And so ends Carver Era

deathbycoldopen:

…just as it began, with a blank slate.  Which, after a three-season arc stretched into four, is oh so refreshing.

The King is dead.  Long live the King.

And Dabb Era has kicked off with a simple yet crucial shift in focus: from two brothers and the sometimes toxic dynamic between them, to two sons and their relationship with their long-dead parents.

We’ve seen it over and over and over again through the past four seasons, amped up even more in season 11.  Following the same path, the same bad decisions, the same sacrifice play and the same drive for revenge, all it leads to is more of the same.  The Winchester merry-go-round, with no way to get off the ride.  And still, the Winchesters have continued on their not-so-merry way, because that’s the only path that they’ve been taught.  Even in tonight’s episode, they still kept on that same path.  Last week Sam offered to take on the Mark of Cain to trap Amara, and this week Dean offered up his life to kill Amara.

But Dean.  He’s spent the last four years in the middle of a transformation.  A trial by fire to show him other ways of living than the one he’s always been taught.  He hit rock bottom and then dug himself down even further, until finally there really was nowhere else to go but up.  And while he was down there, he finally saw the truth of the endless track he and Sam have been running along ever since Mary died on that ceiling, since Lucifer was cast out of Heaven, since God created the universe and Amara looked on it in jealousy.  Every iteration of the same damn story, the same ride spinning round and round.  Grief leads to anger, anger leads to more grief, and all that revenge and sacrifice just ends with Yoda shaking his head at the mangling of his quote.

So Dean got off the ride.

There was no sacrifice play.  No big explosion.  No slapping on a bandaid for future generations to worry about.  Just Dean and Amara, talking in a garden.  Just a reminder that family is about more than just the grand gestures, the fights and the sacrifices.  Family is about hating each other and loving each other all at once, light and dark together.  The cycle ends when those two things come together, light and dark, Chuck and Amara.

Which leaves the show and us with a new stage of family conflict.  Because family isn’t just siblings.  It’s also parents, and the legacies they leave their children, all the things that they taught them knowingly or unknowingly.  With Chuck reappearing on the show, those issues were brought back as well, the memory of John’s absence and the effect it had on the boys, the legacy of hunting and revenge that ruined so much of their lives.  And in 11x23, not only were the Men of Letters, the organization closely linked to legacy and Winchester fathers, given the thread of plot to set up next season; they were also matched by the reappearance of Mary Winchester.  Sam taken away by his father’s legacy, and Dean confronted with his mother’s.

The merry-go-round has stopped, and now it’s time to face the ones who set it spinning in the first place.