{"id":840,"date":"2024-08-13T16:22:55","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T16:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2024-08-13T16:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T16:22:55","slug":"the-winchesters-finale-gave-dean-the-supernatural-ending-he-deserved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"The Winchesters\u2019 Finale Gave Dean the \u2018Supernatural\u2019 Ending He Deserved"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY
\nMICHAEL JOHN PETTY
\n\"\"
\nWhen Supernatural ended its 15-season tenure back in 2020, fans were, well, to put it generously, pretty mixed on how the whole thing turned out. While it was nice to see Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) reunite in Heaven after a heartfelt Kansas-turned-Neoni rendition of the series\u2019 official\/unofficial theme song \u201cCarry On Wayward Son,\u201d it\u2019s no secret that not everyone was particularly happy with the show\u2019s ultimate conclusion. Not only does Dean die on a routine vampire hunt, passing away slowly in his brother\u2019s arms (which coincidentally may be the best scene in the entire final season), but he\u2019s briskly whisked away into Heaven solo. His parents aren\u2019t there to greet him, neither is Castiel (Misha Collins), and their other long-deceased friends and allies don\u2019t greet him either.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, this wasn\u2019t entirely the showrunners\u2019 fault. They had intended an enormous Supernatural reunion in the end, but, like many of us, their plans were dashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) was still there to usher the elder Winchester through the pearly gates. You can always count on Bobby. While series creator Eric Kripke gave the series finale his blessing (he had already written his own ending in Season 5\u2019s \u201cSwan Song,\u201d which is to this day the series\u2019 highest-rated episode), not everyone involved loved the idea. Jensen Ackles himself expressed clear disappointment when talking with his former Smallville co-star Michael Rosenbaum on the Inside of You podcast, explaining that he spent time both liking and disliking the ending chosen for the long-running series. \u201cMy initial reaction was, \u2018I don\u2019t like it,\u2019\u201d Ackles told Rosenbaum. However, he soon explained how he came around to the idea, but only after discussing it further with Kripke himself, who thought it was the \u201cperfect\u201d ending for Sam and Dean. \u201cFrom then on, I was onboard.\u201d While fans continued to struggle with the end of Dean\u2019s story in \u201cCarry On,\u201d currently the third lowest-ranked episode of the series according to IMDb, the Winchester saga has continued.<\/p>\n

Just two years later, the CW revived Ackles\u2019 trademark character for their new spin-off\/prequel series The Winchesters, on which Ackles and his wife (and former Supernatural guest-star) Daneel Ackles also serve as executive producers. The series primarily centers on younger versions of John and Mary Winchester, but not the versions you remember from the Season 4 episode \u201cIn The Beginning\u201d or Season 5\u2019s \u201cThe Song Remains The Same.\u201d Following the new Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly incarnations of John and Mary, the CW\u2019s latest Supernatural love story changes up the lore and aims to give the Winchester family a more hopeful (and far less bloody) ending.<\/p>\n

The Winchesters\u2019 Gave Dean a More Thoughtful Epilogue Than \u2018Supernatural\u2019 Did<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether the spin-off earns itself a sophomore year (the jury\u2019s still out) the first and potentially only season of The Winchesters was a decent ride on its own. More than that, it was a thoughtful epilogue to Dean\u2019s fairweather Supernatural send-off. While Dean himself was only seen in the first and last episodes, he can be heard throughout all 13 as he narrates this John and Mary\u2019s story from afar. A bit that could have easily come off as unnecessarily tacky, Dean\u2019s narration lulls us into a false sense of security, getting us to believe that this is our familiar Supernatural world, one where we know how everything\u2019s supposed to play out. But by the finale, \u201cHey, That\u2019s No Way to Say Goodbye,\u201d that security blanket is ripped right out from under us, and Dean reveals a strange truth that only the diehards might\u2019ve guessed: this isn\u2019t Dean\u2019s home universe, and this John and Mary aren\u2019t his parents.
\nAfter years of sacrificing himself for his family, it felt sort of anticlimactic when Dean died by accident in the field. Rather than some macho-heroic death or some world-ending mission (he\u2019d been on plenty of those before, and even died in a few), Dean was impaled while fighting a masked vampire. Not exactly the most notable death, and certainly not his most iconic given that Dean died countless times throughout the series chronology. (No, seriously, he dies hundreds of times in the Season 3 episode \u201cMystery Spot\u201d alone.) Thus, Dean taking a \u201cdetour through the multiverse\u201d in the middle of his infamous Heaven tour (time up there is iffy anyway) made loads of sense and gave him one last shot at changing what he had always hoped he could: his parent\u2019s destiny.<\/p>\n

In the Supernatural episode \u201cMy Bloody Valentine,\u201d a Cupid reveals that John and Mary Winchester (played primarily by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith in the original series) were set up based on a heavenly decree, making theirs an arranged marriage of sorts. This revelation always stuck with Dean, who believed that his entire life was orchestrated. And as it turned out, he was right. The \u201cGod\u201d of the Supernatural-verse, Chuck Shurley (Red Benedict), eventually made it known that he had been pulling the Winchester strings since long before they were born. \u201cYou\u2019re my favorite show,\u201d Chuck eventually told Sam and Dean in the Season 14 finale \u201cMoriah,\u201d shaking the entire fandom to their core. But, even though Sam and Dean did beat Chuck before the final curtain closed, they couldn\u2019t reverse the negative effect he had on their lives, including on their parents.<\/p>\n

In previous seasons, Dean traveled back in time Back to the Future-style to try and stop his parents (played then by Matt Cohen and Amy Gumenick) from making the same mistakes, but to no avail. The timeline is incredibly hard to change (and even if you do, the consequences are monumental), and at the end of the day, those experiences made John and Mary, and by extension Sam and Dean, who they were. That isn\u2019t even to mention that, though they were reunited again in Supernatural\u2019s 300th episode \u201cLebanon,\u201d John and Mary started a new life post-series with one another in Heaven. So, as he drove through the multiverse in search of a world, a universe, where his family had a happy ending, hoping for some closure himself, Dean became aware of Chuck\u2019s contingency plan: the Akrida.<\/p>\n

Based on the Greek word meaning \u201clocusts,\u201d these monsters, like many on Supernatural, come straight out of the Book of Revelation, and they threatened to eat the entire multiverse as a result. Though Chuck was defeated in \u201cInherit the Earth,\u201d his backup army of monsters began to invade the alternate 1970s world of The Winchesters, which is where the new versions of John Winchester and Mary Campbell come into play. After being pushed by Dean to investigate his father\u2019s disappearance, a young John quickly met a young Mary and, unlike their main universe counterpart, they began hunting together as they fell in love. As John, Mary, and their Monster Club tackled everything from demons, werewolves, vampires, evil clowns, and the Norse trickster Loki (yes, with Richard Speight, Jr. returning), Dean worked behind the scenes to keep the Akrida from destroying this world \u2014 and his family\u2019s chance at happiness.<\/p>\n

The Winchesters\u2019 Finale Allows Dean to Have More Closure From Beyond the Grave
\n\"\"
\nWhile it\u2019s obviously exciting to see Jensen Ackles step out of the Impala as Dean Winchester once again, what\u2019s arguably more compelling is what he does to change The Winchesters\u2019 story so that it doesn\u2019t go on to reflect his own. As we see in the finale, Dean kicks off the series by handing young John a note from his dead father Henry (Gil McKinney). A man who, died saving his grandsons in the future (at least, according to Supernatural\u2019s \u201cAs Time Goes By\u201d), Henry missed John\u2019s entire life. He didn\u2019t get to teach him what it meant to be a Man of Letters, nor did he have the chance to be there for him as his father. This profoundly screwed John up, pushing him towards Vietnam, and eventually affecting the way he raised Sam and Dean. By giving John the push he needed to find closure, Dean shifted the type of parent that the young Winchester would one day become. But this wasn\u2019t the only change he made to this alternate world\u2019s 1973.<\/p>\n

Upon saving Mary from the World Between Worlds (a clever nod to C.S. Lewis\u2019 The Magician\u2019s Nephew), Dean encourages his young parents and their friends and family, including his maternal grandfather Samuel Campbell (played here by another former Smallville co-star, Tom Welling) and his paternal grandmother Millie Winchester (Bianca Kajlich), to write their destinies. After a push by a divine Jack Klein (Alexander Calvert), who had warned Dean not to interfere at all, and his surrogate father Bobby, Dean gifts John and Mary his own hunter\u2019s journal, full of his adventures with Sam, as well as a newly-minted Colt, the gun that can kill anything (especially Yellow-Eyed Demons who might show up looking to make a deal). This, along with their Monster Club allies, gives John and Mary an edge that their Supernatural counterparts never had, and a true fighting chance against the forces of evil.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that the return of both Bobby (who, like Dean, is also dead) and the uber-powered Jack was a welcomed yet unexpected addition (still no word on Cass though\u2026), but what made it all work was Dean\u2019s explanation for defying Jack\u2019s wishes and continuing the fight. The Akrida were made by Chuck to devour
\nanything in their path, including entire universes. This meant that once they took over John and Mary\u2019s world, they\u2019d come for Dean\u2019s homeland next. When Dean died, he left Sam alone, and he hasn\u2019t quite forgiven himself for that. Though we know that Sam is okay (he eventually marries and has a son, whom he names Dean in honor of his late brother), Dean is still the over-protective big brother he\u2019s always been. By putting Sam\u2019s safety above his own peace, Dean is acting more like himself than ever, proving that even beyond the grave, Dean Winchester is a self-sacrificing hero.<\/p>\n

Though Sam and Dean sacrificing themselves for one another is sort of a clich\u00e9 at this point, what made Dean\u2019s return to The Winchesters especially interesting is that he isn\u2019t alive anyway: he\u2019s still dead. How he can interact with the land of the living, albeit a land foreign to his own, is still somewhat unknown (maybe Jack gave him this ability?), but it ultimately means that he is in no real danger. This sacrifice isn\u2019t one that could easily result in his death, he\u2019s simply giving up his own peace and rest. And, at the end of the day, there\u2019s nothing more Dean Winchester than that.<\/p>\n

All in all, Supernatural is an incredible series about two brothers who would do anything for their family (well, full-blood and surrogate family anyway), and The Winchesters piggybacks off that wave like the Impala doing 90 down the highway. No, The Winchesters isn\u2019t exactly a prequel to Supernatural, but it\u2019s a well-thought-out companion piece that gives Dean a bit more closure and allows him the one thing he ultimately always wanted: the chance to save his family. With Dean\u2019s hunting journal as their guide, John and Mary can choose whatever life they want. Whatever life they choose, they\u2019ll do it together as they continue their journey toward becoming the Winchesters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MICHAEL JOHN PETTY When Supernatural ended its 15-season tenure back in 2020, fans were, well, to put it generously, pretty mixed on how the whole thing turned out. While it was nice to see Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) reunite in Heaven after a heartfelt Kansas-turned-Neoni rendition of the series\u2019 official\/unofficial theme…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buzzflash1.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}