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Arthur Ketch is one of those characters where "I like him" gets mistaken for "I think he's a good person."

No.

He's awful.

He's manipulative, sadistic, and spent years as the British Men of Letters' attack dog. But that's exactly what makes him interesting. Arthur Ketch isn't compelling because he's redeemable-- he's compelling because he isn't, yet he still ends up developing very human cracks.

The thing with Mary Winchester is fascinating because it's so... inconvenient. She's not someone he was supposed to love. She's a liability, emotionally and professionally. Yet somewhere along the line, the guy who treated relationships like tactical assets starts imagining a real future with her. That's almost pathetic in the best way. He catches feelings like someone who's never been taught what to do with them.

And that tiny flicker of disappointment when Mary practically says, "It was just blowing off steam"? That's the entire character compressed into one expression. A man who can kill without blinking gets visibly wounded by one sentence.

Then, of course, there's the comedy.

The fact that this man got killed and his first idea was, "I'll just tell everyone I have a twin brother," is SO unserious. And the worst part? He committed to the bit with a completely straight face. He really pulled the oldest soap opera trick in history and somehow made it work. I hate this man. I love this man.

I never really shipped Ketch and Mary either. I just loved the irony of it. The coldest man in the room accidentally developing genuine feelings was far more interesting than if they'd actually become endgame. Sometimes the best romances are the ones that never really happen-- they just reveal something about a character you thought was incapable of feeling at all.

Also:

It's less "I genuinely ship them" and more "...goddammit, I see the vision."

Cz why the hell did Arthur Ketch have chemistry with Dean too? Dean is so greedy. Leave some emotionally constipated men for the rest of us.

Arthur looked at Dean for three business days and I literally went, "oh for fuck's sake, not another one." Dean Winchester is a magnet for deeply disturbed men. It's actually ridiculous at this point.

Dean's body count of men with unresolved feelings for him needs to be studied. I'm convinced every third man Dean meets either wants to fight him, die for him, or kiss him. Sometimes all three.

Dean really be collecting emotionally repressed middle-aged men like they're Infinity Stones.

At some point you have to stop blaming the fandom and start blaming Dean's face. Arthur Ketch catching feelings for Dean too would've been the least surprising plot twist on this show.

Dean collects men the way Sam collects trauma. It's a full-time job.

The emotional reaction ("why won't you stay with your sons?") and the psychological reading ("how could she possibly process this?") are both understandable.

From Dean and Sam's perspective? It's devastating.

They spent their entire lives building this impossible fantasy of their mother. Especially Dean Winchester. She wasn't just his mom, she was the symbol of the normal childhood he never got. Every sacrifice, every hunt, every nightmare traced back to the night she died. Then, after decades of grief, she's suddenly alive... and instead of running into his arms forever, she says she needs space.

To Dean, that probably felt like being abandoned all over again.

But then you flip the camera.

My toxic trait is empathizing with characters the fandom has collectively put on a hit list.

Mary didn't lose thirty years.

She lost one night.

She went to bed a twenty-something woman with a husband she adored, a four-year-old, and a baby. Then she wakes up in a future where her husband has been dead for decades, her children are strangers older than she remembers being, the world has completely changed, and everyone expects her to immediately become "Mom" again.

Except... Mom to who?

She never got to know these men.

She didn't watch Dean lose his childhood. She didn't raise Sam. She didn't witness their first words, first heartbreaks, or first hunts. Those memories don't exist for her. She isn't rejecting the boys she raised-- because she never got the chance to raise them.

That's a horrifying kind of grief. It's almost like everyone else remembers a life you never got to live.

So her burying herself in hunting, trying to reclaim some sense of identity, even sleeping with people, trying to feel like Mary instead of "the Winchester boys' dead mother"... psychologically, that tracks. It's messy. Sometimes selfish. But trauma often is.

I think where the writing loses people isn't that Mary wants independence. It's that the show doesn't always let us feel enough of her internal conflict. We see choices that hurt Dean and Sam, but we don't always sit with Mary's panic, disorientation, guilt, and mourning for the life that was ripped away from her. So viewers are left filling in those gaps themselves.

And that's why she's such a frustrating character.

Because if you watch with your heart, you're Dean.

If you watch with your head, you're looking at a woman who woke up after thirty years to discover she'd outlived her own life.

Neither perspective is wrong. They're just two tragedies colliding.

Also:

Many new mothers go through a period where they don't immediately feel deeply bonded to their baby, and that's far more common than people realize. Birth doesn't automatically flip a switch into overwhelming love for everyone. Recovery, exhaustion, hormonal changes, and sometimes Postpartum depression or Postpartum anxiety can leave a mother feeling detached, numb, or even resentful. Those feelings are usually temporary and don't make someone a bad mother-- they're a recognized part of the range of postpartum experiences.

For Mary, that idea fits because she died when Dean was still a toddler and Sam was an infant. She simply hadn't had the chance to build decades of memories and attachment with them before her life was cut short. That doesn't mean she didn't love them; it means the bond was interrupted before it could fully grow.

First of all, the script itself is already funny.

Crowley: "...burning through that rather finite supply of grace, all in a desperate effort to save your boyfriend."

Castiel: "Maybe he's your boyfriend."

That's not even subtext. That's just two middle-aged supernatural beings accusing each other of having a crush while Dean basically wrecked upstairs.

But then...

"Not my type."

Sir.

SIR.

If you have to physically walk towards the man, stop beneath the stairs, look up at him like you're contemplating every life decision that led you here, and then say "Not my type"... you've already LOST THE ARGUMENT.

Mark Sheppard has this incredible ability to act with his eyes. Crowley's expression so often lands somewhere between admiration, frustration, affection, and "I cannot believe this idiot is making me care." So even when the line is written as a joke, the performance can make it feel... suspiciously loaded.

It's also perfectly in character because Crowley spends an absurd amount of time orbiting Dean during the Mark of Cain arc. He's fascinated by him. He enables him, manipulates him, drinks with him, calls him "Squirrel," tries to recruit him, and seems genuinely disappointed every time Dean chooses someone else over him.

Is it canon romance? No.

Is it incredibly easy to read Crowley as having a one-sided, deeply inconvenient crush on Dean? ...Honestly, I get why people do.

And the funniest part is that "Not my type" is exactly the kind of thing someone says when they're trying way too hard to sound unaffected.

Crowley: "Not my type."

Also Crowley:

crosses continents to help Dean

keeps trying to make Dean his partner

stares at him like he's the last interesting creature on Earth

is visibly offended whenever Dean picks Team Free Will over him

Mark Sheppard really looked up those stairs and said, with his entire face, "Unfortunately, that man is the center of my problems," while his mouth insisted, "Nah."

Like not in the "the writers are trying to make her quirky" way. She's just... naturally adorable. That little smile she gets? The dry humor? The confidence? The way she'll absolutely throw herself into a hunt without making a big deal out of it? She's cool as hell and cute as hell, which is an unfair combination.

And with Sam Winchester... I don't know. They have that quiet kind of chemistry that doesn't scream for your attention. It just settles into your chest. They look at each other like two people who finally found someone speaking the same language, even beyond words.

They're both gentle people who've been through unimaginable amounts of loss. Neither of them needs to be the loudest person in the room. They understand grief, loneliness, and hope in a way that feels almost instinctive. Being together doesn't feel like they're completing each other; it feels like they've finally found someone who gets it.

And I adore that she never feels intimidated by Sam. She teases him, challenges him, works alongside him as an equal. Sam, meanwhile, has this softness around Eileen Leahy that's different from his other relationships. It isn't dramatic or obsessive-- it feels safe. Like he can unclench for the first time in years.

They're the kind of couple that makes you imagine the tiny things: brushing shoulders while cooking, signing "I love you" across a room, silently checking in with each other during hunts, stealing sleepy smiles over morning coffee.

Soulmates is exactly the word I'd use.

Not because fate said so.

Because if you scattered every person in the world into a thousand different lifetimes, I'd still believe Sam would eventually wander into Eileen's path, she'd give him one amused look, and somehow they'd end up finding their way home together.

What, the FUCK. Respectfully.

The world got a god but we lost a son.

Jack spends seasons learning what it means to be human. Not powerful-- HUMAN.

He learns bad jokes. Nougat. Video games. How to hug awkwardly. How to ask if someone is okay. He burns grilled cheese. He accidentally kills people and spends the rest of his existence trying to become someone worthy of being loved. His entire arc is built around one question:

> "Can someone with unimaginable power still choose love?"

And then the finale answers...

"Sure. By leaving."

LIKE??

You spent years making this kid desperately crave a family. He calls Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester his fathers. He calls Castiel family. He literally dies, resurrects, loses his soul, regains it, carries the weight of the universe, all while just wanting someone to tell him, "You're home."

And then he becomes God and says, essentially, "I'm everywhere now."

Sir.

I don't need you to become the concept of humidity.

I need you at the bunker eating cereal out of the box because everyone forgot to buy bowls.

The tragedy is that Jack's ending mirrors Cass's. Cass loves so much that he transcends. Jack loves so much that he transcends. They're turned into these almost cosmic ideas instead of being allowed to exist as people.

Meanwhile, the emotional payoff everyone had invested in was much smaller.

We didn't want omnipresence.

We wanted movie nights.

We wanted Jack accidentally breaking another microwave because he sneezed grace into it.

We wanted Dean grumbling while secretly making Jack an extra burger.

We wanted Sam teaching him dumb trivia.

We wanted Cas coming back and finding Jack asleep on the library table with six books as a pillow.

We wanted family.

That's the thing about the Winchesters. Every single one of them has this horrible habit of believing they have to become a sacrifice.

Dean sacrifices himself.

Sam sacrifices his life over and over.

Cas sacrifices his happiness.

Jack sacrifices... being Jack.

It's like the show cannot comprehend that someone is allowed to survive and keep the people they love.

So when Jack says he won't come home...

...it hurts because "home" was the one thing he spent his entire existence trying to find.

And after all that, the audience is left standing there going,

"Buddy. The universe can wait five minutes. Your dads made pie."

I know there are people who appreciate the symbolism of Jack becoming a hands-off God-- breaking the cycle of manipulation that Chuck Shurley created. Thematically, it's a neat idea.

Emotionally?

Absolutely fucking criminal.

Because that wasn't just God walking away.

That was a kid walking away from the first family that ever made him feel like he belonged.