#also revealing myself as a cas should have stayed dead truther :O

[antigonewinchester]

what was gamble's original season 7 and 8?

disclaimer that a lot of this info is based on fandom hearsay – I would love to verify more of this stuff but there are so many broken / old fandom links that don’t work anymore :(

the 2 major points I’ve heard are:

Cas was not supposed to come back after his death, and

Sam and Dean were supposed to end up in Purgatory together at the end of the season.

Cas not coming back would’ve changed a lot! for ex, he couldn’t have played a part to the resolution for Sam’s Lucifer hallucinations / psychosis arc. I very much read Sam & Lucifer in s5 as being abt Sam overcoming his personal ‘demons,’ so thematically it’s kind of weird for another character to then swoop in and “remove” that trauma for him instead of Sam being more integral to getting rid of Hallucifer. I know a lot of ppl like it, but it plays as a bit of a deux ex machina and doesn’t feel super satisfying to me. (altho Gamble did write 7x17 so maybe her original idea would have been something similar.)

there’s also that without Cas, the show likely would have resolved the Leviathan plotline differently, and wouldn’t have had the Leviathan tablet, which then led to the Demon / Angel tablet plots in s8. while Carver’s era has its horror moments, it does shift more into the fantasy / urban fantasy genre, and I just really like horror-natural… plots around spooky and scary monsters >> plots related to Heaven / the angels. suspect Gamble would’ve brought back more horror vibes for s8, particularly with how her seasons built up Purgatory as a very scary place. I also really really like the idea of both Sam & Dean ending in Purgatory together and fighting their way out. again thematically, if s8 had been the end of the show, it would have been very fitting for Sam and Dean to both get stuck in a dark, liminal place and then return home together. it’s very metaphorical for what their journey was over the previous seasons!

there are some other little bits and pieces of the story Gamble wanted to tell that intrigue me too. there was an interview from mid-way thru s6 where she mentioned returning to Adam – say, wouldn’t a storyline in s8 around Sam and Dean rescuing Adam from the Cage have been cool?

finally, I just overall like Gamble’s take on Sam and Dean and their dynamic more than do Carver’s, so I think I would’ve liked her s8 better than what we got… I know some ppl quite enjoy it (and hey, more power to them) but it just got to be a lot for me. the Gamble era still had conflict between Sam and Dean, but not as intensely as it eventually got w/ Carver.