This week, in honor of the Season 7 finale on Friday, I’ve decided to do a five-part meta about why I love flawed, beautiful, broken Season 7 so much.
Yesterday I explained how Season 7 was basically one long Descent/Eye of the Storm stage of the Heroine’s Journey for Dean Winchester, in which all of his weapons and resources were stripped away, one by one. Today: I look at the rest of the Heroine’s Journey stages and speculate on what they could mean for the season finale—and Season 8.
Previously: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
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The Descent stage might be bad, but what comes next is lethal: Once the protagonist has been stripped of all her weapons, the next stage in The Heroine’s Journey is Death. As I wrote last week:
In the Death stage, everything goes to hell at once. The Heroine is caught off guard when the villain comes back, and this time, the Heroine doesn’t have any of her weapons left to fight. The villain, intent on the Heroine’s destruction, and the Heroine believes there’s nothing she can do to stop it. She is utterly vulnerable. Everything is lost. She dies: She failed at her journey and accepts defeat.
Despite his shiny new leather coat (which serves as a visual metaphor for death and rebirth), I don’t think we’ve really seen Dean hit rock bottom yet. An entire season of loss, alcoholism, and grief haven’t really caught up to him so far – he’s just sort of pretending it didn’t happen at this point—and in fact, with most of the Leviathan Sword completed, he and Sam seem in good shape to take on Dick Roman.
That of course will be rectified in the finale. Everything will go to hell at once. For whatever reason, the sword won’t work, and all of Dean’s weapons that were stripped from him in the Descent stage will be shown to be useless once more. You’ll see Cas refuse to fight. Bobby will go vengeful spirit. Sam will somehow be neutralized and taken out of the fight (if the writers really want to be mean about it, they’d combine those last two; it’s what I would do). The Impala will come back, only to be destroyed. Frank will re-emerge, but he’ll be working for the Leviathan, and so on. You get the drill. Shit will hit the fan, and a point will come where it looks like there’s no way for Dean to win.
Spoilery Season 7 Goodness – And A Whole Lotta Speculation — Behind The Break:
