things he might need to be looking at.
As a consequence, Dean looks like the one with the heart, the one who cares, the one who's right, while Sam looks shallow, cold and even callous. However, as I've written multiple times, it's a matter of skills, therefore of abilities. Of what one can and the other can't.
So what about Cas?
"What about Cas?" is the first thing Sam says in "Lost and Found" to try and address what happened outside that cabin. With the unmistakable Sam's mark of elegant tact (I love him, he is me) he goes "What about Cas? Is he - is he really dead?" after they've just seen their friend getting skewered by Lucifer in front of their very eyes. To be fair to him, Cas has that thing, you know, that thing that he dies and then comes back. Plus, Sam's sense of what's real and what's not is... something to talk about. However, my heart feels for his total inability to read the room, or, well, the Impala: only 5 seconds before Dean couldn't even say the words "Cas is dead" ("Crowley’s dead, Kelly’s dead, Cas is—") and the best thing Sam can come up with is "Hey Dean, what do you think? Is Cas REALLY DEAD, UH?". Oh, Sam.
Throughout the episode Sam's still unsure whether Cas is permadead or not: at first he's got doubts, then Dean tells him that that's final. So he confirms Cas' death to Jack. However, when they're about to make the pyre for his body, Sam has some second thoughts: maybe they can bring him back. Dean is peremptory: "No we can't".
In "The Rising Son" Sam and Dean have a minor fight over Jack and his powers because he accidentally hurt the tattoo artist:
Sam: It was a reflex. He didn’t do it on purpose.
Dean: Who cares if he didn’t do it on purpose? He did it. I mean, you didn’t see Cas smiting someone every time he got his teeth cleaned.
Jack: I’m right here, you know.
Dean: Yeah, and what about the vanishing tattoo?
Donatello: An archangel healed himself.
Sam: Another reflex.
Dean: Or maybe he didn’t want to be warded.
Sam: Okay, look, yeah, Jack is on Lucifer’s family tree. But we don’t know if that DNA is stronger than Kelly’s, or his connection with Cas.
Dean: Oh, you mean the connection that got Cas killed?
I like this dialogue because, once again just like that scene in S11 that I've linked above, Dean's laying his cards on the table. A Crowley or a Lucifer wouldn't have missed that. Sam does.
Dean's the one who's brought Cas up. He explicitily (and unfairly) compares Jack with Cas. Jack hurt people while Cas, his Cas, wouldn't (Oh, Dean you're so wrong my precious baby boy, Cas would hurt people and he's actually done so multiple times and you know it: power imbalance between humans and angels is just what it is, on purpose or not, it's a fact). Dean's also the one who recognizes Jack's real "problem", i.e. he's also an angel, an extremely powerful one at that and his power's an issue.
Sam, however, is the one who brings Lucifer up. He acknowledges Jack's connection with him, Kelly and Cas. Big, BIG mistake. Sam unwittingly turns the knife in Dean's wound, although Dean's mention of Cas before was a huge red flag that Sam completely missed.
This might just be my interpretation but I think that Dean's unconscious eagerness to bring Cas up in any argument reveals his desire to talk about what happened, to vent his anger, to test the waters and see if Sam's on the same page as he is. He's not.
And I think Sam's got a right to be on a different page because this is what S12 was all about: while Dean had found his closure with Mary and had started to see himself as Cas' partner (I've talked about this in my spn s12 tags), Sam's still very much behind. He didn't put in the effort with Mary while Eileen, the one person outside of family Sam's got a connection with (excluding Rowena whom he doesn't trust yet) got brutally murdered by Ketch. Sam and Dean can't possibly be on the same page. Supernatural teaches us that when connections break things are bound to explode.
The dialogue continues:
Sam: I’m just saying, Jack doesn’t have to be evil. We can teach him not to be.
[...]
Donatello: Oh. Speaking not as a prophet but as a scientist, I don’t think teaching him is in the cards.It’s like asking a lion not to be a lion.
Sam: But this is not a lion! This is a human!
Donatello: With a strong dose of God juice.
Dean: Okay, that’s it. I’m done, all right? ‘Cause he’s not God, he’s not Cas, he’s not Simba. He’s the friggin’ Devil!
That's it, Dean's done. The reason? Jack is not Cas. He throws that "he's not Cas" right in the middle, suspiciously hiding the importance of his statement: the techinque is so blatant that, as it turns out, he couldn't be clearer.
Talking on being on the same page:
Sam: Point is… if you and I are gonna do this, keep Jack on the right side of things, then—then we have to be on the same page.
Dean: Okay. Well, that’s the problem, though, Sam, ‘cause we’re not on the same page. Like, at all.
Sam: All right. You know what? I know what’s going on here.
Dean: Oh. Okay. Well, please, tell me, what’s going on here?
Sam: You thinking mom is gone and Cas is gone, and that Jack can’t be saved. Dean, after everything we’ve gone through… We just lost people we love, people who have been in our lives for a long time.
Everything’s upside-down. I get it. But we’ve been down before. I mean, rock bottom. And we find a way. We fix it because that’s what we do. And Jack w—wants to do the right thing. Jack’s scared to death of who he is, and he’s scared of you.
As I've said, Dean had tested the waters to see if he and Sam were on the same page but he quickly realizes they're not. Sam claims that he knows what's going on and Dean sort of dares him to spill the beans. Poor Sam is wrong againg because the "you" in "you thinking that..." is actually him, not Dean. Sam's projecting his own fears onto Dean (Is Mom gone? Will I ever have a connection with her? Can Jack be saved? Is Cas really gone?). He starts and ends his little speech with that "you" but he clearly doesn't get what Dean's deal is.
Dean's deal is not just whether he thinks Cas and Mary are really gone and Jack can or can't be saved. Dean's deal is about what happened before Cas died and, more specifically, about what didn't happen. He'll reveal his cards, like he always does because that's what Dean does, he wears his heart on his sleeve, in the following episode.
I’ve been trying to understand what the heck “natural order” means in Supernatural until I’ve finally realized I was giving it too much thought than necessary because it was much simpler than what I had in mind: the natural order in Supernatural is…. Supernatural from s1 to s3.
I can explain.
First of all, the natural order is an “arrangement”:
EVE: You misunderstand me. I never wanted that. Not at first. I liked our arrangement.
SAM: What arrangement?
EVE: The natural order. My children turned a few of you, you hunted a few of them. I was happy.
Eve turns up in s6 after s4-5 madness and she’s unhappy: the arrangement has been broken. This leads me to think that the key-factor in keeping the natural order alive and well is honoring deals. When Crowley starts crossing boundaries in s6 Eve steps up to put him back in his place. However, she doesn’t realize who her real enemy is until it was too late for her. As always, the enemy of the natural order, the breaker of deals, the one you cannot expect to keep his word, the snake in the grass is our very Castiel.
Billie shares Eve's storyline. She’s also unhappy about the discombobulation of the natural order and she takes it on the Winchesters and then later on specifically on Dean. What's more, with Billie we see that uncontrolled resurrections without deals are a real problem for her. She fails to realize who her mortal enemy is twice: once when she’s a reaper and Castiel stabs her in the back and in so doing he’s breaking a stupid deal; the second time when they die together in s15. This time, though, they die because Cas is honoring a deal, but he’s doing it on his own terms, not waiting around wondering what true happiness is but taking matter into his own hands. Although I have things to say about how happiness is framed in “Despair”, I’ve got to admit that, in its own convoluted way, it was a badass move.
Interestingly, when it comes to Chuck we don’t see the same respect and passion for the natural order that Eve and Billie seem to share. This is also where I think the writers sort of dropped the ball. In s11 it was established that Chuck had created nature and then nature “created on its own”. Here he seems to respect nature and calls it “divine”. In “The Trap”, however, he says the following things:
SAM: It'll be better. It'll be better. It'll be better. If we win – When we win – When we beat you, I will make it better!
CHUCK: You can't, Sam. You, Sam Winchester, have been playing fast and loose with the laws of nature and magic for a very long time – you and your brother. Always breaking the rules. And that's what I love about you, Sam. It's so heroic. It's so...Promethean. But there's still so much about the fabric of the universe that you don't know... that you can't know. 'Cause you're only humans. But I'm God. Think about what I showed you. Look beyond the Mark, beyond you and Dean fanging out – heartbreaking, but not the headline news.
SAM: The monsters.
CHUCK: The monsters.
CHUCK: Without me, it's a law of nature – dark forces prevail, monsters rule, and you, your brother, and everyone you love will die. Can you really live with that?
First of all I find it fascinating that Chuck, of all people, likes Sam and Dean precisely because they break the rules (but then he can't stand Castiel, looool, much to think about). He’s eventually angry at them because they don’t follow his script but he’s ultimately invested in these characters to such a degree that he calls them “Promethean”. Now, lol because didn’t Prometheus die, like, in s8 or something? But also: Prometheus is the hero who got impaled on the mountains of Caucasus because he defied Zeus (*cough* like *cough* Dean Winchester*cough*). So whether Chuck likes their "heroism" or not he only likes it up to a certain point (and this certain point is when their actions reveal his secret desires for self-destruction but that's for another day). For sure he wickedly enjoys when he vicariously breaks the rules and the natural order arrangement via Sam and Dean's actions. Not so much when it's Castiel who inserts himself into the fabrics of his story.
Secondly, “without me, it’s a law of nature”. What does that mean? I promised I wasn’t gonna go too philosophical so I went for the simpler route. If we leave aside the “dark forces” and “monsters rule” shit, what Chuck is saying is basically that without him the natural order will prevail. Which should be a good thing, right? Right?! Which also means that he himself is as much of a disruptor of the natural order as Castiel (oh-oh). Just like Billie, Chuck likes breaking the rules only when he or one of this favorite characters break them. Unlike Castiel and the Winchesters, however, he’s on a different plane of knowledge (therefore power) because there’s so much more about the fabrics of the universe that they can’t know but he can. After all, he is God and he (according to SPN) has created nature itself. So what’s Chuck’s signature on this "divine" masterpiece? What are the foundations of the natural order? I think the answer can be found in “Free to be You and Me”:
DEAN: The hell did you do?
CASTIEL: I don't know. I just looked her in the eyes and told her it wasn't her fault that her father Gene ran off. It was because he hated his job at the post office.
DEAN: Oh, no, man.
CASTIEL: What?
DEAN: This whole industry runs on absent fathers. It's, it's the natural order.
That’s it, that’s the natural order according to Supernatural: it’s about absent fathers. It’s on their absence that “this whole industry” runs. Which not so incidentally is also the premise of Supernatural and, like, the whole plot of the first two seasons (and beyond but I'm talking "Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home for a few days" type of absent father, that is John Winchester).
So if my understanding is correct, it’s accurate to say that Billie won in the finale because the natural order was re-established: nobody is resurrected, they all eventually die and Sam and Dean go on a hunt guided by their absent father’s journal, something we haven’t seen in ages, on a case that John himself had worked on something like maybe 20 years prior? Which is what they did in the first seasons of the show. They even meet a vampire from S1 who was there to signal precisely that: they're back in the past, only not in a positive way because it's a fictional past. A past with a mask.
Yes, the natural order is just the past through rose-colored glasses, a “let’s go back to the fun times of season 1-3 before all that angels-and-god-non-sense”. Which is technically possible but practically anachronistic. These two men are not in their 20s anymore, they're fully grown adults who've been through... let's just say a lot. It's a glorification of youth and a "forever young"ism that I find quite worrying. Moreover, with these premises Castiel couldn’t ever come back because, together with Chuck, he was one of the main disturbers of the natural order, aka the way Supernatural was before S4. Chuck's mistake was precisely inserting himself into the narrative because, in so doing, The Father is no longer absent while he must stay so according to the rule of the natural order. That's the arrangement. Chuck and Castiel's narrative fates are thus weirdly knotted together because the arrangement excludes deal-breakers/father-figures like them. Ironically, the ultimate absent father is not God but John Winchester, period. His absence is Order. It's the Law, aka what gives meaning to reality.
The implications of the finale are problematic because why on earth would you end your series like that? It's not even a positive "full-cycle" moment, it's just sad and uncanny in the freudian sense of the word. I know and understand that Dabb was working on his retelling so that we could all go back to the beginning but what is the point to go back without growth? Or to go back and then die? Or to go back and just leave? To me it doesn't make sense from a storytelling pov. I repeat, why would the people involved in this series decide to go down that road I cannot know. I suspect that they took the emotional, fake-happy ending road because Covid had destroyed the world as we know it so maybe they opted for an ending that would comfort people ("comfort" in the sense that's familiar to people, it follows an established path that's recognizable and doesn't destabilize them, which, for the record, I think they failed to do). Or maybe the intent was precisely the uncanny, that feeling of something disturbing and unsettling in what should be familiar and comfortable for us. As in: the story ends like it began, nothing has really changed and everything can only get resolved in the after-life. True happiness is not in the having, it's in just being (dead in Heaven with your brother). I don't know, two things can be true at the same time, but I'm not gonna lie I smell traditionalism, conservatism and heroism as a cult of death that's very Ur-fascist.
Not that anybody has asked for this but, unlike Eve and Billie, I’m actually quite happy because I’ve managed to find an answer to one of my own questions.
choosing my truths (1): in spn's "stanger in a strange land" the "i thought you two were joined at the..." line is not just a "ihih dick joke" but It's another way of saying that everybody knows that dean and cas... grok.
(it's going to be quite a convoluted post but bear with me)this insanely good post by @postmodernmulticoloredcloak (about this line from 7x21 "the angels, they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just breaks them apart") made me think of another line, always by Edlund, from TMWWBK s6e20, ie:
Dean: It's not too late. Damn it, Cas! We can fix this!
Cas: Dean, it's not broken!
I remember that when I first watched the episode I thought "hold on, what is going on here?" 'cause it was clear from Cas' reply that the lines are not just about the Purgatory situation but also about Dean and Cas' situationship. Now, Dean's words "fix" and "equipment", reminded me how he uses fixing Baby in s7e1 as a necessity ofc, but as a coping mechanism, too after the whole mess with Sam's wall and Cas getting pregnant with Leviathans (I don't remember the lines but I'm pretty sure that he even admits, in different words, that fixing the car is a way to for him to stay focused, to regain control).
And now that the image of fixing a car has popped into my mind, I recalled the lines from s7e17 when Dean tells Emmanuel that he can't "shake off" what Cas did and Cas/Emmanuel says: "You're not a machine, Dean. You're human".
So what am I trying to say? Well, I think what I want to say is that although Dean is humanity, he's the definition of caring etc, at the same time, he doesn't have the tools to navigate his relationship with Cas. He is willing to but he doesn't know how to and this drives him a bit crazy. So, in a way, Dean doesn't have the "equipment" to care as well, not generally speaking, but specifically when it comes to Cas (Dean has said so in s7e17, the one thing he can't shake off is this thing with Cas). Every time he tries they break apart anyway.
From here I went a bit insane 'cause I started thinking: so what happens when you fall in love, deeply, nonsensically and for the first time but you don't know what to do? Like you don't even recognize how big this whole mess is simply because you don't have the tools to deal with these freakingly huge totally-out-of-control emotions? And then the person you're falling for becomes God or whatever and then he dies? What's one supposed to do? I guess fixing a car is as good as a coping mechanism as any So Dean couldn't fix things with Cas but he sure as hell can fix his baby. Now if you excuse me, I'll be over there crying.
