Supernatural Series Finale Disappointed and Outraged Many

The hit tv show, Supernatural, aired its series finale on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020, after a grand total of 15 seasons and 327 episodes, making it one of the longest running live action fantasy tv shows in America. It premiered on Sept. 13, 2005, and gained many loyal followers over the years, however, some of those loyal fans and many others, are outraged.

In the beginning Supernatural followed two brothers-Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles- as they hunted monsters and saved people while trying to find their father who had disappeared. Over time it developed into something more. More characters arrived, more fan favorites were introduced and the overall message was clear; Family Don’t End In Blood. Sam and Dean welcomed people into their family as many fans welcomed them in their hearts.

“Supernatural is a show that I have loved to watch whenever I needed a good laugh or a quick pick me up,” senior Samantha Norton said.

In season four, episode one, Lazarus Rising is where we are introduced into a character who would become one of the most beloved characters ever on the show. Castiel, an angel of the lord more commonly known as Cas, made his spectacular appearance. He was originally only supposed to be a guest star, but ratings skyrocketed and fans loved him so much, he was kept on as a series regular for the rest of the show.

This is partly what makes fans so heartbroken. In season 15, episode 18, Despair(originally titled Truth), two episodes from the finale, Cas confesses his love for Dean, and sacrifices himself to save him. The episode ends with Dean crying on the floor and ignoring his brother’s calls. This is where fans start to disagree(and I use that word lightly)

This romance is not new for the tv show. It did not come out of the blue. This romance has been building for 11 years. Many fans have shipped ‘Destiel’-Dean and Cas’ ship name- for years. The show has even addressed it multiple times, with other angels and demons calling Cas Dean’s boyfriend, and referring to Cas as ‘the one in the dirty trench-coat who’s in love with you’. Misha Collins, who plays Cas, ships Destiel and has talked about it multiple times. He even called Cas’ confession a ‘homosexual declaration of love’.

“Dean and Cas were the first characters I ever shipped and I had nothing to do with LGBT at that time. It was just something I had nothing against but also wasn’t really on my radar. That changed with Destiel,” said Instagram user @m_wie_merkuerdig. “It seemed so obvious to me that there was more between Dean and Cas and that thing in my opinion is not brotherly love. It made me realize on one hand that LGBT love is something quite normal and beautiful and I myself got braver, realizing that I myself am not straight and being able to accept it and actually embrace it.” 

The confession meant a lot more to fans than just ‘oh these two people I think would make a good couple actually like each other’. For LGBTQ+ fans, it was finally representation with a character they held so dear to their hearts, and that’s why what followed, hurt them very much,

Fans take issue with this because in Cas’ final scene, he immediately dies after he confesses. After that he is mentioned twice in the finale and then completely forgotten. Cas plays into the ‘bury your gays trope’, which means that gay characters are killed off more than straight characters and that LGBTQ+ characters always have to meet a miserable end. Some fans tried to excuse this by saying that COVID derailed their plans. 

However, in an TV line article, Andrew Dabb-a writer for Supernatural- said, “In some cases, we had to simplify the [pathways] to get there. For example, for the finale, we had a big, super extravagant thing planned for that episode, and it wasn’t feasible. But we found an alternative to get to the same place, plot-wise and, more importantly, emotionally, that worked great. So it’s about being adaptable. We had to do some rewriting, but nothing that changed fundamentally what the show is or where it was going.”

People who were very hurt by the blatant disrespect shown to Cas and Misha and the LGBTQ+ community argued that if 30 people could stand a bridge close to one another unmasked(the final scene) that they could’ve brought Misha in. Even just a simple ‘Hello Dean’ would have sufficed. They didn’t even have to show him onscreen. 

Fans also were hurt by the fact that Dean never answered Cas. Dean had been through a lot through the past 15 seasons of Supernatural. Many of the fans agreed that Dean was too emotionally distraught when Cas was giving his speech that he couldn’t psychically answer him. While that may be true, the fans also agree that this in no way excuses the fact that Cas is never brought up again. If you watched the show you would see how close Cas, Dean, and Sam were. They meant a lot to each other. Every time Cas has died they actively grieve for him, especially Dean, which has led to multiple heartfelt scenes.

LGBTQ+ fans were really hurt by the way Cas was treated, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. There have been other LGBTQ+ characters on Supernatural. Charlie Bradbury, played by Felicia Day, was a lesbian hacker turned hunter, first introduced in season 7, epsiode 20. She appears off and on as the series progresses and eventually turns into a very beloved sister figure for Sam and Dean. Many fans loved her as well. In season 10, episode 21, Charlie is gutted and left in a bathtub for the Winchesters to find.

Supernatural fans are no stranger to beloved characters dying, as many do throughout the series, including the Winchesters and Cas, but Charlie struck a chord with them. Fans feel that Charlie was killed off for no other reason than to progress Dean’s storyline. They also disagreed with a decision made by Charlie, which ultimately led to her death. They felt it was out of character for her.

Fans were also greatly upset about learning about a deleted scene with another character, a witch named Rowena, played by Ruth Connell. In the scene, Sam is in a truck with an alternate universe Charlie, one who grew up in what is called ‘Apocalypse World’. The deleted scene implies that Rowena and Charlie had relations once before. Although it was included in the deleted scenes montage, many fans did not seem to know about it.

The way Supernatural treated its queer characters may be a part of why fans are so devastated but it is not the whole picture. Fans have expressed just how disappointed with the finale they are. 

On IMDB, the Supernatural series finale, ‘Carry On’, was rated a 6.6, lower than another Supernatural episode called, ‘Bugs’, which from the title alone, you can imagine what took place in those 45 minutes. A lot of the reviews are mostly 1 star, multiple people saying if they could rate it negative stars, they would’ve.

When the final episode ended, many fans were feeling very emotional, for many reasons. Fans were shocked, confused, hurt, angry, feeling betrayed that their favorite tv show could do that to them. The episode started with Dean and Sam in the bunker(an underground bunker where they live), living a normal life. Sam goes for jogs, and they make breakfast, ordinary things. This is where fans got confused and it wasn’t even five minutes into the episode yet. 

The Winchester brothers have been through a lot the past 15 seasons. They’ve walked through hell, sacrificed themselves for one another, watched friends die, and endured a lot of mental and physical trauma. In the previous episode, Jack, the son of Lucifer, helped them defeat God, and in doing that became a sort of God, himself. Jack, played by Alexander Calvert, was first introduced in the last episode of season 12, and became a series regular for the rest of the show.

Over the course of the seasons, Jack became like a son to the WInchesters and Cas, and the fans did not see them actively grieve for him or Cas throughout the entire episode which was extremely out of place. Also, in the previous episode, everyone in the entire universe, except for Jack, Sam, and Dean disappeared, including all of their friends and Sam’s love interest, Eileen. 

When Jack gains the power of God, he brings them all back, and the audience assumes that all of the Winchester’s friends are included in this as well, but they never mention any of them ever again so it is left up to speculation. Some fans who liked the finale tried to defend that COVID got in the way and didn’t allow to bring everyone back, and while that may be true, Sam and Dean did not even mention any of them, which was, again, extremely out of character for them. Throughout the entirety of the series, the show had a motto: Family Don’t End In Blood. Found family was an extremely important part of the show, since the Winchester’s mother had died when they were young and then their father most likely emotionally and psychically abused them, or at least Dean, and then died pretty early in the show.

Supernatural threw all of that out the window in the finale. As the episode progresses we see them work a case, just like old times, pretending nothing ever happened. When Dean and Sam are at a pie fest, Sam mentions Cas and Jack and Dean basically brushes it off. This is the same Dean that blamed himself for everyone they ever lost and prayed for Cas to come back every time he died and kept Cas’ trenchcoat in the trunk of his car once when Cas had died.

They continue the case and find a nest of vampires in a barn. They are cornered and Jenny, a character from season one, appears and they fight. Dean is fighting a vampire and then is pushed backwards onto a rusty nail sticking out of the wall. Sam kills the last vampire and Dean tells him what happened. This leads to a very emotional scene between the two, and invoked a lot of tears from fans. This is also where fans take a lot of issues for many different reasons. 

Ever since we were first introduced into Dean’s character in season one, we knew that Dean has been through a lot of things in his life. His mother died when Dean was four and Sam was six months. They never had a permanent home-John, their father, made them live in motels and would leave Dean and Sam alone for days without any money for food. Dean had to always take care for Sam and never got the chance to be a child. Sam even says to him at one point, “Because you’re following dad’s orders like a good little soldier?” 

Dean’s struggled with mental health problems all throughout the show and is even openly suicidal a few times, and always said that if he had to die, he’d do it with a gun in his hand. That’d he’d go out fighting. Dean’s character has developed since then and in the finale he adopts a dog and you can even spot a job application on his desk. This shows that he wants a normal life, that he never thought he’d had a choice but now he does. During Dean’s death scene, it implies that he was scared, that he didn’t want to die. 

What the writers show their fans and people struggling with mental illness is that there is only peace within death and you can only be truly happy then. “I always felt like Dean and I are so incredibly similar that it actually hurts me to see how he was treated,” said Instagram user @m_wie_merkuerdig.  “It is really hard to explain and it may sound weird but since there are so many similarities between my life and Dean’s including the relationship with our siblings seeing that ending for him really scared me. It’s like I was shown my future and I really didn’t like it. “

After the death scene we are shown Sam mourning in the bunker and then a montage of him living his life without his brother. He goes on, gets married, has a son, and dies a supposed old death, but the math some of the fans do only make him around 60 at the time of his death. Fans also took issue with the fact that they have no idea who his wife is. All the audience gets is a blurred picture of her in the background. Fans understood COVID limited the amount of people they could get back but there was no sign that it was Eileen he had married. Since Eileen is deaf, fans suggested a quick scene of Sam signing something to his son.

In Heaven, Dean meets Bobby-a father figure to Sam and Dean- and Bobby mentions how Jack and Cas fixed heaven so that it’s not just reliving your happiest memory, but ‘what it always shoulda’ been’. At the mention of Cas, Dean just slightly nods before brushing it off again, which is once, again, extremely out of character for him. Bobby goes on to mention that his mother and father live not too far away, and the fans took issue with why Dean’s abusive father gets a place in Heaven near him. As Dean drives in the impala-his car- on the highway, the montage of Sam’s life is shown and then they meet in Heaven and that’s the end. 

Fans were shocked that the show they watched for 15 years could end in such a horrible and disappointing way. They felt that everything that happened between season 1 and season 15, along with all the character development, was thrown out the window.

“It’s like they took all the progress the show made and the things we learned, threw them out and copy and pasted the content from season one into it. I never expected a happy ever after but this ending just feels like a slap in the face to me and I imagine to a lot of other fans who followed this show for years.” said Instagram user @m_wie_merkuerdig.

There was also a whole Twitter movement, using the hashtag #TheySilencedThem and #TheySilencedYou, where they expressed their anger and hurt at the finale and how they silenced all the queer characters. 

Another reason fans took issue with Dean’s death is that many fans headcanon him to be bisexual. There are multiple times Dean gets hit on by a man and gets flustered, or shows his attraction to male characters. For example, in season five, episode eight, Changing Channels, Dean and Sam get transferred into generic tv shows and it is blatantly obvious that Dean has a crush on one of the doctors in the first show they visit.

Ever since Cas has been introduced into the tv show, fans have seen that there is something more between him and Dean. Cas even says very early in the show that ‘Dean and I do share a more profound bond’. This is more than a show to people. These characters are more than just characters to people. Supernatural gives people they can relate to and can sympathize with and can love. It has even brought people closer together with their families.

“Supernatural is something that my mom got me into so it’s kinda like our show that we share interest in,” senior Juliauna Ratliff-Krofta said.

Fans were still reeling from the emotions the finale brought when the Spanish dubbed of the Supernatural finale aired, bringing one extra little line with it. “Y yo a ti Cas.” I love you too, Cas.

Twitter exploded and fans freaked out all over again. Fans also pointed out the fact that Cas said, “Te amo.” which translates to ‘I love you’, but romantically. If Cas meant it platonically he would have said, “Te quiero.”

Misha Collins took to Twitter to explain what had happened. “There was no conspiracy within the network, staff, or cast of #SPN to minimize or erase representation from the narrative & there was o alternate ending to 15.18.” He wrote. “Dean was always too stunned in the moment to reply. (Apparently a rogue translator penned their own dialogue.) Also, in my opinion Cas doesn’t play into the “bury your gays” trope. His declaration of love saves Dean, enabling Sam & Dean to save all of humanity. And Cas doesn’t die! He actually goes on to rebuild heaven!”

Fans said that they respected Misha’s opinion but still disagreed with him. LGBTQ+ fans still felt incredibly invalidated and said that it doesn’t excuse how he was barely mentioned in the last two episodes. Some fans also thought that the CW had Misha do damage control because they knew fans would listen to him.

In a PopSugar article written by Mekishana Pierre, she explains why she doubts the fact that it was a rogue translator. “It seems unlikely that Dean’s response to Cas reciprocating his declaration came from a “rogue translator,” especially considering the hoops I assume productions have to go through for dubbing,” She wrote. “The idea that someone just decided to throw in that wayward line without anyone pointing out that it was wrong is very hard to believe. It feels more likely that the line was included in the original script and was changed during editing or reshoots (“Despair” was the last episode shot before production shut down in March due to COVID).”

Fans were deeply hurt by the Supernatural series finale for many reasons. While some fans thought the series finale was a perfect ending, many did not and will continue to fight for representation and hold the CW accountable.