Liberi Lupi

Maddex: The Thing About Metatron Stealing Cas's Grace

earlwyn:

earlwyn:

… so clearly sleep is for losers. I want to do a more proper write up about this. But given that I am (a) still awake and (b) just pitched this theory at my friend, here’s the cliff notes version until I can get around to doing something more in-depth:

Metatron steals Cas’s…

I didn’t mean that there won’t be any future struggles. But when it comes to the question of, “Will Cas choose Heaven or the Winchesters? Which one will he give up?”, I see this as being a very good set-up for exploring and finally resolving that question. Too much emphasis this season has been put on Dean’s growing awareness and need for Cas to stay in his life. There’s been an expectation set up in the drama for this question to be answered—and that’s not subtext; that’s full-on text. 

Will Cas stay with the Winchesters? Can Cas stay with the Winchesters?

In order to tell a successful story, or that—to end a successful story—they need to resolve that question. 

If the show ends with Season Ten, they can’t leave loose ends. They can’t leave the world in peril; they can’t leave Dean and Sam in the middle of an argument that threatens to tear apart their bond. Likewise, at this point they can’t leave Cas caught in the middle between the Winchesters vs Heaven. 

It’s not about, AND THEN THEY WILL ALL LIVE IN DOMESTIC BLISS. It’s about resolving the issues raised in the narrative. Maybe another world-threatening big bad will come up again in Season Eleven—but if we never get Season Eleven, we’ll never see that. 

I actually am pretty confused how you think monster-of-the-week hunting is not still a painful resolution. Dean and Sam and Cas have all been through RIDIUCLOUS amounts of trauma. Dean and Sam have lost everyone they’ve ever loved—their parents, Bobby, friends who help them, each other. They’ve been tortured; they’ve died. Cas has slaughtered hundreds or thousands of beings, angel and human alike. He’s been tortured. He’s had his agency stripped from him and his grace stripped from him—twice now. 

Just look at Kevin. Kevin who’s pouring himself a glass of whiskey and hanging out friendless in the batcave. That’s the thing with Supernatural; that’s one of the messages it keeps repeating: you can’t go back. You go through this shit and it changes you and you can never escape that. You can never undo that. Kevin will never be a mathlete again. 

That’s not uncomplicated happiness. Trauma recovery takes years, and even if you learn to live with it, you never erase those traumatic experiences. You still struggle to survive and to cope. There is a limit to how much one person can endure—as we’ve seen with Dean and Sam and Cas, repeatedly. They’re all suicidal bastards to some degree. They all struggle with how to live with what they’ve been through. They can’t have a perfect happy ending—but there can be (and should be) an ending that resolves most of the dramatic tension raised by the story.

Nod. Okay. This is more fun. Thanks for the clarification. My response was more directed to the people that might read your post and think that it meant a set up for uncomplicated happiness more than you (obviously not entirely knowing your intentions either). But yeah, cool.

May your hiatus not permanently scar your psyche!