I know it was a little weird, but does anyone else have big feelings about how the end of The Winchesters features Bobby, Dean, and Jack standing together?
That’s Dean’s father. That’s his son. Three generations of family—not by blood, but by choice. And that means everything!!!!1111
Confession: After rewatching SPNwin again, I don't think Dean was literally "looking for Cas" when he said he was looking for "his family." I feel like maybe it was more about Dean himself... about how much he struggles as a backward-looking character, as someone who can’t stop turning over his disappointments and losses in his head.
It's less about finding someone specific and more about chasing and processing that feeling of childhood safety he's already lost and one he feels CHEATED out of.
It's like a "this can't be all there was to my life, to THEIR life" moment.
It actually reminds me a bit of Amelia Novak in 10x20:
"I was dreaming. This whole time, I was dreaming... of finding Jimmy, of putting my family back together."
Dean’s mind, his heart—they seem stuck in this weird in-between space/ Dreaming? Reaching? Hoping? All this, even when he knows deep down that he can’t ever really go home.
Even this impossible version of the past that he helps rescue in SPNwin... it isn’t his home.
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There’s a similar throughline with John in SPNwin. He seems deeply fixated on helping others reunite with their dads. It’s like he’s trying to give them something he never had, because for him and for his dad Henry, it’s already too late.
spnwin 1x02
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Dean is doing that too. He's helping others find the happiness he was denied. It’s a deeply sad, yet ultimately hopeful thing. It’s the positive side of hunting as an ideal: you’re doomed, but you help others avoid the same fate.
Dean isn’t just processing the loss of his childhood, though. He’s grieving the loss of his own family. Even in heaven, their life is "over."
So
What of Cas? Well, that’s the whole thing Dean’s processing too—something about entering the kitchen together, and even what devotion and the longtime ups and downs of marriage look like.
We see all the cheat codes for Dean: in visions of lovers "wanting to live with the consequences" of their spoken feelings, in other characters' fear of loving and being seen/loved.
We even see it in the themes and thoughts on raising and teaching children, and especially in the way we observe Ada Monroe, who wrestles with letting down, being afraid of, and healing with her half-monster son.
We see SPNwin Mary drives into a portal on a soldier's suicide mission to take out the enemy, and she is lost to everyone "forever."
John falls to his knees and then rocks back in shock (spnwin 1x13)
This is Dean reuniting two ripped-apart lovers the way John reunited a ripped-apart dad and son in 1x02.
Because
portals lost forever
portals & faling to knees etc
But you know... besides the "processing" of it all, there's ALSO
Thinking about the stretched connections/shoulder wounds and of @angeldean's idea of baby AS dean's soul. And it's a soul in motion. He's in the multiverse pondering the what-if's and the everything, and it's the locomotion of working through things in the past in order to go into the future...
And the lovers loom with message like this:
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pretty sure this was an unspoken rule b/t THEM too. CAUSE I MEAN LOOK AT THEM
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But like Mary is still figuring herself out because a LIFE of hunting has left her on shaky ground, just like maybe Dean is still figuring himself out, what with the journaling and the pondering the what-ifs and the processing and stuff:
we even saw a glimmer of this aspect of Dean (maybe) in Dean's coded conversations in-series... if you squint (15x08):
It's my opinion that despite Mary and her friends "saying all the right words," and "grieving the right way," SPNwin John actually comes off a lot more honest.
By the time he meets Henry's ghost his emotions are getting more regulated. Millie's, too. They're healing.
But Mary is still sundered from her parents, uncovering more about them, and conflicted. That's why she winds up in Limbo. She's, a la Sam Winchester, not actually DEALING.
And in that episode, we see that John ISN'T waylaid by Limbo. All his instincts are to flee. He's just frustrated because he's being microanalyzed when he's actually doing a decent job starting to express himself. It's Mary's who's lagging. She's doing the Sam thing: NOT dealing with her own stuff by overfocusing on HOW someone else is grieving and coping.
EDIT: One of Mary's fears about leaving hunting is how untethered to her parents she feels, right? We see John on our screens having a tough n' ugly but ultimately CLOSE relationship with Millie.
Mary has warmth in her family, but she's not in regular communication with either parent post-the loss of Maggie. It hasn't repaired in any shape or form, so those cracks are much more foundational shifting tectonics. How can she repair the closeness if she can't even spend time with them, and if she sees them THIS little while hunting, how little will she see then when she's NOT hunting?
John is facing his psychological wound. Mary is pretending hers is about some "future" when it's really about the most basic stuff. Mary's got the mystery, that man-of-action, Indiana Jones charisma, but she's also not as naturally in tune with her emotions as your typical John or Dean. She like recipes and checklists: "Maggie wrote down things to be thankful for, so maybe if I do that too, whatever's bothering me will heal!"
I think my main takeaway I'd like to keep is this:
There's a lot of merit in being anti-destiny, anti-soulmate, anti-chosen-one, anti-Cupid, anti-mirrors/anti-parallels.
To me, that doesn't necessarily mean we poo-poo on characters labeled "soulmates," like Mary and John. To me, it means, we must be hesitant to believe such a claim in the first place. Because Heaven isn't reliable.
And perhaps, it is us swallowing the "soulmates" line robs Mary and John of choice.
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Beware the mirrors:
Before we swallow literal snake oil directly sold from The Architects of a Heavenly Matrix (Gabriel, Zachariah, Chuck, etc.), we must first consider that these "mirrors" may be deeply, deeply suspect or even untrue objects of ridicule or manipulation directly imposed by the author.
Not mirrors of truth, then, but funhouse mirrors. We err when we view our precious side plots as black-and-white revelations of truth. Most importantly, mirrors aren't one-to-one recipes for figuring out what characters mean to each other.
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The very concept of soulmates is Thee Antithesis of Free Will.
As a fandom, we are so willing to believe Mary and John weren’t "in a real relationship" and had no agency.
Why?
Because a Cupid told us so, and we don't think the Cupid had reason to lie, so we believe him.
Yes, they had rocky moments and John for sure had post-death idealization of Mary. John heavily decayed as a character so did Dean, but that doesn’t mean there was no goodness or love to begin with. You can become a bad person.
I think it's a little unfair to assume that they didn’t fight like Hell to choose each other and dodge the machinations. It's also a little unfair to assume that they didn’t choose each other, just because they, like all marriages, weren't perfect or honest with one another. If they had been perfect, don't you think that's actually more suspect?
Oh, but Heaven told you so? Right. Heaven, which feeds you a regular diet of cupids and soulmates and other bullshit. Hmm.
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Are you Team Free Will?
By the time we finish watching SPN, words that imply destiny should send us running for our goddamn lives. So, how did TFW lose?
SPN feels forever unresolved because:
Dean will dies after placing too much focus on Revenge, the corrupted, unfair past
Cas dies after placing too much stock in Jack’s Destiny, the idealized, inevitable future
Sam’s mistake was probably falling prey to Chuck’s illusion, the corrupt future, and losing Hope
Perhaps, they jointly screwed up when they lost their hero-ness and didn’t trust they they were Enough on their own, without Fortuna's luck.
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An alternative to mirrors?
Anyway, I sort of see all the mirror stuff as Chuck making fun of his characters or trying to misdirect them, or at worst, trying to tell them who they are instead of letting them discover it for themselves.
I know fandom loves its mirrors, but I like to remind myself that these mirrors can contain false, toxic messages to mold you to take on a role and to perceive things a certain way.
But importantly:
You are not one-dimensional.
You are not one archetype.
You do not have a sole purpose. You do not serve a sole cause.
You are multi-faceted and beautiful.
You can care about many things and people in your life.
You are worthy, even in the throes of the storm, even in the midst of turmoil, and even tangled up in the ugliness of war.
You can make the worst mistake of your life.
You can be an abuser and victim, and that doesn't make you a caricature; it makes you messy and human.
You can doubt who you are and go full-blown existential crisis and lose your way.
But you can start trying to be good anytime and you should always keep trying to fix it. That's hope. That's the whole point.
