Bergamot

OH NO! Really? That makes me even more sad than I was. 😞 In one way, it makes it better, because it shows that Dean was not just satisfied to stay at the exact same point in his life, that he was looking to find something new for himself in addition to hunting, something that was his own, just as @BabySpinach was talking about before. He was ready to take advantage of the freedom he had earned. And in another way, it makes what happened so much worse, because he never got a chance to do this. 😢 Maybe someone could ask Jensen about this. Maybe it was his idea! I don't think I would have minded so much if the episode had just shown Dean and Sam entering Heaven together in the end. (Although I DO NOT LIKE how specific they were as to what Heaven was -- they should never have done that, they should have left it up to the viewers' imaginations, because in my opinion whatever they came up with was always going to fall short and ultimately feel disappointing.) However, if they were going to show Dean and Sam going to Heaven, it should only have happened at the very end of the show, the very last thing. And what Bobby said to Dean about Heaven: "It's a big new world out there, you'll see", and what he then asked him: "So I guess the question is, what are you going to do now, Dean?" -- these should have been said to Dean when he was ALIVE and as he told Sam, "finally free". Not after he had already died.

I like what they said as well. I think both actors did an excellent job in that scene.

Me too. 💔 This was the hardest thing for me to take, I think. Very well said. I like what you say about how he made what John had pushed onto him into something beautiful and selfless. Dean formulated the idea of "saving people, hunting things" for himself -- it was not a mission statement that he was given by John. As he tells Sam in Wendigo, "I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others". But I also agree that Dean deserved to find something in addition to that, something that was his own. He should have had the time and the freedom to do that. Who knows what he could have done if he had? And if nothing else, he deserved more time to just live and enjoy life. Because he was good at that. He reminds me of something C.S. Lewis said about his wife after she died, that a 1000 years of happiness would not have made her blase about it. That she liked more things, and liked them more, than anyone he knew. I know, Dean can eat pie in Heaven, but it's not the same.

LOL! Hey now, don't you go dissing Rufus! That scowl of his is pretty sexy! 😉

Thanks Binns! I was wondering about the medical realism part of it. Dramatically, I think it was well thought out, and gave them a way to have Dean dying, and know he was dying, but still give him time to talk with Sam.

Seriously? is that why Jim has deleted his Twitter account?

I don't know, but I don't think he would have turned into John. For one thing, we have seen what Dean did when Sam was gone before. He did his best to live up to what Sam wanted. For another thing, Dean was never John, obsessed with hunting for revenge. Maybe this is just a matter of how you phrased it, but Dean was not "arguing to die". He knew that he was dying, that nothing could be done to stop it. Nothing natural, anyway. And I don't think that either of them would have been willing to let the other one try something supernatural to save them, not anymore. As Dean said, they both knew how that would end, that it always ended badly. I thought Jensen was just incredible in this scene. One thing about his acting that is so amazing is the way that you can always SEE what his character is thinking. And when he starts out by saying "I don't think I'm going anywhere", and as he explains to Sam what has happened, you can see the realization dawning on him that he is going to die. And you can see him admit this to himself when he asks Sam to stay with him. And then you can see him shifting gears and trying to think of what he needs to do next, before the end -- first, instruct Sam to make sure that the boys are safe, because that is the most important thing, and then second, help Sam accept what is going to happen and try to make sure he will be okay. And as he is doing that, all the while growing weaker and fading away, he is also trying to accept what is happening for himself. "It's okay, it's okay" he tells Sam, but he also telling himself this. "It's good." And then at the end he says, "I did not think this would be the day. But it is. It is, and that's -- that's okay." He does not want to die, but he knows that it is going to happen, and he accepts it so bravely! 😢 He just needs Sam to tell him that it is okay to let go, because Dean was never able to stop fighting, even when he knew that he couldn't win.

Understood! I also wish it would have been acknowledged more on the show what a heroic character Dean was.

Not going to tell anyone else how to feel about it, but for me, Dean's death was not stupid or unheroic. It's not like he clumsily tripped over Miracle while goofing around and accidentally stepped on a nail. He was fighting a nest of vampires to save two little boys and was impaled on a long sharp piece of metal. The fact that the stakes were "just" the lives of two kids rather than the salvation of the entire world did not make it less heroic. Neither does the fact that he didn't kill every vampire he fought and thus ended up getting killed himself. If he hadn't been there, fighting alongside Sam, who knows if any of them, including the children, would have escaped? For me, I totally reject the idea that Dean did not die a heroic death. As Dean himself said, he went out "saving people, hunting things" to the very end. I was very moved as I watched Dean die. You see him realizing that he is not going to make it, and trying to convey that to Sam. Then the very first thing he tells Sam to do is that he must find the boys and get them to safety, because that is his top priority. Then he tries to make sure that Sam will be okay once he is gone. I think Dean was trying to say whatever he could think of that would help Sam get through this. Like him bringing up the fact that when they were growing up Sam would always defy John's orders, which to me seems like a somewhat random thing that he just threw in there. I don't know if Dean really believed that Sam was smarter and stronger than he was, I guess probably, but that doesn't make it true. I think that Dean said this because he thought that hearing it would help Sam. Which if it was true that this was something Sam wanted and needed to hear, maybe says more about Sam than it does Dean. Of course I wanted to hear Sam saying in his turn whatever he could think of that would help DEAN get through this. The fact that he didn't, again maybe says more about Sam than it does Dean. I don't know -- it's like, who was the strong one here? At least Sam found the strength to give Dean the one thing he specifically asked of him, which was to tell him that it was okay for him to go. What really left a huge gaping hole in the episode for me was not so much what Sam did or didn't say. It was the fact that we never got a chance to hear what we lost, when we lost Dean, from anyone at all. Okay, so because of COVID restrictions, they couldn't show us a big funeral, or a wake, attended by those affected by Dean's death. But they should have found a way to work around that. We should have heard from people like Jody and Donna and other hunters, and maybe also other people Dean saved, who could tell us what a wonderful and heroic person Dean was. If they couldn't do it in person, I don't know, maybe they could have shown Sam listening to voice mail messages or reading emails where these people talked about what Dean meant to them. Like I said, the lack of this in the episode, making it seem like no one but Sam would even notice or care that Dean was gone, was for me a gaping hole in the story. And I think it was what made Sam not saying anything to Dean so noticeable and disappointing.

You know, when I saw Sam with that cute little blond toddler, and saw the name "Dean" embroidered on his little overalls, just for a moment I thought that it was actually the real Dean! Did anyone else think that? Like, somehow after we had seen Dean driving off into Heaven, he had been reincarnated as a little boy, and was going to live his life again, except that Sam was going to raise him! Okay, I might have read a fanfic story like this at one time. 😊 Anyway, I was excited about this for just a second, before I realized my mistake. I still think it would have been kind of an interesting ending, though.

LOL, gonzosgirrl! Now I am thinking of all the people that I would not want living next door to me in heaven! 😄 I think Dabb made a mistake in being so concrete as to what Heaven was like now that Jack has changed things. I think Heaven should represent something wonderful, but also be something that you can't really imagine until you experience it. Something beautiful and sublime, yet mysterious. The Heaven that Dabb came up with seemed kind of well, pedestrian. Like if you found and lived in a neighborhood that you really loved on Earth, and then it just got transferred upstairs to Heaven. I think it would have worked better if Dean had been greeted by Bobby in what was basically the anteroom to Heaven, maybe surrounded by a mysterious mist. Or maybe a beautiful garden. Bobby could have told him that Jack had fixed things there, so that it wasn't just being by yourself reliving your memories. He could then have simply told Dean that this was the Heaven that he deserved, and that he would be with those he loved. Then Dean would get in his heavenly Impala and drive off into the mist. And then we would not see Dean again until he drives onto the bridge and Sam joins him there. It's kind of like they did with Hell. Dean's time in Hell always affected me more powerfully than Sam's, or any subsequent depiction of Hell, because they never really showed it. (I remember Sera Gamble saying something about how that first scene, where Dean was screaming while he was suspended in space with hooks and chains, was not actually Hell, but just the "waiting room" before you actually entered Hell.) Once the show tried to give us a concrete depiction of Hell, it lost its power for me. Heaven is the same way -- they should have left it more up to our imaginations.

Thanks Babyspinach, this is beautifully said. And it is true that this does not diminish him or his legacy, as you say, so I am sure that I will also feel better about it in time. Right now it is hard though. I am happy that Dean did get a chance to have Miracle with him for a time. But then it makes me so sad to think of how they showed that afterwards Miracle was missing Dean too! 😢

Okay, yeah, I think maybe I can agree with this. I guess it is just hard to think of Dean being permanently dead. He was always bursting with life and vitality and love, and always found a way to enjoy the little things and share it with those around him. He would have been that way if he had lived to be 100 years old. You could see it even in the first part of this episode, with his enjoyment of having a dog and going to a pie festival and figuring out a case. It was upsetting to see him die for good. But again, I think maybe I am mixing up my feelings about the show ending with my feelings about the episode. Yes, I am feeling very emotional about it. It is going to take me some time to process this. 😢

Yes, this is how I feel right now. It doesn't totally ruin everything for me, but this is not what I wanted for the final episode. Very disappointing. Right now my sadness at the show ending and my disappointment about the episode are all mixed together -- I can't separate them out to figure out what to say about the episode. I am so sad that Dean never got a chance to grow old and have a family of his own. Also it makes me sad that in the episode it is like the only person affected by Dean's death is Sam. Dean touched so many lives and was loved by so many; I know the production team was operating under constraints but there should have been a way to show this.

It's his destiny! 😊

You mean like, shared hallucinations? I can understand why people are wondering if these scenes are real, with how everything seems almost too perfect. Although when Jack brought back everyone at the end of "Inherit the Earth", that seemed pretty much like a candy-colored perfect world too, full of happy people and puppydogs and Girl Scout cookies. The thing about these being their hallucinations while dying, though, is that I can't see what the point would be. For example, in "Death's Door", when we saw what was inside Bobby's mind as he was dying, we learned things we never knew about Bobby, and why Dean and Sam were so important to him as his adopted family. In these scenes from the finale, what would be learning about Dean and Sam? What insights are we (or the characters) gaining from them? The fact that Dean likes to make up funny portmanteau names for monsters, and that Sam has always wanted to throw a cream pie in Dean's face? I'm just not seeing what would be the idea behind these scenes not being real, aside from Dabb wanting to say, "Haha, I fooled you, this was all a hallucination / preview of heaven / dream!" Which is fine as far as it goes, but I still would want there to be something beyond that -- some point to the story, in the end. I don't know, I want to be able to enjoy this episode, but I am going to keep my expectations very low.

The same with Mary's death (her second death, I mean.) Dean was calm in front of people, but then he went out into the woods by himself, and broke down and cried.

I like seeing John's journal being used one more time! It does bring me back to the beginning, and it made me happy to see it. I wish we could also see them stay in a crappy motel room with some bizarre decorating scheme, just one more time. I will NOT miss the MOL bunker; I think the show really lost something when they settled down in there. Plus I disliked the cold, sterile, windowless ambience with all that harsh artificial lighting. All things considered, I would rather have them discussing the case outside over the Impala in the sunshine than have another scene in the bunker. One of my reactions to this scene was to think, "What a beautiful old tree!" I was pleased to see something on Twitter (here) with a picture of Kim Manners standing in front of this tree on his last location survey for the show. So using this particular spot was a way of remembering him in the finale, which is just lovely. One thought that I had while watching this scene was ironically, how at peace Dean and Sam seemed to be with where they were at this point. I think maybe Dabb was wrong in that last interview, when he said that Dean and Sam could never be at peace as long as there was something out there they needed to hunt. I could be wrong, and maybe all they want to do is sit on a beach, but I don't see "saving people, hunting things" as the reason they could never find peace.

One part of that review that I really liked: This is one thing that I immediately liked about the show at the very beginning, Dean and Sam's matter-of-fact attitude toward the supernatural, the way it made it so believable that they had been raised since they were children to do this job. It was fascinating to me, and made me want to learn more about who these guys were and what their lives had been like. Honestly, one of my favorite lines from the pilot was when Constance tries to run them down with the Impala, and instead of being freaked out by the ghost-driven car, Dean is just pissed: "That Constance chick! What a BITCH!" Ha, loved it! It was an early step in my falling in love with Dean. Like his disgusted reaction to finding the mummified corpse in a cupboard in Asylum -- "Oh, that's just gross" -- or telling the creepy Scarecrow, "Dude, you fugly!"

One of my favorites was the use of "Can't Find My Way Home" with Steve Winwood and Blind Faith, at the very end of Season 9, right before Crowley's monologue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIR_H9hIA5g&t=105s Also the Yardbirds' "Turn Into Earth", for Castiel regaining his memories as an angel in Season 7. They only used a small sample, but here is the whole song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWJanO8-jRw Such a haunting sound.

As Myrelle says, it sounds like he is saying that as long as they were alive and on this Earth, there could never be peace for them. So it does really sound like they both die. LOL, Aeryn! Okay, now I want to see that happen! 😊

That reminds me of how both Lucifer and Chuck said that Michael was in no condition to help them in the fight against Amara in Season 11. If I remember correctly, Lucifer said that Michael spent his time in the Cage "sitting in the corner singing show tunes to himself". I didn't pay much attention, because it was Lucifer talking, but maybe the Michael of our world really was broken somehow by his time in the Cage.

Good point! Maybe the cars of the people who were driving got poofed as well. 😄 Reminds me of this exchange from the episode "Last Call":

One thing that I did like in the episode was the tie-in to what Castiel was talking about in the previous episode, in regard to who Dean is. Dean was always designed from the beginning to be nothing more than a weapon -- his father's blunt instrument, Michael's sword, Chuck's "perfect killer". But he rejected that destiny, and as Castiel confirmed, anyone who really knew Dean, knew that this was not what Dean was all about. When Dean told Chuck, "That's not who we are", I think that what he was saying was his final repudiation of this destiny: "That's not who I am."

How sad is it though, that apparently the only way this could be accomplished, was to remove from the story every adversary, every source of conflict, every challenge to be faced, and every obstacle to be surmounted? All right! Now let's get back to the story of the Winchesters! Uh, that's really great, I guess?