mittensmorgul:

Dean obviously played a vital role in reuniting Chuck and Amara, light and dark, and I’ve been having a lot of thoughts on why. In a really gross oversimplification, I made the comment, “Amara wanted to be with Dean, Chuck wanted to be him,” which is a cliche often applied to rock stars and other popular famous people, but is literally true in Dean’s case here.

These two polar opposite forces that essentially make up everything in the universe both found something valuable in Dean. But this wasn’t the first time Dean’s been elevated as a prime example of Humanity, to the point where even using “Dean” and “Humanity” in a single sentence has probably already conjured pages and pages worth of associations for anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes in fandom. It’s really convenient, because it saves me a lot of typing here. 😛

*for anyone scratching their head and going “HUH?” please see: 1.12, 2.13, the entire s4-5 apocalypse arc, 6.11, Dean’s time in Purgatory,9.02 and Abaddon’s proclamation that he was the perfect vessel, 9.11 and the start of the MoC arc, as well as Metatron’s declarations and all the other angels’ declarations that Cas has always only cared about saving this one man, s10 which was largely about saving this one man, and which was accomplished in 10.23 to the detriment of the rest of the universe, and s11 which was largely about Dean’s “atonement” for all the sins of his own past, the shortcomings of his ancestors via his familial history with the MoC, coming to terms with himself as a whole being with both dark and light parts, and finally righting the original wrong done to the universe by reuniting Chuck and Amara. THAT was a really long sentence but likely saved me 5k of writing, so BOOM.*

Bonus:

Originally posted by cutiebymon

I know this line of thinking has fueled so many “Divine Dean” headcanons over the years (some of which I’ve even participated in), but looking back over the years, and especially in light of Chuck’s revelations since 11.20, I am now absolutely convinced that seeing Dean as anything other than the apex of Humanity is selling him short. And that includes reframing him as divine in any way.

After getting to know Chuck (as god who PREFERS to be called Chuck and perpetuate his own sham of borrowed humanity, via his mimicry of everything we’ve always associated as “Dean things”) and Amara, I can’t help but see them both as mind-bogglingly powerful, but also by nature extremely limited beings. They spent an eternity existing in perfect balance with one another before Chuck locked her away in order to, in his words, make “something more than just us, something better than us.”

Not only that, but at the very end of the universe, both he and Amara had turned all of their attention toward Dean. Since Amara first appeared to Dean, she’s been “fascinated” by him. Having never known anything other than the perfect balance she’d always enjoyed with her brother (until she’d been locked away), it’s easy to see why she (like practically every other character ever) was also drawn to Dean and fascinated by him. After all, he represented the only living being who’d ever been a vessel for the Darkness (until the MoC was removed).

During early s11, there was rampant speculation that Amara may have already damaged Dean’s soul in some way, or even consumed it entirely. There was also speculation that EVERYTHING that Dean was experiencing was proof that some part of his soul was missing, or that some part of the Mark was still affecting him (and hence his “bond” with Amara). I personally never believed that Dean’s soul had been stolen or damaged, but I did struggle with explaining away their presumed bond.

In hindsight, I don’t think Amara’s bond was anything more than her attempt to control him, with the same sort of power that Chuck was throwing around toward the end of the season by booping Sam and Dean around the bunker. Granted, Chuck didn’t directly attempt to mind-control Dean, but that certainly doesn’t mean he was incapable of doing it if he so chose to. He just had more respect for the free will he’d included in the kit to even try it.

I honestly, now, believe that Amara’s “bond” with Dean was entirely of her own making. It may have fed into Dean’s borderline suicidal desire to just end it all and fling himself into the sun (as he asked Cas to do for him should he lose control again in s10, and as he asked Death to do for him in 10.23). Because the longer the season progressed, and certainly by the end of 11.17, Dean had all but become immune to Amara’s power to seduce him (see 11.18, when she first realized she’d lost the ability to control him, and 11.21 when she began to question why, even though she mistakenly attributed it to Chuck’s influence over him, we already saw Dean reject that desire for peaceful oblivion play out before Chuck even entered the picture).

Dean spent most of s11 confronting not only his self-destructive tendencies, but also beginning to wonder what really might make him happy. And in large part, he was pushed into that kind of introspection because his fear of succumbing to Amara drove him to it. And of course to took being entirely backed into a corner for Dean to begin confronting himself this critically. What took him from 11.04′s:

SAM: Really? You don’t … Ever want something more?
DEAN: I’m sorry, have you met us? We’re batting a whopping zero in domestic life, man. Goose eggs.
SAM: You don’t ever think about something? Not marriage or whatever. But … Something? You know, with a hunter? Somebody who understands the life?
DEAN: Have you not heard a single word Bob’s been singing about? You’re tired. I can tell. You’re exhausted. Well, I’m still wired, so I’m gonna pull over, get some gas. You hop in the back, get some Z’s ‘cause, buddy, you earned ‘em. Proud of ya! Piper. Mmm. Man, she smelled good, too.

to 11.19′s, “What’s it like, settling down with a hunter?” Dredging down deep all the way back to the pilot episode’s “No chick flick moments,” to finally admitting he loves chick flicks.

S11 hasn’t been about foreshadowing at all. (yes I’ve been yelling that since April) It’s been about slowly and steadily dismantling Dean’s past alongside the dismantling of all the wrongs that Chuck’s original act of locking Amara away has led to, and the subsequent unlocking of her via the final removal of the MoC and its influence over humanity (and especially over Dean himself). It’s been about Dean really beginning to understand himself as separate from his identity as a tool, as just a hunter, or as a pawn in a much larger game.

In order to unlock his full potential as an individual, and not as a tool for divine forces, or even as a divine sort of force himself, but as the very basic definition of Humanity itself, he also had to find balance for the Darkness he’d harbored by taking on “light,” and in his case that light took the form of a hundred thousand other human souls.

For Dean, that was the final step in, not rejecting divinity, but exemplifying himself as Humanity, which both Chuck and Amara have already indicated through their actions is without a doubt better than they are. For all humanity’s flaws, for all that we’re not perfect, perfection is not the goal.

Supernatural has NEVER held divinity to be superior to humanity. Divinity is inflexible, unchanging, incapable of growth. Humanity needed to evolve for anything truly interesting to happen in this universe, for music and poetry and art and passion and– yes hatred and war and loss and death happen too, but the entire point is that despite all that, we still reach for impossible and glorious things. And isn’t that incredible?

So for me, anyway, Dean is finally beginning to understand all of this, too. Yeah, he’s always talked the talk, choosing humanity and free will and people over any sort of a Divine Plan, but in 11.23, armed as the ultimate weapon against the Darkness and filled with the light of humanity, he chose acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding over his entire history of being labeled a weapon, a tool, and a pawn.

And because Chuck and Amara both used him as their example of “something better than us,” Dean’s choice in that moment saved everything.

Chuck said this to Amara in 11.22 when she accused him of creating the universe only so that he could feel “big”:

Chuck: That’s true. But it isn’t the whole truth. There’s a value, a glory in creation… that’s greater and truer than my pride or my ego. Call it grace, call it being! Whatever it is, it didn’t come from my hands. It was there… waiting to be born. It just is, as you and I just were. Since you’ve been freed, I know that you’ve seen it. Felt it.

And then Chuck looks to Dean, and then back to Amara. The unspoken, “And that’s where you saw and felt it, right there,” directed specifically and wholly at Dean Winchester.

They’ve both held Dean up as the reason that the universe will be okay with them gone from it now, not because of his essential Divinity as a replacement for their own, but because Humanity has now been elevated to a place of equality with the two forces of divinity that humanity holds in balance within itself.

Humanity is not only a representation of Light or Dark, Creation or Destruction, but the realization that there are also an infinite number of points between the two, and it’s only balanced between those things that life can happen at all.

Going forward into s12, I feel like Dean is finally free of the responsibility the universe laid on his shoulders to be that perfect vessel. He’s finally brought the whole journey full circle, the river has found its source, and wherever he goes from here is entirely, for once in his entire life, fully his own free choice. And isn’t that incredible?

Not to say that he doesn’t still have a long way to go personally, but as far as ever being considered as merely a “vessel,” I think his duty to the universe is well and truly fulfilled.

There’s another side to this about Dean’s ongoing journey of self-discovery that’s really only just begun now that this burden is gone, but I’ll explore that elsewhere since this is already so long. There’s also the matter of where this leaves Sam, and what it all means for Cas and his own connection to the divine as well as humanity. But that’s for another post.