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Dean’s Forgotten Daughter: An Essay
For those unaware, Emma and Jack both exist in this human/monster hybrid space where physical age ≠actual age. Yes both are physically in their late teens/young adults, but they’ve only lived a fraction of that time. The Amazon timeline is a nightmare to try and decipher, but Emma says “three days ago I wasn’t even alive”. So in less than three days, she was born within this system and likely didn’t spend any more than a day with Lydia before being handed off. Add another day for the ritualistic training and literally branding.
While Jack isn’t the point of this post, I think he’s important to include as a baseline to compare to. We’ve seen how easy it was for Jack to be manipulated into fulfilling angel and demons’ agenda. But I have seen very few opinions that place blame with Jack, which is interesting because the situation isn’t far removed from Emma’s. In both cases, it is a matter of a few day old with limited understanding of themself or the world being manipulated into a bigger agenda. The only real difference is that Jack had adults in his corner to use as a point of reference. It isn’t entirely clear at what point Jack was self-conscious during Kelly’s pregnancy, but I’d lean pretty early on. So by the time he was born, he has spent a minimum of a few months absorbing Kelly’s voice, love, and positive influence. So by the time he is born, he has a strong sense of his mother and the love and morals she instilled in him.
Emma’s very brief relationship with Lydia on the other hand is drastically different. Their system is fast pace and doesn’t allow for sentiment, so even if Lydia did feel anything for her daughter, she wasn’t free to show it. Lydia was sent out with the single purpose of producing new generation of warriors, just as her mother had, and every generation that came before. So Emma only knows the system she was born into, where her entire life is already planned out for her.
Dipping into personal opinion a bit, but I feel like there’s a very distinct double standard when it comes to hybrid kids and how they are treated by the series and the fandom. Like many aspects of SPN, both as a series and a fanbase, male characters tend to be given much better ends than the female counterparts. When Sam and Dean stumble into Bobby-John, a baby shapeshifter, Dean is adamantly in defense of him. He is just a baby that can’t help what he is. I’m leaving Sam off this example because he was currently soulless and thus not an accurate reference of character. When Jack comes along, Dean is ultimately reacting from a place of grief. Yeah Jack’s power is a raise for concern, but it’s Cas’ death that drives Dean to go back into the house in search of him. Dean even explicitly tells Sam that he can’t look at Jack without being reminded of what he lost in the process.
Moving onto intent because the most common argument I see is “She tried to kill Dean”. No. She was sent there with the intent to, but she never actually tried. The closest she comes to an attempt is pulling the knife, which leads to their little standoff. During that conversation, she even acknowledged the fact that neither of them have made an actual attempt against the other.
That argument is also incredibly stupid in the context of Supernatural. Attempts on Dean Winchester’s life has happened so many times that it’s a canonical joke in the series. Just about every character in this show has at a minimum tried at least once, and majority of those examples conclude with Dean shrugging it off. No harm, no foul. I’m pretty sure a large reason Dean shrugs it off is due to his own self-hatred and the belief that he deserves it. But that’s for another rant on another day. The point is, nearly every character that has tried to kill Dean has lived to tell about it.
But I do want to talk about Emma’s interaction with Dean throughout that scene because I don’t believe it was entirely faked. I think there are clear points where she is repeating what she’s been told to say and there are comments that are clearly meant to hit the right nerve. But I don’t think she was entirely lying when she described her resentment of her situation and the adults around her. If I had been alive for 48 hours and had been subjected to half the things she was, I’d be a little angry too. I will admit which lines are genuine and which are rehearsed is a speculative gray area and ultimately we will never know the truth. But that applies to basically everything about Emma because the writers created and threw her out in the same episode but I’ll get to that later.
Moving onto more of the writing standpoint, I think she was completely wasted potential regardless of which way she went. Because I don’t believe that there was any scenario where Emma walked out that door and Dean went on with life like nothing happened. He outright shuts down the implication that he wouldn’t want her. Even struggling to wrap his head around this 3 day old teenager being his daughter and being rightfully wary of her intentions, he never allows the idea that he wouldn’t want her. So I don’t think Dean could ever let her walk away, at the very least not without him always wondering.
But I think the wasted potential is in the fact that the situation is ultimately skewed by the fact she is Dean’s. So regardless of which side she ultimately chose, we could have potentially had a much bigger story to tell. The conflict could have lasted for much longer than the five minutes they gave her. And considering this is right in the middle of S7’s Leviathan storyline, I argue that it would have been a lot more interesting.
I also think it was a writing fumble because Sam’s indifference to Emma and what she represented is ridiculously out of character. Throughout most of the series, Sam was always the bleeding heart when it came to monsters. Especially in cases where the monster retained humanity, because he saw himself in them. He was once the prophesied monster, who multiple hunters (including his own father) saw as a threat that needed to be eliminated preemptively. And in particular I think Jack Montgomery from S4 is a good frame of comparison. Because Sam adamantly views Jack a human that doesn’t have to give in to the monster part. The episode is meant to be a clear parallel between Sam and Jack, but it also fits the mentioned theme of Sam being the one to sympathize or give them a chance.
If I didn’t know the episode takes place during S7, I would believe it happened during the souless!Sam arc. I mean, just look at the difference in expressions here
He shows absolutely zero emotion before or after pulling the trigger on Emma. Which I’d argue is very unlike Sam, both for the above sympathetic tendencies as well as the fact Sam takes losses harder. When he can’t talk the monster down and or they can’t be saved, he is visibly saddened by the fact. In many cases, he even takes it as a personal failure. Yet, when Dean does show visible discomfort about her death, Sam shuts him down with “She wasn’t your’s, not really”. Which she was, and Dean says as much.
I also think this entire episode was a writing choice and a half because it’s like none of this exists by the next episode. Absolutely nothing in this episode was resolved, nor did it have any plot significance for the future episodes. It just kind of exists to fill time. Which is insane because in one episode we are given a new monster of the week, which is exclusively female and operates in an eerily cult-like nature. And absolutely none of it is unpacked beyond this single episode. The only acknowledgement we get of this episode at all is a weird exchange between Sam and Dean which I included below:
SAM: I might have found something over in Kansas.
DEAN: All right, well, let's do it. But, uh, a few simple rules, okay? No babies. In fact, no baby mamas. No bars. No booze – no hot chicks of any kind.
SAM: Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say –
DEAN: Hey. You spawn a monster baby, see how quick you want to dive back in the pool.
And I think this exchange is where people get the impression that Dean didn’t care if he was comfortable to joke about it. But no one has ever claimed Dean has healthy coping skills, that’s actually a canonical joke in the series. So I don’t think the fact Dean joked about it proves or disproves his feelings. I personally believe he did care based on the above reaction image. But as I said before, we will never actually know because Emma and this entire plot line died with the episode.
This post has ended up being way longer than I was originally planning it to be, but I did say it was an essay.
