There are a lot of things in the finale that don’t sit well with me but my main issue is this:
The spnfamily and the actors themselves are very vocal about mental health awareness. They have made fundraisers, campaigns, and suicide prevention hot lines. They want to give us the message to always keep fighting and to never give up on life.
And yet, the finale, at its core, tells us that you can only find true happiness in death. Cas dies because of his happiness. Dean doesn’t get his heaven on earth. Sam lives but we can see how unhappy he is through the montage and he’s finally happy when he’s reunited with Dean in heaven.
I know the actors didn’t have much control over the ending but this just feels so wrong. I truely hope that any struggling spn fans CAN keep fighting and find happiness in their lives. Because life is worth living.
Yes - some fundamental disconnect happened there.
15x20 made SPN a tragedy.
But many of us weren’t watching a tragedy; we were watching a trauma survival narrative.
And that’s why, rejecting the ending is necessary, for many of us, to keep loving the story.
I am still reeling of a lot of it, which is why I have not been able to do a transcription of the panel (although the ones I’ve reblogged, made by other people, are very accurate and their only “fault” is not being in my head to know why I had some troubles translating Guillermo’s long answers as he spoke too quickly and too passionately so I had to paraphrase rather than translate literally as I did with the shorter answers, and at some points, I admit my short term memory may have failed me)
I am trying to get the panel off the facebook page to put it on my youtube (With permission from Harlecon’s organizer, Harleyquinnarts, whom you should all follow in Instagram and follow Harlecon on facebook because she’s amazing and made this possible by giving us the space to have the panel. BTW, I have heard that there IS a version already on youtube? If it is, please, please, please, put a link back to Harlecon on it, yes? These small cons deserve all our support)
I am ALSO trying to contact Adrian Fogarty, the dubbing director (NOT the translator, as some people are mis-reporting) who is, in the end, the one who has the answers as to where the hell the “Me too” came from.
Which is the missreporting I;ve seen going around, and which I need to adress.
During the panel, Mr. Rojas went from talking about the “Original” Script to the “DUB” Original Script without making it obvious that there was a different. Understand, for MOST actors, when they talk about the Original Script, they’re NOT talking about the Original English Script. They don’t get that. They get the Original TRANSLATED script, which can be then FURTHER changed by them or the director in order to fit cadence, and lip sync.
And yes, we come again to my old nemesis, lip sync.
So he said that the original script said “Me Too”, as a reply to Cas’s “I love you”, and THEN Alejandro Fogarty, who has a TON of experience adapting on the fly, and is a very respected dubbing director, changed it to “And I you,Cas” because it fit better Dean’s lip movements.
This DOESN’T mean that Fogarty ADDED the Me Too. IT WAS on the Original DUB Script that Guillermo was reading.
He said that Dean didn’t reciprocate Castiel’s words too, but that was AFTER he said he didn’t HEAR what Dean originally said (Which, granted, could be him misremembering as he admitted he had a bad short term memory). This is not to say that he lied when he said Dean didn’t reciprocate, but that that’ts the reason why two different versions of what he said may be running around. This was when I said that then we had to ask Fogarty about the origin of the dub script “Me Too” as he’d probably be the one who knows.
He also said that while it was a surprise, that the writers had been very subtle creating the story between Dean and Castiel, and that it made SENSE.
There are a few things I could say here about voice actor culture, but I won’t as it could muddy the issue and I want to wait until I finish the transcription.
What he corrected from my previous assumptions was that there was no Warner Bros quality control. They finish dubbing, then send it to air and as far as HE knows, there’s no WB exec checking the files. He admitted he might be wrong on that, but it’s more probable that he’s right. So IF the “Me too” was added, there would be no final check to stop it. HOWEVER, there has been no request to RE-Dub the line, so we can assume that, now that the horse is out of the barn, WB and CW don’t really care that, in Mexico and LataM, Dean Winchester is bisexual, canonically.
Which brings us back to the REAL question: Where did that Me Too came from?
Now, I want to make clear this I DON’T BELIEVE THERE’S A BIG CW CONSPIRACY TO KEEP DEAN STRAIGHT. What I do believe is that, due to a bunch of mismanagement of the series, PR, confusion of what their demography is, old-boys club mentality AND good ol’ network censorship, they may have ended up accidentally creating the ILLUSION of one.
And to be honest, I preffer to know the ACTUAL truth, which could very well be a rogue dub director (Which, if you check my previous posts, was a possibility I raised, that if there HAD been a rogue dub translator, the director HAD to be on it too), or a different audio version sent from the US.
I’ve seen script captures from the Original English Script that were leaked, and there Dean doesn’t reply ANYTHING. Not “Me too”, not “Don’t do this, CAs”. HE just goes 404,File not found, Being Loved by an angel, doesn’t compute.
So we know that DEan’s answer in english was Ad libbed by Jensen.
However, we also know that Jensen had to re-record some lines.
So he could’ve ad-libbed again, something different (Either by choice, or by the director’s request. I frankly don’t know nor care. I just assume that there were two different readings and the “wrong” one was sent to the Latam Translator. Wrong here to mean “not the one that aired in the US”)
And the only way we’re going to get closer to which was it, is asking the dub director, which is what I am trying to do. And I do hope that by now, you trust me enough to know that, IF the answer was “Oh, yeah, we decided that it was more logical” , I’ll tell you straight (Or, you know, organize another panel so that you hear it from the horse’s mouth just as I did with Guillermo Rojas)
Also, yes, Guillermo didn’t say the words “I ship Destiel” or “I am a Heller”. However, he DID say that the ending of the arc of Dean and Castiel having a love story was the closing of the series, that Dean reciprocating Cas’s feelings made it make sense and that it was beautiful. So he is a heller, in spirit if not in name.
ETA: I had to fix Adrian Fogarty’s name as someone pointed out I wrote “Alejandro Fogarty” and this proves that I need at least a week of sleep as this show has broken my brain.
I’m drunk Chuck and this post is my design for the ending. Or, I am Gabe from “Mystery Spot” and i am here to teach you a lesson.
Disclaimer: I believe with my whole heart that nothing from this post is anywhere near what we are getting. It’s me being sarcastic.It’s a joke. I think I’m being hilarious, please don’t take it away from me. None of this should be taken seriously. On the opposite, the solemn goal of this post is to show that you should put all the negativity aside and stop worrying. We are up for a happy end!
Cas is not coming back. He just isn’t. The best season arc ever written in Supernatural? Oh no, you are just seeing things again.
Has been to empty before, bounced back twice? Naaaah, this time it’s different. This time it’s for good. No further explanation, just take my word for it.
Regarding Dean. He is not feeling this way about Cas, he can’t reciprocate and he won’t, this was a strictly brotherly relationship for him all way long. The looks? The jokes? The prayer? The parallels with Cain and his wife, with Sam and Eileen, Charlie and Stevie? The despair every time he loses Cas? He’s just a flirty little drama queen, sweetie, and you are delusional.
Sure, he is brokenhearted by the loss of a friend, but never mentions to either Sam or Jack what has really happened in the bunker. Why? Castiel is gone, that’s enough. No reflection on the matter whatsoever, they won’t ever speak of him again.
Character development who? Dean is still an angry man with his rock music, his car and his daddy issues, with “DON’T DESERVE - DON’T CARE” tattooed on his knuckles.
Cas’ confession goes in vain, as well as his sacrifice. Dean doesn’t get the message.
Dean keeps the jacket on as a reminder how hard he fucked up with the whole kill Bill(y) idea. It’s the coal fueling his anger, you know, the only thing Dean Winchester knows.
There’s also guilt, caused by the idea that, at the end of the day, Dean is the reason Cas is dead. Silly angel puts another brick in the wall of his self-hatred. The wall so high he soon won’t need Falcon 9 to reach Mars.
Forgiveness? Redemption? Learning, discovering new things about himslef for at least the last five years? Uh-huh, thanks, but no thanks.
Jack who? Something definitely went wrong with Billy’s plan of taking Chuck out, but we just pretend it never happened. We need Jack to sacrifice himself somehow, for the only acceptable ending, so he simply goes supernova. Again. But this time doesn’t miss.
What about Ruby? What about “you made it loud”? What about Lucifer attempting to get out? “Last time it took all the archangels to cage me” anyone?
Just sweep it all under the rug and forget it ever happened, for god’s sake, it’s not like every second of the show has to actually mean something.
The issue of Jack dying is also never addressed ever again, it just was meant to end this way. No biggie. His troubled relationship with Dean? Their touching conversations with Cas and Sam? The character’s arc screaming “I’m perceived evil, but I don’t want to be” not finished? Come again?
The show is about family. The Winchester family. And following the logic of never ending brothers’ deathly ping pong, it all ends with one of them dying during the fight. To save the second one, of course.
Which one? Dean always throws scissor, so it’s kinda predestined.
How? Heroically, given his unhelthy and unhelpful tendency to put everyone but himslef first. He didn’t even have to die, we see it clearly later, it’s done just for the sake of the Winchesters early seasons dynamics. Dibs on dying first!
Bobby? Eileen? Charlie? Another twenty humans? Sorry, kinda forgot to write them back into the script after they’ve vanished.
Let’s say they are not dead, just away. That’s a happy thought, right?
Everyone we cared about for years is either dead or gone, monsters are still lurking under the kids’ beds, but at least God is dead. That’s a win!
Fifteen years, a few apocalypses, a handful of deathes - yet no reflection, no regret, no lessons learned. The message from the creators: no matter what’s the journey, you still end up where you begun.
The last Winchester takes Impala, salts and burns the dead, and finally drives back to Stanford, following the dream of finally doing law after the exhausting years of killing, being killed and all the side effects.
And to celebrate the beginning of his normal life, Sam hits a dog, for crying out loud.
Happy end!
I probably will lose my mind every time anyone interacts with this post, because it’s fucking what has happened in the final!
I CANT. I HATE IT.
I took all my knowledge on how the story works and did everything wrong. I ended being right.
This is the first time I’ve seen this post and yeah I just figured you were writing about the finale being sarcastic until the end… but what really GOT ME about this was:
“I took all my knowledge on how the story works and did everything wrong. I ended up being right.”
That exactly explains everything. I didn’t even consider something so below my own worst case scenario because i literally could not even entertain the thought that they would fuck up literally every narrative point the rest of the show was building towards.
Goddammit Supernatural. We say its the worst finale of all time, but even that feels like an understatement at this point.
@sinnabonka Uhm this surely needs to be added to the S16 masterlist:
A new prophet is chosen to replace Donatello. Poor sucker finds out, when they predict the absolute worst S15 ending as a joke, and… it all comes true.
Here’s my attempt at a full timeline of the events leading up to, during, and after the complete debacle that was the Supernatural series finale complete with sources. I’ll be updating it regularly as more stuff happens/comes to light. If you think I’ve missed anything or gotten anything wrong, please do send me an ask. Otherwise, enjoy!
Key immediate takeaways (I’m bilingual and I’ll go through the whole thing again later to see if I missed anything):
The original script in English did not say have Dean reciprocation in it.
The Dean line “don’t do this, Cas” was translated by director Adrian Fogarty and it was his choice to make Dean’s reciprocation explicit. so rogue director rather than rogue translator
It was originally translated to “yo también” but was intentionally changed to “y yo a ti” which in Spanish is explicitly more romantic
Guillermo Rojas (the Spanish dub voice actor) stresses that he loved it because nobody saw it coming and all the actors were supportive. He hasn’t talked to the Castiel dub actor and doesn’t know what he thinks.
Guillermo also thinks it’s a good move because he views Dean as never having had any meaningful relationships with women beyond just empathetic. He’s a gay Dean stan lmao.
Guillermo also hasn’t seen the finale yet because he doesn’t want to watch it until he has to record the dub for it, which he hasn’t yet because he’s had COVID. When asked what he thought a perfect ending would be, he basically said that these characters have suffered so much for the rest of the world that it should end peacefully for at least the main three because they deserve it.
He confirms he has not been contacted about rerecording that episode without the ‘y yo a ti, Cas.’ (So as far as I can conclude the Spanish dub will eventually be uploaded to Netflix as is, and my assumption is that it might possibly be delayed because the last two episodes haven’t been dubbed yet.)
Just to add because I need to sleep at some point and I am working on getting the copy for youtube and a transcript…
A) Guillermo Rojas is Mexican, not Spanish.
b) He also thinks that it’s amazing that “the perfect manly man” Dean Winchester, is in love with another man and that it makes a great story.
c) He made clear that he doesn’t think the reciprocation came out of nowhere, but that it was built by the original writers and series’s directors in a subtle, but clear way that made perfect sense when you see everything in hindsight.
Ada, I just realized this was you! To clarify for everybody, I meant that Guillermo is the voice actor for the Spanish language dub, not that he’s a Spanish voice actor (although I definitely should start switching to calling it the Mexican dub, not Spanish).
After the season finale of Supernatural aired, many LGBTQ+ fans were left feeling hurt. Castiel, a fan favorite character, was killed immediately after confessing his love for another man, and was barely referenced in the final two episodes. Instead of lashing out in anger, fans created The Castiel Project. The Castiel Project was a fundraiser in support of The Trevor Project, an organization devoted to protecting LGBTQ+ youth. At time of posting, The Castiel Project has raised over $55,000. (Fans have also created fundraisers in honor of other leading characters on Supernatural, links to which will be at the end of this post.)
As the finale drifted futher and further into the past, fans wondered whether Misha Collins, the actor who portrayed Castiel, would acknowledge the project. Misha is known for his charitable efforts, so it was odd that he wouldn’t reference it.
Today he finally tweeted his support.
“Recently, the #SPNFamily teamed up to raise over $55k+ for the @TrevorProject to support LGBTQIA+ folks in honor of Cas. This was ALL you. Never underestimate your power. Proud of you all.”
If you would like to donate to The Castiel Project, click here.
Other SPN fundraisers are listed below. Those in bold have not yet reached their goals.
The Supernatural fandom is buzzing about tonight’s SPN Fights On event. But what’s supposed to happen, exactly? Should you tune in to watch? Here’s what we know.
The Cast: Though the entire guest list has not been released, there will be confirmed appearances from Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, and Jared Padelecki, the show’s creator Eric Kripke, and Stacey Abrams, creator of Fair Fight.
The Cost: Entry is a pick your price donation to Fair Fight. Currently admission is only open to American citizens, but Misha Collins has posted on twitter that he’s working on a way to open it up to international viewers. Updates to follow.
When: The event will start at 9pm ET.
The Experience: From the SPNFightsOn page, “The event will feature discussion about the show and live performances from the cast… We’ll also be offering some incentives: top contributors and trivia question winners will get exclusive Supernatural memorabilia straight from the cast & crew.” These incentives include meet and greets with the cast (including virtual ASL lesson with Shoshannah Stern and a guitar lesson from Rob Benedict), exclusive SPN crew clothing, a piece of one of the Impalas, and much more, which are all listed on the website.
About Fair Fight: Fromtheir website, “Fair Fight brings awareness to the public on election reform, advocates for election reform at all levels, and engages in other voter education programs and communications.”
what is WITH the last two years with all these major franchises and tv shows fucking up so badly in their last films/last seasons
endgame, rise of skywalker, game of thrones, supernatural……..like the endings just fuck up the whole journeys/plots/characterizations it’s ASTOUNDING
Its the pressing need to write absolutely unpredictable plottwists, which forces them to write nonsensical shit bc god forbid some dude on reddit accidentally called the ending, and also the same old racism/homophobia/misogyny as always.
Its also a curious level of denial about who your core fanbase is. All of these wanted their Target audience to be someone else than who their most loyal fans were.
The typical comic fans are kids and teens, marvel wants to make blockbusters for adults. Star wars fans are hyperfocused sci fi nerds AND a lot of minorities and disney wanted to make Big numbers in china and also generally wanted to appeal to a larger audience instead of a loyal, smaller group. The initial got fans were fans of the books, history nerds and lotr stans, d and d wanted to write their own story and shifted the original Story around to basically make a sexed up talent show, you tune in every week to see who makes it to the next round. And now the most dedicated, loyal and borderline obsessive spn fans are of course young women, many of them queer. Same as with sherlock, the creators HATED this, bc they wanted their show to be for men. They begrudgingly played into the fanservice for the ratings, but deep down they hated themselves for it and let us know IN CANON how much they disliked their own fans.
All of these were very good at convincing their fanbase some kind of reward was waiting for them if only theyd stick around and none of them deliviered. But hey, at least many people were watching.
THIS.
It’s actually very obvious that 99% of mainstream media creators get visibly embarrassed by a female majority fanbase. The condecension is thinly-veiled even when they’re in the middle of asking for attention/money from a demographic they obviously despise.
It’s a mindset that says ‘women have bad artistic taste’ and concludes that ‘if women like a piece of artistic creation that means there’s something wrong unless it’s specifically designed for women, in which case it is already categorically inferior and peripheral’. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with conscious authorial decisions (although many of them are intentionally misogynistic in this respect), because it’s a mindset that runs deep and has a much longer history than capitalism - it is a reflection of men’s monopoly on the right to build and add to the semiotics of artistic expression. For centuries. Across many cultures.
It is harsh and cynical; once you start to notice that, it becomes practically impossible to whole-heartedly embrace any fandom of mainstream media at all. That’s why it’s not the fans’ fault for not seeing that, no matter how obvious it seems to outsiders - sometimes in some areas women are still so invalid that praise and love from them are detested and promptly avoided, even at the cost of bringing down the whole story.
This isn’t something we’d get rid of any time soon; people will get new mainstream media obsessions and get hurt when its creators do something silly to avoid women’s approval.
But in the long run we must create our own stories. If you feel like you don’t get what you want, if you feel like your perspective is being constantly invalidated, then draw, write, and support artists who are doing the same.
STOP the infighting and purity policing because we can’t afford to do that. We are in this together.
Our voices remain marginal till this very day, and our priority really shouldn’t be taking down someone who simply likes a differen ship, a problematic trope, or a character you hate. Tolerance is hard but try your best if you really want to see a win instead of these endless sequence of predictable disappointments.
This isn’t even about spn just about basically any mainstream fandom
Just to add to this interesting discussion; the privileging of male perspectives in story, in film and television, is definitely evident from data, in terms of roles for women in front of and behind the camera:
I don’t think we can analyse all these texts as suffering from exactly thesame failings in terms of their ending, however.
Game of Thrones may have tried to surprisefans, but SupernaturalandRise of Skywalker tried to please certain segments of the fan audience (at the expense of others). A Reylo ending for Rise of Skywalker and a Just-the-Brothers ending for Supernatural were fanservice. And it was that, cartoonish idea of, fanservice which impacted narrative and character growth.
Avengers: Endgame - the privileging of the heteronormative family remains a given in products this huge. The ending wasn’t “leftfield” to evade fans who had guessed ahead. The ending was, predictably, normative. Women are seen as a “reward” for male heroism; Peggy becomes Cap’s reward. Women who are not family-normative are seen as expendable; hence Nat’s sacrifice for Barton (because Barton had a heteronormative family). Elements capable of “queer readings” (the team as “found family”, the close relationship between Cap and Bucky) got shut down by a heteronormative ending - dull and regressive, yes, but not leftfield.
In fact, it’s not the narrative trying to “surprise” fans which unites the endings of Game of Thrones,Rise of Skywalker,Avengers:EndgameandSupernatural; it’s the unimaginative straightjacket of (white) heteronormative patriarchy. Disruptive elements allowed space in the middle of the story are given normative endings.
Rey, is the hero of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, and hey, that’s cool, a woman in the Luke role. But, she’s written by men (and the virgin/ whore dichotomy is, apparently, still going strong with them) and so she is girlish and un-sexual (virgin category) and her story evolves to revolve around a troubled white man (Kylo Ren). Rey’s “purity” saves petulant Alt-right manchild Kylo, changing him back into “nice” Ben. It’s Beauty and the Beast, in space.
Wonderful female characters who were allowed to breathe and evolve over the course of Game of Thrones get put back in their boxes at the end. Cersei becomes just the bitch her “nice” brother couldn’t escape from. Dany becomes just the power-mad bitch her “nice” lover Jon Snow had to murder. And the final scene is Brann’s council (all dudes except Brienne) discussing the need to rebuild the city’s brothels as a top priority. Proper patriarchy is restored…
Supernatural, well, what even was that fuckery. But there are no women, no POC, and no queer folk visible in that final Heaven, only white men-folk. All the interesting elements allowed to breath in the middle of the story were bleached out at the end; blood family was reinscribed as more important than found family; Sam got some blurry heterosexuality; Dean and Cas were not allowed to reunite, in case queerness “tainted” the final bow on the corporate product.
Greater diversity in writers rooms, directors’ chairs, producer roles and, crucially, at senior corporate levels in the film and television business is so, desperately, desperately, needed, to lift the curse of the Boring Dudebro Ending.
