#i absolutely didn't understand s10 the first time but it's quite the trip

[ananke-xiii]

"The Prisoner" is remembered for the destiel sex/fight scene which is fair. But do you remember how this scene parallelled Sam and Crowley previous scene where Sam plans to kill the King of Hell (because of Rowena but also because he wanted to) and THEN Crowley has the upper hand and SPARES Sam and tells him to REMEMBER that it was he, A MONSTER, as Sam called him, that decided to spare his life??

And how Cas wants to stop Dean but in the end he's the one whose life is spared because Dean's "connection" never really gets broken, everything stays connected all of the time for him, despite the mark and Cas' betrayal (from Dean's pov)?

And how, by the end of the episode, the big reveal is that the real "monsters" of the season were Sam and Cas? Or, at least, the people "in the wrong", whereas Dean and Crowley are framed as being if not good, better than them and decidedly in the right (even if they ALSO committed HORRIBLE acts too so we're led to choose which of the two evils is the lesser and pick a bloody side)? And they're the ones who actually hold the power of Death and Life over Sam and Cas?

Yeaaaaah, ngl, that's some intriguing stuff, quite different from both the early and the late seasons and their b/w mentality, although it's very grim because there literally is no morally good side, not even in the Winchesters ("good" as in: they're the main characters so we root for them), both brothers represent two different sides of morally bad behaviours and they are veeeery bad lol. They're fundamentally different but they're both based on the assumption that people can decide whether or not another person is good or bad and act for said person according to their belief system. But it's also problematic because by the end of the season Crowley is framed as this morally superior evil (but less evil than, let's say s8 because "The Power of Love") character but he is one of the main reasons they're in that mess in the first place and he did some awful manipulations to Dean's detriment and we're like, supposed to just forget about it (Sam didn't forget any of Crowley's shit and look where that got him). Lol. Mmmm yeah, it was a mess but, in retrospect, it's cool to analyze.