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Prime Dean gives Alt John the tools to unlock the truth and decide for himself if he will hunt
Original run context: John's feelings of betrayal
In the original #SPNprime, John was not allowed to fight for or defend himself until it was already too late. This made the wound of Mary's death much, much deeper than it would have otherwise been.
Unlike with Sam keeping the truth from Jess out of shame, Mary's keeping the truth from John may stem from incredible fear, watching Azazel kill him in The Beginning.
(It's perhaps more akin to Dean symbolically blinding Lisa and Ben to the truth to keep them safe than how Sam was with Jess.)
But in the The Song Remains the Same, John (temporarily) learns the truth, and he is (rightfully) frustrated by having been kept in the dark. He feels intense betrayal. He feels like a child.
JOHN: Monsters. Monsters?
MARY: Yes.
JOHN: Monsters are real.
MARY: I'm sorry, I didn't know howā
JOHN: And you fight them? All of you?
SAM: Yeah.
JOHN: How long?
MARY: All my life. John, just try to understandā
DEAN: She didn't exactly have a choiceā
JOHN: Shut up, all of you! Look, not another word, or so help me, I will turn this car around!
Silence falls.
/// LATER ///
JOHN: What? Y'all might have treated me like a fool, but I am not useless. I can draw a damnā (JOHN picks up the paper from next to a large knife.)āwhatever it isāa sigil.
///
Original run context: Mary continued to hunt near/during the beginning of her marriage?
In Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox, we learn that it could've been Mary who created much of the tension in their marriage by potentially stepping out on John to hunt, calling into question if the fight shown between them in Dark Side of the Moon.
MARY: "No, John. We're not having this conversation again. Time to think? About what? You have two boys at home."
DEAN: "I remember this. Mom and dad were fighting, and then he moved out for a couple of days."
MARY: "Fine. Then don't. There's nothing more to talk about."
Now we wonder: Was this fight even John's fault to begin with? The stereotype of "angry husband" might lull you into thinking so, but it's equally possible that it was Mary that originated the fightāMary who had a long, canon-supported history of lying. Sheās even the one shutting down the conversation here!
Mary would probably rather John think she's unfaithful than risk John being dragged into hunting, and she'd probably pivot to supporting their kids as an excuse to smooth things over. (Just as Cas would rather Dean assume anything so long as he's not dragged into the dangerous world of angelic Civil War).
Alternatively, the fight may have even been part of the normal ebb-and-flow of a marriage. It may have been that the fight looked a LOT bigger through the eyes of a sensitive four-year-old.
(A couple of days ain't even that long, but boy it sure does feel big when you're a kid. But just because their marriage wasn't āperfectā doesn't mean it wasn't good, and the Dean-Sam conversation completely misses on that front.)
//
One of the things post-season 12 in #SPNprime does so beautifully is calls into question everything we know about Mary, including the cartoonish idea of John as the root of all evil.
Mary's lies are given rich complexity, as is Dean's memory of her.
Everything in Dark Side of the Moon, from the idea of Heaven as the āperfect place you grow upā to being simplistically at peace with your siblings/ālittermatesā in the ideal childhood home forever is given more complexity by the narrative unfridging of Mary.
(It's why the gate to Heaven is always associated with a playground. āThere's no place like home,ā is literal in SPN. Heaven can even be seen as the idealization of childhood, as sharing the same history.)
///
Prime Dean helps Alt John because Dean was also ālocked outā during critical periods in his life, prevented from Danger āfor his own goodā
Dean feels this pain acutely in season 6, when Samuel Campbell, his brother Sam, and Bobby Singer keep him out of the larger hunting plot in order to ākeep him at peace.ā
Despite their good intentions, this denied him the right to choose for himself if heād meet The Fight head on.
Cas, too, does this with the angelic Civil War, with Kelly Kline, general āangel business,ā and The Empty deal, and Dean feels that as unintended rejection.
Dean feels, like John, coddled. Like a child. Not getting the chance to be an equal comrade or partner in the fight.
(Note: Ofc, Dean does the same to Lisa and Ben in the end, blinding them when he verbalizes early in the season it would actually make them UNsafer.)
///
But here, prime Dean is giving John the key to discover the truth about monsters and Henryās Men of Letters heritage.
Certainly John has a lot of emotional baggage and childhood abandonment trauma to work through, but at least this time he'll have more agency ahead of time, and he'll get to choose which path to prepare for rather than having the world of monsters thrust upon him in the midst of a grief-spiral.
Dean has handed that power of Choice back to John.
Perhaps prime Dean too is wounded from being kept in the dark. Perhaps he longs for a world were he's known about Cas's The Empty deal instead of, like John, being blindsided and struck dumb by grief.
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