– Lucifer ending up connected to Sam, no matter how hard everybody wishes to keep them separated (Sam being his vessel/Sam owing him his resurrection);
– Cas following Dean to the end, no matter how hard some people try to keep them separated. Cas being separated from the angels, and living on Earth with Dean – and also slowly losing his powers;
So what is different this time?
Dean and Cas are not alone – they have Mary, Jack, Gabriel, Rowena. Even Sam is not gone this time, even though he somehow ended up striking a deal with Lucifer (which was super unlikely only a week ago, but hey, fate is fate, even if it’s flipped fate). Dean and Cas have their family around them, and the sense of hopelessness is at least not based in the fact that “they only have each other”. (Also, last time Chuck was there with them, now Mary is there with them. With Chuck around everything was miserable. With Mary around, things look better. Make what you want of it.)
Cas is stuck on Earth and slowly becoming a human (c’mon, he is SO HUMAN this season!), but NOT because the angels left him behind – he actually is here because he wants to be here. He is losing his angelic powers, but it is not a tragedy as it was in the end!verse. Far from it – what in the end!verse destroyed him, is actually completely flipped, his depression gone, him being better than in a long time. His staying on Earth is his strength, not his weakness as Zachariah (and an endless queue of other creatures afterwards) predicted it would be.
[Castiel away from heaven: expectations vs reality. Reality wins this time.]
Zachariah, the creator of the end!verse, likes to think of himself as a master manipulator, the minister of propaganda, the one messing with people’s minds. In reality, he misses the point so badly, as illustrated this season by his trying to get to Jack by showing him different images that totally miss the mark. He doesn’t understand the brothers, he doesn’t understand Castiel. (Do you remember his ”erotically codependent” line? Well, AU Zachariah puts them in one bedroom when he gives a vision to Jack, so there is that. Once again he missed the point, because the codependency is weakest ever this season.)
At the end of “The End” Dean tells Cas to never change – and yet Cas did change, and he changed not only because he stayed on Earth and because he was around Dean, but also because he was always destined to change. This change turned out to not be for the worse, as Zachariah was predicting and Dean dreaded. Zachariah may have understood fate, but he didn’t understand free will, choosing your own destiny – and he didn’t understand love.
I think (and hope) we are about to see Dean in the situation where he will face AU Castiel, and by this he will see exactly what he was asking for when he asked Cas to never change at the end of 5×04. Because AU Castiel will be what Cas would have turned out to be if he had stayed with heaven, with Zachariah, with Michael, if he hadn’t choose free will. If he didn’t change. Our Cas made his own choices, he didn’t end up Zachariah’s way (depressed and broken), or heaven’s way (robo-Castiel, soldier for life). Dean tried to keep Cas from Dean’s own terrible influence, but in reality Dean’s influence was the best that could’ve happened to Cas, as we can see now – facing this new, ultimate apocalypse he is in better place than ever. Dean and Cas must eventually see it too.
[Compare and contrast: Cas waiting 2009 AD and Cas waiting 2018 AD]
Another good difference is the fact that this time around Sam is not gone, Sam is not dead (any more)(even though he is bound to Lucifer again – owing your life to your abuser is a terrible connection, but it is one), he is at Dean’s side.
The question is: will the last similarity be Dean wishing he could say yes to Michael this time around as well (just like end!verse Dean did)? We’ll see. A lot of stuff is not like the end!verse, but Dean is still defeated because as much as he has grown since 2009, his self worth is still super low. He sees his only value in being useful, in helping people, saving people, and he fails miserably at it this year (in his own mind, that is). He couldn’t save his family members, and even though they all came back to him now, he counts it as a loss, and a failure in his self-hating mind.
HE IS SO DESPERATE FOR A WIN, HE CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT.
I think he if says yes to Michael, our Michael, it will be to get rid of the other Michael – which at the moment sounds like the title idea from the book of worst possible ideas (dude, Michael is a monster, and if you think our Michael will be better than AU Michael, you are delusional), and I think in the long run it will be his win – just like Cas choosing to save Jack sounded like the worst possible idea last year, and we know how that turned out.
Bonus points if he repeats endverse!Dean’s arguments.
In the meantime he will “die”, and then will come back. “Death” and resurrection, always the point of change, and a change for the better it will be – since it would be almost impossible for it to be a change for the worse right now. Dean is following Cas’ story – Dean will follow Cas’ path to recovery, to getting better (choice that seems bad that will turn out to be a good choice that will lead to good stuff, to death and to resurrection as a better man) that will in the meantime be painful for everybody involved.
This end!verse we are living right now is 1000 times better than the Zachariah-created one, but Dean still doesn’t see it. He still is sitting too deeply in his own issues, and there must come something huge that will turn his existence upside down for him to finally see that the self-sacrificing, depressing ending where everybody dies is not The End anymore.
Just as the viewers have to finally see it.
👆👆👆👆👆 YES YES YES
I am so freaking glad someone finally made a beautiful post that puts into words what I’ve been thinking (and feeling) about Apocalypse World all season long. Gorgeous. Thank you.
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