supernatural s2 is SO GOOD because every decision has more weight because the after life is still unknown to us. we know there is something after death but we don't know quite what that is. the season starts with tessa the reaper begging dean to come with her. to where? she cannot say. when john dies it’s devastating to the brothers that he’s no longer here but elsewhere. but it’s even more devastating as they come to the slow realization that elsewhere is probably hell, whatever that looks like. sam and dean don't know anything more than the audience does about hell.
there is an effort to exorcise the possessed and save them instead of letting them die because there is no promise of heaven to be made. the ghost in roadkill wants to know what happens when she crosses over and sam and dean just don’t know. where do the monsters go when they die? are there angels? is there a god? sam and dean don’t know. sam more than anything wants to believe. and secretly dean does too. but they just don’t know.
when sam dies where does he go? dean doesn’t know. we never get to see it. and more than that. does dean truly believe that he would be sent to the same hereafter as his brother after everything he has done? all dean knows is that there is a way to damn your eternal soul to hell and there is a way to bring his brother back from the unknown and he will choose that path without hesitation over and over and over again.
the second the angels are introduced we lose that sense of unknown. while the stakes are higher in seasons 4-5 the second we can see behind the curtain it’s over. yes you can damn the world and start the apocalypse but at least you KNOW. you know there is an afterlife. a heaven. a hell. a hereafter. and all the people who die will end up will end up where they belong so how guilty can you feel using a demon knife to kill an innocent? how wrong is it to drain the host for blood? they’ll end up in heaven after all. no more pain. and that is how only the winchester family drama becomes important to the brothers, because they KNOW the end is not the end. there’s more than just ghosts and demons and reapers. there is a heaven. and if there is a heaven every wrong bad thing in the narrative can be brushed away by the characters or the audience as “well at least they are at peace in heaven now.” they do this to jimmy novak and ash and pamela and lord knows who else.
season 2 sam and dean don’t have this opt out. every choice they make is so much heavier because they just. don’t. know.
So, we all know that Cas branded Dean’s soul with the handprint. And then in his last scene left a bloody handprint on Dean’s jacket.
But, have we ever considered that this last handprint was Cas letting dean go? Like, literally removing the handprint brand he left on his soul? That it’s Castiel saying, “I love you so much that I’m dying for you and freeing you from the claim I made on you. I know you are not mine even if I will always be yours and that’s ok. Please live a good life now that my burden is gone from you.”
And if that’s the case, do you think Dean could feel it? The mark being gone? Do you think that left an emptiness nothing else could fill and that’s one of the reasons he was so fine with dying? Because for the first time since he met him, there was truly nothing of Cas left on Earth or with Dean?
[ID. Digital art of Dean Winchester done in black lineart. He’s holding his own hand over Castiel’s handprint, which is red, and looking forlorn. When clicked, the transparency reveals Castiel with his wings and a halo, holding Dean by the waist and resting their foreheads together. End ID.]