So, Spn went hard Wincest endgame, probably as hard as possible without making GA cringe. But Destiel will always be my OTP.
Here’s the romantic features in 15x20:
- Dean is fridged with no other apparent plot reason than to get the romance between himself and his brother kicked off with hurt and comfort.
- Dean expresses his love to Sam and dies making it canon that his whole life he can only commit to loving his little brother.
- Right before dying Dean asks for Sam to comfort him, and Sam leans in for forehead touches. Dean did not give Castiel any comforting words or physical touch during Castiel’s declaration. On the other hand, Sam gives Dean both words and physical touch for comfort.
- Dean gets to Heaven and hears Castiel is alive, but other than a smile seems fairly indifferent about it.
- Heaven’s rules about only sharing with your soulmate have been retconned. This allows Spn to avoid explicitly stating to GA that Sam and Dean are eachother’s soulmates.
- Then Dean leaves every other soul in Heaven to drive around and remain solitary for 40 years until his little brother can meet him there. That reads very soulmate and romantic.
- There is no canon evidence that Dean has made any attempt to pray to Castiel although it’s been established he’s alive.
- Meanwhile, Sam names his son Dean and dotes on him, but his wife is barely acknowledged. Like the wife was just there to produce a kid, and that was it.
- When Sam dies, his son Dean tells him it’s okay for him to go. This lets Sam be comforted by a Dean, even though his brother isn’t there. (note: the token wife is nowhere near Sam’s deathbed so it’s just his son Dean comforting him in the end)
- The two brothers finally find eachother in Heaven and embrace.
I didn’t know an incest romance story could be shown on primetime network tv, but mofo supernatural pulled it off.
And yes I think it’s so fucked up. Of all the bizarre shit in 2020, Wincest endgame is making me question my reality.
Please someone prove me wrong, but that was the most romantic episode I’ve ever seen in Spn. Starting from Sam walking around topless while the brothers are making their beds. Like topless guy walking around being domestic, pretty common in rom coms. Then Sam smooshing pie on Dean’s face.
Disclaimer: I really like J2, and if they weren’t playing brothers in-universe I would totally ship them. But ugh wtf is an incest romance doing in the series finale?
Like what the actual fuck did I witness?!?!
I find this kind of interesting because I’ve been a fan of the show since the night it aired, and recently watched the fandom hype itself up toward the end and get stoked about destiel going ‘canon’ and all I could think to myself was…
It was always going to end with the brothers. It’s the only way it could end. Always. Since day 1.
As someone who used to ship destiel but doesn’t anymore, once I took off those shipping goggles around s8, I stopped having any belief it would ever go canon (and stopped having any desire for it to but that’s a side thing). Taking those off, it became incredibly apparently the narrative wasn’t telling that story, and had zero interest in telling that story. I felt it undeniable that Cas must love Dean, but knew we’d never see them together, because they were simply not being written as a romance.
(Which is also why the confession in 18 was cathartic and beautiful to me, but perfect in that it was not requited).
Meanwhile, Jensen Ackles told us months ago that 19 was the season finale, whereas 20 was the ‘series’ finale. We knew the seasonal arc was going to wrap up in 19, we knew it was over. And I saw shippers still saying it wasn’t over. I watched people wait with baited breath for something to change in 20.
And then I saw these people claim they were betrayed by 20 despite getting everything we were told to expect (old school episode, focused on the brothers, one more case, series finale, etc). And I just… don’t get how. How are so many people saying they were betrayed when we were told what to expect, and we’ve had 15 years of development to know exactly how this story would end?
From the pilot through to finale, the story has centred around and anchored itself through the relationship between Sam and Dean. It’s never been overtly romantic or sexual, and most people (your GA / general audience) won’t read it as incestuous. And it doesn’t have to be! The point is their brotherly bond, which is itself beautiful (and destructive and overwhelming) without sex or romance. It’s not about those things and has never needed to be, textually. Instead, it’s always been played as this deep, crazy, consuming love between them (”family, love, whatever”) with their brotherhood at the heart of it.
Despite that, the show has had intermittent incest subtext from damn near the beginning. It’s something I’ve always been surprised by (especially that they get away with it), and I’ve been shocked at how they played on that deliberately and pulled it into view, if you were willing to acknowledge it and pick apart the episodes from a narrative lens.
The show joked about it within the story (people calling them a couple, them posing as one), made meta-jokes about it (people in-universe writing incest fic about them), highlighted time and again that they couldn’t fit romantic partners in their lives so long as they had each other (Lisa, Amelia), had nods to them being an old married couple and made implicit comparisons to an actual gay married couple of hunters (the Chitters), and more.
Regardless of sex or romance, the brothers have been canonically been called “psychotically, irrationally, erotically co-dependent” by a character who’s entire job it was to get them to simply play the roles fate set out for them. They were textually implied to be soulmates. There is an in-universe fan convention for Chuck’s books based on them and people who cosplay them turn out to be a gay couple. One of the show’s writers and producers has called the series the “epic love story of Sam and Dean.”
Whether or not someone ships it, Sam-and-Dean as a single unit has been layered into each season of the show. That was never going to change, certainly not in the final episode.
So while I agree with you – the show went all-in on the ‘wincest’ endgame, and for all that it wasn’t sexual or romantic overtly, it’s still in some ways shocking, especially considering it’s written for a general audience – the part that’s bemusing to me is this: if you’re able to see clearly how the finale was written that way, how could it not be clear that the literal entire show for the last 15 years has also been written that way?
I don’t mean that as a specific jab to you, OP. You seem like a lovely person, and I don’t know how to word my question better or I would. I just mean, at all shippers who are angry about the finale focusing on the brothers in this way, or angry about this subtext, or frustrated at the lack of destiel – I genuinely don’t understand how the past 15 years hadn’t prepared you for this ending.
Agree with so much of this; the ending focusing so narrowly on the brothers and their relationship was predictable to anyone paying attention to the totality of the show’s narratives, subtext, and fanservice - and not just laser focusing in on the stuff they saw for their own ship.
At the end of the day, the real love story of the show was always about family and brotherhood. That was in the text. That was in the interviews of the various show runners and J2. I feel like a lot of the problem comes down to our society having an unfortunate focus on romance as the end all be all superior form of affectionate relationships. Some fans just don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around that not being validated once again the way it usually is in most narrative stories. So when Dean/Cas and Eileen/Sam wasn’t the focus of the endgame, but Dean & Sam as it had been all along? It feels like some Dean/Cas shippers were still so focused on there having to be romance in there somewhere that all they could see was the Dean/Sam subtext (and a lot of bewildered and some very angry posting about wincest began). Even though that subtext had been there all along to anyone looking, and it was not really the ultimate intended point either.
I would add something but this has honestly been some sobering reading of fans being civil and not stupid (like I usually am, I’m working on it). I agree with everything that’s been said, as a non shipper I was very happy to see the ending be platonic soulmates. I’m tired of romance being shoehorned into everything, as someone who rarely has it in my life, it’s good to see heroes still being valid heroes and their most meaningful relationship not being about getting a romantic partner - that’s why I love this show so very much - and why it’s sort of unique.
I would like to add my observation of GA. If people would just get off tumblr and Twitter, they’d realize that the actual GA don’t give 2 shits about ships, whether it’s wincest or destiel or any other ships. Just check out the /supernatural subreddit. Most of the GA are actually what you call “bibros”. They know the show is about the brothers, and they want it to end with the brothers and their PLATONIC BROTHER relationship. The GA don’t see incest in the Winchesters and the finale. Both GA and wincest shippers can agree on a bibro ending. If you have to declare it a wincest ending and spread this interpretation all over the internet, you might be more of a wincest shipper than actual wincest shippers would be.
@avariter and @eisforeidolon that’s something I’ve been trying to put into words! I’ll try now but I’m not sure how much sense it’ll make. I’m bibro (Dean-leaning), platonic soulmates (but I also don’t care if ppl ship it romantically or not), multishipper. If you looked at it generally then it’s just two brothers while one dies (ofc a sibling would want to be comforted, ofc the older one would call the younger one baby brother, ofc it’s normal to name your kid after others (look at Garth’s kids, Sam and Dean being named after grandparents, etc.), ofc if you’re dying you would say “I love you”). And it’s the same way/inverse? that some tried to interpret Cas’ confession (saying ‘he also cared for others’ right before saying he ‘loved’ Dean, but not saying he was ‘in love with’ Dean). And so some saw Cas’ love as a genuine, divine love that was asked of him to have for humans, some saw it as a familial/brotherly love since they’ve been best friends for a while, and some saw it romantically all because of the ‘love vs. in love.’ And now that Dean has said he ‘loves’ Sam, some take it brotherly and some take it romantically and it’s both d*stiel and winc*st shippers doing this.
And what you’ve touched on is what I’ve noticed. A lot of d*stiel shippers (the most extreme/loud at least) are calling it inc*stuous etc. And while a lot of winc*st shippers do love that specific scene (I feel like most everyone regardless of ship had at least one problem with the finale), some wanted it to be more (Sam saying he loves him as well, etc.). I’ve noticed the same thing you mentioned on Facebook — GA who watched it liked the ending or, at least, that scene and thought nothing much of it. D*stiel shippers explicitly disliked it. (I didn’t see any winc*st shippers speak on it on FB.)
I’ve seen non-winc*st shippers explain Sam’s nameless wife as the same GA/no romance thing. While there is sometimes romance in the show, it’s not a focus as much as family, so she wasn’t focused on (romance) but the son was (family, and family business as someone mention he had an anti-possession tattoo that I hadn’t noticed).
If it makes some feel better, the original plans were that apparently more of the cast was set to come back (I’ve heard at least M*sha and R*chel), so we might have seen an actual Empty scene.
[My headcanon:] I think that originally after the bridge, that Sam and Dean would both get into the car and drive around visiting everyone for a little bit. But COVID, so you know. And that the bridge scene with most of the cast thanking the fans would have been in the recap/bts episode before the actual finale.
The last thing I want to add is one thing that @phynali said, e19 was supposed to be the season finale with e20 the show finale. There was a montage in e19 that showed everyone (imo it could have been used in e20 instead of the cast on the bridge), so it would have been weird to have another one in e20 as well. Storywise, e20 makes sense if you look at the pilot (I would have liked some things changed or made more explicit as well though).
(Source: gumbelievable)
Hello, Tumblr! It is I, Jo, bringing you once more a meta-analysis of one of the aspects of the Hell that is Supernatural and its fandom and particularly the Circle of Hell that is shipping one of its minor ships. Especially one that has so much canon fodder (see what I did there?) as Megstiel does. I have seen so many extensive (like… you would not believe how many of them, holy shit, they’re everywhere) meta-analysis, essays, theories, hastily put together thoughts, you name it, that people write stating why their ship is/should be/will be canon.
And if someone dares say “Well… I just don’t see it”, they’re likely going to be bombarded by a mountain of evidence of why they’re wrong. Admittedly, some of this evidence is well-thought out and compelling and some is… not… that. But I’m not writing this to argue against that mountain of evidence because I understand those analysis come from a place of love for those characters (and because I would be here all day). I’m doing it because whenever someone brings up Megstiel in these things, it’s usually to belittle it, disregard it or flat out deny its existence. And I, as a Megstiel shipper, have a thing or two to say about that.
Now, let’s make something entirely clear: I’m not here to convince you to stop shipping your ship and start shipping mine. I’m not here to attack you personally. You’re not a horrible person for wanting something different to be canon than I do. I don’t mean to start a shipping war. Full disclaimer, I am a snarky person and sometimes this topic fills me with rage, which is why this essay will be peer-reviewed. Meaning, I will have other Megstiel shippers who are a tad nicer or more jaded than me read it and give me notes before I post it to tone down my salt in the interest of keeping things civil.
And because if I’m excessively mean, Senpai won’t hang out with me.If you have another argument besides the ones I bring up here or if you’re not convinced by my counterarguments, tell me. I will be happy to have a conversation. Unless that conversation starts with you stating I murdered your puppy and destroyed your crops, in which case, I’m not interested in getting to know you and your mom is probably disappointed in you. If you still feel compelled to send me insults because I like a different ship, it will result in you being a) blocked, b) referred to the present essay or c) mocked. Depends on what mood you catch me in.
Okay, so now that we’ve established that, let me tell you why your arguments against Megstiel don’t convince me.
: 13 Reasons Why, MCU
: MCU fanfiction