Mirror vs. Shadow

Have you never mused upon the fact that you’re living my life in reverse? My story began when I killed my brother, and that’s where your story inevitably will end.

In a weird way, Cain would turn out to be absoluetly right, just not in the way he probably expected.

It did end in reverse, but truly in reverse, with Dean. Because instead of Dean mirroring Cain when he killed his own brother, Dean was the one who decided to die, instead, so that Sam could live.

Cas helped Dean to finally break the cycle of rage and violence and revenge. It may have started with Cain, but it continued with Mary and John, and ultimately was ended by Dean and Cas and Sam and Jack tearing out the roots of the Winchester family curse, the very heart of it.

The Winchester family curse that was tied directly to the very first curse that ever was: a curse that was created by an older brother sacrificing his younger brother in order to save him.

Also - narratively speaking (and I can’t believe I’m saying this, btw - if you try to quote me, I will fully pretend I don’t know wtf you’re talking about), it does technically make more sense for Dean to die.

Because, think about it - all the storylines that Dean got where his body, mind, heart and soul just got chewed to hell by the plot, including this one where he literally has been through so much that he just spontaneously becomes a Knight of Hell after he dies.

Dean was literally the sacrificial lamb, so that Sam would be clean and sin-free and neat and tidy and ready for a nice life-after-hunting (which also now makes even more sense why Blurwife - because Eileen was full-on hunting/MOL legacy just like Dean, and was a mirror of Dean’s, too), while Dean (who took the brunt of Chuck’s attention/adoration full-on from basically season 4 onward until the end of the show) was unceremoniously dispatched and done away with like an embarassing family secret, with no one else but the damn dog as a witness. Where the only thing left of Dean is his name handed down to Sam’s son, along with a tattoo he probably doesn’t know the whole truth about.

Narratively speaking, I can see why they did it - Dean was too damaged, Chuck said it, himself - but in their haste to make Sam the noble scion of the family, they ignored the one who had the most ground to recover, the most work left to do, the most normal life left to experience. Sam had already had multiple chances to live like a normie and figure out that hunting wasn’t what he wanted (plus, all his gfs kept winding up dead or evil, so y'know), but Dean didn’t really get a chance to choose normal for himself. He wanted it - you could see that with the job contract he had on his desk - and he was trying, even though it was obviously difficult for him (his room was a mess and he did NOT care), but he was carrying on, because it’s just what he did. I mean jfc, Dean didn’t even get to celebrate his birthday a single time on the show - not ONCE. And the one time he expressed interest in maybe having a birthday, Mrs. Butters looked at him like he’d grown a second nose on his forehead or something. Like wtf.

So yeah - they did everything to otherize Dean, right down to the birthdays. Sam acted like he never got to have birthdays ever, but we know that Dean would have done whatever he could to make sure Sam had a good birthday, and he also celebrated it at least twice on screen with multiple characters. Yes, I am STILL SALTY about Dean’s birthday, fight me.

Anyway. Yeah. Essentially, Dean was never meant to make it out of that show alive - he wasn’t designed to. He was the trauma mule, so that there could be brother-feels and such but Sam would still be able to carry on and live a semi-normal life.