fire walk with me

happy anniversary of dean and cas living happily ever after, y’all

i stopped watching supernatural five years ago and never really looked back. i was happy only occasionally thinking about the incredible joy destiel gave me (has always given me). castiel’s confession of his love for dean was a true gift and made me pay attention again these last few weeks, hopeful for a good ending to a show that once meant the world to me.

i knew going into this finale that we - both destiel fans and fans of the show in general - would almost inevitably come out disappointed. i saw a lot of love on tumblr the last few weeks, and a lot of hope. you guys almost had me hoping too.

i had a few fears, but prime among them was that they would time-skip only to show dean getting a happily ever after with some random woman and 2.5 kids, thereby erasing destiel completely as a final fuck you. turns out that was sam’s fate, and the ending was nearly as much of a dumpster fire as people had feared. no doubt about it, what i have read about the finale is bad; it’s disrespectful to both dean and cas as individual characters, cas especially to only get a passing mention. it’s disrespectful to eileen and sam’s relationship. it’s disrespectful to jack and cas’ relationship. it sucks and it’s incredible to me that anyone thought that was a good way to close out the show.

that being said, i find myself glad that it wasn’t a hell of a lot worse. no twenty-something hottie making dean breakfast in his t-shirt, no cas permanently stuck in turbohell, dean and cas are both in heaven even if it’s not shown. i HATE the ending, but i am finding some peace in that it wasn’t as final a deathknell for destiel as it could have been and, most importantly, can be fixed with fanfic.

when i stopped watching five years ago, that was my wish for supernatural when it finally did end: no explicit disproving of destiel and an ending we could fix with fanfic (we would always have fanfic). ultimately, that’s what we got, with a canonical love confession on top. i’m not excusing the bull that was the finale, but what we have is a jumping-off point. we all knew we’d have to fix canon at the end of this thing and all things considered it’s not the worst place to start.

we all get to be disappointed. this thing was something a lot of us poured a lot of love and energy into for years and years and there was a lot of disrespect for characters we loved. but i think we can build from here, and i for one find solace in the end of the spectre of new and worse canon material making that more and more difficult.

this show meant a lot to me once and the enrichment i got out of the online community is something i will have for the rest of my life. i loved interacting with all of you. it was a hell of a ride. i am truly excited to see where the fanfic goes from here and i so look forward to reading hundreds more beautiful and satisfying aus with you all.

i have a lot of thoughts on character arcs and what would have made the most sense. sam came close to an appropriate arc, having started the show trying to live a normal life and getting sucked back into it. his ending, getting that normal life, makes sense, though obviously they should have addressed eileen and she should have explicitly been his wife; her, contrasted with jess, as the one who died on the altar of the family business but who was resurrected by the new god of the new world order sam helped to create through his prior sacrifices.

castiel’s personal arc was complete; he was an angel who broke ranks to save a human and his story is one of falling. falling from heaven, falling into himself as an individual, falling in love with dean. it made narrative sense for him to confess his feelings and sacrifice himself once again (problematic being sent to turbohell aside). he came full circle at his highest point, and that was a satisfying story for him as an individual character. less satisfying, and my eternal problem with supernatural, was how, for all the talk of being sam and dean’s brother, he is always excluded, lesser, an afterthought. that is the main reason i stopped watching the show, the constant disrespect shown to my favorite character. for all of their flowery words, they did fuck all to actually show cas was their brother and that they considered him family. the show ended with barely a mention of cas and his importance to this story, which is what i always knew in my heart of hearts would happen. it’s tragic.

dean, however, is where they really missed the mark. it made sense for him to die in the business because that’s how he lived his whole life, though there certainly was room for a story about how he was free of that life. but truly that life was all dean ever knew, so what would he have even done once that was gone? it makes sense that he would go first and be waiting for sam in heaven. they deserve to be with each other there. but something that really didn’t make sense was how he (and sam) were content to leave cas in the empty. dean explicitly said he was their brother, and he’s going to let his “brother” languish like that for eternity? love confession completely aside, this is another example of lip service being paid to the idea of family without any commitment. dean should have been the first in line to try to get cas out with sam right behind him. it would have made for perfect bookends for cas to have raised dean from perdition in the beginning of their story only for dean to do the same for cas at the end. that is the kind of symmetry that creates a well-written narrative arc for a character, not a complete abandonment of a very important relationship (or so we are told, over and over) in his life. profound bond? never heard of her.

would i have loved reciprocal, canon destiel? of course, though i never expected it, not even after cas’ confession. dean rescuing cas didn’t even need to show explicit reciprocation to be satisfying, but it DID need to happen, not only for his familial relationship with cas but for the idea of true free will, a theme explored all along and one strengthened in the end with the death of the old god. all that was required was dean saying that family didn’t leave family behind and him truly being warm and appreciative of cas without acting repulsed or weird around him; the fans could fill in the rest with whichever ending they preferred. supernatural has always struggled with logical and consistent over-arching storytelling and there are lots of good critiques explaining the whys and hows. suffice to say i am disappointed but not surprised on the missed opportunities. thank god we will always have fanfic for writers who care about the characters and their stories to carry the torch for us all touched by these characters. bless everyone in this fandom.