I was immediately reminded of this scene when watching the promo for next week’s episode, in which Dean sits on a bench and tries to show the beauty of humanity to a celestial being, or in this case, God.
Long have playgrounds been used in Supernatural as a sort of metaphor for humanity, humans playing around in a sandbox whilst adults (aka Heaven) watch over them and choose when to intervene. The angels actually step onto the climbing frame as seen in season 9 and 10 to show an interesting step towards Angels’ involvement on Earth and their own increasing ‘humanity’ - since being dumped on Earth they are no longer just watching they are actively taking part.
More recently there’s the scene from 11x09 in which Amara shows up by the playground where Dean is, her arrival punctuated by the sudden disappearance of the sounds of the park, giving way to an eerie silence. In this instance it’s obviously a promise of what is to come, the silence and nothingness as we witnessed at the beginning of the season. But here now it’s Chuck/God who is watching on, he doesn’t appear to be affecting the scene, only watching, popcorn in hand. Such is the sign of one who, as Metatron stated, has given up. And in comparison to season 4, both times (as it appears to be) Dean steps in to defend humanity when God/the angels are willing to just let it be destroyed (though in 4x07 Cas admits that he hoped Dean would choose to save the town) - in other words to wipe the slate clean.
I can almost imagine if this is the scene in which Dean reportedly cries instead of reacting with aggression, it’s because God is refusing to step in a help. I guess after not believing in God for so long, after the sliver of hope that came with a shining amulet and a saved town, and then having that hope dashed is pretty frustrating.
As a side it’s lovely to see that even so early on, Cas immediately differed himself from other angels by putting his faith in a human, by showing doubt in his orders. And once again we’re having Cas paralleled to God, which makes me all kinds of happy for the idea that Cas is God’s favourite because he could do so easily what God himself could not.
In this sense I’m really looking forward to next week’s confrontation between Dean and Chuck as a sort of continuation of where Metatron left off, with Dean ‘humanity’ Winchester defending the creation that has in fact far surpassed the Creator.
