There are a few details I noticed in the last episode that I can’t stop thinking about. The main mysterious events bringing the brothers to town all went the same way: mysterious man appearing in front of the victim, a flash of light, then the victim disappeared and all that was left was clothes and some sort of herb powder on them.
All the explanations along the way made sense to me, until I saw the article about that herb – yarrow (Achillea millefolium) – on Sam’s laptop. Then I was a bit like… okay, since when does yarrow have yellow flowers? It’s usually white, sometimes with a pink hue, and there are some garden species that are red, but I couldn’t find any yellow ones when I tried.
Later, when Dean and Sam were sneaking into that witch’s house, there was a long dramatic zoom onto some tansy (Tancetum vulgare) growing nearby, and I was confused even more. Tansy actually HAS yellow flowers, and leaves kind of similar to those of yarrow, but they are definitely two very different plants – here’s yarrow:
and here’s tansy (definitely not yarrow):
Did the research really fail that much? Or more likely, why did someone change the information on purpose? Because that whole Professor Farqus article is copied from Wikipedia (oh come on, it’s readable, of course someone would have noticed this), so whoever prepared this, they kind of must have seen the proper information, and the exact picture from Wikipedia [on the left] looks like it has been photoshopped [screencap from the show on the right] to make the flowers yellow:
And, by the way – both tansy and yarrow have a fresh, green, bitter smell, kind of like absinthium, but none of them smells like “flowery-flowers”. Even more mess. It might all be mistakes, or random changes, but if it is not, then there’s the question – why would somebody fiddle with this so much and try to mix both of these plants in?
You see, the herbs here have some fun medical use. Tansy repels parasites, and has also been used to end an unwanted pregnancy and bring on menstrual bleeding. Yarrow, on the other hand, has been long known for its blood-clotting effects and therefore used to treat minor wounds, abrasions and burns, and is also known as bad man’s plaything, devil’s nettle, thousand seal, soldier’s woundwort, and seven year’s love.
And if we look at Dean’s current state, and at how the plant was used in a spell that returned him to his Mark-of-Cain-free younger body (and soul, apparently), every single one of these names seems a little bit too meaningful. Most of the common names of the plant relate to bleeding, to something it can stop and heal. With this rule applied to other names, bad man & devil ones are pretty obvious. Then there’s the thousand seal – sounds like something very old and very permanent, burned where it belongs since forever and for forever. And the Mark would be almost like that, but it kind of lacks stability; it’s not a scar, it’s a wound still bleeding, turning Dean from a hunter to a stone-cold killer, making him more of a murderer than a soldier fighthing a good fight – hence the soldier’s woundwort. And even his drinking problem – now, as he is like a fourteen year old, there’s seven years till he can drink again, remember what Sam said? Hell of a detox. Tansy’s anti-parasite properties are a nice addition to this all.
And if I’m reading too much into this, then well, how about a little more too much – tansy essential oil (made of Tanacetum annuum, though, not the most common Tanacetum vulgare) is of a beautiful shade of blue. Darker and much more concentrated than angel’s Grace in a vial, but my mind still wants to see the connection, and we have already seen a fallen (=darker) angel’s powers help revert the effects of Mark of Cain on Dean.
Finally, there’s some additional meaning to what Dean did in the end of the episode. To save people, he decided to come back to his older self, the one affected by the Mark. He burned the witch and also burned the hex bag, which probably contained the herbs. Made it impossible to use the spell again, but what I’m thinking about is – incense. It’s not really medical use, but we’re talking the supernatural here and as far as I know, if you want their magic to work, then burning the herbs is one of the most popular ways to go. This is used for protection, divination and purification of a place or person. And the whole idea of a spell is based on concentrated will of the one who wants to perform it, and balancing the offering and the effect.
When Dean accepted the Mark, he basically sacrificed his humanity to be able to kill Abbadon; the magic worked then. (Kind of like tansy works: you’ll get rid of parasites, but it’s also toxic and you’re probably gonna feel that later. Also, killed worms release toxins of their own.) And now his main goal is getting rid of the Mark, cleansing himself, but he is not going to let other humans be killed to achieve this. We’ve just seen his peace of mind, his chance to be normal again, given up in order to save others; he burned the monster, didn’t let anything more bad happen to Tina, and she got a fresh start that she actually wanted.
There is good coming out of Dean’s actions; the Mark’s still there, but this was already an act of self-sacrifice (which is the Winchester way, as we know, and Dean is a Winchester and it’s his strength, as Charlie had reminded in 10×11). And there is no more powerful offering than this. Maybe it’s the first step, one of those that were supposed to cost Dean dearly, according to Metatron. This thing has to go, then burn it off. Smite me, throw me into the fucking Sun. I know there’s all this river and source yet unexplained symbolism, but I feel all of this – it’s going to end in fire somehow.
Sorry to be That Guy but man, I cannot get over the silent dialogue these two have going on. There’s that moment that Dean knows he’s on the hook and has only seconds to decide what to do.
His first instinct, of course, is to make excuses, slap the controls to turn it off, and bluster about how awful (read: unmanly) that was like he did in that deleted scene from 8.20. You can see it in the way he opens his mouth and snaps it shut again, how he steels himself to glance at Sam.
And then there’s Sam’s prompting gesture: “Hey, this crap’s still on, turn it off! You’re not just gonna let that play in the Impala, are you?!”
That’s when he makes his decision. Yeah. Yeah he is just gonna let that play. As Castiel once quoted him: why the Hell not? He’s already copped to liking it in the first place, and so much the better if it pesters his little brother.
This is the first glimmer of S8!Dean we’ve seen in a long while. I’m inclined to consider it Dean’s way of agreeing with the optimism that Sam displayed in the beginning of the episode: he does still have the capacity to grow and improve and get better. Possibly the most important element of this is that it indicates Dean himself believes that what “getting better” truly means is not aping his brother’s “health nut” lifestyle, but being his own person: out from under John’s shadow, outside the rigid box of macho Male Platonic Ideal gender performance he’s been stuffed into, out in the open about things he likes for the sheer sake of them being enjoyable.
And if you zeroed in on the number of times I said “out” in that sentence you are right on track.
10/10 for the commentary. It explains so well why this made me ridiculously happy tonight. I literally squealed and did a fist-pump when he left it on. It felt like a victory. This is the Dean I love. I get all tingly just thinking about it ❤
Dylan Everett playing Young Dean, he knocked it out of the park. Here’s a kid who’s played a young version of Dean before, but it was Young Dean, and here and now he was challenged to play Present Dean in a younger body, and to come onto a set and to take on a character that’s been portrayed by another actor for years, and to put in the performance that he did, I as an audience member and as a huge fan of the show and as someone who is highly protective of this character that I have been playing for the past ten years, I was very impressed, and I was very pleased.
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