Supernatural and the Love Narrative: Special “Sacrifice” Edition

sarasarai:

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” - Mark Twain

There’s a lot said between Dean and Castiel in this episode. There’s honesty, and there’s trust. There’s help offered, and help given.

But nothing is more important than what they don’t say.

The bar scene has caught a lot of attention for a number of reasons: the arrow, targeted at Cas and shot right at him and Dean; a slightly different model of bow and arrow then angled at the bartender after Cupid has worked her own arrow magic (emphasizing the potential link); the explicit, surprise pairing of the two male hunters right in front of a watching Cas and Dean (romance number seventeen. our last and final); the romantic crooning in the background, the singer aching for a love that will soon be leaving and her resigned acceptance that there is nothing she can do about it.

This could all very well be relevant; the arrow matching is the most interesting, playing up the potential for foreshadowing in the hunter couple. The scene plays as a joke (not because they’re gay, but because all expectations are subverted, as we see by way of Dean), but the joke need not have been there at all. After all, this is the end of act one, in what we now know is a true three act structure. We’ve established the goal, and now we’re supposed to be seeing the true propulsive moments that will take us to act two—will take us someplace from which we can never go back. Also, it is the finale—we only have so much time.

Personally, though? What brings my attention back to this scene again and again is the way Carver teaches us all a lesson in the rightly timed pause: in listening not to the words, but to the silence, in a move oddly fitting in a finale with no resolutions but many reminders of those things that have gone unresolved.

Including them.

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