The Companion

Just like everything else in the finale, it's criminally underdeveloped.

I would be surprised to see anyone taking the opposite position. I keep seeing people refer to the "blurry wife." I do think it's fairly clearly implied. Now how it ended is ambiguous. She wasn't in the pictures when he died or at his deathbed.

Given how much I hated the finale, I say we lean into it. Can we edit and dub something more satisfying? Cause I speak French, but I will learn Spanish for a better ending. 😆

Is it legit/real? I am not sure but it is pretty subtle for a fake. If someone faked it, why not put in something more gamechanging? There was also a Twitter thread with Adam Williams who did special effects on the show verifying it (but the thread is a complete mess, so I don’t know that his word is dispositive.

There are actually several pages that are floating around: https://mobile.twitter.com/TeamFreeWillBT/status/1337556042171871232 The script doesn't vary substantially from what was delivered but the Cas POV has hit a lot of people hard and there is a lot of discussion about the direct "Cas pulls Dean close," which appears at the awkward cut when Cas pushes Dean sideways weirdly.

You can see it in the captions here but I can't actually hear it going back to the recording.

There was quite a bit more genital talk than I had anticipated. 😆 I also enjoyed the exchange where someone clarified that there were no happy endings on the set of Supernatural (in reference to the massage) and Jensen said something like "at least not scripted." 😆 Seriously, the absolute chaos once Stacey dropped off was hilarious.

I really enjoyed last night's panel. There were probably too many people and it had the energy of theater kids at 2am in The Waffle House, but I was laughing so hard I was crying. A quick rundown of the highlights - The first 35ish minutes was focused on the cause. Stacey did, in my opinion, a great job of hitting her talking points without it feeling like talking points. She also clearly loves the show and was fangirling out a bit. Who can blame her? The cast asked her questions including, I thought, a really good one about disability accommodations from Shoshannah - She had not seen the last three episodes and plans to binge them tomorrow after celebrating her birthday today -after she left, they had cast and fan trivia which was a bit of a mess and hilarious. One of the questions was the name of the herpes drug Sam did the advertisement for which led to a really ridiculous discussion of herpes. Sam was saying subscription, there was discussion of prescription vs. subscription and genital herpes vs. other types. It was ridiculous. Felicia Day said she had once auditioned for a herpes medication commercial. - JP also told a story about replacing Sebastien Roche's massage therapist at the airport and getting increasingly inappropriate as a prank (under the shirt, low on the back, tweaking nipples?) There may have been some embellishment. -JA did have a beer. He didn't talk as much but he did talk about how happy he was that they were all a family and how this wasn't the end. -the panel ended in bloopers Overall, there wasn't much content and there was almost no discussion of the show, but it was silly and really cool to see so many people affiliated with the show in one place. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy.

That does make it worse. Thanks. 😭😆 If I didn't have to watch the intervening seasons to understand the finale, you have done something wrong. You have failed to move the story forward or you have gone backwards All if this

Y'all are making me feel so much better because this is exactly it. He got free will and was exploring what that meant and then was unceremoniously killed. That is not a poetic ending or a satisfying one. Meanwhile Sam "carries on" I suppose, but he doesn't seem to have a particularly happy life. And in the end, he is surrounded not by the life he builds, but by the people who died before him. His spouse is nowhere to be found. Not at his bedside or on the walls behind him. His son is the only one attending to him even though he is clearly at end of life. Tragedy has its place, but even then people typically want it to be part of a satisfactory arc. The story has to make sense narratively. Here, the story is: oh you finally had the chance to make like on your own terms? Boom, you lost it. When you are telling a story, if you want it to be a worthwhile one, there should be payoff on the elements that you set up previously. The ending here took a u-turn and threw out a ton of character development in the process. I had heard in the past that Sam had speculated that Sam could be bi in prior panels, so I don't think its a new concept being offered here. I think it's something he has previously considered.

This. It's a combination of "they will be better off without me" and "I am better off dead."

JP is probably pretty locked down with his employment contract. JA and MC are bound by CNDAs, so I suspect the story of the original finale plan won't be out completely until those expire unless the CW feels it can mitigate the backlash somehow. I feel like there were still ways to integrate the other characters. Ignored texts because he was depressed would have been a great way to deal with it. You could have seen the family rallying around him. It would have made things so much less depressing to have a reminder that both were loved. I would have been better with (but still mad) a scene of him surrounded by earthside friends cut with a scene of Dean being greeted by friends in heaven. Then he gets in a car and you can end the same way. But I am not sure it was COVID that stopped that. Because I think there were ways to still get that across conceptually. I mean, it felt emptier than the episode where the entire Earth was empty. Hey, the writers had a chance to make it Eileen. If JP wants to leave it open for interpretation, I am actually good with that. It's a fairly mild recon compared to like half the show. 😆

In the end, it was so depressing and isolated to me. Not even name drops. Why have all the Eileen stuff if we don't even know if she is back? We don't know the fate of Charlie and her girlfriend. And Sam looked so defeated in that montage. He doesn't die surrounded by friends and family. He dies with one family member and pictures of the dead. This is the quality content I need. Maybe the reason Sam's spouse was a vague outline was because he did witchy things to make her invisible to anyone so she didn't get struck by the penis curse. Here is the thing. They could have EASILY shown it to be Eileen by having them sign something to her. That's all it would have taken to at least make that storyline relevant. So the writers decided that it didn't matter, which again leads to the feeling that nobody mattered outside of Sam and Dean, which I hate. This. He deserved happiness. Killing him so soon after everything was narrative unsatisfying. He wanted free will. Then he never gets to explore it. As a mother by adoption and embryo donation/adoption, I can assure you that biology is not required for moments of true happiness or a real and meaningful parent-child relationship. Why even have the employment contract? That detail is so cruel. You have this character development where Dean says: hey, I don’t have to be what Dad made me. I can do more than kill things. I am loved. And then you kill him on a hunt his father started and send him to a heaven where he is almost entirely alone. Oh yeah. Congrats. You get to spend eternity with the man who abused and neglected you would have been worse for me. Yeah, Jack becomes God but allows monsters free reign to kill parents and kidnap kids. He saves Cas but doesn't even leave them a voicemail, send a carrier pigeon, etc. I have taken days to even come post because I get upset every time I think about it. I was left asking what was the point? Why have Cas confess his feelings then barely deal with it? Why are we supposed to find this death satisfying when they have undone so many? What was the point of the Kevin stuff? Is he still wandering the earth? But mostly, you have Dean who survived trauma and who has believed for years his only value is as a sacrifice for others. He believes he is good at killing and that's it. We have watched him throw himself into the hunt time and time again when he is depressed, just waiting for the end. He has said over and over this only ends one way. Then we see something fundamental in him change. He wants to live. He wants to be free. He wants to explore what happens now that he isn't being controlled by Chuck. And then he is immediately killed in an arbitrary way. And there is no payoff. Instead he is back where he started. Alone except for his brother and his car. His entire family and all of his friends unmentioned and barely acknowledged. I get it. COVID. But you couldn't have a montage of him doing things? Talking to vague outlines of people like Sam's wife that are implied to be his friends and family? And as I said previously, I wasn't a Destiel fan. I have only watched the show for the last year and I didn't ship them. But to go there and barely address it (and to have Dean basically shrug at the beginning of the episode). That was terrible. And it does ultimately make Castiel's story deeply unsatisfying to me. And it does make me as angry as when they killed Charlie and threw her in a bathtub. I won't go into a long rant about it, because I am just exhausted by the whole thing. But I am tired of dead gay characters. I am tired of women being killed to make the men feel something like they are props (Eileen). I am tired of stories that say the best deeply traumatized people can hope for is a good death. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me over the last year. As unsatisfied as I am with the ending, I enjoyed the ride. This show was there for me in the middle of the night with my baby. It made me laugh and cry. I ended up really loving these characters and all the amazing passionate fans. Thanks for welcoming me with open arms so late in the game.

Hey, there were some extras who were women. 😆

So, wait. Do we think Jack brought back everyone Chuck killed or just the final snapees? Like, did the world of OtherDean and ManbunSam get restored? What about Becky and her family? SOMEONE PLEASE TELL BECKY ABOUT DESTIEL. 🤣

Yep. We don't even need to hear it from her! They would have worked it in but they needed 2,000 establishing shots of empty places and random extras, 5,000 repetitions of the same line by Chuck and Mark Pellegrino.

Agreed. She was trapped by her brother for centuries, finally saw some good in the world and then was convinced by her shitty brother that everything was trash (with no perspective) and trapped again.

The scene was just SO weird. They couldn’t throw in a line that their people were back? I assume they want to save it for next week, but it sorta made it look like they weren't at all worried about any of their friends. Between that and actively ignoring Cas's death in the scene with Jack, the entire end of the episode was off. Also, there for a minute in a moment of boredom and hysteria, I wondered what would happen to the internet if they just kept making ships canon by having the guys kiss. Like, no thanks, but a tiny part if me just wants to watch the internet burn itself down. 😆 I am growing increasingly convinced Castiel comes back next week because they failed to address it and foreclose the possibility in this episode. Then again, we are sort of always stuck with the same question: intentional or bad writitng?

I honestly like the take and think the bones of a satisfying story are in there. I just think the execution was terrible. You have to sort of dig for that story and tilt your head.

So boring. And so so choppy. Like someone took the outline and smushed it together. Agreed. Hell, Cas barely got a few sad lines. I was sitting there thinking his sorta kid is now God and can't bother to bring him back? That is the worst part. I am used to being mad or irritated by poor writing, but this was boring.

Cas made a deal with the empty. Jack woke Castiel whose consciousness woke The Empty. He then made a deal with The Empty.

Agreed. His deepest truth is: I love you. Also, I know there is a lot of talk about his lack of reaction but I want to give JA some credit. He looked absolutely destroyed on the floor. I personally think he was supposed to be shocked and also terrified of losing Cas. Look, I agree with a lot of the people here about the lack of foundation in the story. It's why I was never a Destiel shipper. I don't see the same lines of a love story as, say, Queliot (don't get me started). But he looks Dean in the eye and unequivocally says: I love you. He makes it clear that he thought he couldn't have that love and this is him saying it. I also just feel obligated to point out that sexuality is not the same as who you have had sexual relationships with or shown externally apparent interest in. Honestly, Cas has barely shown interest in anyone and doesn't really have any real relationships beyond the guys. Showing interest in women doesn't preclude him from being interested in a man, and he already lacks gender in the human sense. Though I understand that the intent above was probably more to say the writers failed to establish that he might have a romantic interest in a man, and therefore the foundation was not there, I just wanted to point that out.

The point is that he has an intimate, close relationship without sex already. Dean calls him family. What he wants is something more. I don't actually think that has to be sexual, but I don't think it necessarily isn't either. However, I think it has to be romantic. Something beyond brother/family. By virtue of the words themselves. Sorry, I don't see this as ambiguous. Now, was it earned? Was it well done? Should it have happened. Those are all firmly matters of opinion. But I do think it is a romantic declaration. With some desired intimacy beyond what the currently have. Otherwise, not having what he truly wants makes no sense.

He starts the speech talking about wanting what he can't have. I don't see how you can read that as anything other than romantic. He says: "I never found an answer because the one thing I want is something I know I can’t have." Dean has expressed love for Castiel in a non-romantic way multiple times. He's family or his brother. I don't see how you can interpret the speech as wanting platonic love.

I am not even a Destiel shipper but they sold the fuck out of that scene and I can barely breathe. Phew. I don't know if they bring him back. I actually hope they do. Something is happening in The Empty after all. I hope so, because it really sucks for the shippers to wait this long only to have him immediately killed. But the scene was powerful. And my heart is suddenly broken. I have to assume they will bring back the 100 characters who got smoked, so I can't get too worked up about them. I didn't love what they did with Billie. She became a bit mustache twirly. But I can live with it because I didn't want to devote the screentime to establish it better.