#egipci

Well, technically, it's supposed to give you "what your heart desires."

— Supernatural 2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose // 14.13 Lebanon

The most curious thing to me about this ep has been Jenny’s motivation—  Kate seeking revenge for her mate makes sense to me; Jenny, who was a  victim and turned against her will, who the Winchesters tried to save, being the one to indirectly cause Dean’s death seems like an empty callback to me — and a uncharacteristically pessimistic take on the monstrosity of these ‘infected’ victims.

A few ideas...

1) Imo the most likely, if boring, explanation is that the writers couldn’t or didn’t want to get Kate’s actress back (it does look like her acting career slowed down somewhat in the mid-2010s? according to IMDB, the last movie she did was in 2017 and then a short film in 2021. plus, the pandemic might’ve also messed with her availability) but still wanted to reference 1x20, so they went with Jenny and her actress instead (esp as she’d been on the show again in S5).

2) I also watched “The End of the Road,” the short documentary on the final ep/the end of the series out of curiosity, and:

[4:21 - 5:50] BUCKNER [I think?] The myth of what these brothers were, throughout 15 years, we didn’t shy away from fatalism, but we wanted to be able to have it be kind of uplifting as well. DABB If you’re going to do something that feel like a complete arc, you have to kind of go back to the beginning of it. [VOICEOVER of 1x20 / DEAN: Vampires nest in groups of 8 to 10. Smaller packs are sent out to hunt for food. VOICEOVER from 15x20 / SAM: Well, if this is the same nest and if the pattern holds, then they'll target Canton next. DEAN: They target families that are living outside of town, that are isolated... Jenny?... So, what, are you, like, the, uh... The big boss or something? JENNY: No. I just called dibs.] When it comes to Sam and Dean, and particularly this last episode, it’s all about getting back to in some ways these two guys on the road, in this car, they’ve been doing this job for 15 years now, they’ve fought everyone from demons to vampires to God himself, but at the end of the day they’re still working guys. Out there on the road, taking cases, and we tried to never lose sight of that. [6:11 - 6:31] ROSS-LEMMING I think we sort of knew, generally, what the ending would involved, we might not have known the mechanics, but we sort of knew that there would be a glorious, victorious, sacrificial ending, because I think sacrifice is a big theme in our series, and for every great thing you do a cost must be paid.

given the emphasis on going back to the beginning, returning to where Sam & Dean started, and the writers believing a bit in fatalism, all of that fits with the writers not being particularly perturbed by bringing Jenny back as a doomed victim. it fits with Dean’s death, too, in how Dean wasn’t able to escape a hunter’s demise & how Ross-Lemming frames it as a sacrifice for Sam and his carrying on.

the writing went back and forth on the monstrosity or not of certain victims, but I’m not sure it ever fully settled on a definite answer on whether victims turned against their will are / aren’t monsters. Ross-Lemming (who’s married to director/executive producer Singer) and Buckner in particular seem to have brought a fatalism/fatedness to the writing room / show. they’re the ones who described 9x16, when the Mark is finally activated in Dean, as demonstrating him as innately a warrior and killer, that it was in his DNA, which is pretty Fucked Up.

3) in the story proper, I could also buy Jenny as being a counterpoint to Dean and Sam: she was a killer who thirsted for revenge, in contrast to Dean and Sam giving up on revenge, to being “killers.” I could even see Jenny as a foil specifically for Dean, given how he’s framed as the “ultimate killer” in 15x19, and how much of his story in Dabb era has him (framed as wrongly) wanting and chasing after revenge. Jenny ends up his dark mirror, the bloodthirsty killer Dean could have turned into if not for Sam, Cas and his friends puling him back into the light. not that I like/agree w/ this framing, but there’s a line in a S14 commentary from one of the writers that basically describes Dean exactly that way: that Sam & Cas pull Dean back from his self-destructive tendencies. (I had a side-tangent here abt Dean & Jenny as dual victims of sexual assault in 1x20, and what one could read into that in 15x20, but frankly I don’t think that subtext was intended and it’s also incredibly messed up if you read into it at all.)