I find this kind of interesting because I’ve been a fan of the show since the night it aired, and recently watched the fandom hype itself up toward the end and get stoked about destiel going ‘canon’ and all I could think to myself was...
It was always going to end with the brothers. It’s the only way it could end. Always. Since day 1.
As someone who used to ship destiel but doesn’t anymore, once I took off those shipping goggles around s8, I stopped having any belief it would ever go canon (and stopped having any desire for it to but that’s a side thing). Taking those off, it became incredibly apparently the narrative wasn’t telling that story, and had zero interest in telling that story. I felt it undeniable that Cas must love Dean, but knew we’d never see them together, because they were simply not being written as a romance.
(Which is also why the confession in 18 was cathartic and beautiful to me, but perfect in that it was not requited).
Meanwhile, Jensen Ackles told us months ago that 19 was the season finale, whereas 20 was the ‘series’ finale. We knew the seasonal arc was going to wrap up in 19, we knew it was over. And I saw shippers still saying it wasn’t over. I watched people wait with baited breath for something to change in 20.
And then I saw these people claim they were betrayed by 20 despite getting everything we were told to expect (old school episode, focused on the brothers, one more case, series finale, etc). And I just... don’t get how. How are so many people saying they were betrayed when we were told what to expect, and we’ve had 15 years of development to know exactly how this story would end?
From the pilot through to finale, the story has centred around and anchored itself through the relationship between Sam and Dean. It’s never been overtly romantic or sexual, and most people (your GA / general audience) won’t read it as incestuous. And it doesn’t have to be! The point is their brotherly bond, which is itself beautiful (and destructive and overwhelming) without sex or romance. It’s not about those things and has never needed to be, textually. Instead, it’s always been played as this deep, crazy, consuming love between them (”family, love, whatever”) with their brotherhood at the heart of it.
Despite that, the show has had intermittent incest subtext from damn near the beginning. It’s something I’ve always been surprised by (especially that they get away with it), and I’ve been shocked at how they played on that deliberately and pulled it into view, if you were willing to acknowledge it and pick apart the episodes from a narrative lens.
The show joked about it within the story (people calling them a couple, them posing as one), made meta-jokes about it (people in-universe writing incest fic about them), highlighted time and again that they couldn’t fit romantic partners in their lives so long as they had each other (Lisa, Amelia), had nods to them being an old married couple and made implicit comparisons to an actual gay married couple of hunters (the Chitters), and more.
Regardless of sex or romance, the brothers have been canonically been called “psychotically, irrationally, erotically co-dependent” by a character who’s entire job it was to get them to simply play the roles fate set out for them. They were textually implied to be soulmates. There is an in-universe fan convention for Chuck’s books based on them and people who cosplay them turn out to be a gay couple. One of the show’s writers and producers has called the series the “epic love story of Sam and Dean.”
Whether or not someone ships it, Sam-and-Dean as a single unit has been layered into each season of the show. That was never going to change, certainly not in the final episode.
So while I agree with you -- the show went all-in on the ‘wincest’ endgame, and for all that it wasn’t sexual or romantic overtly, it’s still in some ways shocking, especially considering it’s written for a general audience -- the part that’s bemusing to me is this: if you’re able to see clearly how the finale was written that way, how could it not be clear that the literal entire show for the last 15 years has also been written that way?
I don’t mean that as a specific jab to you, OP. You seem like a lovely person, and I don’t know how to word my question better or I would. I just mean, at all shippers who are angry about the finale focusing on the brothers in this way, or angry about this subtext, or frustrated at the lack of destiel -- I genuinely don’t understand how the past 15 years hadn’t prepared you for this ending.
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