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I haven’t talked a lot about the episode but I guess I wanna talk about how the stated intent of Amara with bringing Mary back was right on level with Dean’s internal reflections in 15x02, 15x07, and 15x09, and how that was important enough to clarify beyond meta for >
I haven’t talked a lot about the episode but I guess I wanna talk about how the stated intent of Amara with bringing Mary back was right on level with Dean’s internal reflections in 15x02, 15x07, and 15x09, and how that was important enough to clarify beyond meta for >
those viewers who maybe never even considered the question of WHY.
At the end of S12 Amara told Dean she was giving him what he needed and while the answer of who that was was obvious, the noted intent behind the action was not. >>
At the end of S12 Amara told Dean she was giving him what he needed and while the answer of who that was was obvious, the noted intent behind the action was not. >>
That’s why Dean asked the question in the first place. And it’s a question of intent I’m sure some viewers never considered, having already reasoned Amara’s actions in a basic way: Dean loves his mom and Amara was giving him back the time she herself was robbed of with family. >>
Reconnecting, after all, is the beat the S12 finale left us on. But it also more deeply left us on how over the course of S12 Amara learned to forgive the past in order to move into the future, to stop existing as vengeance and fury only, lashing out blame as a justification >>
to keeping herself stuck in the past. In contrast, S15 has Michael (and Adam) just ready to move on, not being consumed by the past, forever stuck in place.
Amara’s intention, spelled plainly out to Dean is a path, a shape of what victory looks like for him personally. >>
Amara’s intention, spelled plainly out to Dean is a path, a shape of what victory looks like for him personally. >>
It’s a meta phrase I’ve used a lot this year when describing the show’s endgame: “The shape of the path to victory”. Amara understands perfectly the nature of existence. Dean, meanwhile, is still angry about its nature: that beings exist that can manipulate his circumstances. >>
Chuck existing was never the problem tho. Chuck’s obsession with how his creation became better than him is the problem. Your children often show you the true nature of life so you’d always do well to stop trying to hold them back and instead simply let them show you the future.
And the future is something new. We change, grow. This understanding, this growth, is what Dean needs to take with him into the future
It’s two story beats existing as one (another Michael/Adam piece of symbolism I suppose). >>
It’s two story beats existing as one (another Michael/Adam piece of symbolism I suppose). >>
Amara essentially saying to Dean: “I’m showing you how to grow in the existence the universe created without killing me or my brother” is an essential thing for Dean to consider. Because whether they cease to exist or not, Dean can still be stuck in the past >>
unless he lets go of the anger around the circumstances of his past. Without letting go of that anger, Dean Winchester has no future. And I honestly don’t think he’s really thought of that before, having never really spent his time imagining the future where he’s not >>
fighting monsters. His present, fighting monsters, is also soiled by this inability to see the future. And I think that’s not something he’s thought sequentially about either. Amara is politely trying to explain this truth. It’s an imperative for the audience as well. >>
Dean Winchester is being made to consider what his freed existence looks like on a personal level in both the present AND the future. And this in turn is the seeming answer to the problem of Chuck, who his sister knows so well. >>
Adjacently, the show has used Cas to emphasize different aspects of this as well. Cas tells Dean plainly in 15x02 the nature of existence and how choice surpasses all of Chuck’s machinations. Dean didn’t want to hear it then. He’s still angry about it now. >>
Then there’s the S15 skirted question of what is Cas to Dean: choice or machination? Dean touches on this in 15x07 (iirc) but doesn’t word it so bluntly. He only muses on how he can’t clearly see what are his choices versus Chuck’s paths. I think it haunts him, this question >>
of WHAT CAS IS: choice or non-choice? Amara felt inside Cas’ heart in 11x18 (iirc). She’s been inside Dean. She knows the answer to this question that haunts him but knows (given Dean’s mistrust of all-powerful beings) that Dean must figure it out for himself, that Cas, much >>
like everything else Dean currently loves (and however we view that love), is a choice he makes, an endeavor he decides upon. It’s learning to be free. And we can tell Cas is so intimately tied up in this development because 15x09 ties it so textually in, when Dean >>
laments about his anger to Cas directly through prayer, offering to say it out loud also. Claiming Cas, through choice (words), is structurally one of Dean’s final bridges to cross and I think the writing outlines this plainly now, following the discussions around Dean’s anger >>
and the baseline reality of existence both through Dean himself and other supernatural characters.
“You asked what about all this is real. We are.”
“You asked what about all this is real. We are.”
By now Supernatural has shown us what it plans to do for the ending. It’s shown us its strongest value: togetherness, keeping those we love with us, sharing that journey together and letting go of the anger of the past in order to accept and pursue the future. >>
And the future doesn’t look like what we know now. It won’t play by the same rules. It can’t. It’s here the show invites us to consider most these two themes: togetherness and a new reality. We’ve also seen a lot of imagery with two things living as one. >>
Dean letting go of his anger is key tho, really important. It can’t follow him into his new world where he is allowed a bar and doesn’t have to constantly fight monsters and worry about losing his family. In preparation for the future, Amara gives Dean what she knows >>
he will need to take with him into this new life.
*S11 not S12 in this thread! Sorry about that. I was most thinking about Mary and her effect from Amara and wrote the wrong season early in the thread! 
