spn!
Welp.
Hi pals!
It's been almost exactly eight years since I posted a Supernatural episode reaction on this here LJ. I stopped watching the show after that-I got behind, then promised I would catch up and never leave but did neither of those things.
In the intervening years I moved to Tumblr and got deeply into One Direction fandom, but stopped being able to write not long after the band ended. These days I post sporadically on my Tumblr; most of my fannish interaction is about The Untamed and via Discord or just gchats/whatsapps/telegrams with my friends.
Of course I miss the culture of the old LJ days, and I miss being part of something the way I felt with SPN fandom back then. It's so difficult to connect the same way with Tumblr, which isn't really built for the long-form navel-gazing that was my bread and butter as a 20-something, and I always have trouble formulating responses to asks or reaching out via chat.
Anyway. The reason I'm posting now is, of course, because the SPN series finale aired on Thursday.
I cannot believe I've been watching this show for 15 years. lazy_daze and I first started watching together during the mid-season 1 hiatus, so we binged up through Shadow and then watched weekly from Hell House on. I would get up at 4 AM the day after it aired (at uni in London) and torrent the new episode as soon as it was up post-premiering in the US. Sam and I watched them as soon as possible those mornings, before lectures. I still have such vivid memories of that excitement!
I stopped watching early in season 8, as evidenced by my last episode reaction here. I just couldn't slog through it anymore; I was too much a samgirl at heart, among other things. It was a long time before I started again. I tried to catch up after season 9 aired, but I started back at the beginning of season 8 and didn't even make it as far as I had the first time.
Eventually in spring of 2016, when season 11 was finishing up, I tried one more time. There had been some buzz around really great recent episodes with a lot of old-school wincest vibes, and I couldn't resist. I started at the beginning of season 8 again, but that time I watched with valiant which was the motivation I needed to stick with it. We caught all the way up to the end of season 11-the season of Baby and Red Meat, to this day still two of my favourite eps of all time. Part of why it worked was also just that I'd had enough emotional distance from the fandom and from the show that I could enjoy it for what it was. It was awful sometimes (often), ridiculous and goofy...and poorly written. I consistently felt like Sam got shafted (so to speak) as I always used to when I was watching it the first time. But staying away from SPN fandom and just watching it with a friend was a great boundary-otherwise the fandom's obsession with Castiel and specifically with Destiel would've pushed me way, way away again. I had to actively disengage from that to be able to enjoy the show.
How sad, you know, that the SPN fandom which had once been such a font of joy for me was something I bristled so vehemently at. It was like this vocal majority was watching a completely different show than I was, and always had been. To me, it seemed like there were so many fans fundamentally misunderstanding what the show was about, and what it valued. Even if you don't ship Sam/Dean, their relationship is so clearly the point, the third main character...
I've regularly caught up on seasons of SPN after they're over since then. Every time I have I re-learn, by watching the show, that as scared as I am of them throwing away Sam and Dean's relationship as the core of everything, they don't. So many people paint Castiel as a much, much bigger part of the show than he is, and his relationship with Dean as so much more important than it is. And then I'd watch a season and be like, oh right. They're watching a different show than I am, I forgot. None of that is true.
I stalled out for a bit in season 14, I don't even really know why, but eventually caught up in time to be able to watch season 15 episodes in chunks, and then, after the pandemic break, as they aired. So now here we are.
It's over. What a wild, wild ride. I was 19 when I started watching this show, and now I'm 34. Supernatural has been airing my entire adult life. I met so many of my dearest friends through this show, I learned how to write, I grew up. I took the bad with the good. I quit when I needed to, and I came back when I wanted to.
I never thought we'd get an ending like this.
So.
Obviously, as I'm sure would be clear to anyone who has known me here on this LJ, I loved this episode. This final episode of Supernatural. I can't adequately express my emotions in words, and when I think about various parts of it too much I still burst out ugly-sobbing. This is the ending, or a version of the ending, that I have wanted since Dark Side of the Moon, way back in season 5. It's the ending I never thought we'd actually get. It's better than that, even. We've known that Sam and Dean are soulmates, we've known that they'd share a heaven the way heaven used to be set up. But having that, plus freedom, is so much more satisfying. I'm a wincest shipper, of course, and always have been, and I can't not see this episode as the ultimate wincest ending that my heart has always wanted. Just them. Forever. I can't believe it.
I have to imagine that when Jensen said this finale didn't sit right with him initially, it was because Sam and Dean didn't go out together. Which I understand! We've all been talking about a Butch and Sundance ending since season 1 first aired. I would have loved that. But they gave us JACK AND ROSE instead. I literally still cannot believe it. Is someone going to yell GOTCHA and take this away from me??? Like...I can't...I still can't process this. Did they know this was what they were doing?? THEY HAD TO, RIGHT? ANDREW "RED MEAT" DABB??? MUST'VE KNOWN.
Like yes, okay, the montage of Sam's life was ridiculous. They just had to get some JK Rowling idiocy up in there, because you can't appreciate the perfect without the flawed, I guess. Gotta always remember this is SPN. But the concept-that Dean needs Sam to keep going, to have a free and happy life. Sam misses Dean every single day. That there's never a moment, a second, that he doesn't think about him, that he doesn't wish they were together. That "always keep fighting" is about fighting through sadness and loneliness to get to be the real normal human with a small, real life that they deserved to have instead of the fated bullshit they got. That he is living his life FOR Dean. THAT'S THE GOOD STUFF.
I wish the kid weren't named Dean, I think that's silly. I wish the old age hair wasn't...that. I wish there weren't a blurry porch-woman of whom there is not a single picture in the house who is ostensibly his wife but has no identity or agency or value. Also like, did she die before him? Is that why she's not at his bedside? Because like, he dies and she ain't there and he's not wearing his wedding ring he had in the montage when he gets to heaven with his brother, so like sodignldkfmh. Was she just the babysitter? Is Dean the Younger a wishbaby...???? lol like I'm not mad at DILF Sam!!! I just wish they'd montaged him hunting more and more clearly explained whether he gave it up to have a normal life or did both (I WANT BOTH PLZ). Keep everything else vague!! I always get prickly when marriage and having babies are the indicators of a happy successful life, too, so I'd be particularly pleased if he e.g. saved a kid (or brothers!!) from a hunt and adopted him/them and raised them to be kind and smart and heroic and to love each other more than anything :(
ANYWAY.
The episode started with a full-on curtainfic, and god it was so, so good to me. Naked Sam torso and a li'l towel headwrap!! Puppydog!! It was sweet and gentle and happy and they were FINALLY FREE. I would have liked an indicator of how much time had passed here, because I want to think it was like...six months at least, since Jack became god and fixed everything. The way it went, it seemed sort of like the vampire juggalos were the first case Sam and Dean went on since freedom, and I don't think you HAVE to read it that way, but. Sam being Sad Sam on the bench thinking about Jack and Castiel implied to me that it was still fresh. (Also ow, this foreshadowing-Dean says, "You know that pain's not gonna go away. But if we don't keep living, then all the sacrifice is gonna be for nothing." OUCH!!) But yeah, I want them to have had longer together, living their lives how they wanted to, finally. :(((
I liked the old-school case, using John's journal, using Kripke and Singer as aliases, serving us nostalgia. I liked Sam saying he was going to make the vampire guy "feel every inch" heh heh heh. I like Dean saying "erotic fantasy".
I've seen some people who hate that "a nail" (excuse me that's rebar, how dare) is what killed Dean, but I really like it. They're normal now. They're not the superprotagonists anymore, and no Chuck is protecting them, nothing is guiding the outcome of the fight. "Normal" heroes do hard things and have to suffer the consequences, and now Dean Winchester is a normal hero. And just because it's a pedestrian death (or as pedestrian as a vampire juggalo shoving incident can be) doesn't make it meaningless. That Dean can die now, that he has the freedom to accept his death, is the most meaningful of all. I was talking to beckaandzac about this earlier, and how contrary to some people's feeling that this is a banal, meaningless death with no catharsis, to me it's the MOST cathartic death...uh, maybe ever??? At least in modern television storytelling, for sure. Dean has been dying and coming back to life for 15 years of this damn show. And now he gets to die, and accept it, and choose to stay dead. To rest. To end the cycle. It's so cathartic I'm LITERALLY weeping just typing this.
I don't even know where to start with Dean's death scene. This was the best acting I've ever seen from Jensen, hands down. Again, I'm teary right now just remembering it. And this is why it's so good that we got them not dying together. I am a huge sucker for life-or-death love declarations, and this is nothing if not that. That broken desperation that this is (maybe) the last time you'll be able to tell the person who is half your fucking heart that you love them and have always loved them more than anyone or anything else in the world, in the cosmos, in all of metaphysical space and time. Fuck!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE WE GET TO HAVE THIS. I can't believe we GET to HAVE THIS. He needs to see Sam, needs to look at him as he dies. "Yeah, there he is." Christ :(((( Dean is so proud of Sam, has always looked up to him, so smart, so strong, so independent. Stood outside his dorm for hours agonising about seeing him again because he didn't know if Sam would even speak to him, and the finality of that rejection would have killed him because it's only ever been Sam, for Dean. THE WAY HE SAYS IT. "I was so scared because when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It's always been you. And me."
And Sam says, "Then don't leave me. Don't leave me." AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! STAB ME DIRECTLY IN THE FUCKING HEART WITH A PIECE OF REBAR WHY DON'T YOU. The throwback to the pilot dialogue with, "I can't do this alone."
"Yes, you can."
"Well I don't want to."
He doesn't want to!!!!!!!!!! And Dean says, "I'm not leaving you. I'm gonna BE with you." The way he emphasises "be" in that sentence, I don't know why, but it just fucking guts me. I feel like the usual way that would go is emphasis on WITH. "I'm gonna be WITH you. Right here." And the different emphasis just changes it and makes it so much deeper and more and OH DON'T MIND ME I'M JUST TYPING THROUGH A BLURRY VEIL OF CONSTANT TEARS. He's gonna be in Sam's heart every single day that he's fighting through the pain of not having Dean. Every step.
And then :((((((((( "I love you so much. My baby brother."
Okay lol I just had to loudly sob into a pillow for several minutes but I'm back now. Sorry for just transcribing this damn scene and calling it an episode reaction but like FUCK MAN. FUCK!!!!!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, MY BABY BROTHER??????? It...I'm…I genuinely am at a loss. I don't think Dean has ever specifically directly said "I love you" to just Sam like this at all before, and this is such a fucking doozy. It's also, sorry, deeply wincesty. My baby brother. FUCK, MAN. Put this on my fuuuucking tombstone
Then Sam being brave enough, in the midst of being SO DEEPLY BROKEN, to let Dean go and tell him it's okay. The gentle, soft forehead touch. Hands clutching. I was thinking, when they were leaning in, "they're so close, wouldn't it be good if they could've touched foreheads." AND THEN THEY DID. I just. I was beside myself. I'm still beside myself. The radiating love and warmth and tenderness, it's fucking unreal. Even NOT seen romantically, it's so intimate and special, but like...also...come on. Sweeping!!!!!!!! Romance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I started this out wanting to be collected and at least partially coherent but here we are with all caps and dumps of punctuation and emojis; my true self jumped out. This is what it has always been. It was ALWAYS the love story of Sam and Dean. ALWAYS. I have seen my fair share of the outpouring of...opinions...re: this episode, and I just don't understand what show these people have been fucking watching. I know I basically said that earlier but I DON'T FUCKING GET IT. No one has ever, ever been closer to Sam and Dean than each other. They built themselves a family, they met friends along the way. But there was never a question that they come first in each other's lives, always. ALWAYS. And specifically that Sam comes first in Dean's life. It's truly baffling to me that anyone could read this show as touting anything other than the ultimate love being the soulmate bond between the two of them.
I didn't think they would give it to us in the final episode this blatantly, I didn't think that we would get to hear Dean absolutely flay himself and rip his heart out of his chest and hand it still-beating to Sam, but they did. And the interviews with Dabb before this episode aired, where he said he knew a lot of people weren't going to like it-he said that ultimately he had to be true to the characters, and to the story they want to tell. Twitter will like what it likes, and it will hate what it hates, but the creators' ultimate loyalty is to Sam and Dean. I just!!! That there's anyone out there who DOESN'T think this episode was loyal to Sam and Dean, that anyone out there doesn't think this is the show that they've been watching for 15 years, or that they got short-changed, or that anything here happened for shock value...I don't know what to tell you.
I mentioned earlier that I failed out the first time during the airing of season 8. I couldn't handle it because I felt like Dean just didn't care about Sam enough anymore. He didn't trust him. He was always with Castiel, and Benny, and I was over it. I was over everyone else being more important in the show, to Dean, than Sam. But here's the thing-Sam felt that way too. If I'd have stuck with it, I'd have seen the scene in the finale where Sam tells Dean that his greatest sin is that he let Dean down, so badly and so many times, that Dean turns to angels and vampires over him. And Dean is FURIOUS. ENRAGED that Sam could EVER think that. He says it's completely untrue. He killed Benny to save Sam. "Don't you DARE think that there is ANYTHING, past or present, that I would put in front of you. It has NEVER been like that, EVER. I need you to see that, I'm begging you." If I'd watched the whole season the first time, I would have heard the show TELLING ME that the core of the show has always been and will always be them, and their love for each other. How did these people who hate the finale not hear him? This is all he's been saying, every single episode, for fifteen years. It was a surprise to me that we got as much as we did as explicitly and as laser-focused as we did in the finale, but the fact that the love between Sam and Dean is ultimately the most important part of the show and one that will ALWAYS come first...that's been there all along.
So Dean died. Sam stroked his hair and clutched his body and wept and it's beautiful and makes me think of a mirror of All Hell Breaks Loose. I want a million codas of the immediate aftermath of that-him having to clean up the scene, and drive his brother's body and the kids away from that barn. And then drive Dean home, all that way in the Impala, alone. And wrap him. And build his pyre. Wanting to hop on himself, probably, but he promised. And now he has to face the long expanse of his life without Dean. Fuck. FUCK!!
I talked about the montage part earlier so I won't rehash, but suffice to say, I would've done it differently but I don't HATE it. I would be really interested in some fic about it that takes the touchstones we get in canon and makes something out of them. I love that he's wearing Dean's watch. I love the shaky misery that comes out when he's sitting in the Impala, pining. I love the mundane tragedy of living every day, all of the joys, with this background of waiting for death. He's fighting because otherwise all the sacrifice is for nothing, and because he's the strongest of them, but when his son tells him he can go, it's letting out that breath he's been holding the whole time.
I do find it soothing that for them, thirty or forty years isn't even that long. They've lived so many lifetimes. Sam's soul was tortured for 120 years in hell. A few decades of a normal(-ish) happy life is easy to fight through when you've got that under your belt, I feel. They'll be together for eternity. He doesn't know Dean's in heaven, I suppose, or that he'll get there himself, and he doesn't know that Jack and Castiel have fixed it, but Sam has always had faith and there's nothing he has more faith in than Dean, so.
I imagine the pandemic made it such that they couldn't have a lot of people back that they wanted to; the fact that Dean arrives at Harvelle's makes me feel like Ellen and Jo and Ash would have been there if not for filming constraints. I actually like the lonely feel of it this way, though-that everyone is there, but just out of shot, because it's not paradise yet for Dean. "Almost perfect," he says, and Bobby knows exactly what he means. "He'll be along." I like that time moves differently in heaven. I like that rather than go see his parents or his friends without Sam, he just goes for a drive until he gets there. That he senses that exact moment. I like the throwback to the pilot outfits, it's emosh. Although, okay, I admit it doesn't make a ton of sense. Why would they pick those outfits to spend eternity in out of any, idfk. But I like seeing it.
The way their last words in the whole series are "Sammy" and "Dean". The smiles, that hug. Sam is the love of Dean's life and he's there and they're together and now it's really heaven. And for Sam, he can finally stop pushing, stop fighting, stop being strong and missing Dean every single day, because he has him now, forever. :(((((((((( Christ.
I feel like there must be more I need to say, that I'm forgetting. I've rewatched it a couple times now, particularly the rebar scene, and it just hurts so fucking bad every time. I keep thinking this time I won't sob as much, but no. I really do think Sam/Dean is my ultimate OTP of all time, and will continue to be, especially after this. I can drift as far from SPN as it's possible to drift but they will ALWAYS be the most special. Jared and Jensen's chemistry saved that fucking show more times than anyone can count, and made something so INDELIBLE I'm going to carry it with me always. I absolutely feel like I won, like everyone who ships Sam/Dean won. I'm sad that there's such a negative tidal wave on e.g. Twitter right now, and I hope that Jared and Jensen and everyone stay away for a while, knowing what it'll be like there. They're just wrong, man. THEY'RE JUST WRONG. This finale fully honoured the legacy of the show, and of course I understand wanting to see some people back in the flesh, but there were filming restrictions, and it was just so good the way they were able to do it in the end.
So yeah. Overall, I loved this episode. It's the best ending I could've hoped for, that I never thought we'd get, and it makes me want to read Supernatural fic for the first time in about eight years.
Sorry that's so long, I guess I had a lot of feelings, to put it mildly. What better way to express them than to come back here, though! And I also owe a Sam/Dean fic to kelios which I'm about four or five years late on, and WOW am I full of inspiration to finish it now. Maybe this is what it'll take to get me writing again...