#Jason todd and Dean Winchester both have adoption problems

[dotthings]

There’s a ton of John Winchester mirroring for the comic book store owner mentoring his successors and as someone else pointed out, “Jaeger” means hunter and they used footage from earlier eps for the fake trailer including John being their Jaeger stand-in. So a whole lot here about father figures, and mentors, and particularly John as someone who trained children to be warriors and is a complicated father role and there were costs to his obsession. Comic book store owner as a more benign mentor, until he became a ghost, but a parallel to John nonetheless. Are we not going to talk about the John Winchester and father-son pain parallel nod?

So let’s talk about that massive Jason Todd as Red Hood mannequin easter egg which is probably just meant as a fun easter egg because of Jensen’s planned Halloween cosplay. But the camera swept over a whole bunch of DC comics titles including Batman. While the Jason Todd mannequin is standing there in the comics shop. Just...standing there. Silent and heavy-laden with pointed significance.

Slight spoilers behind the cut for this ep and the dc animated movie Under the Red Hood where Jensen voiced Jason Todd and some batfamily and spn parallels.

Before I throw Bruce Wayne under the bus, the circumstances are a bit different. All of Bruce’s kids that he trained to be Robins came to him. Bruce isn’t exactly a picture of emotional stability and he shouldn’t have agreed to let minors become warriors alongside of him, but he also didn’t emotionally abuse them or tell them this was their only job and purpose in life and tell them they were worthless if they didn’t watch over their little brother properly. He was strict as a teacher, not denigrating or dismissive. And if Dick Grayson or any Robin had gone to Bruce and said “I just want to be a regular kid” I think Bruce would feel immense relief (and a little sad but mostly relief). Alfred would throw a party. Bruce would protect that regular life for the kids he mentored. All the Robins had to convince Bruce they could handle it, that they were ready, convince him to let them into his scary world, and Bruce, in all the iterations of the story, is strict about the rules and you aren’t ready until he says so and they all asked to be there. Begged, even. Even when Bruce was saying no you’re not ready.

There were however high costs. There’s a bunch of dead (and then un-deaded) Robins, there’s damaged Robins, there’s the Robin who didn’t die but left and became his own hero and became in some ways a better version of his adoptive father. There are also storylines where Bruce tells them nope that’s it this is too dangerous I don’t want to lose you so I am benching you. Which angers the Robins. Bruce knows the costs.

John is a different matter. Dean and Sam weren’t given an initial choice. They were raised into it from infancy. John punished outside interests, his kids looking beyond the hunting life. Bruce’s kids were always offered an education, college, options. It helps that Bruce was a billionaire with bottomless resources of course but John and Bruce both had a choice how they mentored their kids, how they treated them personally and yeah I’d say Bruce comes out looking like the better dad, with both of them in a zone of no dude don’t let kids be warriors. But allowing them and drilling it into their heads that can be their only worth and role in life are two different things. Nonetheless both Bruce and John are complicated painful father figures.

BTW Dick Grayson, the first Robin’s parents, were named John and Mary. And Dick was trained into the slightly perilous family business of being a trapeze artist, but with lots of safety nets and love and his extended circus family around him. Sam and Dean had no safety nets, there were no safety nets for John, and they had little sense of community. Also John and Mary Grayson died due to sabotage while performing without a safety net.

Should I bring up the fact Sam, Dean, and Cas are training Jack who is effectively still a child to be a hunter—but with lots of safety nets, with Cas telling him his own worth, instead of “this is your only worth.” With choices because Jack is the one begging to go out in the field while Dean is playing protective batdad saying no. If Jack said he wanted something else, if Jack decides he wants to go to college someday, or just be a guy who works in a comics shop and has friends, TFW is going to support him.

What’s interesting about Jason Todd showing up in this ep of spn is that Jason is the most tragic Robin and the one Bruce always felt the most sense of failure on. Jason is the Robin who died (there’s another one who did too but DC also undid that, and Jason was the first to die). Under the Red Hood effectively is the story of someone who thought his father didn’t love him enough. So it’s the high cost of training children to be warriors writ large and the Red Hood animated movie brings in a lot about insecurities from both Bruce and Jason’s end—I failed you, you didn’t love me enough. Jason’s also got sibling jealousy issues. Jason had behavioral problems, he was a bit of an asshole, he was basically good, but Jason was the 2nd Robin and had to follow Dick Grayson who is a really talented, good-hearted, smart, handsome, universally loved, gold standard of Robins, and became Nightwing who can hold his own as Batman’s equal.

Jason was murdered by the Joker and that was the end of him for decades. His memory haunted the batfamily. His memory taunted Dick with the potential for his own failure and he haunted Bruce. There’s a story where Bruce blows up at Dick saying Jason was just like Dick—brash and over-confident and so Dick could have been killed just as easy. Anyway Jason’s story was over until DC brought him back from the dead and while not gone all over to the dark side Jason was pretty messed up emotionally, tried to steal Nightwing’s identity in one SL, and uses violence to do his work on levels Batman was adamantly against. (note I have no idea if these backstories on the batfamily are still considered canon or not what with all the reboots but they are part of an emotional continuity in how I know the characters—it’s comics and animated series and there are emotional consistencies across all the canon versions and maintained through the reboots. Still, discussinf what’s “dc canon” is a mess).

Oh and Stuart was stealing from his mentor and in one of the Jason Todd origin stories, Batman found Jason when Jason stole from him (the batmobile hubcaps. Jason had moxy).

I was also a batfamily fan when I got into SPN and early seasons SPN sent all my batfamily parallel radars beeping. So now, that Red Hood mannequin, being in this ep? With those other parallels about John running strong already in place? Of all things, they put this ouchie of a batfamily nod in there? That is some easter egg. That thing was just begging to be meta’d, it was asking for it.

#supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #meta #supernatural spoilers #spn #spn spoilers #supernatural season 14 spoilers #supernatural season 14 #John Winchester #Bruce Wayne #Jason Todd #Dick Grayson #batfamily