Epic Supernatural Fail

Epic Supernatural Fail

A chance to integrate some real plot, deep arcs and—gasp!—a female character was lost just as it was being born.

I have brushed off attacks against Supernatural before, but never again. Will I still watch the show? Yeah. What can I say, I love those guys. But the writers sure are making them hard men to love. When we saw Dean, a once-professed family man, so callously kill a woman who was only working to save her child (something I sincerely doubt he’d do to, say, Lisa) at the beginning of the season, I was livid. Absolutely livid!

They have neglected to kill monsters before, such as the vampires who were vegetarians, and this mother really had no choice. She’d worked hard to not kill her whole life and was forced to do so. She wasn’t maliciously killing and she swore she’d never do it again—not to mention that she saved Sam’s life when he was a kid. But nope; our boys are cold, calculated killers.

This time, however, in episode 7.13, “The Slice Girls,” Sam actually killed Dean’s daughter—and Dean was perfectly okay with it (presumably). His daughter! I have to wonder if it would have been different if she’d been a guy… After all, the fan base is largely girls with crushes on Jared Padalecki and Jenson Ackles, so a girl wouldn’t have added to their fun.

But instead of having the boys be so callous and cruel and John Winchester-like, couldn’t they have taken a page from Bobby Singer’s book and showed some compassion? Hell, when Sam had no soul, or when he had demon blood, they didn’t kill him. They tried to help him, and you’d think that, Amazon or no, they’d have done the same for Dean’s own daughter.

Could you imagine what the show would have been like afterward? A third hunter, this time a girl? Maybe she’s on her own, maybe she tags along, maybe both; but I am SO ready for some female hunting on the show. Aside from an occasional, RARE episode, we haven’t really seen any since Ellen and Jo, which was years ago. Could you imagine the depth that would have come from such a curveball? The boys always say to get out of the business if you can, that a family can’t fit in the mix. But what if the family were half-monster—and simply unavoidable? What if an Amazon went rogue (after all, she had Dean’s blood) and became the first hunter of her kind, and maybe even got pregnant and had another daughter to form a hunting team? The possibilities here are really endless.

But no. We won’t see such a thing, since, like may bloggers have said (to my deaf ears), the show is decidedly misogynist, even perpetuates sexual violence tropes, and is obviously not going to feature a female lead, ever. I am fine with it being about the brothers primarily, but we’ve had plenty of people with long arcs or frequent appearances (though most have been killed, while the two youngest boys ironically stay alive) and it’s time for some good feminist monster butt-kicking.

I’m telling you, CW, I smell a spin-off here—or even the future of the series once the boys have had their run. Could she possibly be still alive?