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The thing is, I never intended to write a Supernatural meta about Zen. I never even cared about Zen. When I traveled to Japan, it was for those other things - my things - very distant relatives of those beings I’ve spent half my life researching. I went to Japan to discover more about Shinto. To get lost in very old forests and see the red doors of a run-down temple through the trees. To hear the stories about those gods who go on holiday once a year and during that week, boy, you’d better not have anything important planned because no one is going to give you a blessing. I went to Japan to meet the gods of an unconceivable, upside-down country where the sun is a girl and the moon is a boy.
And I found them. I did.
(What I hadn’t bargained for was Zen.
I ended up spending a month in a monastery, trying to learn about it and mostly hurting and suffering and realizing you can’t learn about Zen: you can only practice Zen. And, well, living according to some principle someone else wrote down and you can’t even fathom is so unlike everything I am that I am still trying to rebel against it. And I shouldn't, really, because I realized in that monastery that that thing I was so proud of being - a creature of extremes - was slowly killing me. It’s not that I cared too much: there’s no such thing. It’s that I cared in the wrong way. Unable to move beyond other people’s deaths, I was becoming obsessed by my own - not because of illness or suffering, that is, but because of all those things I was already too late for; those opportunities I’d missed, those vague dreams I’d never act upon. I had come to understand, as we all do at some point in our lives, that I couldn’t have everything; and I was freaking out. And if anyone is feeling the same way: Zen helps. It really does.)
Now, the Shinto gods has nothing to do with us. They’re friends, not family. My people - Apollo and Zeus and Athena - are related to mostly anyone from Varanasi to Oslo, but not to them. I know this. But still, sometimes I can’t help feeling that, if you boil it down until all the water is gone and your house is probably next, it all comes down to us vs them anyway. The people with thousands of gods and the demons and the unseen forces doing weird stuff and guiding your steps (very often towards a ravine, so, yeah, thanks) and a destiny you have to fight against or for - and the people who have all these things and yet recognize they are unimportant: an illusion. That our world is created by our minds, not the other way around. Now, as far as I know, only Buddhism is in the second camp, because, really, even the Abrahamic religions, with all their talk of philosophy and I am what I am, are very firmly a jubilation of colours and curses and secret babies and wheels of fire with six (or eight) wings.
On the other hand, though, the distinction is not all that clear-cut, because a couple of Buddhist sects take their demons way too seriously, while some Christian philosophers and Muslim mystics prefer to rise above and look at the world in an uncannily Zen way. I rather suspect, in fact, that this us vs them distinction has little to do with cultures and nations, and is instead a battle raging inside every single one of us; and, since we are humans and frail and mostly irrational, very few people will see a definite victory, one way or another, during their lifetimes. No, for most of us, the thing is split down the middle. Some days we are blue and desperate and full of superstitious fear and willing to beg anything and anyone; and other days we sigh and breathe and tell ourselves, and others, that everything will pass, and things are what we make of them.
If there’s someone out there who has no idea what I’m saying, here it is: religion is a contract. Nothing more, it’s true, but, then again, nothing less: contracts, when done well, are very powerful things. Just ask Crowley - he lives off them. Because the thing is, we often think men invented religion to explain what was going on around them - the thunder and the storm and the frightening things moving around at night - but, really, what purpose would that have? Who cares about the why? No, what really matters is the how - how do I control this? How do I make sure my husband comes back from the hunt and my baby doesn’t die and the sun will rise tomorrow and this icy, cruel winter will one day come to an end? This is what man has been doing from the very beginning: seeking control over a difficult, if not downright hostile, environment. For this reason, every religion is, at its core, a ritual. We baptize our kids so demons won’t get them. We make a libation to Poseidon so he’ll bless our cows. We eat the body of Christ so we’ll be forgiven.
(Magic works exactly in the same way - the world runs on contracts.)
Mythology came much later, when people started to wonder why some rituals worked and others didn’t. You know, the kind of Yeah, so maybe your herd died because you had too many cows and Zeus was jealous - next time try throwing your ring in the river as a sacrifice. And it is mythology, more than ritual, which helps us to make sense of our place in the world, and why things happen the way they do.
Which means that every religion contains both - rituals and mythology. The Last Sacraments and the Garden of Eden. Libations and the Gigantomachy. Mantras and Mara. It is a common misconception, really, that religion and mythology are not on the same plane, or that one is true where the other is false, or other such nonsense. They are instead two very different things; two distinct wheels of a complex mechanism we cannot rid ourselves of (not that we’re trying all that hard).
Now, the next thing is that humanity comes from different families. In Europe, we mostly belong to the Indo-European family, a very large tribe stretching all the way back to India. This means that our languages (Hindi and German and Spanish) used to be the same language, and our gods (Thor and Zeus and Gebeleixis) used to be the same gods. In Europe, this invading tribe of Indo-Europeans is probably remembered as a horde of centaurs, because the people already living here hadn’t domesticated horses yet, and, Jesus, if you’ve ever seen someone on a horse coming towards you at full gallop you know how scary the sight is; how close you are to dying, right where you’re standing, and how powerless you are to do anything to save yourself.
As it often happens, because people are funny that way, this new civilisation mostly destroyed the old one, so that today it’s very hard to find out anything about those non Indo-European tribes living in Europe. The fact that not much time later a gigantic tsunami came down upon the Mediterranean doesn’t help either.
(I guess we all remember the harrowing images coming in from Japan - those waves were 30 meters high. The ones which destroyed Thera and Crete? 100 meters high. The event permanently altered the temperature, and therefore the ecosystem, of the whole Mediterranean Sea. It exterminated a culture - the Minoans - which had invented sophisticated writing and flushing toilets. It set human development back centuries. It changed everything.)
Athena is the most clear example of the sudden shift. Most people know she was born from her father’s head, but fewer people are told why - Zeus had met the non Indo-European goddess of cleverness, Methys, and, of course, leaving a woman in charge of something like that is never a good idea, so he - well, he ate her. And that daughter who was born to him nine months later was, again, a goddess of intelligence and craft, but she was also, resolutely, in her father’s camp. A non-feminist, proud to be her father’s daughter; a woman-hating figure who not only refused all the traditional womanly trappings (she never had children, never got married, never had sex - that one time that guy came over her dress doesn’t actually count) but supported men over women, every single time (most notably, she argued Orestes shouldn’t be punished for murdering his mother because mothers, eh).
So, anyway, that’s us. The guys with the gods and the sense of destiny and the deep certainty it will all, somehow, end in fire (look at the Indian cycles; at Ragnarok).
And Christianity, if anything, made things worse. Christianity evolved from Judaism, of course, and Jews are not Indo-Europeans (like Egyptians and Arabs and Mesopotamians, they are Semitic, which is why they have a language of consonants and sands and sweet, runny honey we can’t understand one word of) and the Middle East had managed to construct religion as an even bleaker thing - a constant fight between Good and Evil, neither of which could be appeased or destroyed. Early Middle-Eastern rituals tended to include tons of blood (and, yeah, I know the Romans occasionally sacrificed human beings, but, come on, it was that one time and here we’re talking about gallons of the stuff - we’re talking about being down in a hole and listening to the dying sounds of a terrified bull and we’re talking about being drenched in blood until you can’t breathe through the smell of it) and the whole thing was so extreme only someone like Nietzsche could make any sense of it (probably because he was, himself, a man of extremes: someone who wrote like a god and hated women and weirdos and lived with his mother until he was forty).
Now, our culture (sorry: speaking about Europe here) has been festering in this unholy mixture - Semitic classes, Indo-European recess - for two millennia, and this is what Supernatural captures so well. The road so far? Textbook us.
We’ve had the destiny, and the big gestures, and the hero’s journey and the quest and this land of absolutes ("There is a right and a wrong here and you know it.") and the constant, threatening doom of ultimate destruction. Even before the angels appeared, Dean and Sam were traditional Western heroes. An absent father, an unknowable mission, the constant fights and pain and doubts - yep - that’s us, right there. It’s Achilles refusing to fight ("It’s too big."), it’s Hector snarling at his brother ("If I didn’t know you, I would want to hunt you."), it’s Odysseus refusing the gift of immortality and wishing he could just go home instead ("You can take your peace, and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain, and the guilt, I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise!"). It’s us, and perhaps this is why it draws us in so much - because this is a story we’ve been reading and rereading for the past twenty centuries.
And it ends in blood.
That’s what it does.
(We all know it.)
It ends with Jesus weeping on the Cross ("Didn't you hear? He's dead, Castiel. Dead."). It ends with Odin mauled to death by the giant wolf Fenrir ("I'm sorry, Dean. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy."). It ends with Cú Chulainn gritting his teeth and closing his belt around the rock behind him until it hurts more than the fatal wound in his side, because, luidhim fom armuibh, he won’t die lying down ("It doesn't matter what you are, it only matters what you do.").
It was always going to end in blood.
This is what heroes do.
They die.
Or, at least, they did until some prince who was living a charmed life in an Indian palace wandered off by mistake and realized that, man, the world is one fucked-up place.
Prince Gautama was twenty-one and he had a wife and a small child, but he’d never stepped outside his mansion before. And when he saw actual reality - sick people and old people and dying people and, holy shit, actual corpses - he flipped and ran away and spent the better part of the next twenty years trying to figure it all out. He drank too much and then he fasted until he almost died and disciples came to him and then went away when they realized he had no idea what he was doing; and through it all, Gautama thought and thought and tried and tried. And at last, he meditated in the wilderness for forty days and fought off a demon who’d come to tempt him (sounds familiar?) and when he opened his eyes again, he’d found Enlightenment. And this is how the Buddha put into words that feeling that, no doubt, had already been around somehow - in the hearts of those content with their fate; in the minds of the mystics and in the resolute, serene gaze of that warrior who wasn’t afraid to die and in the smile of that old lady who took such joy in cooking and cleaning her humble house.
Buddhism teaches (very roughly speaking) that things are transient and illusory, and non-attachment is the way to go - because caring implies suffering.
Now, when I was a kid my parents had this postcard tucked into a corner of the kitchen door - The way which is the way is not the way - and I used to read it and ask what it meant. I never got a good answer back, which means: we sat down together and read a book about Buddhism and, while I liked the picture of baby Siddhartha being born - of flowers blooming as he walked around - this non-caring thing always annoyed me.
Because, yes - us vs them. In the West, caring is everything. We need to be loud and dramatic and conquer things and stab people who don’t agree with us because everything is just so damn important. Buddhism, and especially Zen Buddhism, which pushes these things to even loudest extremes, can be (and has been) perceived as nihilist and defeatist at best, and as weak at worst.
In the West, we never fully realized that, yes, fire burns down everything around it and is wondrous to behold; but water - water is what flattens mountains. Fire is vulnerable and volatile and cannot be controlled. Water, on the other hand, flows and waits; patient. Immortal.
Now, the thing is - it’s not clear what Supernatural even is (a comedy, a tragedy; a horror show, and love story, a coming-of-age tale), and I’ve been afraid it would end badly since demons showed up and it all started to fit in rather too neatly with our Western ideals.
(Which, I feel I need to say, are not bad, and do make for great stories. Those choices both brothers had to make - heroic. Bloody spectacular.)
Now, though - now I am feeling increasingly - what kind of story are they telling here, really?
The thing is, we tend to equate not caring with indifference (with what happens when your soul is sucked out of you and you stop loving anyone or anything), and Amara is a perfect symbol of this - a dark force which just - makes things disappear. She is a whatever enemy, doing her whatever things. When she takes a human soul, her victims survive, because humans are imperfect and damaged and can live without love. But when she attacks angels - angels are, at their very core, their Father’s love. Grace is Love, and without Grace, they go out like candles. They don’t have anything else to fall back on.
(And demons - whatever demons have inside them, and whatever Plutus said, I do believe it is a sort of human soul - twisted and corrupted and completely loveless, but a soul nonetheless; like Horcruxes, demons seem to be reduced to a single part of themselves - this black smoke which is all that’s left of a human being after he’s been tormented for eternity - and, well: it may be the opposite of love, and what love carves out when it disappears utterly and completely, but, like angels, demons can’t survive without it.
Which means, would you look at that, that there may be more love left inside demons than we ever thought.)
And this, yes, would make it very difficult for Amara to get something out of Cas (to hurt Cas), because Cas - what is left of his Grace? Cas has abandoned his Father in the same final way his Father seems to have abandoned him (after all, even if God helped him, even if God came back, they are not close; they have nothing more to say to one another), which means that spark Amara may be looking for is perhaps no longer there; but in the meantime, Cas has been watching humanity ("And by humanity, do you mean Dean?"), has been learning how to love in a human way - a messy, painful way. He is, of course, a mirror for Dean, who seems to be, by now, the opposite way around - not a human soul anymore, but a sort of Grace, because caring for people is all he is, all he was raised to do, all he chose to do, over and over again, which means -
Now, I didn’t want to get too heavily into Harry Potter references, but then Claire up and said it ("I solemnly swear not to hunt like a dumbass."), so here we go. I won’t even fight it anymore. Because to be honest, the first thing I remembered when Amara tried, and failed, to claim Dean and then Cas for herself was Sirius’ broken confession: "I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me; but it kept me sane".
I don’t know if I’ll ever understand Zen properly; what I feel more close to is mysticism - that mysterious, lonely place where different faiths flow into one another because love, in the end, is all that matters and yes, death is what happens when you fool around with God, but that one night you had with Him was so good you no longer care about dying - and this is why I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows over and over again.
I mean, it’s a sad book. Of course it is. JK Rowling didn’t even need to say she wrote it thinking about her mother’s death: you can positively smell death all over it. It is also, undeniably, a profoundly Christian book (the fact that some people tried to ban it because it had magic wands in it proves, if anything, that we have learned nothing as a species), a story deeply laced with those constant, all-important questions of God and doubt and resurrection. During his travels, Harry is both Dean and Sam. The boy tainted by evil, whose head is not really his own; the boy who was abandoned by everyone he ever loved and yet kept choosing this mismatched family of his time and time again.
("He was always a little bit angry, but now -")
And then, shocked and broken by the fact his friends are hurting and Dobby died and it’s all his fault, because it always is - then Harry lets go, and decides to just trust. This beautiful moment by a solitary grave mirrored, and very clearly at that, the ending of the Book of Job.
(“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you know so much. On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?”
“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”)
Only, well Dumbledore doesn’t need to do or say a single thing to finally win Harry’s trust. It is the love Harry had for Dumbledore which finally led him towards acceptance and forgiveness, because twenty centuries or more have passed since God tortured Job, and God is now Jesus’ God, not Abraham’s. And so Harry acknowledges he doesn’t know everything, and that, whatever he chooses to do, he will probably die; and also that, in the end, it’s okay.
(The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.)
Supernatural brought this point home in its usual heart-wrenching, brutal fashion at the end of last season - Sam kneeling on a dirty floor, looking up at his brother; and Dean - Dean raising the scythe up, and then -
But this is not a Death Eater’s concept, and it’s not Amara’s concept. We’re not talking about immortality and the fake Paradise Zachariah once promised Dean. We’re not talking about not caring, one way or the other. We’re talking about recognizing that death and life are one and the same. That you defeat death by not fearing death.
As R. H. Blyth beautifully puts is, in the West we tend to understand non-attachment either as “deep, cold selfishness, which avoids all love and sympathy because it may lead to pain” (Amara) or as “the belief (which in itself is based on the same cold-heartedness) that all the things of this world are of no account compared to those of the next” (Zachariah). Instead, non-attachment is to be understood as love - “love the world, and love all the things in the world, all of them without exception, but do not love them for the pleasure they give you or hate them for the pain they bring you; love them without attachment”.
That Heaven Cas rebelled against was wrong because it preached non-attachment in that Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs hue; and the Mark Dean worked so hard to get off himself - a Mark which was, in the end, Amara herself - was a physical representation of the first kind of non-attachment. Remember Sam looking down at his brother and saying, “Even after I gave him all that blood, he still said he didn’t want to be cured, that he didn’t want to be human”? Because of course Sam, with his manifest destiny and his firm place in the universe - Sam doesn’t get it. But remember Cas’ reply?
“Only humans can feel real joy, but also such profound pain. This is easier.”
He was right. Amara is the easy way out. She is bliss, perhaps, but a poisoned bliss, and something Dean was tempted by, but definitely doesn’t want.
(Not now, that is: now he has his soul and wits and capacity to love flooding through him all over again. Before, he was very close to letting go, but now - now -)
However, Dean has also come to understand that he wants out. That he has feelings and wants to express them and doesn’t want to wait for Paradise. This point has been brought home several times - by his confession to an unknown priest, by Mildred’s sweet stalking and her comment about pining, and, most of all, by Billie’s threat. Paradise was never something Dean was particularly interested in, but now it’s not even on the table anymore and Dean - how does Dean react to this?
Well, we’ve seen how. By being his usual self. By sacrificing himself - or trying to - for the people he loves. Dean deals with the threat of non existence, first and foremost, by not caring - as long as those he loves are okay.
The first time Sam died, Dean made a deal to bring him back, knowing full well it was an idiotic idea (“These people are actually making deals with the damn thing. You know, 'cause that always ends good.”). And in Red Meat, this last time Sam (almost) died, Dean (almost) made another deal, which was a more dramatic, immediate version of the first one: his life for his brother’s. Only, this time he was prepared to die at once, and forever.
I think this choice (to bring the story there, to frame that episode that way) wasn’t random, and wasn’t about a regression in character development at all. Instead, it was yet another step towards a complete and utter destruction of the hero trope. Because back when he made that first deal, Dean may have been desperate and wrong and flawed, but his was a hero’s choice. It was Alcestis volunteering to take her husband’s place and die in his stead. It was Hector choosing to fight even when he knew the battle was lost. Because Sam came back, and Dean was doomed, and then he died. So far, so good.
This other time, though - everything Dean goes through is for nothing, because, well, Sam is not dead. Sam is so not dead, in fact, that he comes back and kills everyone and saves his brother’s life. Personally, I felt this accomplished two things: one, it established that Sam is more than capable to take care of himself and is also, always, guided by good instincts and good morals (and that therefore, John Winchester’s first and last orders - to look after Sam and to kill Sam - are now void); and two, it confirmed what we have known for a while - that Dean is an unreliable narrator spiraling more and more quickly towards his own destruction - from a traditional hero’s point of view, that is.
I have this feeling - vague, and probably wrong - that the show is moving away from a Western narrative to embrace Eastern philosophy. A place where we don’t need big gestures - Sam giving himself up for the world, Cas rebelling against the Host of Heaven - but we live in the moment instead, and we savour it, and we understand all those small things around us are just as important as those grand heroics - Dean is still taking care of everyone - at the beginning of the season, he was fussing over his shell-shocked brother and making sure Cas was okay and finding a way to talk to Claire so that she truly heard him - because it was not about saving the world anymore. In fact, the very absence of any apocalyptic shenanigans (unlike the spectacle Lilith and Lucifer put up last time - “Apocalypse? The Apocalypse Apocalypse? The Four Horsemen, pestilence, 5$-a-gallon-gas apocalypse?”) seems to imply that this is a different kind of fight. We are still fighting for the world, yes, but every battle starts in our own souls; every enemy we need to defeat is first born inside our own hearts. I don’t even know that they needed Lucifer, in a way, because this is a battle Dean needs to fight himself [pompous and self-satisfied edit: I wrote this part months ago, and I'm very happy I was right about something - looks like Lucifer is out of the picture for good, as is God, and it's all down to Dean now].
(The title of the episode where Amara first became her own person, or at least a creature capable of speech and action? Form and Void - those key elements of the Heart Sutra. As Sunyata said to Sariputra, “Form does not differ from the Void, and the Void does not differ from Form. Form is Void and Void is Form; the same is true for feelings, perceptions, volitions and consciousness.”)
No, every episode we’ve seen so far in this season eleven I was so very afraid of has toyed with the same issues - identity and reality. We’ve seen children’s fantasies coming to life and we’ve wondered who poor Chester really was (a cunning predator or an ill-adjusted man trying his best?). We’ve seen killers hiding under masks and a haunted house where people were more dangerous than ghosts (we’ve seen people being more dangerous than werewolves). We’ve seen enemies turning into allies turning into enemies and also (God have mercy) someone beloved and familiar disappear and become someone else entirely. People we thought were vulnerable - sweet old Mildred; deaf lady Eileen - saved the day after experienced hunter Sam was unable to come to the rescue of his broken-hearted brother.
And next, it all went even deeper inside the rabbit hole.
Don’t You Forget About Me was an episode of smoke and mirrors, but mostly mirrors. It recalled, in its very title, a famous movie Dean must have seen growing up - a movie which, again, deals with the ideas of identity and reality. Without spoiling anything for those who haven’t seen it (it’s called The Breakfast Club, and it’s really worth it) it’s a sort of huis clos drama forcing together five people we think we know - the good-looking athlete, the rich girl eating sushi out of an actual wooden box, an awkward genius, that one kid who thinks he can be a bully and wears mismatched clothes and that other kid who only meows when you talk to her - and then turns them upside down and shakes them until their very souls come out.
(And I wonder when Dean saw it, and if he identified with Bender or with Andy most.)
Those words, however, also force us to acknowledge not only this outside world which is so often neglected by Supernatural writers (instead, you see? you see? you can have the Winchesters interact with real people and it’s super sweet and it doesn’t take anything away from them) but this one character who isn’t there and without whom all those parallels we’ve seen in this episode (hell: in the whole season, because Amara - Amara was never paralleled with Heaven, because she is, in the end, Heaven; instead, she was paralleled with Cas, and very strongly at that) don’t work at all.
Tell me your troubles and doubts / Giving me everything inside and out and / Love's strange so real in the dark / Think of the tender things that we were working on, the lyrics say, and, oh, Cas, were are you?
Well. If there is one thing we’ve learned during this season, that’s the answer to this question.
Cas is inside Dean’s heart. Cas is anchored so very firmly inside Dean’s heart, in fact, that Dean cannot survive - cannot be himself - without Cas.
Because Cas - he represents, he always represented, the third kind of non-attachment. The right kind. Cas is not about not caring because everything is fucked, anyway (what Dean believed, or tried to believe, as he was growing up alone and unwanted and downright suicidal - that thing he very nearly embraced when Zachariah dangled it in front of him, that thing he ultimately confronted, both in the world and inside himself; that thing he pushed against until he won), and he’s not about not caring because love is painful (and this is what Dean had to live with every day he had the Mark: that it would be easier, in a way, and much better, to just give in and disappear inside himself and kill everyone he ever loved because there is no way out). No, Cas is about something completely different. Cas - this angel who tilts his head in wonder at playgrounds and guinea pigs and the fact humans need to eat and sleep - Cas always knew everything about Dean, and he always accepted Dean anyway. He accepted Dean’s strength and he accepted Dean’s weakness. He was there when Dean begged him to come and he was there when Dean tricked him into leaving him alone and he was there when Dean called him back because he couldn’t do it on his own. From his perspective, that of a being who’s millions of years old, Dean is perfect just as he is, not because Dean is objectively perfect, but because it doesn’t matter - because there is no difference, in the end, between beauty and blemish. Because you can love anyway (because love is greater than that; greater than anything).
Cas doesn't love Dean for what Dean can give him, or for any feeling Dean elicits within himself. Cas loves Dean just because Dean is there. Because Dean is Dean.
And we know Dean, our traditional Western hero, had a lot of trouble understanding this (understanding faith; understanding how to love without drowning). He raged at Cas and he pushed against those feelings he felt from the very beginning (recognition, at first; then familiarity and trust; and, next, that bond of friendship and longing and deep, undying love). He felt he couldn’t change - that he would always be what he’d been trained to be (a mindless soldier). But Dean wasn’t happy when he was Michael’s vessel, and his experience of bearing the Mark - and the brutal, profound shock of seeing that Darkness come to life and claim him for herself - have eaten away at his insecurities and that role he always assumed he had to play. The role God himself, in a way, had written for him - because God stepped back and did not intervene when Mary Winchester was burning to death in the nursery and Dean became Michael’s vessel. God was, in fact, as flabbergasted as anyone when Cas switched sides and the Apocalypse was averted (“You’re not in this story.”), but He didn’t change his mind, and we saw it most clearly in the way he confronted Dean - and Lucifer. God is like Zachariah. God is about not caring because human life is finite, so why bother?
And this is, for Dean, the last strand. God being what He is, and God failing - this is how Dean will decide, I think, that letting go - that not caring in its truest sense - is actually okay, because love is the only way out of this mess, and if you practice non-attachment in the right way (in Cas’ way) - if you’re prepared to die not to make a big gesture or to save the world or to spare those you love, but simply because death is not that scary, and what matters is that you lived and loved and accepted your grief the way you accepted your joy - then everything makes sense. I think Dean is now at peace with himself, and I think this is how they will win. After all, they’ve tried it the Western way (Sam is still a traditional Western hero - look at him trusting God and being willing to sacrifice himself to a life of darkness) and it didn’t work. The time has come to try something else.
“We’re working on the power of love,” Dean said, once upon a time, when he had no faith and his sense of self was a black mess of guilt and doubt.
In the end, though, the power of love did save the world, because Dean loved his brother enough to be willing to die with him, and Sam loved Dean enough to defeat Lucifer and kill himself.
And now, well - I think now we’re about to see something even more wondrous. I think we’re about to see Dean walking into the fray completely at peace with himself. I think we’re about to see Dean being water, and Amara being fire.
And fire may burn and burn and blacken the whole Earth, but in the end, fire will consume itself and therefore be destroyed. Water, though - water is pure and eternal; a never-ending cycle. Water flattens mountains. Water, like love, can conquer all.
What does it mean, though? How will it end?
Well, like in Harry Potter, the central theme in Supernatural was always choice (because, after all, it is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities). And Dean has always been loud and dramatic and (sometimes) cavalier with his choices: making a demonic deal, refusing Michael on principle, taking the Mark of Cain without even knowing what it was. He’s chosen to act, and sometimes he’s chosen not to act. Mostly, though, he’s chosen to sacrifice himself because he thinks he doesn’t matter (“It’s like my life could mean something,” it’s how he explains his suicidal decision to Bobby, and it never even occurs to him to hope he's wrong). But there is another kind of sacrifice, which is far nobler and far greater and, more importantly, far more mature. It is the sacrifice that comes from understanding life and death are, in the end, the same thing (and now, in the Supernatural world there is no more Heaven, no more Hell; not for the Winchesters, at least: there is only the Empty). It’s the sense of serenity expressed in so many Zen koans -
(During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master.
Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger.
"You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"
But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved.
"And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"
The general bowed his head and left.)
- and something that was hinted at several times during this season, most clearly, perhaps, in the very obvious choice of presenting a vampire victim in the shape of the Hanged Man - the tarot card representing sacrifice and letting go.
And about the kind of story they’re telling, and how it ends - well, the very point is that it doesn’t matter. Life is about the journey, not the destination. In a very real sense, it’s not important if Dean dies, or if he opens a B&B with Cas. What matters is how Dean is changing - how he’s letting go of his anger and guilt and lack of self-worth to recognize that he has feelings; that he is a good person, and did the best he could.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was a very long essay about non-attachment, but how satisfied we are with the end depends, after all, on who we were watching - the master or the pupil? Because Harry does get his happy ending - by realizing he needed to let go of his dead family; that he would never see them again, and that’s okay, just as it was okay to walk to his death in the Forbidden Forest knowing he would never see his friends again. But Dumbledore - despite his wisdom and his fondness for sweets and his pet phoenix, Dumbledore spent his long life in solitude, wary of those feelings which had led him towards someone dangerous and unsuitable; unable to accept the fact that love, this one force which held him true for seventy years, also caused his sister’s death.
Even more than a rotten world and hostile screenwriters, I can’t help but feeling that what’s kept Dean from Cas all these years is - well - Dean himself. Like (I assume) everyone else, I did resent Jensen when I came to learn he was supposed to say I love you in that crypt, and didn’t. But, well, he was right and I was wrong. Until Dean doesn’t find peace, he cannot welcome love into his heart. And now, despite yet another end of the world scenario - despite Amara and God and everything else - now Dean is moving towards that. I think he’s finally stopped feeling guilty about the way he raised Sam, and the choices he thinks he imposed on Sam - Dean telling Claire to stay in school - well, that was him coming full circle, and taking his distance from the guilt-ridden, Bender-like kid he used to be - the kid who drove straight to Stanford after two years of silence to get his brother back because he was terrified of being alone. After that whole visions from Lucifer and Cage disaster, Dean was there for Sam in the right way - he found him cases and made him laugh and allowed him to criticize Dean’s choice of meals and checked how much sleep and fresh air Sam was actually getting (which is, by the way, what Sam did for him after Cas disappeared inside Lucifer, because Sam is, of course, an adult who trusts and values his own heart and knows how to do these things) - instead of yelling at Sam and getting drunk and punching the stuffing out of him like someone else (not a fan of John’s) might have done - someone bursting with love, bleeding with it, and yet unable to let it out in another way. And I think Dean no longer feels guilty about Cas, either, and all the crap Cas has been through since choosing Dean (“I did it, all of it, for you.”), because Dean is now accepting people make their own choices and not everything is his responsibility; and he’s realizing he can let go and love Cas because all that mess that used to be between them - Dean not being worthy, or even good enough - is now gone.
Really, Sam telling him to make the smart choice, not the heart choice - that was the last obstacle Dean had to overcome (“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.”) and I think now God is truly out of the picture Dean will complete this journey of self-discovery he’s been on since - well, probably since that time he saw what he truly thought about himself - saw the monster that was nesting and festering inside his own heart - a black-eyed demon shouting and sneering at him -
(“Talk about low self-esteem. Then again, I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, now is it? I mean, after all, you've got nothing outside of Sam. You are nothing. You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog. What are the things that you want? What are the things that you dream? I mean, your car? That's Dad's. Your favorite leather jacket? Dad's. Your music? Dad's. Do you even have an original thought? No. No, all there is is, ‘Watch out for Sammy. Look out for your little brother, boy!’ You can still hear your Dad's voice in your head, can't you? Clear as a bell. I mean, think about it - all he ever did is train you, boss you around. But Sam - Sam he doted on. Sam, he loved. Dad knew who you really were. A good soldier and nothing else. Daddy's blunt little instrument. Your own father didn't care whether you lived or died. Why should you?”)
- and rejected it and defeated it and killed it dead.
(“My father was an obsessed bastard! All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam - that was his crap. He's the one who couldn't protect his family. He - he's the one who let Mom die - who wasn't there for Sam. I always was! He wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me! And I don't deserve to go to Hell!”)
So, well. It turns out that Supernatural is a bit of everything, in the end - a comedy, a tragedy, a love story and a horror show - but, to me, it is mostly a coming-of-age tale. And now, it truly feels like our hero is all grown-up. Like he’s defeated everything that stood in his path - including his own mind. Like he’s ready to give in to what truly matters, what sets us apart from both angels and demons - that thing which saved his life and redeemed him so many times before: his unerring, all-encompassing capacity to love. Like Harry, I think he will walk into a forest of monsters, and that he will walk out again, because this time, he doesn’t care if he does - and that is the only way to truly win.
(For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.)