There’s a lot to like about The Winchesters, but I think one of the reasons it hits so hard for me is that it solves my biggest problem with the finale. Personally, I don’t have a problem with tragic endings. The season 5 finale of Spn has a tragic ending, and I think it’s a wonderful feat of storytelling. Aside from the fact that 15x20 tried to pretend it wasn’t tragic and tried to make it seem like Sam and Dean standing alone on a bridge in Heaven was a happy ending, what I hated most about the finale was they had to flatten Dean into a two-dimensional caricature of himself to do it. Aside from maybe the revelation that Dean stood outside Sam’s apartment at Stanford for hours trying to psych himself up to go in because he was nervous Sam would turn him away, there was no moment in the episode that Dean felt like the complex, nuanced character we had come to know and love over the past 15 seasons. He had no desires or characterisation beyond pie, car and Sammy. There was no sign of all the growth we’ve seen from him, no hint of his own needs, wants or sense of self. I mean, he wasn’t even allowed to interact with his own heaven before Sam showed up. Even after his death, he was never allowed to have anything that was just his.
Look, I’ve said all this a hundred times before – if you look at my 15x20 tag, it’s basically just this sentiment repeated over and over again – so why am I saying it again now? Well, because The Winchesters is fixing that. The mission Dean is on is all his. It’s not about Sam, or pie or whatever surface level bullshit that finale tried to boil Dean down to. He’s going back to the past, he’s meddling in something insane because he sees value in it, and in the process going on a journey to understand himself better. His narration makes it pretty clear that through this quest he’s learning to contextualise his own life and feelings better. The past presents the future, after all (full disclosure, that’s an Ugly Betty episode title that I just really loved and use far too often in casual conversation), and one of the biggest hang ups in Dean’s life was that he was given this mythologised version of events and expected to believe them. Mary was this perfect saintly mother who sat at home baking cookies all day before she was brutally, and through no fault of her own, ripped away from them. John was the perfect mild-mannered husband and father who only slid into anger and obsession after he lost his perfect wife.
Eventually Dean realises that none of that is true. Mary couldn’t cook. She was a hunter. She was involved in the circumstances that brought about her own death. She was a complicated person, and in the end he got the chance to see that knowing the real her, flaws and all, was infinitely superior to believing the white-washed fairytale about the perfect martyr that John created after she died. There’s also the fact that John was never the perfect husband or father, even before Mary’s death. We get maybe one reference to that in Spn, how in Dean’s heaven in season 5 he remembers John and Mary fighting and John moving out for a few days, but not much else. The focus is very much on how John turned into a neglectful parent and an angry man after Mary’s death. But The Winchesters is working hard to dispel that lie. John always had this anger in him. Mary even calls him out multiple times on how he’s using her and their relationship as an excuse to avoid his issues. She straight up uses those words. There are also references to how raising your kids to be soldiers and being their drill sergeant rather than their parent is one of the worst things a parent can do to their child.
Anyway, as interesting as it is to see all these things addressed in the Spn universe, what’s so damn satisfying is seeing Dean realise it. Dean’s on a mission to learn more about his past. To understand that our parents and where we come from shapes and moulds the people we become, but it doesn’t have to define us forever if we don’t let it. By accepting his past and finding out the truth about who his parents truly were, he can accept himself and move forward, free of whatever baggage that had been dragging him down for so much of his life.
And the greatest part about all of this, is that Dean’s the one driving this story. It’s not God, or his father or even his duty to take care of Sam which dictated so much of his life and his choices before. This is about Dean’s choices and who he is as a person and what he wants. It’s funny because as little as we saw John Winchester in season 1 of Spn, he was very much the spectre hanging over the story, and the search to find him is what drove much of the plot throughout the season. Much of what his sons were doing was in reaction to him. And now in The Winchesters, Dean himself is the spectre that’s been hanging over the season. He’s the one making the big moves and steering the action. He’s the one everyone, friend and foe alike, is looking for. He’s the one who gave John the note and put this whole thing into motion. After the ending of Spn took away so much of his agency and everything that makes Dean Dean, he’s finally getting it back and then some.
I’m excited to see how the season’s going to end, but I’ll forever be happy that this show gave us Dean being his own person again. He’s the one picking the music this time.
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