#but Dean is the only one we’ve seen on screen that has a MUTUAL connection w jack

[soullessjack]

throwing out just One more hot dean and jack take while it’s on my brain but I honestly think dean gives jack a little more autonomy than sam and cas do . Maybe.

[myblackeyedfire]

15x18, hurting something awful but the story’s not over for Cas and Dean

Spoilers ahead. 

I feel for the fans who left in earlier seasons due to queerbaiting or fridging or other shit in years prior who are seeing their feeds confirm that is what happened in this week’s episode and it’s frustrating feeling like the reverse of the boy who cried wolf, so I want to write out my thoughts on it because I want to believe TPTB learned from past mistakes and are going in a different direction for the conclusion. Here’s why.  

1. The story itself. We get deliberate parallels to romantic couples in Charlie and Stevie, and Sam and Eileen. The losses are of people in love, mutually. Whatever stage of their relationship they’re at, from amazing scrambled eggs together or dates and photos of the other as the lock screen, the connection is that it’s a romantic relationship. Sam is devastated when he sees Eileen’s phone but he presses on then and there because it needs to be done, and to keep from losing it (see: Dean at the end of this ep). 

Bobo Berens is deliberate and subtle. He crafted Claire and Kaia’s Dreamhunter dynamic with such care that I’m taking a reasoned leap of faith for the remaining two episodes. I’m thinking of how he wrote Rowena in The Rupture, the dignity and self determination in her deciding on closing the rift with Sam’s help to fulfil the prophesy. The music, the slow turn, she is the captain of her soul, steering it by choice. Rowena isn’t forgotten after that. She’s mentioned in in all but one of the subsequent episodes and we learn she’s taken over in Hell, so this strongly implies it is not a final goodbye.

The writer who gave one character’s dignified sacrifice a way to carry on is the same one who depicted Cas’ sacrifice as fully freely chosen and on his terms as much as it can be, to be taken to a place Cas got out of before and that Jack can enter. There’s as big a doorway to lead Cas out potentially as there was out of Billie’s library - assuming they can trick or overpower or persuade The Empty once they get there. 

2. The Doylist logistics of creating the show as a story. Aside from the way we’ve seen how Castiel’s death leaves Dean looking hollow-eyed and unable to cope, we know there are two episodes left. See Dean here giving Cas a hunter’s funeral?

This is the face of a man who says “we’ve lost everything.” Chuck didn’t answer then and if he won’t now (hah, good luck with that!) Dean should be the one “to bring him back.” Because Cas staying gone is not a toes in the sand ending. There’s no peace when they are done if he stays gone. Sam is also devastated but Dean’s just hollowed out completely. 

The shattered gaze here? Been there, done that. We’ve seen callbacks and parallels aplenty but at no point has this show committed itself to pantomime or exact replication. They’ve had the ending where everyone they love is gone, too, which is why I think we’ll see everyone who Chuck poofed reinstated. There was too much care taken to clarify that he didn’t kill them. They’re just *waving vaguely* not here at the moment. So here’s to bringing back Charlie and Stevie, Bobby, Donna, Becky, and everyone else. The quiet sobs as he sits and ignores Sam’s call remind me of Dean’s barely controlled breathing as he begins preparations for the funeral and starts walking around Cas’ shrouded body laid to rest. It’s already happened. 

So, this repetition. Jensen played Dean as a grieving widower until he got Cas back (see above) and TPTB already indicated they’re not going for an ending befitting the first 5 seasons or GoT, so it makes no sense to leave things there as the end to Dean’s story. We already established that Chuck’s view of them and the ending he wants is the wrong one given how Becky reacts, so it has to be subverted from the names on tombstones doom and gloom. 

Likewise, leaving The Empty, Chuck/Amara, Jack, Sam and Dean as the only pieces left on the chess board reminds me of Sam and Dean cut off from everything as the Leviathans take over. Andrew Dabb’s been instrumental in helping Sam and Dean adjust their relationship, too, to one of brotherhood instead of parenting and codependency, so leaving just them left with all their friends and allies and loved ones gone is too great a loss. It would be a regression. It would mean Chuck gets his ending. 

Remember also how Chuck confirmed that Cas hasn’t followed orders since the very beginning of meeting Dean. That’s immense. It means everything he’s ever done was because he decided on it, not because it was a beat in Chuck’s story arcs. 

Here is the first time the shot shows Dean since Chuck starts ranting. He’s listening intently, body language like a cat with an arched back before a brawl, but he heard what Chuck just revealed. 

We’ve had layers already peeled back about angel and human relationships, most recently with Adam and before that with Isham. We’ve seen the Cas/Colette parallels, too. It’s all there. And with the enormous work Dean’s been doing on accepting himself more, of rebalancing his relationship with Sam to one of more even footing, he is doing the work on himself to be more open and able to express his emotions. Poor boy is still not great at it as a lifetime of running on coffee, questionable drugs, minimal sleep, and fear-soaked adrenaline within a hunter culture and the ever disapproving shadow of John Winchester doesn’t leave much room for processing. 

So back to 15x18. Dean hasn't even had time to consider the confirmation/revelation from 15x17 by Chuck that Cas was never operating under his control and what it means for the magnitude of Cas' actions, the very opposite of the centuries in the making soulmates that Mary and John Winchester were from heavenly machination. He's been angrily panicking all season up to now that nothing in his life is real, that choice is an illusion, that he's a rat trapped in a deadly maze all his life but Castiel is the undoing of that. What he told Dean earlier in the season when he was questioning what’s real, that they are, is amplified magnificently. Their connection is real. Castiel’s love for Dean is real. 

Let’s take a breath and see how they explore the nature of Destiel in Act Two. With any luck there’ll be robots, a trip to the moon, and a story about love and love. Dean getting to experience things, people differently or maybe for the first time, y’know? Otherwise there was no point setting up any of those parallels, the meeting with the hunter husbands, the car conversation with Sam about settling down with a hunter, someone who knows the life. Dean’s heard Cas say he loves them, and now him in particular. It’s not a satisfying story to leave it at that and we’ve seen it already. In 11x17 Michelle says “They said I could leave an hour ago. But where am I even supposed to go? After everything we survived together... I watched the man I love die. There's no normal after that.” I don’t think what we’re getting is a repeat of this so here’s hoping Dean gets how in love Cas is, gets Cas back, and chooses him, too. I want them to continue making it up as they go. Dean rescuing Cas as a parallel for Cas raising him from Hell is a far better story than Dean going on without him, wouldn’t you say? So I have hope.