nerdylittleshit:

SPOILERS AHEAD!
BEWARE!

So, does anybody else have Buffy season 2 war flashbacks? (I
know you do) What an episode. It was a lot to take in, both emotionally (ALL
THE FEELS), as well if what happened in the episode could mean for the future.
For whatever slow pacing the season had so far, Jack’s sickness and death arc
happened rather fast. They could have dragged it out longer, and the reason
they didn’t means it was a plot device. Though unlike Kevin or Charlie’s death
(who were plot devices as well) this ended on a happy note. For now.

But, as always, let’s take a closer look.

Because I made a
promise, because I love you

I saw some speculation about Jack’s death after last week’s
episode, that he had to die in order for the story to make sense, but in all
honesty I didn’t expect it so soon. I was not ready. And obviously neither were
Sam, Dean and Cas. And we see how different they react to his death, how Dean
can’t even bear to be in the same room when it happens, but afterwards he is
the one dealing with the most mature. He is the one talking about a funeral,
and he is the one most suspicious of the deal Lily Sunder offered. And I think
it might be because he has been a father his whole life, and it is not the
first child he loses (Sam), whereas Sam and Cas are strangers to the situation.
Sam only lost people who took care of him but never someone he felt responsible
for.

I hope nobody dares to give Mary shit for not calling back
immediately. I think Dean calling her was a good way to include her in the
episode, because apart from Team Free Will she was closest to Jack. And Dean,
who tried to hold everything together, just needed for a moment to be a child
as well. He needed comfort as well, and Mary is the only one he allows himself
to ask for it.

The episode focused on the unnaturalness of a child dying
before his parents. All three (Sam, Dean and Cas) fully accept Jack as their
child. Cas says that this is not how he thought Jack’s story would end, which
of course is very meta thing to say. Even on a show like Supernatural nobody expected Jack to really die. And we see two
women trying to help Jack who both know what it means to lose a child: Rowena
last episode and now Lily Sunder.

A word about Lily: I’m glad they brought her back because
she has been an awesome character. I’m glad that she found some sort of peace
and that they let her age (because, you know, women aren’t allowed to get older
on TV). There is also regret of what she had done. Yes, she got her revenge,
but it almost cost her her soul (metaphorically and literary), reminding us
again that revenge will never bring you peace. And by doing so she ruined her
chance to be reunited with her daughter. I love how they ended her story, how
Dean reminded her of her humanity, of her own pain, and how that one big
sacrifice got rewarded in the end.

Dean is the one who is the most suspicious of the deal they
made, which shows his growth. Also his first assumption is that Sam made a
deal, and he got really angry about it. I do believe that the spell they used
to save Jack will have consequences. If Dean is suspicious it is always an alarm
signal. Lily says that as long as he only uses his soul to sustain his body it
won’t cost him much. So Jack will probably use this magic for more, which will
have an effect on his soul. I… don’t like it.  

After Jack dies he goes to heaven, which makes sense,
because without his grace he is essentially human. And yet the Empty claims
him. So does the Empty also claims other angels who lost their grace? Does it
matter more what you were born as, than as what you die?

I also wonder if the Empty has been awake since Cas woke it
up (and it can’t go back to sleep until Cas returns), or if Lucifer woke it up
again? Naomi said Cas is the only one who ever escaped the Empty, so does that
mean Lucifer is still there and that she doesn’t know about him yet? Is the
Empty pissed because Cas escaped or because he woke it up or both?

I also loved how Erica Cerra played the Empty (better than
Misha and his weird accent *cough*). I really think the major issue is that the
Empty is now awake, aware of the endless nothingness it is surrounded by. I
would go bonkers as well. The deal Cas makes is of course a huge reference to Buffy and the curse Angel was put under.
Angel lost his soul after one moment of true happiness, and that happiness
happened after he finally allowed himself to return Buffy’s love. So yeah, if
they go that route, it would be a huge step towards Destiel. I wonder if Cas
remembers this del however and if Jack does as well, because we know Sam and
Dean forgot all of their heaven memories.

One more thing about the Empty: back in season 12 it was
already a metaphor for depression, representing empty nothingness, and we saw
how Cas overcame it. And now, when he finally allows himself to be happy, it
will take him away again. Ouch.

I also saw some suggesting that Cas only needs to become
human, so he will go to heaven if he dies. But Jack was human when he died, and
the Empty still claimed him. A deal is a deal.

Also speaking of Destiel, the episode made a huge deal of separating
Sam from Dean and Cas, and showing us basically them acting as husbands the
entire time. Because they are.

It is also interesting that Jack’s heaven, one of his
happiest memories, is their hunt from 13×06. That was after Cas returned and
Den finally started accepting Jack. He sees them as much as his family as they
seem him as their child. I don’t think this makes Kelly less important, but he
simply had no memories of her he could see. I do love the ways in which the
show made Kelly part of Jack’s story and that they were finally able to meet.
It tied her story up perfectly. And her and Cas’s story as well. All. The. Feels.

On another note I love how Supernatural just mixes up all religions. Yes of course Anubis
works with heaven (and yeah for a moment I thought they would have the same
point system as in The Good Place).
But also Anubis’s reminder that it isn’t him or God who decides where we will
end up but just ourselves. Our choices determinate what kind of person we are.
(I wonder where Sam and Dean would go? They did save the world (a lot) but also
did some really awful things)

So next week we will see Michael again. How does heaven know
where to find him? And what is the relationship between heaven and Michael?
Michael didn’t seem to fond of the angels and Naomi just gave his location to
the hunters who try to kill him… unless it is a trap *badadum* We will see.

Until next week ❤

postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

This is how I read the pyre scene: when Dean and Cas go looking for Sam after Jack dies, the spot Sam is sitting looks like a crossroad from Dean’s perspective from the car.

Dean, who is already fearing the worst, this this scene and his fears grow. Once Sam explains, Dean looks better and he realizes the other ‘road’ is not a road, but some space cleared by Sam as he cut down some trees, and understands.

So Sam looks like he’s doing something at a crossroad, but at a closer inspection that’s not what was happening. Sam was making it look like a crossroad by unloading his feelings onto cutting the trees – a destructive choice rather than a constructive choice, because the real reason he was doing it wasn’t really to build a pyre, but to vent his pain and frustration. A pyre could’ve waited until it wasn’t night in a dangerous place, and it could’ve been done with the others’ help. Sam needed to deal with his feelings and the pyre was an excuse, just like Kelly’s IKEA crib wasn’t about making a crib, but helping her feel like she was doing something for Jack.

This is Sam’s crossroad, not an actual demon deal but a crossroad he’s making himself, alone and in pain. It isn’t a really good way to deal with his feelings – it doesn’t even work, and he just flops down dejectedly. It’s not a coincidence that is tool is a hatchet, the weapon of the Hatchet Man.

It’s a negative coping mechanism (as opposed to being with Dean and Cas, during which he had the idea of calling Lily, the real constructive solution). But he doesn’t even really achieve the negative coping mechanism, because the hatchet breaks.

The Hatchet Man solution doesn’t work. The David Yaeger John Winchester approach to life and relationships doesn’t work. Companionship works. Allowing yourself to acknowledge and accept loss works. Asking for help and trusting others, even outside of blood family, works.

postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

dotthings:

Wait…wait I’m having a coherent thought about SPN 14.08…look, yes I know everything is on fire, but this is actually still in keeping with S14′s more hopeful tone and forward progression. 

When Castiel said yes to Lucifer, it was in a frame of mind where he really thought he had no other role, nothing else to offer, no other worth, except sacrifice himself. It was right after the angel Ambriel told him “You help. But Sam and Dean Winchester are the real heroes. So, if the Darkness is still alive and she’s pissed… and she kills us… no big loss.”

What we’ve been seeing from Castiel in S14 is a growing awareness of his own sense of worth, which he vocalized earlier this season, “I had Sam and Dean. But I had something else that was extremely helpful. I had myself. Just the basic me, as, uh…as Dean would say, without all the bells and whistles.”

Castiel’s deal to save Jack seems more parallel to Dean saying yes to Michael. Dean and Cas aren’t at those points driven by a conviction their only worth is to sacrifice for others or they are failures if they don’t save others. Dean says yes to Michael to save Sam and Jack and keep the rest of his family from getting hurt because there really seems to be no other way–he does that for family. Castiel does it to save their son, because there really seems to be no other way–and not in a headspace where he thinks that’s all he has to offer anyone and I feel Dean was past that too when he said yes. 

Like Michael said regarding Dean’s choice, it was because of love. Of course, Michael’s “drowning” possession and the Empty gooey blackness represent trauma and mental illness (it’s not like you snap a finger and those disappear, even if you do get better, anyway) but the character development has happened and they are in a healthier place. Not the finish line, but definitely closer.

postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

Hey, Mom, it’s me. Sorry to lay this on your voicemail, but, uh… it’s Jack. He… he got sick, um, and he, uh… h-he died… this morning. I would have called you sooner, but, um, it – it happened so fast. And we thought we could fix it, you know, like always. Anyway, Mom, I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you and, uh, to all of us. Anyway, to tell you the truth, it would really be nice to hear your voice. If you could, uh, just call us back.

The episode emphasized the absence of Mary. Dean’s words don’t just inform us that he’s letting Mary know about Jack’s death, but also that “it would really be nice to hear your voice”, meaning she hasn’t really been in touch. Dean misses her. She’s not there. Again and again the narrative tells us in more or less little ways – she has come back to life, but she’s not present in her sons’ lives.

Conversely, Kelly has died, but it feels she’s closer to Jack than Mary, alive, is close to Dean and Sam. She is there without being physically present on earth – she’s left her message to Jack, her parents talk fondly about her, and now she’s actually met Jack in heaven.

Cas picking up Kelly’s picture on Jack’s nightstand reminds me of Amara picking up Mary’s picture from Dean’s nightstand while she was going around the bunker. At the time, she was also a dead mother whose memory and picture Dean had with himself, and who he’d seen through supernatural creatures taking her shape (like Mia the shapeshifter did with Jack, although in her case it was a benevolent action, while Dean had to face Eve, Zachariah’s fake heaven Mary… not exactly pleasant experiences).

In this episode, Dean disparages the “meant to be crap”, and I’m not expecting anything less from Mr Free Will, but some “meant to be crap” is real and subverting it messes up with things (Billie, not coincidentally, was mentioned in the episode…).

Both Mary and Kelly were meant to die. As she chose to have her nephilim child born, Kelly’s fate was to die as she gave birth. Mary was meant to die as the mother of the vessels for the apocalypse archangel showdown. While her death appeared more coincidental than Kelly’s – if she’d not gone into Sam’s nursery that night…? – her death was a fundamental element in the story.

This doesn’t feel right. It’s just not how I thought Jack’s story would end. […] The certainty… of death, even for angels, it’s always felt natural, but this doesn’t. Jack being taken before his time. I mean, taken before me.

While this can be read as the unnaturality of a child dying before their parent (which definitely is what Cas is expressing, I’m not saying it isn’t) it also drops the idea of what feels like a ‘right’ ending of a story. Jack’s story wasn’t supposed to end with his untimely death from some sickness… Conversely, Kelly’s story was always supposed to end with her death to give Jack life. And Mary’s story was always supposed to end with her death. “If she’d not gone into Sam’s nursery that night” is an empty question, because that’s simply not what happened. Mary’s death triggered the course of events that prepared Sam and Dean as vessels (of course, Dean’s stubbornness treasuring free will was the wild card).

Mary’s death was the natural end of her story. Her presence is unnatural. Of course, Dean’s relationship with the natural order has always been extremely complex, so I don’t know whether he’s going to fight this particular piece of destiny and change the nature of Mary’s new presence on earth.

People have been wondering whether it wasn’t a coincidence that the people who spent the most time in the apocalypse world after the rift was opened (Lucifer came back pretty soon) have been Mary and Jack, the latter the one who caused the rift in the first place, and the former an element of unbalance in the world. And now she’s basically retired with one of the humans from the other world. Coincidence…?

I am a dumbass of the size of a small moon because I made a post about mothers and death in 14×08 and… literally… forgot to talk about Lily

It’s extremely interesting how Lily got physically older since the last time we saw her, finally embracing the natural decay of her body rather than keeping it unnaturally young. Similarly, Jack’s arrival in Kelly’s heaven breaks the heaven illusion and turns her from a “fake” younger version of herself (which would have been real on earth years ago, but has no longer any reality but as a memory/illusion) and turns her back into the older, “real” version of her who is no longer encased in a memory loop, but has her perception and agency again. When she died, time stopped for her, encasing her in a timeless illusion, but now she returns into time, as the Kelly who died and now is dead in heaven rather than a past Kelly that doesn’t exist anymore. Lily also stopped time for her body, and now embraces letting herself age and die.

Time stopped for Mary too when she died, and then she found herself alive again in a different moment of time entirely. Kelly sees a grown Jack and realizes she’s dead, and consequently she’s also dead. Mary saw a grown Dean and realized they were both alive, but she was in a moment of time where the current her didn’t belong.

What stopped time for Lily, on the other hand, was the death of her daughter; but that was also when she died, in a way. Because time stops for you when you die; and Lily died with her daughter, because a parent surviving a child is unnatural, and she just decided that the angels who had killed May were just going to die along with the two of them. We just know that, in heaven, Lily will look like she did in 1901, when it would have been natural for her to look like that, because she hadn’t ‘died’ and stopped time yet.

drsilverfish:

Up until 14×08 Byzantium, we have known the entity of The Empty just as “The Empty” embodied, but now it has a new name…. The Shadow…  

(Ged confronts his shadow – Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula le Guin)

“Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

(If it’s in a word, or if it’s in a look…. you can’t get rid of the Babadook…)

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”

— Carl Jung, Aion (1951)

Both Castiel and Dean have very explicitly begun the confrontation with their shadow doppleganger selves (which will eventually lead to deeper self-knowledge):

Castiel in 13×04 The Big Empty with the entity now known as The Shadow wearing his face

And Dean in 14×02 Gods and Monsters with AU Michael wearing his meatsuit:

Both dopple-ganger entities taunt Cas and Dean. Cas is taunted with being unloved and Dean is taunted with being “owned”/ possessed/ controlled. 

Then we have another doppleganger (to emphasise the theme) Dark!Kaia who dresses like a Sith Lord and carries the spear which can pierce Michael!Dean (a bi-dent – yes, that’s a thing, I’ve meta’d about it, and the way in which AU Michael!Dean represents John Winchester’s remaining negative grip on Dean’s psyche [including the repression of his queerness] already here:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/179975186264/uhm-14x05s-text-reference-is )

We have seen Dean confront Dark!Kaia, where she stands in for his AU Michael!Dean shadow:

Dean: “I am nothing like him!” (14×03 The Scar)

In 14×08 we get another chance to see Cas confront his shadow (which continues to tell him he can never be happy)

“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Carl Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” Alchemical Studies (1945)  

Now, for Dean and for Cas, it is the season of shadow work….