Supernatural’s Dean Jr. Proves The Winchesters Failed

Sam Winchester has a son at the end of Supernatural, who’s implied to continue the family line of hunters. Does this prove Sam & Dean failed?

Does the Supernatural finale’s introduction of Dean Jr. prove the Winchester brothers never truly succeeded in their monster-hunting mission statement? When Supernatural came to an end in November 2020, it did so with no small amount of controversy. Castiel’s pre-death declaration, Dean getting killed by a standard vampire, and Sam’s suspicious “old man” wig all rankled viewers one way or another. Supernatural concludes with Sam Winchester on his deathbed, bidding farewell to his son who, thanks to an awful pair of denim dungarees, we know is called Dean.

Supernatural‘s finale doesn’t explicitly reveal Dean Winchester II’s chosen career path, but the episode strongly implies he continued the family business of hunting monsters. Saying a final farewell to his father, Dean II is shown to have an anti-possession tattoo. Maybe Sam simply took precautions so his son couldn’t be inhabited by a disgruntled demon foe (making Dean II the only kid in school whose parents encouraged a tattoo), but the way Supernatural‘s finale focuses upon this symbol signifies to audiences that Dean Winchester II is most likely a hunter.

Related: Why The CW Should Still Make A Wayward Sisters Supernatural Spinoff

But if the next generation of Winchesters is picking up the hunting mantle, doesn’t that mean Sam and Dean failed, to an extent? No one can take away how the Winchester brothers defeated God, and Lucifer, and the Darkness, etc (even if some of those apocalypses were of Sam and Dean’s own making). But throughout Supernatural, the Winchesters would bemoan how awful the hunting lifestyle was – no families, no Christmas, no normality, never sure whether they’d make it through another blood-soaked mission. Arguably, Supernatural‘s main villain wasn’t Chuck Shurley, but the necessary evil of having hunters in the first place. Especially traumatic for Sam and Dean was how their father, John Winchester, ushered them into “the life” with no second thoughts about whether his sons wanted that dirty motel room existence.

As the Winchester brothers began facing villains higher up the food chain, making a lasting dent in the monster population became a realistic possibility. The British Men of Letters might’ve been smarmy, evil and depraved, but they found a more efficient system of dealing with Europe’s monster population. The same goes for alternate Sam and Dean, whose family founded HunterCorp. Supernatural season 14’s “Don’t Go Into The Woods” offered another solution – come clean to the entire world about monsters, alleviating the pressure on hunters to handle the problem alone. Alas, by Supernatural‘s final episode, none of these eventualities have come to pass. The monster population is still booming, there’s no big corporation of hunters making the operation safer, and the world remains ignorant to the truth.

We can safely assume Sam Winchester didn’t pressure Dean II into the monster-killing life like John did to him back in the day. If Sam’s son is a hunter, he undoubtedly became one of his own volition. Nevertheless, there’s a problem with Dean II continuing in the same tradition as his father and uncle – the tradition that robbed them of a normal life, that cost the lives of many friends (pretty much all of them, actually), and that neither Sam or Dean wanted for their prospective future children. Sure, the Winchester brothers saved the world, but did they leave it in a better place for the next generation? Dean II becoming a hunter suggests not.

The big caveat to this argument is that Supernatural never shows exactly what the hunting situation looks like by the time Sam draws his last breath. Maybe the Winchester family has found a better way of doing things. Perhaps monster numbers finally are dwindling, rather than spawning new variants and continuing to cause problems. But Supernatural gives no hint this is the case, and if the finale was aiming for a happy ending (which it definitely is), why not reveal Dean Winchester II became a doctor, or a cop, or a lawyer like his father wanted to be? Anything to break the Winchester cycle of hunting misery.

More: How Many Times Dean Died In Supernatural

The DCEU Just Introduced A Hero Who Could Take Down Superman

About The Author