The thing is. The Winchesters would be a tragedy if Dean weren’t in it.
If there was no Dean narrating, no Dean with his car and pen and notebook, then there would be no doubt that the story being developed in front of our eyes would be a tragedy. Everyone is pushed by an invisible script along the tracks of their role in a cruel god’s story. All the characters are cogs inside a machine. The outcome is already written, it already happened. You can’t change the past. You can’t rewrite a book that has already been typed out. There’s no hope.
But Dean’s presence in the narrative changes things. Dean writing with his own hands on a notebook. Dean who is the future and who defeats the machine in the future. Dean who rips out the script in the future. Dean who refuses to be the character he’s supposed to be.
I don’t know if the show will fix the finale. Probably not. An actual continuation will fix the finale. But this show, I suspect, could actually fix something else: 14x18.
The past has already happened so it can’t change. But the future can be changed, it doesn’t have to still follow the script.
Maybe I’m wrong and this show will, indeed, change the past. But there’s a way of fixing something bad about Supernatural without needing to do that.
If Dean is in heaven (again, the finale fix-it will be its own show, one that has Dean and Cas front and center) then this can be a partial for-now finale fix-it. Because the so-called finale (-guy pointing at forehead meme- there can’t be a finale if the thing doesn’t finish) wants us to drink up the idea that a dead Dean is static. He drives nowhere just to stop. He does nothing but drink a shitty beer that reminds him of his dad and shitty childhood, and the only prospect in front of him is to hang out with his parents next door.
This show has the opportunity to be like “oh? You put Dean in heaven? Very well. He’ll be Dean Winchester in heaven then. Doing his thing. Healing”. No static Dean who’s like “oh it’s nice to be dead :)” but a Dean Winchester who doesn’t stop fighting his fight, fixing what he can fix, help who he can help.
Heal himself by healing his family. Healing his parents.
We’re supposed to believe that Mary Winchester is also just happy to be dead and reunited with her husband for eternity. That was a pretty horrific perspective in Supernatural. Mary had started out a new chapter of her life, was making new experiences, dating someone else, learning about her husband abusing their kids - and then she’s slammed back into the dead wife role.
We were like, there is no way those two people can just meet again and heaven and just spend the rest of eternity together, like nothing else happened to them, like they didn’t both go through experiences that changed them.
But what if that’s what Dean is doing? What if Dean is looking for Mary and John’s friends, possibly lovers who could never be because of destiny, and allow them the life they could have had if not for the machine?
What if Dean allows them to reunite - all of them looking the way they did when they were all together, young and as innocent as they could ever be, already traumatized but capable of hope and love?
What if Dean is the one who brings the gang together again, yes dead - you cannot change the past - but free to be themselves and love each other and heal together?
This is my theory for a “the past cannot be changed” scenario. Who knows, maybe the show will indeed pull some fuckery and surprise me. Dean did promise us surprises. But if this is the case, then I think I would be still satisfied with it. Yes, John and Mary Winchester’s story is a tragedy, but Dean Winchester can heal it and consequently heal himself by healing it.
I mean. I would love a scenario where the show goes. “Ah, you put Dean Winchester in heaven with his parents? Very well. He goes to get his father’s boyfriend and his mother’s girlfriend. You’re welcome.”
