EXILE ON MAIN ST., HEAVEN. NO REST FOR PARADISE’S RESIDENTS IN ERIC KRIPKE’S SUPERNATURAL

Abstract

In the final episode of Supernatural (2005-2020), Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) is killed and sent to Heaven. Even though the ending is dark and unrewarding, it offers an interesting depiction of afterworlds and afterlives. Upon his arrival, Dean is told that Heaven is being rebuilt as a happier place in which life – and all it entails – can continue after death. It is precisely in this new and improved design that its nightmarish nature resurfaces. The inability to escape earthly relationships is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it prevents loneliness and may thus be seen as positive; on the other, it may disavow relief, peace, or freedom. As such, Dean’s death is all but freeing insofar that he is destined to spend the rest of eternity in the company of his violent and abusive father John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who lives down the road. The show herewith continues to subvert religious promises of eternal happiness and salvation, reprising its original depiction of Heaven as a continuation of life on Earth and not too dissimilar from life in Hell. By dismissing its more recent criticism of corporate America, Andrew Dabb returns to Eric Kripke’s prerogatives. In doing so, the showrunner creates a connection with Supernatural’s first portrayal of Heaven, which took on the semblance of “a place where you can relive your greatest hits” (Dark Side of the Moon S5E16). A prison controlled by Angels in which life and human connections are negated, but some freedom is still possible: notwithstanding the echoes of trauma, persecutors have no access to the private world of their victims. It follows that the place has nothing to do with religious cosmology, faith, or merit. Instead, in both cases, Heaven and rotten family homes (depicted as the source of corruption) become one and the same: they both are places ruled by violent fathers and their legacy, in which the consequences of self-damnation in the aftermath of desperate attempts at self-preservation remain clear. Locked and with no chance of escaping, Heaven becomes yet another space in which trauma can reverberate ad infinitum in the right conditions and, as such, disallows salvation. Because of this, it allows the further deconstruction of hypermasculine ideals like the Independent Marlboro Man, dysfunctional familial relationships, and the trauma that derives from them. The aim of this essay is to analyze Supernatural’s depiction of Heaven in light of American culture at the beginning of the new millennium, highlighting its connection to the culture of post-9/11 America. In particular, it will delve into how Eric Kripke and Andrew Dabb construct a world that is not only irrevocably tied to a specific moment in American history, but also the means by which the show deepens the rippling effects of White hegemonic masculinity within microcosms embodied by the family, presenting it as inescapable in life as in death.