25 Days of Dean-mas Day 18: Dean’s bonds with his family members

Family don’t end with blood or start there on Supernatural. For Dean, his blood family members are still important and here’s a spotlight on those bonds.

We know that family don’t end with blood on Supernatural. Dean was also the one that shared family doesn’t start there either. Not always. But that doesn’t stop Dean’s bonds with his blood family members from being important.

For Day 18 of the 25 Days of Dean-mas, we’re looking at those bonds. We’ll start with Sam (obviously) and then look at John, Mary, and Adam. Yes, Adam, too. He is related by blood through their father, after all, and it seems all the more important with the Supernatural fall finale.

Sam: Sacrifice the world

Dean and Sam have a co-dependent relationship that is often on the unhealthy side. That doesn’t make us love him any less. Dean will do whatever he can for Sammy, even selling his soul to bring Sam back from the dead. He would sacrifice the world for his little brother.

It all started when Dean pulled Sam out of the fire as a baby. From that point, Dean knew that he was Sam’s protector. Even as Sam got taller than Dean and grew up, Dean wouldn’t stop protecting his little brother.

Dean simply can’t live without his brother around. He tried in Season 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben for a year. It’s not a life that took, despite at one point dreaming of that apple pie life. When the show ends, I do believe that Dean will be the one to sacrifice himself, knowing that he can’t bear to be alive without Sam around.

John: The loyal soldier

Sadly, Dean didn’t have much of a father-son relationship with his dad. John Winchester threw himself into the deep end of hunting, needing to find the creature that killed Mary. Dean was raised in the life of a hunter, something that Mary had never wanted for her sons.

That all led to Dean becoming the loyal soldier. He was the eldest, the protector. When his dad told him to jump, he would always ask how high. There was one time that he completely disobeyed an order and it almost led to Sam’s death. Dean had never forgiven himself for that mistake.

At some times, he was a father to his father. He would be there to patch up wounds and to find a way to calm John down after an argument, especially when that argument involved Sammy. Dean felt inferior to his dad and longed for approval, something we were glad to see he gained in the 300th episode.

Mary: A wish for a normal life

Dean got to know his mom for the first four years of his life. It would set up an ideal for her throughout his life after her death. It wouldn’t be until Season 4 that we’d find out she was a hunter, so all those dreams of a normal life were really just pipe dreams based on a memory of his mother.

In fact, when Mary came back, many Supernatural fans had a problem with her. They couldn’t stand that she wasn’t a “mother” to her boys. Take out the fact that she had been dead for 30+ years and thrown into the deep end knowing nothing about her sons growing from children to adults, but the memories we had were of a woman who was a memory; an ideal.

And that was really the relationship Dean had with Mary. He wanted her to be the woman that he remembered, the woman that his four-year-old self remembered. Was that ever going to be the case? Things started to change in Season 14, but it was too late. Mary would be ripped away before we could see enough of a relationship between them.

Adam: A bond that could have been

In Supernatural Season 4, the series introduced a half-brother. The episode was literally called “Jump the Shark,” referring to the term often used when younger half-siblings are brought into the story. It’s usually used as a way to revitalize a dying show, but Supernatural opted for something different.

This wasn’t the real Adam. We wouldn’t get to meet him until Season 5 when the angels brought Adam back to become Michael’s vessel. And there we saw the bond that could have been but never had the chance to happen.

Dean and Adam are very much alike in personality. They would have likely had a lot of fun together, with Dean protective but also taking his little brother under his wing. Sadly, Adam was taken too soon.

The Supernatural Season 15 fall finale finally gave Dean a chance to apologize for leaving Adam behind. And it looks like Adam did accept that apology, but it’s still hard to accept that he was left behind in Hell. And not just any Hell, but Lucifer’s Cage.

What do you think of the bonds between Dean and his family members? Which bonds would you have liked to see develop better? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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