#and the parallels are always deep and pointing to it being requited... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

handlewithkara · 3 years

Text

What I take away from Supernatural’s ending

Well the first thing I take away that once again creators are way too in love with killing their characters at the end (I wanted to say male ones, but TVD had a similar ending and I think they had a female showrunner). I often wonder if for some of them it’s almost a therapeutic step to get closure after being on a job for a long time. Or whether there is some sort of childish primal “I made it, I destroy it” in there, or wanting to make sure that the show can’t easily be revived and for somebody else to write their creations again.

It appears the Supernatural TPTB have gone on record on twitter that their finale was heavily impacted by Covid, that they originally wanted to do a lot more guest stars but couldn’t get them. If so, that probably contributed a lot to the finale being THAT brother focused. I will say though, though personally I would always be in the camp of telling people not to be unrealistic, if there was ever a show that could “Snydercut” their own finale, it would be this finale. Not to the extent of changing anything major, but they could easily do isolated scenes of the various characters in heaven and just cut them into the montage of Dean driving.

However, I don’t think that Covid is a substantial enough excuse for some of the creative choices they made. Most notably they could have followed up on Castiel’s big confession simply by giving Dean dialogue with the characters he did interact with in the finale (or even worst case by talking to himself). They had opportunities to handle it within the circumstances they were in and they did not take it. Again I wonder whether they thought they were doing fans a favor by leaving it open so everybody can project in their own truth, but I personally think this is pretty cowardly (especially since they could have addressed it more within dialogue and still keep Dean’s exact feelings vague).

I have said before that what struck me as baiting about the way the Destiel situation was handled wasn’t that Castiel confessed or even that his feelings might potentially not be requited. I always had a sinking feeling that they never had any intention of having Dean reciprocate on screen romantically (think the “friend” description line in the script) [so again they might have been thinking of it as a favor to keep it open]. Yet to me having a clearly onesided gay love would have been less baiting. In that case the writers could have reasoned plausibly that this is just the arc they see for Castiel. It would have fallen into other negative tropes like tragic!gay! but it wouldn’t have been baiting. If either following scenes had made it clear that Dean doesn’t see him “that way” or if the writers at least had gone on record and made it clear that that is the end of Castiel’s tale. It would have been disappointing but at least fans would have known exactly what they were in for. What makes the confession “baity” is Dean’s lack of response, which “baits” people to keep watching to see how he will respond (only to have exactly that never happen).

My last takeaway is on the nature of speculation and prediction.

1.) Temper your expectations. Generally, whenever the fans look for symbolism and “signs” in the text... just halve on whatever complexity you expect out of the writers. And then halve that again. IMO most shows are much simpler than people think. Yes, sometimes they surprise us with the occasional callbacks to the past and yes sometimes they do employ very simple elements of parallelism, but 10 times out of 10 whatever the fans think is way more detailed than what the writers think of.

2.) Speculation fans who call their fellow fans “honey” are always a bad sign. It’s too often an indicator of people who think they have the truth when everybody else doesn’t, which again, usually a bad sign. Refer back to point 1 on that.

3.) As much as I personally highly doubted that there was a big chance that the show was going to have Dean unambiguously reciprocate romantic feelings and as much as I’m highly dubious of fans using highly specific symbolism as clues or refering back to episodes 5 seasons back and use it as surefire clues of how the finale is going to pan out, I don’t think that some of the other speculations were so off the wall. A confession like Castiel’s does raise an expectation that it should at least be addressed in some way. Similarly, despite me being doubtful about how they would handle this, I did at least highly expect Castiel to be in the finale in some way. I’m not a hardcore SPN fan at all, but even I was aware that the show heavily used a promo picture of 4 characters (Sam, Dean, Castiel and Jack) to promote the season. Add to that TPTB explicitly singling out Castiel in their various social media posts in regards to thanking people and shouting him out as to what the show was about, giving interviews about the finale being about the family Sam and Dean have built around them, it was enough for me to expect that finale would be more about how how the family has grown to be beyond just Sam and Dean, so for it to be just them mostly felt like them reverting.

Granted, this might just be me being grumpy that my expectations were wrong and hence me looking to Covid as an explanation to say: I didn’t read the signs wrong, it’s not that I read the show (family is SamDean+the friends they made along the way) differently from the writers (Sam and Dean to the exclusion of anything else).

In the end, this element reminds me the most of Supergirl and how fans have very different read on which parts of the story are “the important bit”. Is it sisters over everything or is it space family or the whole gang or is it Kara over everything? It is about Kara’s human connections or is it about Kara’s mission as a hero? Is Kara as a symbol a burden to be discarded or a good thing to be celebrated? And those are the things that a finale ends up having the final say on and those questions are often frustrating because usually those are multiple valid point of views that both have copious perceived “evidence” and they are heavily influenced by personal preference and personal experience.

Above all, the Supernatural ending has for me strengthened my unease with speculation and prediction and acting like something is a sure thing. That’s why I don’t really like predicting things, why I want to focus more on the things we already got. Because speculation is treacherous. I will still look at various elements of foreshadowing, but I want to do it more as a tool of judgement rather than as a tool of prediction. Less “they built up vigilante Alex, so this WILL happen” and more “they built so much effort into setting up this situation, it would feel haphazard if they didn’t follow up on it at all”.

I think people should never make the mistake that anything shown in a show is a promise to them. I think you can try to signal to the show that the fact that there is foreshadowing means that if it came true, you would find it extremely awesome, because fans love stuff like that. But never make the mistake of assuming you know where TPTB are going and that it’s a sure thing (and the further back your evidence lies, imo the less likeyl it is to still be relevant to the writers in any meaningful way, that’s why “they have been foreshadowing this since season 1!!!!” usually doesn’t impress me at all). Again, reduce your expectations of complexity and then reduce it again. It’s not that deep, writens usually are busy people, with hectic lives who don’t spend nearly as much time watching old episodes as fans do.

#spn #supergirl

3 notes · View notes

ariainstars · 5 years

Text

The Last Skywalker or Homecoming of the Children or It’s About Family

This is my very own interpretation of the outcome of the Star Wars saga and its wrap-up, after having rewatched the movies twice last year as well as made researches in the web and thought about it for some time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The final battle on Crait in TLJ mirrors, with many visual parallels, Anakin’s assault on the Jedi Temple in ROTS, which had its terrible climax in the annihilation of the Jedi children padawans. In Kylo’s case, the attack is a total failure: the Resistance escapes, and Rey has brought with her the sacred Jedi texts from Ahch-To ensuring that their philosophy will not die.

In the final scene on Crait we see a frame of Kylo’s / Ben’s face which shows the opposite of Anakin / Vader after the battle at the Temple - on his knees instead of standing, bathed in white instead of yellow-reddish light, bare-headed instead of shadowed, his features vulnerable instead of hardened, his eyes directed up at his left instead of down at his right. That this story is going in the opposite direction of the prequels, closing up the saga making a circle and leading Ben Solo to his redemption, is undeniable.

Ben’s anger against his family led to nothing, and he wanted to eliminate Snoke to be free of him, not because he had an ambition for power; he strained for freedom and purpose and belonging with Rey, whom he feels as his equal. But we have already seen that General Hux would not hesitate to kill the new Supreme Leader at the first occasion; so it would not surprise me if the next and last chapter of the saga would begin with an act of state which would disempower Kylo / Ben and force him to flee across the galaxy, kicking over the traces. He killed Snoke to become the master of his own fate at last, thus mirroring and growing beyond Anakin, who had told Padmé he could overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy with her but remained Palpatine’s slave until shortly before his death. Both Anakin and Ben are no leaders or governors by nature; as Force users, their task is the galaxy’s spiritual welfare, not its political union. However, this union will not be possible unless the populations know and feel that there is an all-encompassing ideal behind it, that of a Force being and remaining in balance.

Although many fans lamented its seeming lack of purpose, in my opinion Finn’s and Rose’s journey to Canto Bight was pivotal for TLJ. It was important that they meet D.J. and hear his point of view as an outsider, i.e. that war is a dirty business which only makes people rich who have no qualms selling weapons (often to both sides), and that every kind of war is useless in the long run because “you blow them up today, they blow you up tomorrow.”

Even more important, in my opinion, is their encounter with the enslaved children who take care of the fathiers. These children seem insignificant sidekicks, emphasized by the fact that they only communicate with Finn and Rose through gestures and by the end we hear one of them speaking in an alien language; thus, they seem estranged to the story. Nevertheless, in all three scenes when they appear their features are very clearly discernible, including the few seconds when Finn observes them through the binoculars.

The children enjoy the fathier’s liberation because they would love to have the opportunity to run away, too. And the ending scene of TLJ shows that one of these children is a Force user and that he dreams about being a Jedi - a parallel with Anakin, who was a slave himself and dreamt, when he was a child, of being a Jedi and coming to free Tatooine’s slave population. (Another small detail: Cantonica, too, is a planet almost entirely covered in desert.)

The role of children in Star Wars always is very important. Anakin’s friends on Tatooine were slaves like himself, but the Jedi padawans we see at the temple don’t seem to be in an enviable position either: they are separated from their families at a very young age and taught to learn emotional detachment, since Jedi are not supposed to have close connections. In AotC and RotS we see how the affectionate and protective Anakin cannot endure his isolation, and how his intelligence criticizes the Jedi’s chief interest in politics and their lack of compassion. (As in the classic trilogy, it always comes up to him to speak the disagreeable truths nobody wants to hear.) His attitude results in setbacks and humiliations by the Jedi, who are convinced of being unquestionably in the right. All of this, in a chain reaction beginning with his mother’s cruel and senseless death, leads to his damnation; even though they had no really evil intentions, the Jedi were for a large part responsible for the disaster initiated by the future Emperor and then continued by him and his apprentice, turned into the ruthless Darth Vader.

Anakin’s ultimate moment of damnation is the carnage of the Jedi children, who were completely innocent and who additionally, before he raised his light sabre against them, had approached him with respect and trust, even calling him “master”, obviously not knowing that the Jedi had humiliated him additionally by denying him the title.

If we now assume that Kylo Ren’s / Ben Solo’s journey is basically an inversion of Anakin’s fate, it seems most logical to me to assume that he will have to meet the Canto Bight children (maybe also other children, but I would assume these, since they were already introduced in detail) and to find his future by bonding with them.

Let us consider his character as we have known him until now. Ben does not seem aggressive and violent in his nature, he has to hide behind Kylo Ren’s mask to do his evil deeds. On Crait he makes a fool of himself; the only successfully cruel act he commits bare-headed is Han’s killing, which he only manages because Han lets him do it, and which traumatizes him to the point that he can’t kill any more except in self-defence. During his interactions with Rey we meet a timid, awkward youngster, who is however also patient (he never gets angry despite Rey’s repeated aggression) and empathic (he is the one who listens to her and supports her after her experience in the Dark Side cave).

Kylo’s / Ben’s personality, like Anakin’s / Vader’s, is torn in two, but the fracture is much less deep, which can also be seen from the names: while Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader sound perfectly dissimilar, there is not much difference between Kylo Ren and Solo Ben. He is not physically maimed and handicapped like his grandfather, amply shown when he easily takes off his mask, when we see him shirtless, or when he offers Rey his hand - the right one, which distinctively is not a robotic hand. Luke could sense Vader’s inner conflict, proof that this conflict was always there but so deeply buried that only a Force-sensitive close blood relative could feel it; while Kylo’s / Ben’s outbursts of anger show that his own conflict is much more below the surface.

We can only conjecture what led Kylo to kill his own father; Snoke called it a “test” for him, probably threatening to kill Kylo himself if he didn’t commit the deed, but we do sense that there is also some personal reason. When he says to his father that Ben was “a weakling and a fool who deserved to die”, this leads us to understand that he has never learned to accept his introverted, thoughtful and vulnerable nature, even less to value it: Ben is practically his roguish, charming, good-looking father’s opposite. Knowing Snoke, he probably threw salt into Ben’s low self-esteem making him believe that by giving up the name and life of Ben Solo and becoming “the mighty Kylo Ren”, a persona modelled on Vader’s example, he would become someone “strong” as opposite to his attitude towards the Ben Solo persona. For the purpose, Snoke suggested that Ben had to kill his father, of whom he allegedly “has the heart”. But the exact contrary happens: Ben is traumatized by the act and finally understands that Snoke only used him (proving that Han’s words to him were right), destroys Kylo’s mask and never speaks to Snoke or even looks at him again. Allowing Ben to kill him, Han committed his last and most significant act of heroism - forcing his son to look at him while he committed the deed, the horror of which never leaves him again. This closes the cycle to Anakin, who had first become a killer, annihilating the tusken village, after his mother’s senseless death.

As we know Anakin when he is a child, he is intelligent, fort-right, self-assured and supportive of others. When we see him again in AotC, he is a padawan - frustrated, isolated, suffocated by the Jedi’s expectations and the lack of chances they offer him, and burdened by his master’s lack of faith in him. The child he was seems gone for good. (Another parallel: his son Luke, who had grown up with his aunt and uncle in a normal family until he was about twenty, is a pure, authentic soul full of dreams and ideals, and we even see him play with a toy aircraft in one scene on Tatooine.) We have never seen, until now, a “normal” family with mother, father and children in the saga; our heroes grew up in surrogated families or without one altogether, like in Han’s or Rey’s case. We can only speculate how far Ben Solo’s family was “normal”; their parent’s marriage was difficult, his mother busy with politics, and he was sent to training to his uncle at a young age - we do not exactly know when, but he assuredly wasn’t an adult yet. This is a big hint, for me, that peace throughout the galaxy will be possible if children could grow up in a safe place, well-educated but also loved and respected. The purpose of peace, in my opinion, is always to make the concept of a home possible. Superficially seen, Star Wars is a story of Good and Evil, but it’s not; it’s about Love and War.

At the end of TLJ, Ben is in love with Rey, but his feelings are not requited and now he has no one to whom he can offer them. I believe it would be a godsend for Ben to meet the children and learn to love them and be responsible for them. Among other things this would make him grow and find again the child he once was, the son of Han and Leia who, despite the mistakes they made with him, most certainly loved him. When they meet again in TFA, Leia immediately takes responsibility speaking with her husband, saying that she never should have sent their son away from home. She was convinced that her brother, the Jedi, would protect him, but by now she has understood that in his family sphere he would have been safer from Snoke’s evil influence. At the end of RotJ Luke was already showing the emotional detachment he retained until TLJ; this was, on the long run, neither good for him nor for his pupils. He could teach them the ways of the Force, but his wisdom was not enough to protect them. Tragically, and unknowingly, as a master he had gone a similar path as Obi-Wan and Yoda, who were wise but not truly compassionate because the Jedi ways had taught them to be detached, i.e. not to really care. Luke could not offer his nephew the comfort of a home, and this probably applied to his other students as well. Spiriting a dozen of powerful young men off to a distant planet, away from the happenings in the galaxy and without distinct purpose, and trying to teach them to suppress their emotions, Luke was unwittingly sitting on a powder keg, repeating on a smaller scale the disaster that had been caused by the Jedi Order during the times of the Old Republic. The young man who once was compassion incarnate became, ironically, uncaring precisely due to his commitment to the Jedi rules. Only after being shaken by Rey’s anger and later by Yoda’s advice he finds back to himself one last time and projects his image to Crait in order to rescue his sister and apologize to his nephew, giving up his life in the process.

If there is anything we can learn about the Jedi is that they were no heroes; Luke truly was a hero, but he was not infallible, and his story also teaches that being a hero is not a happy and fulfilling task. As beautiful as the classic trilogy is, it’s a story about longing for the past, about the desire to bring back the “past order”. None of the rebels seems to consider that the old Republic can’t have been all that good if it enabled the rise of the Empire or at least couldn’t foresee it. What the galaxy needs is not the old, but a new order, and children are demonstrative of a fresh and better start.

Ben Solo is the last from the Skywalker blood, and the Skywalkers are notoriously family men: Anakin wanted nothing more than a home. He got mad with grief when his mother died, he married although he was not supposed to, and the day Padmé told him that she was pregnant he declared that it was the happiest day of his life. Luke himself, even before knowing so, always did anything he could and ignoring the risks, to save and keep his family together (his sister, his father) and adding to it (befriending Han, who by marrying Leia became his brother-in-law). It’s when the Sykwalkers are united as a family that the galaxy is at peace. Ben has turned his back on his family feeling rejected and betrayed; all we see him do with the First Order’s means has only one aim, finding Luke and confronting him with all of his pent-up anger. So we can assume that he is not cold towards his family but on the contrary feels a lot for it, else he would not be so frustrated and disappointed. But by the end of TLJ Luke as well as Han’s dice, his last keepsake, have dissolved; a sign that his anger has literally gone up in smoke.

We have heard repeatedly the opinion other people had of Ben: his parents and his uncle feared that he might be or become like Vader, Snoke accused him of having his father’s heart… but in my opinion, Ben shows his Skywalker blood most by having, like all of them, his mother’s heart. In TESB Han pointed out that Leia would not be so angry with him if she didn’t care; and it was always she who comforted the others when they were hurt or traumatized. Ben killed Snoke in cold blood, but his extremely aggressive demeanour against Luke shows that he still cares a lot about his uncle; and in the scenes with Rey we have repeatedly seen his underlying compassionate nature. Although he is raw and immature, we feel his mother’s passionate heart in him. He has his father’s shrewdness at times, but the way he feels comes all from Leia.

Once again, the saga’s love for figurative speech helps us, emphasizing the theory of Ben Solo’s redemption: at the beginning we met a child who had no father, and the young man who is his reincarnation is the only one whose sword has the form of a cross. I do not doubt that Ben Solo will indeed “finish what his grandfather started”, as he had promised. He is the Chosen One now, Anakin being dead. That is also the main reason why I’m sure Ben will not die in the end: in Darth Vader we already had a figure who died for his sins and it would be unoriginal, mildly speaking, to simply go there again. But most importantly, Vader had left something good in the galaxy in form of his two children. If Kylo / Ben dies, the power he has inherited from his grandfather, his loving upbringing by his parents and the teachings from his uncle will all be gone with him, too: which would mean that the Skywalker family was begotten only to bring death and terror to the galaxy. This family was always meant to bring peace and stability, but it was often prevented from doing so by influences stronger than them.

The last Skywalker is now free from all outward influence - Snoke, his father, his uncle; and he has no past sins to repair for but his own, differently from Luke who spent the rest of his life trying to atone for Vader’s crimes. Ben finally has the freedom to make his own choices and to go his own way; he is the last Skywalker, but he is also the first who must learn to live without a father figure. In theory, he could now go anywhere: Snoke (albeit not voluntarily) left him his power, Luke his knowledge, Han his love.

Many viewers are of the opinion that Kylo Ren can’t hold a candle to Darth Vader in his villainous role. But this is deliberate: the tormented galaxy does not need another Vader. When the saga began, the central figure was Darth Vader, the Dark, the Evil Father; yet as we meet him when he is a child, he is the Good Son. When we first see Kylo he is the Evil Son; so narratively, I assume that his goal is that of becoming the Good Father. With a family of his own, the last Skywalker would finally find his balance and thus, bring peace to the galaxy.

On a side note, Ben may have an encounter with his grandfather aided by the Force, in order to get to know him how he truly was: an affectionate, protective person whose alleged “power” as Darth Vader hid the tragedy of a torn soul and dismembered body.

I am not quite certain about the galaxy’s political goal, but I would suggest that the only viable solution would be through matriarchy; the few working political systems we briefly know of are Naboo under Padmés rule and Alderaan under Breha’s, both of whom queens. In any case, none of them was a Force user; they did not reign using the Force the way Anakin / Vader / Kylo wanted. But not being Force users, they had never been padawans: thus they had not learned their caring and responsible attitude from the Jedi.

Ben Solo is by now the only known person in the galaxy who was actually trained in the ways of the Jedi and also knows the Dark Side. (In theory there are also the Knights of Ren, but their destiny is unknown as of yet.)

I believe it will be Ben’s task, together with Rey who is his equal in the Force, to find and keep a new and better balance in the Force without suppressing the Dark Side, and growing Force-sensitive children in a more natural way; not separating them from their families (respectively giving them one in case they don’t have it), not teaching them emotional detachment but compassion, and leaving them the choice as to whether they want to become Jedi or not. (Keep in mind: the Skywalker men from all three generations had the ambition of becoming pilots, and were pushed into becoming Jedi because it seemed to be the right thing for them. None of them actually wanted or ever was happy with being a Jedi.)

Most viewers were irritated on first seeing Kylo’s face without the mask: the reason for that being that his looks are diametrically opposite to Vader’s, he inspires trust and sympathy instead of fear. My assumption is that Ben would win the children’s confidence easily, and that his connection with them would lead to his salvation. Also, the girl he loves and whom he saw as “his” right from the beginning is someone who desires nothing more than a family, which would give both of them what they truly need - a home, and a sense and purpose in life. This would at last put an end to one of the central rules of the Jedi Code, which is that they are not supposed to marry and have families of their own. Ben Solo is the father figure the Skywalker family, and with him the whole galaxy, has been waiting for.

Carrie Fisher, whenever she was asked why she thought the saga was so loved, allegedly always answered “It’s about family.” This is perfectly true: the importance of an intact family where children can grow protected and loved is perhaps the most crucial theme of the entire story. And what makes Ben’s and Rey’s relationship so touching and inspires so many people to think and dream about them is that we instinctively feel why they fit so well: officially they impersonate Dark and Light side of the Force, but deep down they both are lost children, who desperately wish for nothing more than a home.

The technical preliminaries fit to this theory, too - George Lucas is father or three adopted children himself, and he sold the rights to the third trilogy of the saga to Disney, a production firm that knows like no other how to tell family stories and happy endings.

Narratively, it would close the circle with the other third chapters of the saga, which also deal with a return, a reckoning: after the revenge of the Sith and the return of the Jedi, now it would be time for the ones who are neither one nor the other to have a chance.

I am quite certain Ben and Rey two are meant to be together, but not on their own. Their task is to start another Skywalker story, one that is about love and not power. Ben and Rey are the beginning of the new Skywalker family, one to which everyone is invited, boy or girl, from a good family or poor and abandoned, Force-sensitive or not; the Canto Bight children are only the beginning. The “Reylo” love story so many fans are imagining these days is, in my opinion, a red herring just as Rey’s family background was in TFA, when after all of the speculating and fantasizing whose child she was, she turned out to be an absolute nobody. Her name was a dead giveaway, by the way - “Rei” in Japanese means “zero”. I know more than one Japanese manga or anime where the protagonist is named Rei which hints at her not having a belonging or family, and having to find her place in life through her own abilities and the friends she makes.

Ben’s name makes things clear, too: he bears the name Obi-Wan assumed while he was in exile; Obi-Wan / Ben was a Jedi, a mentor and a father figure, so now it’s up to Ben Solo to pick up this task.

The relationship between Ben and Rey will not lead to a grand romance but to their “place in all this”: as mother and father. The authors are drawing wool over our eyes to keep up the suspense and make us imagine all sorts of romantic outcomes, or terrible retaliations in store for Kylo / Ben, instead of the obvious truth staring in our faces.

Anakin never found another home after he had to leave his mother on Tatooine. His marriage to Padmé was secret, so they could never share a home together and present themselves in public as husband and wife. His children never knew him the way he was; and later they didn’t talk to anyone about him, Ben learned only at age 23 that the infamous Darth Vader was actually his grandfather. Luke had forgiven him and called him “father”, but even he didn’t accept the truth of his heritage, he tried to amend for the evil his father had done, but never learned about the good man he had once been. As for Leia, who had been imprisoned and tortured by him, she probably never wanted to waste a thought on him.

But Ben, who is Anakin’s reincarnation, reinstalled his place in the family the moment he called him “grandfather” in TFA. And if he manages to have a family in the end, Anakin, too will at last have come home again.

This is what I think the scene at the ending of TLJ is anticipating: we see the Force-sensitive boy sweeping the platform in front of the stables and then dreaming about being a Jedi, lifting the handle of the broom which in the starlight begins to gleam like it was a light sabre. The platform recalls a stage, and the little boy is not dreaming but, effectively, playacting.

Message received: free the stage, it’s time for us - the galaxy’s children.

#star wars #episode IX #speculation #anakin skywalker #ben solo #kylo ren #padme amidala #leia organa #darth vader #canto bight #ben kenobi #luke skywalker #jedi order #reylo #bendemption #save ben solo #read more

20 notes · View notes