It's been 12 long years since Dean stated those words after John brought him back in Season 2 as the show's first major resurrection. The Winchester brothers have actually known this basic truth even longer if you consider the Season 1 episode "Faith" where there was fallout after Sam messed with their first reaper to heal a mortally injured Dean. Death himself reiterated this to the Winchesters in the Season 6 episode "Appointment in Samarra": the boys need to stop messing with the natural order. When Bambi Boy was resurrected in the first half of this season, I had a feeling it wasn't going to end well, and this episode was proof of that. It's too bad the brothers didn't just leave well enough alone back in "Byzantium." Of all the new characters the writers have added in the last few seasons, Mary brought more to the show than Bambi Boy, and given the choice between them, I'd have rather kept her around than Jack. As Dean pointed out at the beginning of this episode, the nephilm has basically become their "Get Out of Jail Free Card," an easy way to solve all of their (and the writers') problems, and Sam notes that Dean is disappointed in that (rightfully so, the "nephilim-ex-machina" makes things far too easy). Given that the title for next week's episode is "Jack in the Box," I'm guessing that the Malik Box that Dean built in "Damaged Goods" is going to come back into play, but this time to hold Jack instead of Dean, which is NOT a direction I would've predicted after "Prophet and Loss," so good on the writers for keeping that ace up their sleeves.
Final thoughts on the best scenes in this episode:
1) After all of the flashbacks throughout the episode showing what Mary has meant to Jack, Cas and Sam, the best one was the final, wordless one with Dean, where nothing needed to be spoken, the smile on Dean's face with his mom was at his side says it all.
2) During Mary's funeral at the end, Cas looks over at Dean, and seeing the turmoil on his suffering friend's face, starts walking toward him, presumably to attempt to offer comfort. And Sam holds him back and shakes his head "no" at the angel, knowing that his brother is in no fit state to talk to the friend he feels has let them down so badly. (I'm actually a little worried for Sam, I think he's going to be so busy dealing with his brother's grief that his own will get overlooked, the same thing happened in Season 2 when they lost their father, it took several episodes before Dean even acknowledged "He was your dad, too"...)
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