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elizabethrobertajones · 8 years ago

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9x23 rewatch

This is one of those ones where you can see precisely at what point 12x15 aired in between working on this, so once more Lizzy works through wtf is going on with season 12 via an old episode with uncanny connections, because they ALL have uncanny connections...

This is like, the pinnacle of Carver era as an experimental project about being a really terrible writer... Before that inevitably catches up with the narrative by removing Metatron’s apparent control over it as an excuse, and a chance to try and explain why the writing is terrible, so might as well enjoy it before it’s beset by, like, everything.

This season has too much in it. This is the longest recap. How many plot twists? Remember how Abaddon was the big problem?

The good part is it started with the flying monkey, and the entire recap for Cas being human was “he was naked that one time in the laundromat” like… that’s it :P Sure April is in it like 3 times for plot or being stabbed or throwing Sam through a door stuff, but any emphasis on what CAS was up to with her is being tortured, and the part reminding us how he was human is just him stripping down out of the old trenchcoat. I suppose when you have to compact the entire season, a big emotional arc like that needs one symbolic moment and that would be it. Crowley gets more obvious emotional recapping, and his moping in bed complaining no one knows what it’s like to be human is linked directly to Dean picking up the blade with his mind and Dean’s descent.

The best part is that it flows from 9x22 to 9x23 perfectly with catching us up to that last scene and then Dean stabbing Gadreel and the “NOW” card only gets in the way of the action for a second.

Also nicely ended with the music with just the guitar chord into a ringing silence (shush it’s not quiet but it’s that ringing murder noise the show has that Jeffrey mentioned in 7x15 and they’re using the guitar for it but it represents silence. It’s good, okay??) for the last few seconds of horrified stillness after Dean stabs him and then Cas and Sam lunge at him.

Dean throws Cas off so hard he flies into the bench at the back of the room – this is 1 of 4 times Cas restrains Dean from behind. The first time Dean’s in such a murder rage he throws Cas off and Cas gets knocked into some furniture, then Cas subdues him again this scene the same way because he will never fight Dean and 9x22 only just made it extremely clear. Then of course, 10x03 where it works again, and 10x22 where again Cas gets thrown off and this time he’s not just accidentally knocked around but Dean turns on him. Kind of ominous here though for 10x22.

[At this point while writing the director’s name had not yet appeared on screen. Insert Dean looking unimpressed but not surprised into the camera.gif]

Sam, meanwhile, tries to use the whole “drop the blade” thing that worked in 9x21, while standing protectively in front of Gadreel, all drama forgotten in favour of being horrified of what Dean’s become – is this the first moment of Sam unifying with the previously thought of enemy for a greater good? In this case because he doesn’t think Gadreel deserves to be murdered on the spot, whatever he put him through, when he has use to them and seemed to be asking for forgiveness… Dean makes him pick a side, accidentally in a way.

I mean, specifically, Sam working with his past torturers/violators in a way beyond putting up with Meg or gritting his teeth about Crowley or even being prepared to forgive Cas in 7x01, which a lot of people mentioned with Dean telling Sam to pick a side and throwing in a mention of Cas in 12x14, because on what scale was he talking? But in this case, just completely putting it all aside, and putting his body between Dean and Gadreel? And Sam will call Gadreel a real friend in almost the same breath as mentioning he still has nightmares about killing Kevin later in the episode. Possibly Sam’s biggest moment of compartmentalising and forgiving so far (as I said somewhere or other about 12x14, Carver era really crushes Sam in some really specific ways with the kind of trauma he accumulates).

Except, of course, for working WITH Dean who could hurt him so easily all this long time he’s got the brother killing curse. 9x22 opening with Sam sleeping clothed and armed in his own home and “I nearly shot you!” emphasising how unsafe he really feels around Dean, and tbh that he’s half-prepared to do it if Dean turns on him, though I don’t know how consciously he’s thought that. Hasn’t come to it yet – I think this is all to make US uneasy about it around this point anyway. Sam is compartmentalising the danger and the betrayal over Gadreel but since it’s Dean, the rules for Sam working with him are a bit different than Gadreel as the brother thing is such a motivator to forgive or extend at least partial olive branches…

Anyway, Sam is standing between Dean and Gadreel, who is lying on the floor being used as a reminder of Dean’s rage and inability to put down the blade in a mirrored moment, poses and all, to 7x20 and Bobby’s encounter with Dick, when Charlie has been thrown aside and had her arm broken (ALL the parallels between Cas and Charlie which I guess start here before we know it and carry on until 10x21/10x22 and them dying/nearly being killed for this >.> least favourite set of parallels). This sort of completes the comparison of Dean as a vengeful ghost for this season, anyhow.

Finally, Sam can’t get through to Dean; Cas grapples him again, but Sam has to pry every one of Dean’s fingers off the Blade, and we get our first moment where we don’t see Cas bodily carrying a squirming and furious Dean through the Bunker to the dungeon in his arms and this happens twice in 4 episodes and I’m still kinda mad despite how objectively ridiculous it would have looked :D

Anyway it proves the rest of TFW CAN’T get through to Dean, not when he’s this angry. Cas can hold him back, but Sam can’t talk the blade out of his hand, and it cuts from this struggle without showing the resolution to the actual grappling and yelling, to Dean in the dungeon.

And that’s how you do an opening minute of an episode :P

Full-on symbolism with Dean walking up to the edge of the devil trap and then stepping away from it, like… Not gonna risk it. He hangs in the dungeon for a while and we never see him cross the line, just edging around it.

DEAN And you two are gonna do what? Take on Metatron yourselves? That's smart. Oh, no, wait. No, you -- [motions to CASTIEL] you lost your Angel army. And you -- [motions to SAM] now you're trying to lock up the one guy who has a shot at killing the son of a bitch!

Hell of a plan, fellas!

OH That’s why he says “fellas” in 10x03 right after they revive him. Bookends to them shutting him out, since once they lock him in the dungeon Cas and Sam are finally handling Dean as they have to, instead of tiptoeing around the fact he’s turning into a demon right before their eyes. We officially enter Sam n Cas panic about what to do about Dean territory that lasts until the end of 10x03, and these bookend it nicely. (After much denial, panic resumes after 10x14)

It took maybe 5 minutes actual time in their lives for Dean to go from dewy eyed “you gave up your army for one guy” to yelling at Cas for doing that and weakening himself. Again, using the blade massively hurts Dean’s soul, and I kind of like how being sweet to Cas was the ~last~ thing to go. Dean is demon!Dean now as far as the symbolism is concerned, reeking of sulphur and refusing to go in demon traps.

His turn around on Cas’s actions reminds me of Leviathan!Dean in 7x06 – he’s pissed off because they’re clever and strong and powerful in their own way and missing out on a perfectly good opportunity to subjugate the weak. Cas had an army and Dean no longer sees the sacrifice Cas made, that 5 minutes ago broke through his shell for what will be his last real smile for months – now it’s that Cas is an idiot who should have prioritised having an army to take on the real evil (and just killed Dean while he was at it, he doesn’t even imply it clearly here, but obviously he means, you should have killed me if you knew what was right… Same sentiment from the end of the episode with “it’s better this way” and the last time we see Dean for 3 episodes…)

Dean thinks he’s stronger than the both of them (though Sam n Cas managed to subdue and disarm him like, a minute ago. Shush Dean), and that their compassionate choices have ruined everything. I think he is genuinely concerned about killing Metatron because he’s next on the list of douchebags Dean wants to kill, and he’s motivated by a very very twisted saving people hunting things of throwing himself at greater evils to take them out to save the world.

And he emphasises that Sam is going to be lacking a Dean on this attempt, which in the show’s rules about having your brother by your side is one of the grave crimes.

Of course in a little bit Dean punches Sam out and goes to take on Metatron alone but shh. He’s not feeling himself at the mo :P And will judge Sam for not doing exactly what he then goes and does, highlighting the depressing part of their relationship where this happens all the time, or of course Dean judging Sam for saying he’d not do what Dean did so hard Sam feels obliged to do it – “I lied” coming up at the end too.

Sam and Cas exchange more worried looks –

CASTIEL Dean...wasn't wrong. My followers have abandoned us.

SAM Yeah, and Gadreel says he can help us. From where I sit, that's more than an even trade.

Oh Cas I was saying this LAST EPISODE about you feeling certain Dean was judging you about the bombers – maybe you didn’t send them but his judgement was enough to make you doubt :< And he holds Dean’s word in such high esteem that even when he’s like this, it hurts, and now Cas doubts.

Sam on the other hand, also being a pragmatist, in a totally different way, recognises the worth of a defected Gadreel as better than a whole army that Cas suddenly misses right after “are you sure we three will be enough” “always have been” has been kicked out from under him 7 minutes later…

Metatron continues typing away on his magic typewriter. It’s now obvious to HIM everything is going somewhat-to-perfectly to plan – bearing in mind he’s ONLY controlling the angel arc so Cas’s personal crap with Dean is sort of a wild card. He DOES intend to lure Dean out to fight, but even he doesn’t know about the Mark yet, though that just makes him laugh harder at what Dean’s done because if there is one character on the chessboard who knows about the Mark, it’s Metatron. Even Cain doesn’t really appreciate what it is in the grander scheme, and Crowley’s holding out for a miracle. Metatron finding this out doesn’t change his plan, it just means he has an idea of how things will be even WORSE for Cas should he not fall for the plan and survive, demon!Dean will be running loose out there. Like, no win situation there >.>

“Do You Believe In Miracles” comes up on screen over Metatron, and it all seems to be about him and the angel arc, that this is the Big Thing that needs wrapping up, the ultimate threat that he needs to be dealt with… But of course those lines are actually for Crowley. As in season 7 – when will you get it, Crowley’s always the problem, Meg tells them, and here it’s blatantly set up to misdirect us, because these titles about heaven and miracles all seem to tie into the angel plot and are laid over Metatron. No one would think Crowley was after a miracle of his own.

Of course you can apply the title to every part of this episode, from them needing a miracle to pull off their plan to storm the Death Star, to Metatron’s hope to plant himself as the new God, including starting a new Biblical age of miracles on earth, walking among humanity and curing them etc. (In a total perversion of how Cas had his army working at the hospital.) Of course he sours miracles completely, whipping up murderous followers with them. Just the same as Crowley has a terrible miracle he’s hoping for.

(This is also one of those Crowlatron episodes like 8x21 and as my sometimes favourite ship I have to appreciate the scraps I get :P)

NEIL So, uh, Metatron. Metatron.

God?

METATRON Just a second.

(I can’t believe there was an angel called Neil – is this like Flagstaff? Were they starting to run out of angel names?)

Anyway, little detail of Metatron refusing to answer to anything but God… Of course he has a massive god complex and blah blah fairly obvious in context, nothing interesting to say about that HERE, but I like it for 11x20 and fleshing out his actual issues with God, exploring the way he wanted to emulate him and so on, because he’s busy being unrepentantly awful but honestly, he sort of learned from the best? He feels like all his writer’s tricks are stuff he learned from God. He needs a good editor and didn’t get one (I think Cas could have been if Metatron had his shit together and wasn’t awful but a decent angel who asked for help so this is a total AU going back to season 8 :P) and ran amok with the Worst Story Ever, which he thinks is marvellous but of course he’s just using it to make himself look awesome and to establish himself as God.

I suppose the line from 9x18 from Metatron via Gabriel about “you’ve been God more often than dad has” or whatever it was to Cas, is part of why Cas is the rival. He’s been in the same place as Metatron and I guess Metatron can’t trust him, or that the other angels wouldn’t think Cas is a viable alternative leader (especially when he’s seemingly fine until Metatron reveals the stolen grace thing… Cas, would you STOP eating things for power?)

(Yes, I know… I guess it’s like a watered down version of the eating Purgatory thing – Cas is in a similar position but reacts much less drastically, in a sort of “did what I had to do” way where everything is reacting and trying to counter things, and his methods are careful and proportionate. Gadreel said he hadn’t done ANYTHING on the offence to Metatron, but he was organising the angels and still very dangerous to him… Anyway, Cas took enough power to manage that, but not so that he’d get overwhelmed with it like the purgatory souls. Just die as himself, instead of exploding or releasing thousands of leviathan...)

NEIL Is that the new Angel handbook you're working on, or, uh...?

METATRON No, no, this is a story, Neil, a marvelous story, full of love and heartbreak and...love.

NEIL Sort of like "The Notebook."

METATRON Uh...

NEIL I love "The Notebook".

METATRON No.

The fact the angels are hoping Metatron will actually come up with something helpful for them – a book to live by >.> All they want is guidance and Metatron was the Scribe of God, SURELY he should be able to write them up a new way to live???

(*points at Cas living by example since ever*)

Anyway the whole book end-y thing for the season, of love and… love (As Dean said in 9x02 he doesn’t really do those things). Only last episode Metatron said Cas was in love with humanity. Now he suggests 2 kinds of love in his script which is designed to ruin Cas. It’s important to remember he doesn’t know Dean has the Mark and his writing is not fucking with ALL of season 9, ONLY the angel stuff and ONLY has a vendetta against Cas, of which Dean is only an incidental part. Honestly, 9x18 almost feels like the first time Metatron really came up against Cas this way after tricking him back in 8x23, because for a while he’s just an irritating bug Metatron can’t squash when he seems to get involved. I think 9x14 also suggests Metatron subtextually is making a play for Cas for an earlier draft of this same scheme, so ever since Cas got back in the game, Metatron’s had it out for him and everything he does just infuriates Metatron more. If you’ve been following the rewatch, vague ramblings about this all over the place but now it pays off to remember Metatron is writing about CAS.

It’s an authorial comment from Carver, yes, about the entire show, and that’s not half fascinating. He dismisses that it’s like The Notebook but there are still elements, as people have pointed out, the ridiculousness of Dean praying every night to Cas for a year same as whichever one of them wrote the letters (I watched The Notebook for work and I guess it didn’t stick).

But on the level of what Metatron is actually up to it’s suddenly fascinating that this story is all about Cas. And Metatron’s revenge. Cas loves humanity in every way, and Metatron’s about to go after one aspect of it (humanity in general) to catch and destroy one particular aspect of it, the face that Cas represents Humanity with, its noble champion who is already decaying his own humanity – it works on every layer that Metatron is out to get humanity and he kills the last of humanity out of Dean so he can be resurrected a demon, confirming exactly that: Dean is humanity, and then of course Cas is in love with it. Or him. Whichever way you turn it it’s all Dean.

I mean the “heartbreak” is that he’s literally gonna stab Dean in the heart

Blah blah setting up Metatron’s fall with the angel radio thing and how eeeveryone can hear him when this button is pressed. Honestly the fact Cas figured that out is probably book ending his brilliant deduction about seatbelts in 9x01 when he’d previously never encountered them in the wild because although the Impala reportedly might have belts that go across the lap, like hell Sam and Dean use them :P Like, here is a strange piece of human(ish) technology but he works out what it’s for and uses it to save himself and the day :’D

I love Metatron’s boring Heaven offices everyone’s working at. I’m always kind of sad to see Hannah there because I feel she is an office worker angel… One of the most typical water cooler angels there are, who have always been running the bureaucracy in the background all this time and never really fighting on Earth or doing cool shit :P Like, a tiny glimpse of her just doing what she was meant to :<

Although under Metatron’s rule so better she doesn’t stay there I guess >.>

I like the transitions here, that Metatron monologueing obviously is going out to every angel, so we rejoin our current angels.

There is absolutely no explanation for why Sam and Cas are in Cas’s car.

I assume it drove itself to the Bunker.

METATRON I'd like to take a moment to welcome you all back. I want you to know how moved I am that you've accepted me as your new God. My heart, as they say, is full, which is why I want to share some wonderful news with you. I'm going on a short trip. Heaven's door will be temporarily closed pending my return, but rest assured all will be explained. And it will be...Glorious.

Metatron setting out to make himself God with this weird ass plan to get Dean…

Got to wonder if he has to kill Dean because Dean as the centre of the universe and somehow the arbitrator on which way the universe has gone for years, as the firewall between light and dark, needs to be out the way or so dark he can’t object, so Metatron’s ulterior motive to draw him out could just be so he doesn’t have to fight Dean over this later.

The universe tends to go where Dean says, and Metatron might be over confident and egotistical but he can see when Dean is the home team he’s playing against and better safe than sorry… the fact it’s the same thing as Cas and cutting out his human weakness to destroy him is almost, like, a happy 2 birds with one stone coincidence :P

I like how Gadreel and Cas just *headache* *dying over here but I will still make That Face about it* when Metatron talks.

Oh Gadreel :< Cas approaches him while he’s lying in the grass with an attractive smear of blood on his head, mirroring 9x01 and Cas and Hael. Cas has been on a huge journey since then, and I guess it’s hard to know where to start. Hael was going to go on angel radio and call all the angels down on Cas; they’ve just got an angel radio message to all the angels from Metatron who’s setting the trap FOR Cas to destroy him.

Cas is now an angel again – ish.

Gadreel leans away from Cas trying to heal him with a protest of “your grace” showing us how far Cas has gone and how broken he is really. Hael’s broken glass halo seems way more appropriate for him on the inside, or perhaps Gadreel who is now in deep repenting mode, and as a Cas parallel, representing that side of Cas that self-destructs to redeem himself for the angels. I think this is the last time it happens, or rather, the angel fall was and Cas has learned not to do this, because he goes along with Hannah’s mission but his heart isn’t in it and he’s happy to move on to repenting for other stuff, looking at the more human stuff in his life, helping Claire and Dean pretty much exclusively after 10x09. Don’t think we’ve really had any big Cas guilt moments since then in the same way – not with him self-destructing for HEAVEN. He makes a lot of choices this year :P

Anyway at least Cas heals Gadreel instead of having to kill Hael. He has a bit more luxury to help the angels, thankless task though it is. Of course Gadreel represents how Cas went from a villain to the angels to the one who’ll save them, even if this is a really mixed victory for personal reasons, he DID manage to get them all home to a stable-ish Heaven. Stable enough anyway that it’s not been a problem for 3 years.

There’s probably tons more about that one little moment because Gadreel and Cas are so layered but I’m very tired so I hope anyone reading this just muses on the mirrored moments a little while and appreciates the symmetry :P

Meanwhile: Carver’s weird fixation with Crowley. Did he even write him until season 8? I don’t think he did. He was in very very few episodes in season 5 and I think only returned in 5x20 – and Carver’s last episode was 5x18. I think 8x01 actually the first time he writes him… After 11x01 I think it’s best just to side-eye Carver and Crowley and that weird phallic lantern/fountain and move on - quickly.

I sometimes think Carver sort of manages to embody all his major writers in one way or another but in this case we’re getting Buckleming vibes :P

Mood whiplash from Crowley’s odd spa to

DEAN What the hell's happening to me, you son of a bitch?

CROWLEY Liquor before beer, bad taco? How should I know?

DEAN I can't turn it off! Ever since I killed Abaddon, it's -- it's like this whole...other thing. I get this high and I-I-I need to kill. I mean, I really, really need to kill. And if I don't --

Dean KNOWS Crowley knows and did this to him. He’s terrified and angry and reaching out for answers in that sort of desperate way where you only SUMMON Crowley when things are really really bad.

“I can’t turn it off” suggests that Dean has been managing to switch the bloodlust on and off as needed – saying he couldn’t do it “since Abaddon” means that 9x22 and all his stupid decisions are more than explained. This also gives us an insight into this “whole other thing” – a year before we find out about the Darkness, a little suggestion that this isn’t strictly Dean’s darkness overwhelming him. Perhaps an innocent turn of phrase ONCE, but knowing what we know with hindsight, he’s being devoured by Amara’s rage to kill and destroy her brother’s creation. Killing Abaddon was a powerful enough moment to let her in… It could even have been tapping into the powers and all the stuff where the Mark was glowing and he used telekinesis because that seemed to power him up enough to overcome Abaddon – the killing was just the reward for indulging that power and tapping into Amara’s rage.

Now we know the “really really need to kill” is all her influence, and that and demon!Dean’s behaviour are two slightly adjacent things. Crowley actually keeps the Mark well fed while he has him, so at least in 10x01 Dean is pretty much a case study on DEAN as a demon, while perhaps by 10x03 when he’s had a rougher time and been denied regular killing and also has Sam in front of him to rile him up with AMARA’S anger at brothers and stuff, then, yeah. Whole different beastie.

I like how Dean gets locked in the dungeon and literally the next time we see him after the episode starts he’s got the doors open and raided the supply room for summoning stuff. Top security, Sam n Cas. Is it a tiny lesson in not taking the proper precautions when it comes to Dean’s resourcefulness – literally leaving him with a room full of resources in his grasp? Obviously this episode leaves us on the warning that Sam and Cas are going to have to deal with demon!Dean and everything so far has been showing us how emotionally unprepared they are for it.

CROWLEY It wants you to kill. The more you kill, the better you feel. The less you kill, the less better you feel.

DEAN How much less better?

CROWLEY One would imagine

the least-best better.

I love when language gets all tied up in knots like this.

Dean looks like he’s about to cry as he has to vocalise for the first time the thought of kill all the time or just die

He mentions Cain and Crowley LIES to him: “Cain was a demon” – swapping the order of events, and of course in a way where we know that from his speech at the end of the episode he knows full well what happened to Cain. He even references this exact exchange. I would call this a lie. >.>

Anyway I guess 12x15 has left me extra attuned to Dean being lied to, and I am feeling like combining sensitive season 12 Dean girl feelings with season 9 and 10 is probably not going to end well :P

Crowley is testing Dean all episode and when Dean brings up getting rid of the Mark but then admits he wants to kill Metatron more, he passes yet another of Crowley’s tests – that the bloodlust will beat out self-preservation instinct.

(At this point and until 10x14 removing the Mark from Dean is a perfectly sensible thing to do >.>)

DEAN But I have to get through that door, and I have to get to the blade. And you're gonna help me.

[Camera switches to SAM, CASTIEL and GADREEL entering the bunker. The box that the Blade was in lays open on the table.]

I love how Dean commands Crowley, and then we switch to Sam LEADING two angels into the Bunker. Winchesters taking charge – their default thing where they end up in control of a room. Sometimes they hang back when they think someone is better equipped or more commanding than them but I think that pretty much always ends up with them running stuff anyway :P

That was enough of a time skip for Crowley to whisk Dean away, and:

GADREEL What's that smell?

SAM Sulfur.

To go with Crowley asking it the moment he showed up in the dungeon. There’s the answer to the question… Dean’s turned into a demon enough that like all the others, he reeks of sulphur.

(I’m guessing this is a thing that can be managed either with demon strength deodorant or frequent washing or something because Dean and Crowley could not possibly have pulled triplets while reeking of rotten eggs :P I guess it’s something that manifests when they use their powers and people find it at scenes where demons did crap because it’s a residue from their powers and of course Dean in transformation to a demon is being twisted up by demonic power or something very much like it…)

SAM Who else would he summon? I mean, he and Crowley have been bromancing over the Blade ever since Dean got the mark.

Oh Cas’s FACE. He’s come up against the love triangle briefly in 9x10 where Crowley was just making some little feelers out into where next for him and his plans, Cas just kind of eyerolling at how they have to work with him and so on.

This is where he first knows that things are wrong. Dean working with Crowley and that he didn’t know, and generally how far out of control things got while he was busy, and how MUCH he blames Crowley, like of course things are so terrible because this has been the next part of his plan. Cas knows what the Mark does, in a very abstract way, the same rumours Crowley knows, if we have to guess from how he asked Sam about Dean last episode and in 9x18 when he told Sam to keep an eye on him, probably fully meaning to hurry things along and fix Dean.

(Also with 12x15 in mind, Cas summoning an army and re-taking Heaven? At this point I think he would still feel like he SHOULD default towards working with Heaven. He resisted it before, for personal reasons, since he got back from Purgatory, only to find out he HAD been working with them via mind control. The fall came too soon after to work out anything about a post-Naomi relationship with Heaven, and all the different factions etc have been the angels trying to work things out. Cas being recognised as a leader for half the season and at least a viable threat by Metatron for most of it, means that he DOES have a place in Heaven if he wants it, recognises that, and I think was hoping he could get everything together, get the angels back, and with order restored, use the resources of Heaven to fix Dean. (See also: not a bad idea to do that until 10x14) It’s not until the middle of season 10 and start of 11 he truly starts to feel UNWELCOME and OUTCAST when he starts making too many decisions in favour of the Winchesters over Heaven (like 10x17) and his criminal status is back. 12x15 he’s potentially reclaiming (or at least exploring doing so) something that he hadn’t QUITE lost here, although of course he gets a taste of it, being led to Metatron in handcuffs, it’s still largely their feud, you could argue, and the angels are going back and forth on leaders so much that of course at the end of this episode he’s free and standing around in Heaven chatting to Hannah. (I think 12x15 is only the second time he’s been to Heaven since 9x23… oh, 10x02, 10x17. Yeah. 3rd time. 3rd and a half if you include 11x22))

Blah blah Sam stands up for Dean with the angels being super practical about his chances of taking out Metatron, eventually signs up for the plan anyway because what other option to they have – Sam and pragmatism again; something that does align him with the way Cas thinks. 11x18 and sticking up for Cas’s choice, after seeing what he said in 11x14? Yeah, he understands.

He does also go for it only after Gadreel and Cas discuss the rest of the plan in which they can help, which honestly doesn’t seem to address Sam’s concerns about Dean being too dangerous himself and TO himself… But at least reduces the chance of Dean being killed and then they can deal with the urgent problem, of Metatron, and buy time to worry about Dean… Which would be great logic if he wasn’t already too far gone :P

CASTIEL Not if we can break the connection between Metatron and the tablet. That would make him just an ordinary Angel.

The whole “what broke the connection” thing with the tablet… Very curious words for Cas to use.

Of course book ending the tablet being found and the tablet being smashed, in very similar staging of how it’s being dropped. (Take a wild frikkin guess at the director of this episode :P) I guess the fights may be similar with Dean getting thrown around by Metatron – I never analysed them side by side, although of course Metatron as the Worst Cas Mirror also gives us a kind of great non-Destiel reverse crypt scene as the climax of the episode.

Externalising the trauma of the crypt scene for them I guess – Cas chooses NOT to prioritise the tablet, but to smash it (and it can’t control him to protect it, instead it seems happy to let him break it and end this)… Yeah, important moments for Cas, symbolically managing to give up Heaven’s control. See above: what I was rambling about there about how he’s been away from it for a while. He has to go through some more motions – the Hannah stuff next season – but his heart is no longer in it, and he makes a really hefty choice to break the tablet (I guess which he’s doing here, hence the “break the connection” long before he DOES it)… I remember the action at the end is all blurred together, Cas in Heaven and Dean getting beaten up, so Cas is almost like the Naomi to Metatron’s Cas, except he’s not controlling him and he’s trying to STOP him killing Dean.

… I wonder if anyone’s ever actually paralleled these moments together before. I don’t remember it from the end of season 9, although it’s very possible I read an excellent meta arguing it and have now FORGOTTEN. [insert the usual disclaimer I hope you take for granted about these rewatches that I have soup for brains]

I think also at this point we needed at LEAST 10x22 to realise how dedicated Thomas J. Wright is to his crypt scene parallels. At this point it’s like, blah blah here’s his next episode, where’s the crypt scene (*stares at 12x10 which I wrote about as ENDING this but have some feeling that it’s never over as long as he’s around*) but understandably at this point people might not have noticed TJW was so obsessed with this :P

SAM If Metatron's number two shows up with heaven's most wanted, [motioning at CASTIEL] the gig is up.

Oooh that Heaven’s most wanted thing was used again in 11x22 wasn’t it?

LADY Damn it, Al, I don't care what you've got going on tonight. He's your kid, too, and I'm telling you he's on drugs.

They were selling the Mark descent as an addiction (and used Dean calling it a “high” just now) – Sam n Cas are the concerned parents in this case, Dean the errant kid, and in the here and now they’re mostly on the same page but I think in say 10x01 or 10x02 when Cas gets all distracted with other things “going on” there’s a sense of this, especially Sam in the line of fire.

On the other hand Cas is the one I think Crowley literally calls roadkill when he catches up to him in 10x03? Crowlatron parallels as he heals Cas! Which I guess would parallel that Cas has been far MORE worried about Dean than Sam has at this point?

Anyway Dean n Crowley on the road together, Dean letting Crowley ride shotgun. Probably a side effect of Cas having his own car and keeping them separate is that Cas never got to ride shotgun with Dean since 9x06 but Crowley’s been there several times since, like 9x11 immediately after all the nonsense about shotgun and its sacred place next to Dean. Since the driver’s seat is set, there’s only room for either an angel or a demon on your shoulder, not the healthy balance they’re supposed to represent :P

Dean walks under a red exit sign just like, one more for the road though he’s way past help now, and orders a coffee black as his eyes are about to be

Crowley plays at guilt about that and Dean not being considerate of the service industry, which also means he gets to order his infamous uneaten cheeseburger. Considering I’m watching the start of season 8 as well, yeah, those cheeseburgers are all over the place and Dean’s scoffing them down, sometimes 2 at once, glad to be back on earth and among humanity. The sign he’s partaking in society :P Crowley frames ordering enough food to tip properly as a sign of the social contract in play; Dean NOT thinking of it that way and just ordering a coffee as a gesture of interaction is a sign he’s stepped outside of that.

[urgh and in 12x15, Cas and Kelvin seemingly ordering and leaving untouched two large glasses of water at the bar?]

Crowley gets all philosophical about howling at the moon to indirectly seduce Dean by waxing lyrical about what he could offer him if Dean would take him up on this. He eyes up the waitress on Dean’s behalf but Dean isn’t interested. He’s just interested in finding Metatron right now – Crowley is talking at a brick wall that just wants to kill stuff. But when Dean DOES become a demon, his sense of duty and responsibility disappears, and howling at the moon suddenly sounds like a great idea.

CROWLEY You never get tired of the rat race? Never get the urge to just...bugger off and howl at the moon? Never ask yourself, "is this it? Is this all there is?"

Dean and I guess we also (are meant to) initially think that Crowley is mostly talking about himself, especially as he has started to act mid-life crisis-y since this season, and getting his human emotions amped back up.

Now we know he didn’t necessarily want Hell (thanks, 12x12), or at least hadn’t thought he’d ever get a shot at running it and had it dumped on him, we see that the boring side of running hell is emphasised more and more as time goes on. Season 10 really starts it – once Dean and Crowley run off together we get much more of an inside look at Crowley from then on, even after they go their separate ways. I guess we haven’t really seen his throne room and all that nonsense yet, and his sense of boredom or the outright disrespect or frustration from his minions is also something we don’t really see up to this point – though he’s had demons defect to Abaddon, the ones he keeps around himself have all been presented as loyal and eager as they’re mostly dropping by to move the plot along.

Anyway immediately after this he ducks behind fake protesting too much that he kicked human blood and isn’t being emo, to make Dean think that he IS just being emo because too much human blood, instead of mirroring how in the start of the season he was manipulating Kevin by being really canny about human emotion now and also having (always) been good at really DARK human nature, making it a dangerous combination to give Crowley extra tools for extra emotional manipulation (he manipulates Kevin into torture, which of course is ominous for how he’s taking Dean for his own purposes now).

Slightly wanky side note – I forgot about this lie CONFIRMING that Crowley and the human blood thing was a front for most of the time, so I think Buckleming really over-sold it in 9x16 or weren’t convincing enough or… something. Crowley’s a bit inconsistent and I think they are responsible for the most extreme change in characterisation considering he’s fine when we last see him in 9x11 and playing up the addiction but actually fine in 9x17, so really 9x16 should have started with Crowley trying to play Abaddon and actually treating her as a credible threat… But anyway every few days I find some way or another to write a Buckleming episode better, so I should probably stop…

DEAN Oh, so you're full-metal douche again. Well, that's fantastic. Would you like a stuffed bear?

This is one of the best-delivered lines on the show – he’s brimming with anger and distaste and “would you like a stuffed bear” is the most disgusted, sarcastic line I’ve heard ever. Dang Jensen.

There’s probably some interesting thoughts about Dean’s relation to demonhood here: it’s a mess about not wanting Crowley to be a vampire, because people get hurt, hating Crowley as an apparently fully functioning antagonist with no emotional baggage more and generally being pissed off with his existence… However Crowley’s talking about becoming less human, less emotional, and Dean hardly believes him but considering where HE is right now in relation to humanity… Not good. These words are frightening – that humanity can be so easily gained and lost.

CROWLEY Just trying to make conversation.

DEAN How's hell, Crowley?

CROWLEY Hell's fine. Hell's like a Swiss watch. Don't worry about hell.

That’s significant, I say like not everything is, because it’s Dean doing that thing where he says/indicates one thing but then does another – like “do you want to talk about it?” “no” *immediately talk about it* - in this case, telling Crowley to shut up but then when he protests he was only trying to make conversation, actually immediately follows up with small talk of his own, sounding grumpily obliged to do it, but STILL DOING IT despite how he seemed to be grumpily blanking Crowley out. Another bad sign that he’s LISTENING and absorbing what Crowley says. Even if he seems to be angry and silent about it.

Crowley brushes off his request as if it were an accusation, but then pauses and admits that

CROWLEY Hell's complicated.

DEAN "Game of Thrones" is complicated. Shower sex -- that's complicated. Hell ain't complicated. Your problem ain't hell. It's you.

And Dean bites right back, pointing out Crowley was right about Hell being a swiss watch, so if there’s any complication it’s Crowley’s fault (Crowley also uses the phrasing which indicates a relationship – “it’s complicated” and Dean’s response including a mention of shower sex, so their aggressive flirting is going on underneath this)

Mentioning Game of Thrones also ties in a tiny part of 9x04, and that nice family bonding scene with Sam, Charlie and Dean. Bringing it up in this context just shows us how far away Dean is from that.

And his criticism of Crowley –

CROWLEY Fair enough.

Crowley wasn’t designed to run Hell, and Crowley has it as a surprise burden – this is foreshadowing development of REALLY seeing how fed up of Hell Crowley is, as I think 10x02 being the first scene to show Crowley with minions who are boring him to tears in a reflection of how it’s going to be for the next few seasons, to date, since the most recent season 12 episode featured minions boring Crowley to tears :P And that’s on the other side of finding out he never really went all out guns blazing to get the title but had it handed to him in a quirk of fate.

CROWLEY What's your problem, then?

DEAN My problem is Metatron.

Again, Crowley bounces back to Dean – keeping up the conversation, and again showing them as equals with problems that can be compared this way, as if they’re just gossiping.

Dean obviously has much bigger personal problems but they’re all being channelled into Metatron as an outlet for the feelings, giving his need to kill a big target… Something the Mark is thirsting after, and also the last thing Amara kills in season 11, AND in 10x10 Metatron admits how much the Mark would love to kill him, ranking himself as a bigger target than even regular angels because of his “Scribe of God” thing. Metatron playing God also is dangerously putting himself in the shoes of the exact thing the root cause of the Mark wants to kill most, more than demons, more than angels, more than even regular old Metatron. And certainly trumping Dean’s personal descent relating to Sam for now.

Season 11 hindsight does make this all very interesting. Who knows how much of this was ever Carver’s full plan but now we have all the info it is fun to put pieces together…

The old temptation of working with someone with much better resources – Dean complains about how there’s no info on Metatron, and immediately demons come through the door with the lead Dean needs… You could almost say on cue.

Dean touches the blade warily when the demons come in and lets go when they leave. He hates demons and wants to kill them… but Crowley seems to be fine.

The phone they give him is yellow – dunno if they confiscated it off the actual kid involved or if that just happened to be one of the demon’s phones they loaded it up on instead of bothering finding it on youtube for Crowley – considering Dean has a laptop open in front of him and all :P

I suppose in a season with Dean’s pink ipod it’s amusing to look at him holding a yellow phone now. In this episode yellow is very very much about sulphur and hell, which the final confrontation will show with colour beautifully. Which makes the pink ipod a little sign of the layer underneath performing Dean – pink is a warning sign (used a LOT in the start of the season especially 9x06) but also the other level that Dean owns such a thing… Now he’s being handed a yellow phone, which will lead him off onto the next step of his unstoppable transformation… Yellow is not a happy colour here.

CROWLEY Apparently... Your angel has gone viral.

“your angel” – taking Cas’s spot with Metatron as Dean is consumed with revenge and he loses his emotional attachment to Cas.

Also, for what I was saying about the crypt scene repeat, Dean is the one again getting slammed around by an angel who needs the connection broken, and the only one in the original spot from 8x17.

Carver era Carver is… definitely a writer I have issues with and the fact we only get him at the start and end of each season would somewhat obscure it when it comes to… personal flair… Anyway filed under things I just do not know what to make of for his intent:

BOY #1 [following a girls ass down the sidewalk] And that, America, is perfection.

BOY #2 Yo, dude, that's your sister.

I mean, the show HAS incest subtext, pretty much always as “how you would care to interpret Sam and Dean” and occasional romantic mirrors to their dynamic, and it plays both sides with Sam n Dean and Dean n Cas subtext (and Dean n Crowley right now)… so is this some mirror for the sake of pandering? Random edgy incest stuff because why not, the show is known for it and apparently it’s a draw for some of the audience, so give them what you think they might enjoy? It’s a random little moment and I can’t see any way to connect it to Sam and Dean and their dynamic/where their story is at or ever has been because neither of them ever literally objectifies the other – not that I particularly want to look at their subtext but it’s normally in the stuff that happens between them personally. I mean if it’s saying the show approves of incest – ick – and feels like the end of the episode between Sam and Dean is sort of like a dying declaration sort of thing, then I suppose good for the people who ship it… It baffles me to have this moment here though.

I’d assume rolling back to what a casual viewer might think the point is to recoil with “ugh!” when we find out what the guy’s filming, and has his friend call him out for it. The calling out being the important part.

Metatron’s interactions with humanity have a whole range of horrible human behaviours almost like he’s got a miasma around him; this guy, the woman who dies arguing with the father of her son who won’t help him when he’s on drugs, then Metatron seeks out the homeless camp and riles them all up to murder in his name. It’s possibly trying to show us the worst of humanity, that people can be awful. Dean “humanity” Winchester is corrupted and broken right now, and almost like with him out of commission, Metatron is happily making a mockery of “humanity” that Cas loves so much by whipping up violence in them… And ACTUALLY making a cult after Dean accused Cas of that in the previous episode.

Still this is a really terrible note in the middle of the episode and I’ve never liked it because it feels completely fake which means the writing is pushing something or other here, and it’s jarring and weird.

Oh yeah Crowley already knows what’s on the video when he hears Metatron’s voice and reacts smugly to Dean’s surprised reaction

*crowlatron intensifies*

[DEAN gathers his stuff and gets up]

CROWLEY Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're not gonna eat your food?

DEAN Not hungry.

Dean’s reaction to Crowley is initially to pull out some cash and pay for the burger or leave the tip that Crowley was aggravating him about earlier. It doesn’t occur to him to think about eating or not eating, until an afterthought. Crowley essentially bothered him into getting the food and Dean possibly is reacting to it as some sort of power play from Crowley, assuming he’s bothering him because he WANTS him to eat or something – his own lack of desire for food and the fact that’s a glaring red light totally missing him. Whoops :P

Aaah no the Heaven playground. Aaaaaaah AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

*enjoy Gadreel’s most excellent stare into the distance with total WTF about “Wookie” while I’m trying not to be overwhelmed by Cas*

The playground here is full of life in a sense – the angels guarding it are playing, and the sun is out. Compare to 12x15 and it was intentionally made to look empty, bare, and sort of abandoned and dirty on a grey rainy day. They might not have been able to help the weather exactly, but the shift between the first time we see it and the last stand out to me, especially as we were reminded of behind the scenes nonsense of Misha playing on the slide in both episodes :P

Anyway, Gadreel serves as the most angel-y angel ever (as Metatron points out for us last episode with his “ugh you’re such an angel”) and Cas is put in contrast, as an angel who’s been sort of ruined. Yeah Metatron did it to him, by putting all that pop culture in his brain, so again the whole thing is very manufactured to make the point but it DOES show the concept of Cas being altered by humanity and Gadreel as an angel in contrast who has no idea wtf that all is about. Possibly they just wanted Cas to have this moment he’s never had before of being the one making the reference, and it’s a good moment using all the resources of the season… Funny moment, not sure how much I like it going deeper because it’s kind of just there :P I feel like I’m reaching to analyse Cas being anything other than Cas in it…

And I love him being resourceful an intelligent and using all HIS resources, so it is a good moment for showing him getting on with things I guess.

As I was saying earlier, this scene shows quite clearly Cas is wanted as the “leader of the rebellion” (against Metatron) so the stuff about him and Heaven as a concept or family is still not being developed in the way that it will after leading to 12x15 as, I guess, Cas still seems to have some faith and love for restoring his family and the call of “home” is still a powerful force on him (9x18, 9x22) and he still considers heaven to be home. He’s dealing with the politics, not being emotionally exiled, OR quite yet (like, within this episode) questioning his place among them. Oh, he’s been asked a few times this season, but it’s been much easier to ignore so far…

Dean continues to have Crowley in the front seat – this time a violation showing clearly it’s Sam’s place when they pull up at the end of the clue trail to find Sam there, who then points out he didn’t need a demon to do the work for him.

Dean thinks that Sam’s about to stage an intervention (I wonder if Sam was waiting, KNOWING Dean would come, or he heard the sound of the Impala and hurried the woman away and is covering her escape at the same time as confronting Dean). Sam just wants Dean to work with them on this –

SAM Yeah, I sort of got that. I just thought you might like to know that while you two have been playing, uh, odd couple,

And points out that Dean’s actively been making it HARDER for them to solve this (although I don’t know how as they arrive at the same point at roughly the same time – Sam first – off the same clue :P) … He points out that Dean is eloping with Crowley, but I think just jabbing at Dean, because the elopement STILL takes him by surprise…

Sam compartmentalising, Dean holding a grudge and making it personal, the usual:

SAM A fight, I might add, you made that much more complicated when you decided to stab the one angel who could actually get us to Metatron.

DEAN You mean the angel that took you for a joy ride? The angel that slaughtered Kevin? That angel?

Dean thinking Sam should be more upset and want Gadreel dead on principle.

Now this is interesting because Dean has a similar grudge against the BMoL for torturing Sam but of course he’s NOT Marked!Dean any more, and while he’s expressing his dislike of it in sadness and miserable faces, once Sam has this almost exact same conversation with him in 12x15 about how he’s working with someone Dean considers an enemy BECAUSE THEY HURT SAM, Dean has a more reasonable response which is to agree to work with them FOR Sam (and Mary), and openly what we were hoping Sam may have been doing but probably isn’t now with a bit more development, of going along for the ride, judging the operation, and choosing when to pull the plug on their cooperation.

Dean offering to be a moral compass there obviously is something he CAN’T do here, but this situation is much simpler – Cas and Gadreel are intentionally now beyond his reach, being in Heaven and enacting their part of the plan with no idea what’s happening on Earth until Metatron comes back to tell Cas. Sam hasn’t exactly signed up to work with Gadreel full time – he makes sense as a resource to use in this situation and Sam can put it aside for long enough to deal with their very real terrible problems but again I still see this as early days to what’s being addressed in season 12… So. Moving on…

SAM Who you let in the front door in the first place. You tricked me, Dean. And now I'm the one who wakes up in the middle of the night seeing my hands killing Kevin, not you.

AAAAH

This does feel like something that Sam maybe should have mentioned sooner, such as in the 9x12-15 range of their fight when Dean still had approachable empathy even if it was a bit messed up.

Sam moves right on from dropping his emotional bombshell, and agrees they should carry on disowning each other, and NOW Dean is truly another thing he compartmentalises to work with, when he grudgingly admits that Gadreel was their best hope at info but Dean is the best shot at KILLING Metatron.

Dean says he’s ready to kamikaze himself on that, whatever the consequences, and Sam’s like whatever, while Crowley listens in looking all “aha” – he knows it’s safe to leave. Sam was talking about arming the warhead earlier but it’s Crowley who has actually done that and he now knows that Dean is on the right trajectory to get what HE wants out of him.

This conversation also starts with Sam mentioning the woman as “miracle lady” which is using the keyword from the title – “Do you Believe in Miracles” and this is all about the total non-miracle of Dean becoming a demon, and Crowley’s hope/faith that it will.

Also the way they film Jensen’s face in season - I have no idea how you can transform a face so completely but I guess all the little things like stubble, his current haircut, and the makeup to redden his eyes (and the way he’s narrowing them) turn his into this unrecognisable creature, when you throw in camera angles catching his face in a very certain way. I find it incredible how transformed he is – if you look at all the different shots of him here, compare to, like, the start of the season when he was happy and healthy… Yeah. I can’t even say it’s because they left his skin bare because he’s showing as many freckles here as 9x02 and he looked GREAT there… I also find it crazy how in 10x01 he looks 10 years younger, and once he’s not a demon any more, resumes a completely regular Dean sort of face. Like wtf Jensen.

DEAN Look, I don't know what you expected here, okay. I don't really care, but you wanted off the hamster wheel. Get off.

Something about bringing up hamsters in a Crowley context just makes me itch :P

Anyway. Dean’s “I don’t know what you expected” is very relationship coded. Or, well, “this was just a fling, bugger off” for NOW. More Crowley usurping Sam and Dean stuff –

SAM I know. But if this is it, we're gonna do it together.

I think you could definitely read in Sam self-destructing along with Dean there, that same “I could go with you” Cas offers Dean in 11x23, although this is much grimmer in a way, that what they’re doing is so much more motivated by blood and revenge, and Dean’s not himself, and just – Sam so not dealing well with the Mark, and what it’s done to Dean and what he’s lost because of it. He’s still treating Dean like he’s Dean and that might mean something...

While Dean punching Sam out in a bit is much more like “let me go Sammy” from Dean’s perspective, because that’s all gone for him and he doesn’t want or need it. (Well, I’d argue he’d never want Sam to come with him because he’d want to protect him, but in this case it’s more about pushing him away emotionally – maybe for his own protection in 9x21 if you don’t think Dean just didn’t want Sam to see him like that, but at this point I wouldn’t like to say Dean feels anything for Sam until he’s stabbed and gets a last little moment of perspective…)

Anyway again I think I’m coming at this from the wrong direction, squinting at what this comparison says, because I’m looking at it knowing Drowley is a done deal for next season and taking it as the main thing instead of the incidental but hilariously episode-reaction-overwhelming thing in 10x01…

Crowley does make a point of trying to usurp literally every influence on Dean’s life, from parental to brother to romantic interest. He teases the same jealousy in Sam next episode (obviously also Carver), about he and Dean completing each other in a way that pisses Sam off… I may just be grumpy with Carver for the incest thing earlier, but obviously even ignoring that Drowey is at least initially in season 9 a love triangle (or whatever shape) involving prying Dean away from Sam too (“you’re lying to him like he’s your wife, which makes me your mistress” or whatever Crowley said along those lines), with the obvious take that I personally would always read that as usurping the brother dynamic in the way that the new relationship snatches Dean from his old role in the family (and literally, since their relationship is dead in the water with the Mark poisoning Dean right now).

Carver era is strewn with misunderstandings about feelings and different forms of affection being blurred together – although Dabb took over by then, 11x23 wraps that up thematically with Amara understanding what she’d been feeling for Dean was misapplied yearning for a better SIBLING relationship, and so on… Ugh :P

Anyway… Metatron’s portal! I’m not laughing that I just stuck a gifset in my queue of Cas going in willingly accompanied by Kelvin and here he goes with Gadreel thinking he has everything under control and – oops they’re in prison.

Poor Gadreel. Back where he started, and ALL his mistakes were made AVOIDING getting back here and trying to do whatever he could or believing anything that would mean Heaven would forgive him and he’d never have to go back. All his work, and he’s locked up for not even the original crime any more, but his latest attempts to make thing right after changing sides for like the 3rd time…

Of course he always was going to end up back here after he killed for this – and killed innocents, and Sam reminded us moments ago that Kevin’s blood was on his hands, never mind all the angels Gadreel killed.

Anyway the angel Ingrid does all the gloating and locking them up – Hannah flounces behind her and looks pleased that this has all been sorted out, but doesn’t actually SAY anything, possibly to save on likeability for later.

Thinking about likeability, here’s Metatron hanging out as Marv, wearing the clothes he thinks make him look the most pathetic, and also the ones he’ll be stuck with for a good chunk of the rest of his appearances, where that gets turned around on him and makes him look genuinely pathetic because he IS. People compared it again to mimicking Cas’s clothes in 9x03 but of course he’s doing it out of cruelty, not necessity… More cosplaying Cas though.

SCARF ANGEL He's a fraud!

Calling him out on his plan; what every writer fears hearing after convincing themselves they’re doing such a great job :P Of course Metatron is plagiarising and writing terribly and has advice like “steal from the best” so he knows that he lacks the originality. It takes until 11x20 to own up to it and be more at peace with himself and his terrible writing. Right here, it’s just a way to anger him.

Oooh the lady that he healed earlier has followed him – I guess she’s one of his disciples now… She’s changed into a plaid shirt, I guess symbolic of all the random humanity he’s been corrupting. Because plaid is humanity. Because Dean.

They really got Scarf Angel to stand at a great angle for the sun to hit his eyes and make them glow gold naturally. I have also been noticing while listening on proper good headphones that many of the angels have their dialogue tweaked to sound a little clearer and echoey compared to others, if they talk in that angel way, all full of conviction and righteousness. I don’t think Metatron or Cas have it, but Cas’s army and Tessa all did last episode.

SCARF ANGEL I am sorry you don't believe me. But I must do what my mission demands. I must protect you.

It’s really really dangerous to try and follow the original mission >.> RIP Scarf Angel.

This is so brutal, and Metatron just loves how much they love him… Being willing to kill in his name (last episode Sam was telling Cas about how people did messed up stuff in God’s name >.>) – I guess in 12x07 Lucifer figures out the same thing about how you can enjoy the devotion of humans, but made them hurt THEMSELVES in his name. Or, Vince’s. Not that doing it for “Marv” is any better :P

Meanwhile Dean is having a weird moment with the Blade. Sam asks Dean if he’s good and Dean’s like yeah I’m good. Sam hands him the First Blade, which considering what Dean’s about to do is just symbolically awful about Sam knowing he has to enable Dean and put that weapon in his hands, because he sure needs some more guilt about that before the end of the episode :P

Dean tries to apologise for the previous months, kind of, and Sam’s like, I know. Because NOW he starts to get that Dean maaaybe hasn’t been himself. Dean’s intending this as last words, scraping up one last shred of himself to say goodbye, and Sam brushes it off, so that Dean doesn’t have to say it. Not sure Dean intended to say anything out loud but WANTED Sam to fill in the gaps for him, that he couldn’t really say.

Anyway night night Sammy. Dean is kind enough not to leave him with his hand in a puddle. He’s not that cruel :P

HANNAH You told us not a single angel more would die in this fight.

CASTIEL What do you think I have been trying to do?

OW. Whenever Cas gets that urgent gritted teeth anger I just die a bit about how frustrated he is to make his family see…

Never mind having to defend Gadreel and finding that the two of them are not only uniquely placed to fight Metatron but now are uniquely placed not to be trusted and that NOTHING they say will be trusted…

HANNAH Nothing you say matters.

CASTIEL Would you rather I not try at all?

Also that line from Cas is like… the most Cas thing.

Here’s Dean doing his walk to his doom. Aaaand here’s the line that sneakily confirms absolutely everything about Dean “Humanity” Winchester and the multiple layers at work about him representing that and what that MEANS for Cas and what Metatron’s plan was really about…

WOMAN You're Dean Winchester.

DEAN Now, how did you know that?

WOMAN He said you were coming.

Dean carries on the walk to his doom. Through the shadows, back-lit, so not scary at ALL, passing through red light with a bar pattern that falls over his face… Yeah he’s fine.

Hannah’s words get to Gadreel about only thinking about himself. Cas calls him “friend” and Gadreel mentions the original mission, which I think is a bingo on “you’re about to die” :P

GADREEL The only thing that matters in the end is the mission -- protecting those who would not and cannot protect themselves --the humans. None of us is bigger than that. And we will not let our fears, our self-absorption prevent us from seeing it through. Not anymore.

I love that he talks for all angels here though, once he puts aside his personal feelings, about wanting to redeem himself. It’s really dark – that he loses his sense of self and puts the “mission” first, for all angels. He wants to give Cas and Hannah a chance and of course next season go off just to round off rogue angels until Hannah belatedly has a realisation in 10x07. The Gadreel Memorial Rubble in 10x02 maybe helped a bit to remind them of his words.

(Also all this fuckery blurring Dean and Humanity gives Cas a pretty fair reason to ditch everything to do with ANGELS and try and help him after he finds out in 10x02, though of course it’s just framed as the Dean/Cas/Hannah love triangle there >.>)

Needless to say I am still distraught about Gadreel doing that :<

Not entirely sure what his plan was – to make a big gesture? Or to free Cas and assume he could take it from there? I mean it WORKS but how was he to know it would work? He had to guess Hannah could be talked around to believing and helping Cas…

Eh, plot convenience.

Metatron sitting with that lurid yellow line behind him.

Literally like the sulphurous depths of Hell wait below them. And it’s a line that he’ll throw Dean across to kill him – the wall Dean will die against is right there behind him with its crosses. The line behind Metatron though, doesn’t have the bottom bar of the cross. He doesn’t get that framing despite going around casting himself as the messiah and getting followers to repeat it.

DEAN You can save the humble-pie Jesus routine for somebody who gives a damn.

Not on his watch :P

LOL and the red arrow in the background of Dean pointing down…

And he’s all lit with yellow. I can’t get enough of this set. Or his face. Once you light it from below with yellow with all the aforementioned things that change his face already? He’s not Dean any more. He’s like a caged creature pacing threateningly back and forth in step with Metatron.

METATRON So I'm a fake. Do you have any idea how much pancake makeup and soft lighting it took to get God to work a rope line? He hated it.

There’s that insider knowledge on how God operated which makes Metatron’s admiration and MIMICKING of him so dark… I think something that just works better once you’ve seen 11x20 and feel at least a little sympathetic towards him or understand why he went so far off the rails. He says people can sense God hated all the effort of being God (and no wonder he left and gives us an early insight into God AVOIDING his responsibilities instead of being ~mysterious~) and Metatron is so bitter about that and about God leaving…

Again, season 6 and Cas trying to be God (which Metatron reminded him of in 9x18 via Gabriel in an attempt at a friendly way) this intentionally parallels them, by Metatron’s doing, the burden of being God and all the hard work to pull it off… Cas for all the right reasons to the wrong ends, but Metatron just completely wrong >.> And that they do it because they’re bitter God left, because God doesn’t answer – his absence, leaving behind the tablets as the only guidance, is something from season 7-11 that shapes everything, and his absence is in every season from 4. Obviously it’s a thing in 12 in different ways, but basically since Cas said “because God commanded it” in 4x01 God’s actual absence and lack of comment has been powering everything…

METATRON And all the while, blaming themselves! "Oh, if only I'd been more prayerful, "God would have loved me! God would have saved me!" You know what?! God didn't even know their name! But I do.

LOL Metatron projecting – he probably has a deep down fear he doesn’t even want to express about “just being the angel closest to the door” whose name didn’t matter. The entire time we’ve known him or known OF him he’s had pretensions of grandeur, of styling himself archangel or using the “scribe of god” title and acting like that gives him so much extra power and prestige. That God liked him best and he was special and chosen… God KNEW his name and asked for him by it, kind of thing.

DEAN [starting to unwrap the First Blade in his hand] I'm blaming you for Kevin! I'm blaming you for taking Cas' Grace. Hell, I'm blaming you for the Cubs not winning The World Series in the last 100 freaking years. Whatever it is... I'm blaming you.

Oh yeah that was weird when the show killed off Metatron and then that happened.

Anyway, Dean listens to all that blah about God and the universe and then brings it right down to the personal level, that Metatron has to be held accountable for Kevin, and what he did to Cas. The two things that have caused the most pain as far as Dean can see as personal injuries to his nearest and dearest – Sam just mentioned how Kevin still, uh, haunts him, and Dean is feeling bad about Cas just on principle without an obvious reminder. I think he is still worried after the reveal in 9x22, never mind the stress it caused him over the year with Cas being human and how much he failed him… Then he moves to blaming Metatron for the sorry state of the world in general, as if covering for Dean caring too much :P

Of course you could say he cares most about Kevin because he feels the responsibility of that, but then Cas is a random point of data between Kevin and baseball stats; how much does he mean? Dean has no guilt for it, but it DID happen to someone he cared about, and Metatron hasn’t caused THAT much personal injury to them, all in all, since he’s mostly dealt with Cas and run an angel war away from them. All very mysterious >.>

Metatron reacts to Dean pulling out the First Blade with a genuine little moment of consternation before he carries on trash talking. I think he knows that he has a danger that he COULD be killed with it if he fucks up, because if he’s masquerading as God, well, the Blade is shaking in Dean’s hand with anticipation and how much is Dean and how much is the Mark screeching for Metatron/God (if it can only sense his power, his power is mostly from the tablet, filled with God’s power that Metatron’s tapped into for himself)…

He also knows that that power is enough that he IS stronger than Dean as he is… In 10x10 he’s got no cards left and is willing to let Dean kill him just to fuck him up and therefore really ruin Cas’s day too probably :P Here I don’t think he’d let that happen at all, and if Metatron had remained in power, season 10 would have been very different, because he would have been MUCH more motivated not to be God while a powerful unkillable demon was walking around pissed at him on a personal and cosmic level, so probably would have been gunning for Dean. Being in prison is weirdly quite a safe place to be, although in 10x02 didn’t he suggest he was ready to move to another planet and let them have this one? :P puts it in context how scared of Dean he is when he’s powerless…

Metatron looks so small and unassuming and Dean looks so huge and menacing. Not quite as huge as Gadreel-in-Sam standing next to Metatron in that one scene where it’s hilariously different sizes, but still :P

He manages to land a solid punch, after Metatron tells him Cas is locked up and Dean’s all alone with no help coming. (He walked in here after punching Sam out cold but was still relying on Cas, and you can see that on his face when Metatron calls him out that he really was stalling and hoping >.>)

Metatron then implies he has a “big blade” with about the same sort of innuendo as he talked about Cas having the bigger army last episode :D

Metatron throws him over the yellow line, and doesn’t let him back past… This fight is too fast for there to be a full 8x17 parallel, actually, although it does start with Dean getting thrown, and then Metatron punches him in the face a lot. I guess I thought that was always the style of these fights where they get overwhelmed, since Swan Song goes that way too, but this is very obviously not relying on the “breaking through the punching” thing to work that way because what does Metatron care about not hurting Dean? but playing off Cas in Metatron’s office struggling to break the connection… So yeah, we’re a step down the road from 8x17, not Swan Song.

This is cut with flashes to the office in Heaven and with Sam hurrying on his way to… idk shoot Metatron? He has NO plan. Why do the Winchesters run towards death etc.

Dean reaches for the blade and Cas sees the typewriter in the same second of back and forth moments – their two desires at the moment put side by side… Dean doesn’t get to stab Metatron and Cas gets there too late and loses Dean too.

Oh that always hurts to watch.

Also Metatron twisting the knife.

Looking at how squarely in the chest Dean was stabbed, that SHOULD have killed him then and there, and I reckon he does kinda die at the moment the tablet shatters (was I pointlessly keeping count to ramble about it each time he did it? That’s 3/3 for Cas breaking the word of God :P) because it’s just so SYMBOLIC of everything shattering and Metatron’s story ending. Metatron should have realised it was all over then, despite trying to have a go at Cas anyway, because he was off-script, and the regular rules are back in play for him, including dramatic irony now chasing after him catching up after he wrote his way around it for a year. :P

Oh yeah and that great rumble of thunder comes when Dean opens his eyes again (Mittens was talking about how killing Cain had a great rumble of cosmic thunder) – it’s got a time delay from the tablet breaking and maybe that’s just the distance the thunder had to travel from Heaven, but I think Dean reviving because the Mark won’t let him die is much more likely because it ALWAYS bugged me how long it took him to “die” here and that Sam had him up and walking. Not with how squarely Metatron stabbed him in the chest.

Kinda horrible seeing Sam rushing in to tend to Dean just ignoring the murderous angel standing right there… >.> Oh Sam.

I do wonder about Cas sitting in Metatron’s chair because he has the broadcast on… Maybe since he is kinda ill at the moment, he just sat down to recover from all the stress. But, no, I wonder if it’s a strategy thing, to make Metatron not look that direction, but also to put himself in the seat, like, I won, the way Lucifer keeps plonking himself in Crowley’s chair or something. Rile him up to be even more annoyed and baited into perjuring himself. (Oh this is such a fantasy that leaders can be brought down by saying things which obviously show they’re evil and incompetent for all to hear.)

But Metatron doesn’t melt down, he comes at Cas all confidence, because he knows something Cas doesn’t, winning cards to put on the table…

METATRON Ah. So Gadreel bites the dust. And the Angel tablet -- arguably the most powerful instrument in the history of the universe -- is in pieces, and for what again? Oh, that's right -- to save Dean Winchester. That was your goal, right? I mean, you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human, right? Well, guess what. He's dead, too.

At least in the emotional war, the battle is won but Metatron won the war. In the Angel war, Metatron wins this little battle of the personal pissing contest but the war is won in Cas’s favour.

Anyway is there even any point in doing more than flailing in the direction of those lines after turning them inside out about what they all mean in context of all the stuff building up to them? Cas’s emotional arc is revealed here – his true weakness.

Loving humanity is DANGEROUS yes, we’ve seen 2 angels in a row make a stand for the mission and die. But it’s not on the same scale as what Cas’s “weakness” is – it’s always “the Winchesters” this and “Dean” that… 12x10 expressly says his “human weakness” and links it to Dean, a couple of episodes before Cas’s love confession. As I said, season 12 picking up where season 9 left off. And Cas finally returning to deal with all this; breaking the Word of God in favour of Dean. A clear message about picking “humanity” over angels and Heaven. Of picking Dean over his duty or even the same original mission that Gadreel just died for. You could say Metatron is just taunting him, but Cas’s loyalty was demonstrated to be to Dean not Heaven JUST last episode and it’s impossible not to see these two things fit together like jigsaw pieces where only we and Metatron know everything. Cas has no idea that Metatron identified his weakness as being in love (with humanity) or that he’s now changed his evaluation of Cas to make it deadly personal about Dean…

But we do :3

[oops, either I have a fucked up gifset somewhere or that’s a reject gif I found on the workbench :P]

Cas can’t even look at Metatron when he says “it was all about saving one human”

I also love Metatron’s reaction to Gadreel’s death, because Gadreel was his main character until he betrayed him – the tablet being broken, the story is over… But his story was failing before Cas even did that because his characters surprised him – by not wanting to go where “the story” took them.

Also, the speech starting with Gadreel’s death and ending in Dean’s – almost like Metatron IS still weaving the story, making things real by saying them… The last parallel between Dean and Gadreel, again tying their journeys and characters together…

DEAN [weakly] Sammy, you got to get out of here before he comes back.

I wonder if he knows he’s turning – he says the Mark’s making him into something he doesn’t want to be. Does he know how literal that is? I mean, probably not, but it’s all really ominous that Sam needs to get away and leave Dean. Sam can’t leave Dean – he hauls him all the way back to the Bunker, and just makes everything that much worse for himself.

Anyway Sam in desperate bargaining mode, having had every single thing kicked out from underneath him since season 8, and in season 9 discovered there were NEW things to kick out from under him.

I think one of the things about Carver era is it wants to explore all this darkness and co-dependency but it has to drive Sam to impossibly hard places before it’s his turn for it, and to torment and trick Dean into all sorts of terrible choices, e.g. trusting Gadreel was a terrible idea and a bad thing to do but the blackmail from Gadreel that endangered Sam’s life came AFTER, yanking control from Dean and tricking him, even if that doesn’t absolve him of the choice, it’s like it escalated 10 steps after Dean took 1. It’s like Metatron and his convoluted stories and set ups, dragging the characters to these places so the stories can be told about them.

I think there IS a natural progression from Sam at the start of season 8 to Sam in 8x23 or from there to here, but the point is they put in so much WORK to grind him down and ruin him and Dean and their relationship (for example using the Mark to accelerate a descent for Dean along with then changing his behaviour), that it’s sort of forcing a situation where it’s exploring things which seem to be deep dark truths about their relationship and how it’s awful and needs to be addressed so they stop sacrificing for each other and doing silly things like releasing the Darkness… but it’s all a shade too manufactured (I mean, the Darkness came out of nowhere as a big escalation from an already bad decision Sam had already made but then it got 10x worse).

And not in the big scale even but the smaller things that add up, like the OTT reactions to lying and betrayal at the start of season 8 or the season long grudge and disowning etc this year. The end of season 10 with Sam frantically telling Cas how much worse Dean has got over and over almost in defiance of how Dean seems to be sort of okay, working himself into such a panic he’ll use the Book of the Damned (and not even ask Rowena nicely but put her in chains to do it for him). After any big thing you can be like, how did we get here, and look back, and the progression is full of things which sort of make you pull a face at how they were pulled off but the overall picture is thematically sound and you know what they’re angling at.

Heck, I AGREE that the co-dependency was a bad thing, but it had been dormant for years when Carver came back, having missed all of Gamble era, so he resurrected it as the thing he wanted to address (the last episode he wrote being 5x18 where Adam takes the brunt of their making huge choices for each other thing and it being heavily romanticised and I think the episode where Zach says they’re codependent and it actually sounds critical in that way where you question if he has a point especially as Adam did pay for it, and THAT was what Carver went and stewed on for 2 years out of the fold… I think I mused on this from the other direction back in the 5x18 rewatch) So the fact it’s not romanticised and is used as the motivating Bad Thing in Carver era which needs to be resolved, still means it needs to go through a couple of rounds of awful to build up and be arguably bad enough to then try and fix. Throw in the plot accordion and Carver losing interest and wandering off before it was done, and… Yeah.

Basically I totally sympathise with Sam in the position he’s in but that doesn’t mean I like the bigger picture very much, now this is setting him up for his season 10 stuff, where he has to bear being the Winchester in the wrong, ethically, even if emotionally he just wants to save his brother and for a vast number of reasons is kind of forced into it.

And then when we get to the big big picture of what was Carver era all about, I DO agree… 11x23 wrapped it up nicely, although it all flowed into DABB’s approach to everything and his choices and approach to cleaning this all up. (And I mean obviously he didn’t solve the co-dependency but he’s now brought it all down to a level where you can work with it – smaller choices and smaller consequences which affect the world in different ways…)

SAM Don't worry about the Mark. We'll figure out the Mark later. Just hold on, okay? Get you some help.

Sam. How many times have I told you to worry about the Mark first?

CASTIEL You will never get away with this.

Cas using clichéd lines from the movies that usually trick the villain into confessing

CASTIEL You give our brothers and sisters far too little credit. They will soon learn that you have been playing them.

I hope the other angels can hear Cas too. Maybe this is why they give him another big chance to be free and work with them after this

METATRON And then? They will do nothing because they are frightened little sheep following my crook wherever it leads. And where I'm taking them, back to our rightful place atop this mountain of human shame and excrement -- when that happens, trust me, they're not gonna care how they got there.

Lol foot in mouth.

Also disrespecting humans – Metatron doesn’t learn, while all the good angels are concerned about the original mission (Gadreel, Scarf Angel, Cas and now Hannah) and anyway, the blatant disrespect for humans AND angels shows he’s not fit to be a leader.

DEAN What happened with you being okay with this?

SAM I lied.

DEAN Ain't that a bitch?

I just had a long conversation with Mittens pretty much unrelated to this about Sam and Dean and lying and how that’s changing over time, or not. I think season 9 really did give Dean a problem with lying – whether he was doing it or being lied TO, all his issues come from the deception at the start. In season 12 he’s being positioned as the character being constantly lied to and he wants to tell the truth or thinking lying sucks; generally back to Dean as the moral compass.

He lies professionally – and even that was challenged in 12x11 with the peek behind performing Dean – but I think in emotional situations, Dean has made a LOT of progress towards telling the truth or reaching out to people (started in his character development season in season 10), along with how he has a lot of perspective on how much lying sucks both for those holding up a lie (he was SO bad at it during the Gadreel possession because he didn’t WANT to lie which I think is much better perspective than lying and getting away with it and not suffering until it’s found out) and being lied to. Sam, though, may not like being lied to (who does) but hasn’t sort of internalised the problem with being the one lying, especially when it’s both a useful tool day to day, but also he can lie to himself about a ton of stuff to get through the day, and is so successful with self-deceiving lies or covering up his feelings in a major way.

I think in these 2 words it’s the really big emotional confession from Sam at the end of the season – same as 8x23 then makes you go back and evaluate Sam all season looking for the root of all that, I’ve had to talk about Sam all through this season knowing he knows that in his heart he probably would do the same for Dean but he was lashing out in the fight and sticking his ground and I think (badly) trying to make the point that it was a really bad thing to do, to keep sacrificing for each other and doing terrible things to keep each other alive. Obviously he has a point, but then because he’s lying he’s not addressing the core issue, which is that this applies to him just as much. Revealing this to Dean then becomes validating to Dean that his actions weren’t so far off base and the principles that Sam was pissed on the behalf of maybe aren’t so important, and so on. To come to a place of truly healing they need NOT to lie and keep things from each other.

(So season 12’s staged reasons to lie to each other, the fact Sam even admits a portion of what he was keeping secret within an episode is a good start. He’s STILL holding back the stuff that in this context would be “I lied” – that is, the important details about what the BMoL are doing and have done so far. Dean hasn’t heard the world without monsters sales pitch, really, not in a meaningful way; he just knows that they’re basically taking over the spot Bobby used to have for example, of dishing out cases to hunters. Working with vs believing in or something. Idk.

I should stop talking about season 12 but honestly I process it through writing about old seasons… I swear I didn’t do a single rewatch during season 11 where I wasn’t dragging in later canon >.>

Anywho. Metatron and Cas. Much more melodramatic :P

METATRON You know, why you could never quite pull it together, Castiel, while you're sitting here with Your Grace slowly burning away and your reputation long extinguished? No curiosity. You didn't read enough. You never learned how to tell a good story.

CASTIEL [looking straight at METATRON] But you did.

Honestly that line seems to refer both to Metatron blabbing everything, and Metatron giving Cas aaall the tools here – I think this is an extension of his “wookie” plan, learning these tricks through stories. At the time of airing I’m pretty sure people came up with several plots foiled in such a way… If nothing else it seems very much like a silly comedy thing where the cartoonish villain accidentally is on loudspeaker and the stakes are only like, say, reputation at school or workplace or something. Tricking confessions onto recording devices rather than broadcasts is also a very common trope in slightly more serious fiction. Anyway because he learned all this about stories and then gave them to Cas, he manufactured his own downfall, through storytelling. Of course.

And his lack of respect for Cas as a PROTAGONIST not an antagonist. “I didn’t think he’d be good at it!” Metatron protests, underestimating that the story will support CAS.

Also suggesting he may be wrong in his assessment of Cas here.

The pause after “no curiosity” is also interesting because it gives a good long time to wonder what Cas wasn’t curious about. He has been following his duty quite consistently. It’s why he failed at Metatron’s “find a wife” command among other (gay) reasons. It’s not that he wasn’t doing well at being human, it’s that bigger problems like… Metatron forced him back into the game (also… other reasons. Like helping Dean >.>) so it wasn’t that he was NOT curious about living a human life and slowly starting to pick up human customs (the start of 9x06 shows him curious and mimicking humans at work), he just didn’t have time for it. Anyway. Double meaning on “curious” because of gay stuff. Cas doesn’t actually get blatantly queercoded all that often in comparison to Dean when it comes to language and implications around him, but this season has the bulk of it. Generally he just sort of gets on with things while being Cas.

Would Cas have done better if he’d taken advantage of being human and exercised some curiosity and made out with Dean?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where did Cas learn to get out of handcuffs like that?

She says, not wanting to even contemplate talking about the tears in Cas’s eyes when he sees Metatron’s angel blade all covered in Dean’s blood.

I mean talk about symbolic if they had both been stabbed through the heart with it

Also Cas is metaphorically stabbed through the heart with it anyway, seeing that, bye

Meanwhile: Dean busy dying. Like, super dead. Bye bye.

(He’ll be fine, oh my god, Sam, stop with the ugly crying)

I mean I’m torn, obviously this is all really emotional but on the other hand he literally is dead for less than 5 minutes screentime. I feel horrible for Sam, who thinks Dean is dead until a quarter of the way through 10x01 (or Cas who doesn’t know until the start of 10x02) but on the other hand as the audience this is a huge sad set up which is then yanked away with horror, not grief, at what’s become of Dean. And Sam, sadly, is in this place where his reactions are much more tinged with irony than Cas’s are, because of the “I lied” thing coming right before Dean’s death. Dean briefly reasserts his normal self to say some sad words about being proud of them and to die good, you know, the last part of his personality that exists before it’s all gone for a while, so we see Dean’s symbolic death of Self after that… Sam has just let this all spin from between his fingers while fighting with Dean and not seeing how bad it was getting… I mean even now he seems to think the worst problem is that Dean was stabbed by Metatron. Dean’s already died of that and come back :P Now his soul is getting all munched up with the effort of keeping him alive, and he’s probably more like, blacked out while passing between states or something.

Anyway Sam saying he lied and Dean’s “ain’t that a bitch” show how the entire conflict that brought them there has been undermined by these actions, for it to all swing around to next season, of Sam steering the latest round of saving each other and bad decisions, presented as a moral decline (to limited success as Buckleming had to deliver the big staged moment, like, for our contemplation on the subject, immediately followed by the formula curse shelving everything to get back to normal in time for the 200th).

So I’ve always struggled with Sam’s grief here because his sadness is very real but it’s always been clear that this swing around was coming and that Sam would have to be the one making bad decisions about what to do about Dean – his next thing is attempting to summon Crowley, showing he’d be exactly where Dean was, as 9x01 and 9x23 mirror each other with a Winchester laid out seemingly dead/dying in bed, and the other bargaining for their life. And in Sam’s case it’s not pure grief motivating it because of everything that was built up – the obligation since 8x01 that they save each other all the time and their rule about not doing that was something they knew they ignored anyway:

DEAN After you looked for me. [SAM says nothing.] Did you look for me, Sam? [SAM looks away.] Good. That's good. Now, we – we... always told each other not to look for each other. That's smart. Good for you. Of course, we always ignored that because of our deep, abiding love for each another, but not this time, right, Sammy?

So Sam’s got a double obligation of failing Dean’s standards last time, owing him one for saving him in 9x01 and having just stated that his stance on the argument about its moral failings was a lie… Like, I don’t wanna judge Sam because obviously Dean’s part in this has very much been beating him into shape to make these choices and Sam’s in a “did what I had to do” lack of choice when it seems like you could choose to just let it go and NOT go down a bad path. It’s a tragedy and they’re both messed up by it.

Still, actually watching Sam sob all over Dean while knowing he’s gonna make terrible choices is harder to watch than Cas on the verge of tears after an entirely blameless season where he’s been shoved around this way and that and only ever tried to help his two families and/or acted out of love for Dean in a pretty pure, unproblematic way.

I don’t really like Carver era Sam. He’s all puppy dog eyes about doing things I seriously don’t agree with. Dean being all conflicted and angsty while doing things I seriously don’t agree with at least makes me feel like Dean feels horrible about it which makes it easier for me to sympathise even while he does immensely silly things, because he seems to know they are too :P

*raises a glass to Sam and his terrible decisions in season 12 which has been making me cheer for Sam being a total badass all the while and I’m totally and utterly turning into a Sam!girl while he’s making all his terrible decisions so clearly it is not about them making terrible decisions but how it comes across when they do*

HANNAH You're doing the right thing -- letting him live.

That’s an abrupt turn around on punishing Dean :P I think she’s realised a lot about Cas and his compassion – she IS learning from him all the time because she admires him (except for in 9x22 briefly when Metatron turns them against him), so I think she’s now rationalising that Cas is trying not to kill people all the time as a good sign of his leadership. I mean, which this is, and I would barely comment if not for how literally last episode she was making him kill Dean over a much smaller thing than Metatron’s crimes. Cas thinking differently from the other angels, making compassionate decisions – yeah, that makes him stand out. The fact he wouldn’t kill Dean SEEMED huge to her, but now she sees he won’t kill even his NEMESIS.

The impact of not killing Dean on a personal level maybe is watered down in Hannah’s estimation for a lil while until she has to give him a pep talk about getting distracted in 10x03 :P I think for us, the fact these things are compared means less because it’s coming from Hannah’s direction. Metatron was also mobbed by angels, paralleling how he incited the mob of humans to kill; Cas in charge now is like, NO don’t do that, that’s barbaric. He chose a better way, that NO more angels die, and he means it. That may be the main contrast here.

HANNAH It's what a leader would do.

CASTIEL I'm no leader, Hannah. I never was. I just want to be an angel.

HANNAH And Your Grace? What will you do about that? You will die if you don't replenish it.

Oh Cas :<

So there’s his “don’t want to be a leader” thing again, on the OTHER side of Metatron. Hannah’s season is telling Cas he should be a leader, getting him to be a leader briefly, abandoning him as a leader, and once again following him and seeing him AS a leader, and like 9x18 when they first meet, Cas has to tell her he’s not a leader. Though he might seem like the obvious choice and the angel with the most – wait a minute :P

Lizzy says, having been typing this whole paragraph thinking about Kelvin and his speech about Cas having more experience than the next 1000 angels combined and so on. As I said, season 12 picking up where season 9 left off.

Cas says he doesn’t want to be a leader and he just wants to be an angel. After being challenged all season about what he wants to be – to live or die, angel or man, earth or heaven, us or them, etc etc, he seems to make a choice; this scene transitions via music that starts over Cas’s anguished face to all these questions, to Dean being dead. He and Cas are linked still, with their dying and fading away, Dean with his humanity, Cas with his grace. Thematically intertwined even when they’re at this point about as far from each other as it’s possible to be.

I think it’s very important Cas ends this season in Heaven saying he wants to be an angel, even if he’s back on Earth (mourning Dean while naked - nope not over it) when we next see him. At this point it seems like all his ties to Earth are gone (well, Sam is still alive, but come on, he loves Sam but DEAN is the much bigger motivator for where Cas goes and stays)… With nothing left to keep him, Cas seems to declare a side, or at least, a wish for a side. Being a simple, uncomplicated angel with someone to tell him what to do, because now he’s going to be forced into like, 2 years of self-reflection to help make this choice clearer. Heaven means a lot to him. It’s his family. When they care, they want him there.

But Cas doesn’t have a sense of belonging with them. He just wants to be an angel. Implying he isn’t, that he’s offset from that, that he already doesn’t belong. And belonging is the keyword because when this arc picks up again in 12x03, it’s Mary asking Cas about belonging, and he’s not sure he does belong or not. By 12x12 he is ready to declare who his family is and that he loves them. Something I don’t think he could say here about them... not because he didn’t feel it but because it was TOO far away and seemingly lost or unattainable, or something Cas couldn’t imagine for himself. At least the years of self-reflection allow Cas a lot more time to ruminate on all this.

I think his decision is coming and in a way 12x15 had to drag him back to this exact point but on the other side of all of that: bringing him back to Heaven and facing him with actually contemplating how he fits in and how he belongs – and what Heaven means to him and how he might be able to make peace with them. And it’s no longer vague or implied about who he considers family and how he feels about them, so that’s good. It’s answering THIS moment where Cas doesn’t really know anything, can barely express it except in a wish that he was just an angel, and if he can barely commit to Heaven, he has lost a huge tether to being human or even sharing in Dean’s human life and picking earth even as an angel still.

(I mean I do think this season by having Cas be human, teases in a huge way that this might be a path he takes willingly. But that’s even more abstract from where we are now because first he has to deal with Heaven and find a way to come to a comfortable place to be able to choose his human family… Before he could ever consider being human WITH them. But this DOES mean it’s on the table as an endgame for him since it’s a path offered to him)

Anyway Sam drops Dean on the wrong side of the bed, and goes to drink and be miserable about things. Sam drinking is neeever a good sign.

Last time to enjoy his hair looking even halfway normal for a year.

Oh no there’s blood on the rusty bacon shirt. I can imagine Dean not wearing that shirt he died in ever again because it’s soaked in blood and probably has a hole through the back. But Sam keeps on wearing this shirt, and ARGH. :P

SAM Damn it, Crowley. You got him into this mess. You will get him out... or so help me, God.

LOL then God ends up helping

I don’t know if Sam was entirely intending to make a deal, or just feeling reckless enough that he might threaten Crowley into helping (i.e. like he did with Rowena next season) … either way, not a good path to go down, and you can definitely see his summoning Crowley as letting him in to completely ignore appearing for him, but going straight to Dean instead. After all… he is saving Dean from being dead…

That one shot of him doing the summoning for Crowley was enough to stoke hope that we’d get witch!Sam over the hiatus since the last thing we see him doing is a summoning.

Basically I’d say we should stop speculating for witch!Sam after being burned so many times but it’s so much fun. And this was one of the few times we knew he was going dark and so could plausibly indulge in a little magic. Except then Rowena came along and instead of teaching him he made her do all the work. Close enough >.>

He’s aligned with Rowena but here’s Crowley looking over Dean lying on the bed. Dean’s hand is already clenched a little as if around the Blade. Crowley is looking over his work, and lurks in the doorway… The next shot, of course, of him coming into the room still in shadow. An image we see a lot in the next couple of episodes, with Sam moping into this room, and then demon!Dean and Sam both coming by during the chase. But the bookend to this is the very similar staging of Dean alive and well and cured, when Cas drops by, again standing in the doorway, framed across Dean’s bed, and being used as the conversation to tie off all the ends, to show that most things are right again, until Cas leaves… Of course, need I say it, also doing a tremendous amount for the Cas/Dean/Crowley love triangle, as it shows Cas has won him back.

But now, Crowley comes to claim him:

CROWLEY Your brother, bless his soul, is summoning me as I speak. Make a deal, bring you back. It's exactly what I was talking about, isn't it? It's all become so... expected. You have to believe me. When I suggested you take on the Mark of Cain, I didn't know this was going to happen. Not really. I mean, I might not have told you the entire truth. But I never lied. I never lied, Dean. That's important. It's fundamental. But...there is one story about Cain that I might have... forgotten to tell you. Apparently, he, too, was willing to accept death, rather than becoming the killer the Mark wanted him to be. So he took his own life with the Blade. He died. Except, as rumor has it, the Mark never quite let go. You can understand why I never spoke of this. Why set hearts aflutter at mere speculation? It wasn't until you summoned me... No, it wasn't truly until you left that cheeseburger uneaten...that I began to let myself believe. Maybe miracles do come true.

[CROWLEY moves to the bed and places the First Blade into DEAN's right hand and lays them both on DEAN's chest.]

Listen to me, Dean Winchester, what you're feeling right now -- it's not death. It's life -- a new kind of life. Open your eyes, Dean. See what I see. Feel what I feel. And let's go take a howl at that moon.

I love how this is cut with shots of Dean’s dead face like he’s got some part in the conversation. In a messed up way it reminds me 8x16, Dean’s prayer in this same room, where the silences and changes in camera angle implied Cas was listening and watching but not answering. I feel like I should make a comment about how only Jensen Ackles can have emotive reaction shots while playing DEAD.

Anyway, now Crowley calls out how boring the cycle of Winchesters saving each other is, once more as a final thought. Like, yeah, they need to change, but this is probably not how to do it healthily :P Though from a writing POV (and Crowley, more than Metatron, actually is the genre savvy character calling this stuff out) it’s like, at least it’s acknowledging that after 9 years certain cycles don’t work anymore. I still think season 6 & 7 are just way too clean of all this sort of specific melodrama so Carver had to conjure it all up anyway, but oh well. :P We’re here now.

Crowley goes on to explain that he hasn’t lied, which obviously parallels to how Sam admits he had lied, so despite Dean’s overall assessment of being proud of them, their fight just resolved with “well ain’t that a bitch” and basically, Dean only NOT being pissy about all that because he was too busy dying which really gives some context on a situation :P But if he’s going to come back, Crowley can now position himself as the one who DOESN’T lie to Dean so the one who should be trusted. He meanders around the truth a bit, but saying that it’s “fundamental” emphasises Crowley’s integrity. Which Dean has reason to believe in despite everything, because of the times Crowley has helped them in the past or stood up for Hell’s integrity, and the natural order. Dean is now aligning himself with the natural order and the way Hell works seems much simpler and plainer to him. Hell’s like a Swiss watch etc. Dean already shows that he gets it?

Then Crowley comes clean with the rumours he (and possibly Cas) knew about Cain and how he came to be a demon. Which implies where Dean’s self-destruction and last moment of clarity after getting stabbed about “it’s better this way” come from. Even, perhaps, Dean’s entire suicidal run at Metatron. Dean overwhelmed with the same thing.

The important phrasing here is “becoming the killer the Mark wanted him to be” because it’s nature vs nurture – the Mark MAKING them into it, vs unlocking some darkness inside them. Word choice deliberate. (every time I say “dark” it is, really :P) The darkness is pushed on them. The Mark not wanting to let go? That’s it having its own will because it’s an outside thing with its own hungers and own tiny bit of consciousness as a way Amara is able to lash out at Creation…

Crowley mentions miracles, finally revealing what the title is really about. Crowley’s definition of miracles. He believed in this. He’s been hoping for one all year it feels like. All his hard work setting it up, and he just has to lurk around the fight, collect the blade, follow them back to the Bunker and see if his gamble paid off and he got his miracle.

Anyway I completely coincidentally watched 8x04 within the last few days and the fact that’s got a “see what I see, feel what I feel”-ish line has me on the side-eyeing everyone borrowing everything from Robbie train again. Especially as the MotW in that part of season 8 set up literally everything from season 9, 10 and 11. Like, just that little cluster of episodes are thematically dense and only get denser. Now Carver era has finished, rewatching 8x03-8x06 is kind of hilarious.

Anyway happy last moment of not realising Drowley was gonna be an actual thing, past!me! The fact this season literally ends on their elopement and Crowley winning Dean over was like… “it’s just subtextual coding” over the summer and lots of clever analysis from the fandom about how suggestive it all was… Ah, simpler times :P Dean’s world is all about to change. I guess the true victim of this season was Dean’s desperate attempts to convince himself of his heterosexuality.

Well played, Crowley.

#9x23 #weird rewatching #spn rewatches #Marshmallow Era #12x14 #12x15 #petition for Dabb to STOP #my stuff

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