There’s a sense of conspiracy going around that the back end of the season was changed dramatically from planned - there are a couple of theories on how it should have looked if it stuck with the original promises of the season, and assuming the change happened somewhere after mid-season. I’m inclined to think it was more to do with plot accordions than malicious intent but it was pretty poorly handled given how thematically interesting the start of the season was.

Being somewhat prone to idly re-imagining entire seasons anyway, I figured why not have a crack at it myself, and attempt a reasonably neutral look at what could have/should have happened based off canon.

(Massive kudos to iwatchthepie for reading it over and over and helping my poor addled brain along)

Season 10 mk II:

I’m working on the assumption here that they knew season 11 was happening but got teased for season 12 and THAT is the cause of the plot accordion. The season ran true to some vague plan that would have utilised these plot elements (while they were never set in stone, the change of direction was enough not all the foreshadowing or thematic build up works now). 10x14 is the last plot episode that conceivably fits the old mould; the MotW before and after it show some possible Darkness foreshadowing - then from 10x17 onwards the episodes show signs of end of season meddling, but these episodes were already planned and under way; until 10x21 tanks the trajectory completely (With Angel Heart as a sort of free space on the bingo card of the narrative).



Here’s some assumptions about what we got.

Victims of the plot accordion:

Death



Rudy



Charlie



Saved by the plot accordion:

Cole



Crowley (for any reason, but especially in conjunction with…)



Cas (for the Colette parallel?)



Rowena possibly



Metatron perhaps though I’ve always liked him as the end game villain of Carver Era

Added plotlines:

The Stynes

The rough transcription of Robbie’s keynote speech from DePaul conference is ambiguous on what was there before:

“A: I was writing 18 and 20, and was told that I needed to change 18 to Steyn because they were going to be the Frankenstein family and they killed Charlie.”

This tweet as well suggests that the “Jacob” character was created by Robbie for the episode but he got a note to change the name while he was still working: all signs point to them plotting like…

The Darkness (from 10x10 onwards? This post has some quotes with potential/probable foreshadowing.) If the 10x10 mention refers to the Darkness and not some vague idea of what was to come (along with 10x11 having the first mention of the BotD - which on the other hand appeared IN CANON with something we were shown on screen, to be a very different book but also apparently a real one: despite Robbie taking both episodes either there was a miscommunication with the set guys about what he wanted it to be like and he always envisioned something more doomy and they were tripped up by the real book existing, or it was an easter egg for meta peeps, or Robbie genuinely didn’t know yet and this seemed like the best idea at the time) then they were laying threads since possibly mid-season. On the other hand they could have just been threads laid to be followed but maybe not written with a full idea of what they meant until after the next break, when the story structure seems to have actively changed direction.



Dropped plotlines:

Dean’s demon eyes in 10x17

Perhaps some idea OVERTLY connected to “The river ends at the source.” (so the episode that starts one later-dropped plotline drops another on the side… lol lol this is a mess :P)

Whatever Cas was meant to do from 10x21 onwards that wasn’t that

(Some wank has followed about the First Blade dropping off the grid. It’s possible that it was meant to play a greater role, and Cas would of course have been an agent of this story, and this might have been his lead back into the main plot. There’s also some speculation it wasn’t all for nothing, for what it’s worth.)

(Some wank has followed about the First Blade dropping off the grid. It’s possible that it was meant to play a greater role, and Cas would of course have been an agent of this story, and this might have been his lead back into the main plot. There’s also some speculation it wasn’t all for nothing, for what it’s worth.) Whatever Crowley was meant to do after 10x17 that wasn’t that - possible Hell coup storyline?? At the very most that plot thread is deferred, but for the sake of season 10′s narrative and this discussion therefore, there’s no active lead away from it into 11, and therefore it looks dropped for now, and will be considered picked up rather than continued if it’s in season 11.

rather than continued if it’s in season 11. Rowena vs the Bunker - the emphasis in her interrogation of Olivette was HUGELY weighted towards her finding out about the Bunker and the Men of Letters and its Legacies guarding it, and her encounter with Dean in 10x17 seemed at first to be about this, but in hindsight was just more Crowley character development instead, and a thread to turn her onto curing the Mark - which initially she only wanted to do to kill Dean to… get in the Bunker. Uh.

Crowley character development instead, and a thread to turn her onto curing the Mark - which she only wanted to do to kill Dean to… get in the Bunker. Uh. Wherever they were semi-openly going with the John Winchester subtext (see above: Cole surviving via plot accordion - I’ll get to this too)

Let’s be honest, there were other ways for Cain’s List to go, and be more textually overt. The subtext of it ended up so vague except to those who were already excitedly structuring the season by it, it basically didn’t matter that it had been said at all (and for once I’d argue the Crowley thing first and foremost could have been clearer just to get everyone on the same page, as the lead-in to the next parallels - see above: Crowley’s dropped plotlines).

The title card was deeply suggestive of something that never happened.

Deferred plotlines:

Metatron & the demon tablet (I had some fun with this one) - this is NOT a dropped plotline as his exit stage right has an obvious hook that more is to come. The complaints about this I assume are that no one MENTIONED it again, but the communication issues at the end of the season were hilarious, so I can see how it wasn’t mentioned and now probably Dean will stay out of the loop until it’s a problem again.



it wasn’t mentioned and now probably Dean will stay out of the loop until it’s a problem again. Heaven and whatever Hannah’s up to (for good or bad though I guess it’s not a plot thread if it’s for good… on the other hand 10x20 left a different plot thread to follow with angel lore, and 10x17 was an exploration which left people talking about the possibility, since Metatron’s annoyed but pro-Hannah comments in 10x18 don’t necessarily gel with what we saw in Heaven the previous episode, suggesting there may be multiple sides to the Hannah as a fair ruler of Heaven idea.)

Possibly Rowena taking on Hell (she sat on Crowley’s throne that one time) but there’s no clear hook she’s still after it - she made a very generic power grab but DID leave Crowley to be killed) so I’m putting this in deferred instead of dropped mostly because of my ongoing infatuation with Rowena and therefore hope for her succeeding where Abbadon failed.

hook she’s still after it - she made a very generic power grab but DID leave Crowley to be killed) so I’m putting this in deferred instead of dropped mostly because of my ongoing infatuation with Rowena and therefore hope for her succeeding where Abbadon failed. The Grand Coven was talked up (especially pre-season PR about Rowena if I remember correctly), along with spending time on her introducing some better witch lore and 10x12 including the witch specifically mentioning Rowena vs the Grand Coven, but ultimately it wasn’t utilised for its own plotline, either MoL vs Witches or Rowena vs Witches; with Olivette still chillaxing in her hamster wheel, this doesn’t count as dropped provided any return to this thread focusses around witchy ire over this specific action, as they returned to Olivette multiple times rather than forget her.

Let’s have a look at season 10′s themes up to the branching off point.

The first 3 episodes dealt with fixing Dean and setting up some basic themes for the characters: basically spiralling identity crisis for Dean focussed on love in general; the seeds of Sam needing to save Dean at any cost; Cas’s spiralling identity crisis re: what he wants from humanity and heaven; Crowley with his OWN identity crisis focussed on family and his job.

All of these got explored right through the season to a point:

Cas’s arc ended abruptly with getting his grace back and the conclusion of the Claire arc (which tbh Angel Heart was narratively floating and could have come at any point in the season so I keep forgetting to mention it in my discussion of the narrative since we could just throw it in immediately after 10x10 and call it a day) and no reason was found to bring him back in except for as a prop/catalyst. The end of 10x22 at least had an attempt at giving a good emotional reason for him to be there from his end, his dilemma (I’m just assuming it was one) was woefully under-explored in the surrounding 2 episodes (and should have been the resolution of his arc for the season but didn’t pay off properly) and by this point though he seemed to have chosen to be with Dean, the potential for interesting exploration set up in 10x01 vanished and even 10x18′s challenges about what he wanted issued by Metatron seemed irrelevant to the question, especially as Cas was working on a surface level deal of somehow accepting he was an angel, Dean had the Mark and this was a potentially endless status quo and so picking Dean had nothing whatsoever to do with Cas’s identity crisis of the season.

Crowley did somewhat better, as his themes were easier to fold into the new plot. 10x17 spoke to me of leading to what the encounter with Sam in 10x22 forced forwards. I figured (pre-Stynes) he’d boot Rowena out and go back to business as usual but better, and be the reason of conflict at the end of the season, presumably with a similar pattern to what happened but for it to mean something more to both Crowley and the Winchesters. 10x22 suggests an event that was needed for their projected long term ideas of Crowley (e.g. go into season 11 with him back on the playing field as an unfriendly king instead of a malleable pawn) but they put off the moment and made Crowley a passive agent in his own arc, and the character development borked as a result. It seems they meant for him to be antagonistic again but he never actually was properly. His involvement in the finale seems vaguely in character to other times he’s helped (e.g. season 5 and 7) with his own self-interest (dicking Oscar over to spite Rowena was his motivation to actually start helping at all) but doesn’t follow a clear arc since he went from close family friend with his arc centred on Dean, to Sam forcing him to be evil, to that not reflecting on anything when his involvement at the end came down to Cas and Rowena interaction and nothing to do with the boys.

Sam n Dean’s arcs are laid out across the early part of the season.

10x04 provided a good blueprint with the werewolf sisters. Kate killed Tasha, nominally a Dean mirror killing a Sam mirror based on their direct backstory parallel to 9x01 complete with a visual flashback instead of just telling us so we could really see how similar it was to the Gadreel thing, but the layers in the episode made it very muddy which werewolf represented which brother.

If it was a Dean killing Sam mirror then this played through or at least stands as structurally sound foreshadowing (mirrors and parallels don’t have to be an exact representation of what is to come, merely introduce the themes.) However, Kate killed Tasha because she was out of control and it was regret for what she had caused; Tasha’s actions were paralleled to demon!Dean, just like Kate’s decision to save her was paralleled to Dean’s Gadreel decision. The death as narrative foreshadowing works just as well with Sam doing what he couldn’t in 10x03 and killing demon!Dean; on the other hand the exploration in 10x23′s dialogue of Sam’s actions as a “monster” and with Dean freely using the word “evil” about what they do approaches this parallel in hindsight, if we use the metaphor of Kate turning Tasha as Dean owning his part in twisting Sam from season 8 onwards into this “evil” mindset. Does that make Dean the “ethical” monster like Kate? All season until Cyrus Styne and Rudy he killed characters exclusively within a certain moral range, but at the end he slipped up, unlike her: she had a different moral position in the confrontation than Dean did with Sam, and ultimately he had a different moral position when he chose not to kill Sam.

There was also debate stemming from this episode about the validity of the cure, as in the episode Dean lied about there being a cure for werewolfism, while heavily relating to Tasha’s life based on what happened to him the week before. It was enough to prompt me to speculate that Dean was going to suffer a backslide into demonism, and up to 10x17 I still had a hope for it: at this point the black eyes in the mirror in that episode are now another dropped plotline, as nothing came of them, and no indication was given again that Dean was that close to being a demon again (part of why I suggested at the start of this that 10x17-18 scraped by with some of the original plot in them if something like the black eyes were included without comment - my only thought is that with 10x23 we saw Dean hallucinate into a mirror (again?) so it’s a point in favour of it being a product of his mind, but either way it was a threat of what was to come that was never delivered as they failed to explore this avenue narratively.)

I posit that a return, or the threat of it, to demon!Dean with clear indicators and discussion - an escalation of the black eyes in the mirror of 10x17 - would have been one of the motivators for the end of the season. If it started in 10x17 (pre-existence of the Stynes as we know they were invented for 10x18 with no forewarning to the writers) that leaves them 5 episodes of potential build up, and removes the criticism from the fandom from the last part of the season about Sam n Cas bandying back and forth “he’s getting worse”, where it would have had more meaning if the threat was laid out (10x09 showed Dean could have prophetic visions of slaughter and 10x17 suggested he was dreaming of killing Sam along with the black eyes, but we got almost no Dean headspace on this stuff in the end of the season). This was dropped in favour of an uncomplicated cure and an external motivator (I am SO SORRY CHARLIE) because going right back down this path would have added extra complication to their rushed ending (e.g. they needed it as clear as possible Dean was FINE TOTALLY NORMAL EVERYTHING IS OK when the Mark was off his arm, and further debate on how demonised his soul is/was is beyond the needs of the drama of the finale.)

If this was the case, the Kate n Tasha mirror would make Tasha’s parallels to demon!Dean not merely a reflection of what he had done, but also a threat of what was to come, so I’m confident about putting that on the dropped plotlines list.

10x05 began to show signs of a pattern that was maintained for several episodes starting with 10x04 - the boys were on the road and circling pointlessly looking for cases instead of returning home or resting; Dean was fixing up the car and setting his soul back in order. Fitting with that, for the first time in canon they actually heard the Carry On Wayward Son song applied to them so it was directly thematically relevant for the season, not just for the finale as per every other season. The episode’s broad message fit with nostalgia for the show’s previous 199 episodes and introduced the storytelling theme as well as hammering home in the songs the messages of Dean-is-important-to-Cas, John-was-a-shitty-father and Sam-n-Dean-don’t-get-each-other-but-do-love-each-other which were all important or MEANT to be important for the season. (For once my bitterness is not for the Cas thing. I’ll get to John. :P)

There was at least one line in Single Man Tear about how “Sam” wished “Dean” could see him the way he did, which comes around reasonably neatly to Sam trying to tell Dean that he’s a good man in 10x23 - again, one of only a handful of the presented themes that managed to pull through. Also, I’ve been bitterly laughing since 10x21 but laughing louder since 10x23 about how the take away BM scene was “you and me against the world” so there is that. I don’t want to believe it was intended with such cruel irony at the time of writing. Analysis at the time suggested Sam took it wholeheartedly, and Dean was more sceptical, as part of his ongoing extended family-don’t-end-in-blood theme (to go in conjunction with the John Winchester subtext) which culminated with the conversation with Crowley in 10x17 and the Last Supper in 10x18. Judging by which episodes had the conclusions of this arc, it’s probable they were included just to set up an ideal to be torn down; I can’t decide how much this affects the original angle of attack on this thematic arc except that it means the uncritical surface reading from the play “won” (i.e. the stuff about Kristen showing up as Adam for the Wayward Son song instead of Cas - Sam n Dean don’t even realise who she’s meant to be portraying at the time: a clear point in the doesn’t-begin-there-either column for the family-don’t-end-in-blood theme.) and all Marie’s work at subtext was for nothing. She will be kicking herself over the end of the season if she knew it.

10x06 was fascinating for meta purposes, giving us a lot of sneaky insight on Dean with the armour and the attic metaphors (aurgh my 10x06 tag is probably the most meta-biased tag of any episode I just browsed through it all and there’s like 3 junk posts and the rest is amazing speculation and I’m crying about the wasted potential :P). Basically, more on the identity theme for Dean. Which, honestly, I’m feeling is one of the dropped plotlines, I think with 10x17 being the last with serious soul-searching. The emotional POV switched more broadly to Sam after that and Dean’s story became focused on external influences. So this episode’s beautiful symbolism largely tanked, as it was focussed around more threats of demon!Dean and knight symbolism linked to Dean.

10x07 was our first return to major plot, and served as an introduction proper for Rowena. Crowley’s kingdom seemed more shaky (ongoing speculation he was losing control of it from this point which came to just about nothing but that one line in the confrontation with Sam: the introduction of Rowena suggested perhaps she would have more to do with it, especially later when she sat on the throne for giggles) and we met the attack dog spell which serves as Cas n Crowley’s entire meaningful cliffhanger for the season and the only real plot hook attached to them since 10x17/10x20. :P

Probably: Crowley’s subplot was with Rowena but as a downfall arc. Probably Rowena was thought up all along as the one to remove the Mark and her meeting with Sam in 10x18 certainly felt long-foretold. In the end of this episode she’s in chains: at the end of the season she breaks out of (different) chains, so she scrapes by with a reasonable sort of arc where we see her various attempts at canny manipulations not work repeatedly until she succeeds at last (she definitely ‘won’ the season); she was necessary to the plot of this season and it looked after her as a result. I put her on the maybe would have died list mostly because if there was less plot that needed stretching she may have been killed as a reward for her efforts: now I hope potential plot ideas pinned to her have been deferred for next season.

At the time the attack dog spell showed there was an ongoing Sam vs doors theme, mirroring how he couldn’t stop demon!Dean coming for him: this one played through in the finale with Sam finding an alternative to get to Dean recognising through either 10x03 or the symbolic warning he had, to try an alternative method (10x17′s intersection of Sam n Cas versus a door). But originally the build up seemed to be to do with more violent mind control/altered states. The attack dog spell was introduced here as a metaphor to Dean’s state, thanks to the mirror to 10x03, and the initial reverse crypt scene discussion/speculation and the idea that it was coming this season was based off Sam’s troubles with keeping things behind doors and Cas’s heroic door smashing. 10x17 ended this branch of the theme and led us to the way it did resolve instead, with Cas vs doors at best being a build up to his explosive attempts to help as a metaphor for accidentally unleashing the Darkness in an effort to save Dean. Their vs doors symbolism re: Dean’s Mark-altered self barely scrapes by but you could argue it.

Cas’s side of this episode with Hannah did its own thing and thanks to being self-contained character development and a lead-in to the Claire plot, which was allowed to wrap up nicely and continued to be self-contained to the end, doesn’t have much to apologise for in hindsight.

BUT the other subplot of the episode was Dean n Cole. Okay, from a character POV Cole’s story sort of works, but he was a character added JUST for the season and had some strong thematic links to Dean, and this ended up not working out as it seemed like it should have. (I mean they really hyped him up)

Premise (nudged to me by iwatchthepie): Rudy was a replacement Cole, and he was meant to be dead in the finale by Dean’s callous mistake.

Thing is, for the last few seasons as a kind of pattern of the Carver era there’s been a morally grey but on-the-right-side character and Cole fits perfectly with the pattern set by Benny and Gadreel. Sam hated Benny, Gadreel screwed them both over, but in the end both made a sacrifice to further the main characters’ stories, and redeemed themselves - Benny to Sam and Gadreel to Heaven in general with his BIG gesture (but also personally to the Winchesters enough with his gesture at the end of 9x22 that Sam is open about him being on their side in 9x23 to Dean).

Cole started off the season as a sworn enemy of Dean, and went on a rampage to get him. In 10x07 he and Dean finally meet and talk properly man to man, and set themselves up a truce with some closure. There’s a lot of themes here - especially in the opening run of episodes Cole radiated vibes of all the bad crap the Winchesters do emotionally as a kind of amalgam Dean-John-Sam toxic bundle of bad hunter tropes; he left his blonde wife and small child to go on a revenge mission against a guy to avenge his father (with Dean as Azazel in this parallel - ah how far a guy goes in 10 seasons…). Cole was ruthless and also just chirpy enough while doing everything to come across as a little unhinged by his mission. I mean like fair enough this all works thematically and there was some good closure and everything at the end of 10x07 which left us speculating about Cole on the assumption he may be plot important.

But then he came back. And he wasn’t plot important. Within the stretch of the season: this wasn’t like them bringing back a fan favourite. “Oh lol everyone liked Cole, what’s he up to these days?” His return was planned, and it leaves him as a weird floating narrative thread where they felt the need to insert this character AGAIN after his meaningful but open farewell, but not to follow up after. It means Cole’s appearances were almost entirely about his own personal story all along, only serving to rattle the narrative here and there (e.g. a deus ex for Rowena to leg it or to slow Sam down on finding demon!Dean) but without making him genuinely mean much on the emotional narrative (i.e. the point of introducing a character like him on an inwards-facing season).

10x15 gives us a smoother hunter origin story without the revenge and a proper lead in to it being about the supernatural in general and not one demon in particular: Cole finds out about more monsters in his local area, bumps into the Winchesters, goes along to defend his friends and generally save people upfront, the revenge all gone, the altruistic side of a hunters’ backstory appearing (Saving People, Hunting Things).

There was also, thanks to his backstory and setting of the town he was in, a load of army imagery and stuff - this and the Americana strong background visual themes for the season. He personally had a mission from when he was a kid to kill Dean, and he had gone to war and made that his mission, so it seems quite reasonable that being cut adrift from various violent missions, and then seeing how the world around him was at threat from monsters, Cole might try to step up and become an active hunter himself: a new mission to take on, but for the right reasons, against the ‘real’ monsters. There’s always been a hunters are soldiers and everyone else is a civilian thing so this theme is ridiculously overt, should it have happened.

Rudy first shows up off-screen as a phonecall in 10x17, and is mentioned again before he appears. I reckon this was meant to be Cole. He starts hunting off-screen, perhaps calling Dean for advice, or even just asking him if there’s a case to do. Dean warns him off or gives him some neutral advice, tells him not to get his ass killed, reminds him of his wife and kid, thinks that’s the end of it.

Now let’s pad out 10x21, since nothing happened in it until the last 10 minutes. Dean was a little adrift in that episode, since Sam was being sneaky as a subplot and there were points where Dean was just standing around in the background pouting. He had a subplot where he had the free time to just casually go get pizza. The story could have been made much shorter (and perhaps with some actual urgency throughout that increased the drama/threat level? I don’t know. :P) and the whole thing felt like padding just to get to the horrible bad decision death at the end. Imagine Cole came back for a MotW or something and like with the easy vampire hunts they’ve been blowing off steam with all season, Dean could sort it in a few minutes in tandem to Sam’s subplots. Perhaps Dean, slowly creeping back under the effects of the Mark, is a crappy teacher and instead of the nice resourceful way they solved 10x15, it’s a mess, Dean is scary, Cole shows some flickers of that weird revenge driven personality we first met… This isn’t looking like a good team.

Come 10x23, Cole calls Dean up for help again, and Dean goes along, and then we pretty much just do exactly what Rudy did but with Cole quipping and bouncy instead of generic and scruffy (sorry Rudy, you weren’t very interesting to the point where another Cole episode sounds thrilling :P). Perhaps right as he realises Dean really will let him get killed, there’s a sort of I was right about you all along moment. Cole dies; he appears in the mirror scene along with Cas. It’s an emotionally and thematically resonant bookend to the season.

I… genuinely have to think either they made a massive writing over-sight somewhere, or they couldn’t get Travis for the end of the season or something so they had to cram in Rudy. I mean, I am legit writing fix-it-fic to insert more Cole into the season here, that’s how bad it is. :P In the wake of 10x15′s sweat lodge sequence, perhaps it’s just that Rudy no-homo’s COLE and Dean and his subtextual romance and homoerotic subtextual fling were both meant to be in that mirror.

Anyways, Cole represented a lot of that toxic Winchester bull which came around in the climax of the episode, so his symbolic death in the line of their work would have made for some very interesting discussion. His use as a mirror to Dean and his life story and mission represented as dead in the mirror would have been fascinating, and emphasised how Cas was just thrown in there for the emotional whammy.

Please, talk to me about the irony of how the symbolic season 10 fall-guy who should have died to drive a point home for the characters about their toxic family situation completely failed to manifest at the appropriate time.

10x08 is an island in the storm, like Angel Heart. Hmm. Can we please just have Wayward Daughters already?

It and 10x09 had a little and then a lot of Dean’s deterioration down to the fugue-state murder spree. Dean kills a lot of vampires, after trying to be restrained for a few episodes, then the alarming kill of Olivia in 10x06, and a perfunctory demon kill in 10x07 he has a controlled but effective fight in 10x08. Once again, this reasonably well-paced descent (contrasted with a few episodes of Dean pointedly not killing and 10x06 revealing how killing is DEFINITELY a problem for him) is compared to the lack of noticeable or at least consistent deterioration at the end of the season, and once again I’m wondering about the need for demon!Dean to have been a weight on their minds at the end of the season.

But the important thing about 10x09 (Burger Date aside) is not the Cas n Claire stuff, but the John Winchester stuff from that one little scene. I’m assuming that Cole is just a walking part of this subtext, but it was this episode, more than demon!Dean’s line in 10x03 or the line in the song from 10x05, which got everyone talking about John’s parenting skills. (I ran out of words in that sentence before posts in my 10x09 tag :P) I think the last really strong imagery to go with this theme was in 10x13 and then as far as I can tell the show backs off (edit to add: Oh! “Burn the journal” in 10x16 to go along with the other symbolic burning in 10x13!). I feel like the exploration of John Winchester’s parenting was going so well up to a point, and the military links from 10x13 tie into Cole’s story in 10x15, that the parallels and symbolism would have tangled up somewhere. I don’t know if we could have got Dean talking about it again, but imagine if through Cole’s greater presence in the narrative at the end of the season he was inspired to say something about their upbringing to him or the like, and make the links overt?

(I’m keeping all speculation very manageable and pretending like the show wouldn’t do random asspulls so I’m not going to go out there and say John would have appeared or anything which couldn’t be strictly on the table from the cards they already handed us.)

Thematically this does play through subtextually with what actually happened. I’m just going to sneakily quote iwatchthepie because I’m lazy and I’d only paraphrase this:

I keep thinking about all the toxic/abusive/absent parents they showed us, and wondering now about God. After all he put that “demonic tramp stamp” on Lucifer in the first place and then bailed. So I feel like he’s supposed to be part of that.



The parallel in 10x09 did sneakily include God in the list of fathers being discussed and that wasn’t really poked at, but he has actually been on the table a while. So there is that. :P

10x10 comes after midseason, and while 10x11 seems at this point the key (hah) to the Darkness subplot (explored in a few of the meta I linked up at the top), I’ve honestly been laughing at “The river ends at the source” since 10x17 (I think I was using the tag “rivers and sources” since 10x10 although sporadically, so you can find a patchy progression of the speculation on it there - I was never particularly enthused by this one even when the going was good and we assumed there was a purpose).

I wonder if it is an example of the writers dropping a line in hoping it would come of something and they could refer back to the vague open-ended riddle smugly at the end. By 10x17 they realised they weren’t going down a path where it would overtly work, and so they had Metatron make a meta commentary on their writing skills. It was left subtextual and there are some good ideas, most linking the “source” to the Darkness, but Metatron pointing out he was just bullshitting to buy time does seem most like a comment on the writers themselves, given his meta use in the narrative. :P

I’m just going to skip ahead to 10x14 (since the MotW between here and there largely focus on Dean’s inner struggle and ongoing character development in a more plot-neutral way aside from the little points I bring up), and mention the other “riddle” of the season - what I’ve been tagging as The Colette Conundrum.

I know, this parallel has been the most annoying and frustrating part of the whole last season and a half. There are arguments it went nowhere. There are arguments it played out. There are arguments about who, if anyone, was even meant to be in the parallel, which was the most frustrating part especially before 10x14. There are arguments about what the “Colette” is supposed to do for Dean; if Sam could have fulfilled that role or if he was a subversion of the Abel role; if Charlie was a no-homo “Colette” instead of Cas via her death, even while Cas in the very next episode mirrors some of the original story Cain told as well (if we parallel the rampage we FIND Cain on in the cold open of 9x11 to the rampage caused by Charlie’s death, e.g. when Abbadon took Colette and Cain walking into that cabin and Dean coming into the bunker to fight the Stynes are direct parallels… Then Cas asks Dean to stop like the conversation between Cain and Colette after Abbadon nopes out so there is STILL some muddying of the parallel between Charlie and Cas being Colette no matter how you look at it). 10x13 had the “trenchcoat of love” lady with the most overt Cain/Colette Dean/Cas parallel in the MotW we’d ever have hoped to get. I made some angry noises at the time about that being a cheque that had better not bounce. It is a mess.

The basic premise of the fandom fight seems to be: Abel was boringly killed off-screen a million years ago with no argument. We got a nice emotional story with Cain n Colette which was beautiful and showed some hope for Cain. Colette did not save Cain but she brought out some good in him and diverted him from a brutal track. Cain n Abel is a story of evil brothers and fratricide and all sorts of crap which is all over the Winchesters’ own lives (even if they’ve never actually KILLED one another it’s been a long long thread that they might and even more specifically, that Dean might have to kill Sam). Obviously people who like Sam and Dean’s bond wanted Sam to be able to break through to Dean and make him not kill him via touching emotional appeal. Colette was set up to have done that for Cain. Basically at this point the waters get muddied by the fact she had a nicer (if tragic) story with Cain, where it was implied someone with the Mark could be tempered by love. Charlie also fitted into the role: narratively, in fact, she did the most Colette-ing of anyone, forgiving Dean in 10x11, Dean trying hard to be good because in part of his horror about hurting her, and then when she died Dean snapped. Obviously a loved-her-like-a-sister BFF relationship with a beloved side character is huge, but it’s not the kind of narrative-shaking thing people wanted with either Sam or Cas ticking off boxes left and right from Cain’s own life (and in the end STILL neither of them knew about Colette). Which. Charlie died for that dumb parallel to work and so did everyone Cain cared about - being in this parallel is not a good thing. This is a LOT of why I put Cas on the list of characters who may have died (perhaps only symbolically).

This goes hand-in-hand with the title card, another possible plot thread that was dropped; that is, Cas saving Dean from the Mark with his own sacrifice of his grace. It was right there on the screen, and in 10x03 when we had blue and black eyes next to each other, it didn’t seem like it was going any other way. At the very best at this point, the title card is meant to refer for the entire season to that one 3 second moment, which is delightful for my shipper heart, but not narratively satisfying. :P

Cas’s grace always was meant to be a plot point - 10x02 established very clearly how it was meant to be and 10x17 was written pre-Stynes and pre-Charlie death: 10x18 was at least pitched, approved and in the process of being written when this retcon appeared. Cas’s grace was intended to reappear at the end of the season and quite possibly be plot significant.

These three ideas - Colette, the title card, and rivers and sources, all make a sort of patchwork quilt of good speculation jumping off points with ideas of what the season should have and could have been leading towards, and ended up representing themselves on-screen (you could say the title card was “merely” representative of Dean being cured at all) - what was that quote from one of the actors towards the end? “We give them what they want in a way that they’re not going to expect it.” - but they did not play through in a satisfying or even always easy-to-spot way. The speculation around them all was tremendous and it’s probably because these were such good narrative constructs that the disappointment when all three fell moderately to completely flat in front of us was particularly sharp (especially with a lot of the fandom losing faith after Charlie’s death).

After this we’re back in plot accordion territory.

So let’s try and sum up some of these ideas of where the season might have/could have gone: