The Impala is often a stand-in for Dean’s soul, and I’m not the first person to draw this parallel between the bloody handprint on the car’s window and the scar on Dean’s shoulder.
I’m also not the first person to comment that every driver in this episode reflects something about Dean.
What I would like to comment on is that each driver reflect on the journey taken by Dean’s soul and who has had the charge of directing its course.
Here we have young, joy riding Jessie. The soul is not hers. But her job is to ferry it to a place where it rests and waits, and she expects to be paid for her efforts.
Dean’s soul has not just seen it’s share of reapers, but a monster has been behind the wheel, as well. Is he a man? Is he a monster? When he looks in the mirror, what will he see?
And here the most poignant of all.
John Winchester in the driver’s seat, directing any and all choices Dean made. He did his best, “anyway, for what it was worth.” But still, his legacy is still played out today. He “played [his] part” in setting them on the path that takes Sam and Dean to this point.
Dean, the man that John Winchester made and then sent out into the world.
What choices will Dean make? Who will be in the driver’s seat? Will Sam still be “Sam,” not “Samuel” and not John’s “son”?
We’re all in the car. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, Dad’s sitting shotgun. But there aren’t any shotguns. There’s no monsters. There’s no hunting. There’s none of that. It’s just… He’s teaching me how to drive. And, uh, I’m not little like when he actually taught me how to drive. I’m 16, and he’s helping me get my learner’s permit. Of course, you’re in the backseat, just begging to take a turn. We pull up to the house, the family house, and I park in the driveway, and he looks over and he says, “Perfect landing, son.”
The dream isn’t just about having a home and something more, it’s also about the longing for what wasn’t. It’s about grieving the fantasy of the family that you wish you had had, the one you needed. The one that let you be in the driver’s seat of your destiny, but was there with you, guiding, mentoring, and giving you praise for a job well done. It’s about letting it go, and taking a firm grasp of the wheel and setting your own path.
I love this collection of shots. And would like to add that I think the exit sign next to Sam in season 11 is indeed one of many potential instances of the foreshadowing of his death at the (near) end of this season. I also think that with Death’s demise, the exit signs might not be as straightforward as they have been.
As @lost-shoe and @dustydreamsanddirtyscars have said, it might be more a case of an indication of the death of co-dependence and not of an actual death, as – for all of Billie ’s threats- the Winchesters will live (unless this does turn out to be the final season, then all bets are off)
Also the fact that a lot of characters are framed with them could be indicative of a threat of the end of the world as we know it, given Amara is hell – bent on destroying God’s work, in which case everyone would die.
I also think that with Death’s demise, the exit signs might not be as straightforward as they have been.
Yeah, I was kinda wondering that myself. It wouldn’t be the first time a visual motif in SPN started off foreshadowing plot points for specific characters morphed into something indicating more general portents.
So, it may be more significant that an exit sign is lurking behind a human, in general, rather than Sam in particular. That would bring the 3 axis of Heaven, Hell, and Earth into parallel.
Supernatural makes vigorous use of visual imagery to support the narrative. Just one more example: color.
The association of the color white and death started with the two Women in White early in the first season
From there, Dean and John stripped down to their most vulnerable, with little left to hold them here.
Hints of death showed up in What Is and What Should Never Be. The girl, John, and Mary weren’t really there. It was all a dream of those long gone.
It was a dream where Mary was associated with pink and red flowers and Sam with yellow flowers. It was Dean, on the brink of death, who was associated with white flowers.
Sam wore the blue and white shirt of sacrifice and death at the end of Season 2.
White has hinted at death throughout the remaining seasons.
Until here, in bold, Death rides the palest horse.
The Darkness personified is distinctly purple. Contrast Sam’s POV inside the Darkness versus Dean’s in the opening scenes of Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire.
Supernatural makes vigorous use of visual imagery, including thematic use of color. Purple didn’t show up often in the early seasons, but it’s use has become more and more marked.
Here we have the infamous purple nurples in Tall Tales. If ever there was an episode about the power of point of view, this one was it. Was Starla “just trying to keep her liquor down?” Or was she a “class act?” I supposed it depends on who’s telling the story.
In Season 9′s Bad Boys, “the story became the story.” First love’s kiss or just another “bad boy?” “Delinquent” or a young boy desperate to feed his little brother? What was the story? Dean was away on a hunt?
And then we have Season 10′s Fan Fiction, in which “I have my story and you have yours.”
Sam takes a very purple point of view looking at his newly returned brother in Paper Moon. Everything’s all right here, right? We’re back to normal? Two brothers kicking back and enjoying the life?
But sometimes what we see is an illusion. A figment of magic and willful perception. (Executioner’s Song)
So, what is being hidden here? What is yet to be revealed?
The story became the story, a tale told by Death. The victor gets to tell the tale. But what story might the vanquished tell if she were given a voice again?
No Exit:
Exit signs have been used to hint at a character’s death before. I first noticed them in Season 2, In My Time of Dying, hinting at the fact that Dean was between worlds. His death loomed behind him. So did it appear behind Dean off and on early in Season 10, after his death and resurrection.
Now, here they are again, looming behind Sam presaging his sacrifice and imminent death in Season 11.1.
Flowers unfold. As buds, their inner parts are hidden, secret, until they come to their full bloom and reach their peak of potential. Supernatural uses many, many visual motifs to reinforce its narrative. Flowers are one of them.
They were first introduced subtly in Home. First on the wallpaper of Sari’s room, where it was later revealed that Mary had been residing in the closet.
In Home, we learned that Mary’s death was even more complicated than we had known before. But that just introduced more of a mystery. Why had she hung around after her death? Why did she tell Sam that she was sorry?
~*~
Once we reached What Is and What Shall Never Be, roses were found everywhere in the Winchester family home. Mary is the only family member still living there.
Everywhere Mary went, pink and red flowers followed.
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Their last appearance associated with Mary was in In The Beginning.
All the pink and red flowers around Mary disappeared once it was revealed just how she came to be linked to the mytharc through the Yellow-Eyed Demon. ( After that, she started showing up in blue with white flowers or white with blue flowers. White=death, blue=sacrifice.)
When we first meet Ava here in Hunted, she seemed one thing, but then she disappeared without a trace. Where she had gone and why were a mystery. When we met her again, she was something else entirely.
Once the narrative started focusing on the mystery of Azazel’s children, yellow flowers showed up around Sam. Note the bedspread in The Kids Are All Right. It’s yellow damask. Damask is a fabric weave which is strongly associated with roses.
Note also that this is the episode in which Ruby truly entered Sam’s life and started Sam on the path that would ultimately end with him opening the Cage. At this point, orange and red flowers entered the mix. Red on Supernatural is usually associated with danger and demons. Orange in Supernatural is usually associated with temptation or something akin to what happens to you when you look to long into the abyss, going along with the theme that when you hunt monsters you run the danger of becoming monstrous yourself. But that’s a meta for another day.
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They appeared in front of Dean at his first visit to a crossroads in Crossroad Blues.
There they hinted that something was yet to be revealed regarding the fate that would bring Dean directly into the mytharc associated with Sam and the YED’s children.
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Red, blue, and yellow roses are associated with Mary, Ava, and Sam, respectively. The commonality between all of these three characters is that something was hidden, secret, yet to come to full bloom. Secrets surrounded Mary. How did she know the Yellow Eyed Demon? Just what was she? Much about her was hidden and not revealed until the 4th season. Ava had a hidden potential, too. Who knew that that sweet and quirky secretary from Peoria would develop into a manipulative, cold-blooded murderer. Sam, too, had his hidden aspect, that deep mystery that ran through the first five seasons of what had Azazel done to Sam and why.
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At first flowers followed along behind characters. Then they started appearing along the key points of the mysteries associated with the primary mytharc of the narrative.
For example, in the early scenes in Croatoan, where they appeared before the reveal of the virus and Sam’s immunity.
A red rosebush made an incongruous appearance in the window behind both Sam and Dean in Lazarus Rising, where both brothers had something they were hiding.
They appeared in Changing Channels. Once Dr. Sexy morphed into The Trickster and we learned his agenda related to the main mytharc, we didn’t see them again.
Flowers appeared in Jump the Shark prior to the reveal that Adam and his mother were long dead. Later, Adam too entered the mytharc by virtue of being John’s son.
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Once season 5 ended Kripke’s grand mytharc, flowers still make their appearance and signal that things aren’t quite what they seem, that something is yet to be revealed.
For example, they appear in the last scene when Dean and Sam part ways in Exile on Main Street, presaging that reveal that was Soulless Sam in season 6.
Blue and yellow (angelic) and orange (temptation to a long slow fall) flowers appear around Castiel once the story of Season 6 hints at just what’s been going on in heaven. At the very point in The Man Who Would Be King that Castiel expresses grave doubts, their presence hints at more happening than meets the eye.
Even Crowley gets in on the act. Here he is in First Born putting the first step of his hidden agenda into play, tempting Dean to follow him to Cain.
White (death) and red (demons, danger) flowers litter the mansion in Ask Jeeves, an episode all about fakers and liars and the things that they hide.
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Even now, flowers hint at more to come:
Here we have Claire in Things We Left Behind and her tattoo. The red (demons, danger) rose, on the same arm as Dean’s Mark, and first presented in an episode in which Claire is clearly placed in parallel to Dean lay down some pretty strong hints that there is much more to be revealed about the role that she will play.
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And here I shall leave you with the now infamous scene from Things We Left Behind in which Dean and Sam tell a tall tale in which the shadow of their father looms large.
I can only wonder what next is to be revealed about John Winchester and the effects of his parenting.
Hearseeno 