#rowena and crowley can't be healthy at the same time

[shallowseeker]

How would you bring Crowley back in a sequel? I know you see Rowena and being Queen of Hell still.

Oh, Crowley is hard. I'm going to have to get back to you on this one after work.

Off the bat, I think...you'd have to resist the temptation to have him too tied up with Dean. He's got so much more than that, and he could easily get too pigeon-holed and doomed to campy caricature within the plot. Crowley's got that complicated, painful humanity you can utilize, plus that tragic, tragic ambition...that he never overcame his humble background.

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I mean, most importantly, you have to look at how Crowley died. After he lost Gavin, he gave into full-throttle kingly ambition, searching for a meaning he couldn't fill up with human friendships or relationships, so I think you'd have to take Crowley back further than what we saw in SPN Prime.

You'd have to take him all the way back to that insecure guy, Fergus, who drank himself to death and got victimized by a demon in that alleyway. (I think you could even bring Gavin back into it, eventually. That was a horrifically painful thing between him and Rowena. Also, Oskar!)

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One way you could tackle this, I think, is bringing in Crowley's father. Crowley's father would be able to hit at Crowley's vulnerability and give him a "nobility/royalty/status" that he always felt he lacked.

So, you could do Crowley's father being the one to spring Crowley from The Empty. Then you'd have this mini side-war B plot between Rowena and Crowley's dad, tying somehow into the main plot with Sam and Dean II.

You'd have Rowena being Queen of Hell, yes, and trying to covertly help Sam and Dean II while saving face in her kingdom. Simultaneously, she's trying to best her OG abuser and get Crowley away from that guy's clutches.

Meanwhile, Crowley's completely under his father's spell, to the point he'd kill Dean II without a second thought, because he's tired of the Winchesters always winning at everyone else's expense. Maybe, he's still spiraling into that horrible nihilism, which will be especially pronounced after reliving his worst memories in The Empty.

And it's hard, right? Because Rowena's kind of doing too little, too late. How can Crowley believe her love is real, given all that she did before?

[darringtonshorthalt]

for all we talk about the finale being reductive, finale apologists who make the claim that the winchesters finally learn from their past and stop tripping over themselves to sacrifice themselves to save each other

but like

sam never actually sacrificed himself to save dean. it was always the other way around

Dean dying in Faith, Sam does find the faith healer, the cost is (unbeknownst to them) a random other person

Dean dying in In My Time of Dying, it's John who dies to save Dean

Sam dies in All Hell Breaks Loose, Dean sells his soul to bring him back

Dean dies over and over in Mystery Spot and when it seems final, Sam seems more bent on revenge than actually saving him

Dean dies in No Rest For The Wicked, Sam tried to find a way but came up bupkis, it's Cas who saves him from hell

they both die in Dark Side of the Moon, and while neither of them saves the other, this shows pretty strongly where their priorities lie. Dean's priorities are Sam; Sam's priorities are elsewhere

Sam sacrifices himself to stop Lucifer - this is probably the only time Dean actually doesn't do something catastrophic to save him. Inevitably, it's Cas who saves Sam (which can probably be attributed to him learning love from Dean)

Dean 'dies' (from Sam's perspective) and is stuck in purgatory. Sam retires and makes seemingly no efforts to get Dean back. This is virtually indistinguishable from the events of the finale, with the notable exception of Amelia having a personality and no blurry face, and dog instead of kid. The dog had more involved character building.

Sam is ready to sacrifice himself for the world again in Sacrifice, stops only because Dean begs him to. Worth noting, I think, that Sam's sacrifices are usually for the world, while Dean's are for family (mainly Sam). not saying that this is good or healthy or better in anyway, still drawing a point to the finale

now we get to Dean doing some extremely sketchy shit to save Sam in I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here, this time at the cost of Sam's free will instead of, you know, his own life. Progress? Not really

Dean takes on the burden of the Mark in First Born, not really knowing the ultimate consequences, mostly to save the world but also because he feels bad about what he did to Sam.

There's a bunch of unnecessary conflict for the sake of drama, basically Dean will always do whatever it takes to save Sam, but Sam doesn't feel the same way, except then by Do You Believe In Miracles they act like he does except that he literally has never gone to the same extreme as Dean has

Probably the most extreme we get of Sam trying to save Dean is whatever happens offscreen before Black.

saving Dean in Soul Survivor is a combo effort between Sam, Cas, a little bit of Crowley, and exactly 0 personal sacrifices. oh other than that random loser Sam duped into making a deal with Demon!Dean or whatever

then Sam spends the entire season searching for a cure to the MoC, Dean spends... a lot less time than that before just accepting it. In Brother's Keeper, Dean is saved by some extreme means on Sam's part, however, once again, the actual 'sacrifice' isn't made by Sam - it's Rowena and her... immortal child-figure? (and also charlie)

oh and when Dean tries to make a deal with death, the deal is he has to kill sam which he like... almost goes along with but obvs he could never kill his brother, he can't even let his brother stay dead

oh right and saving Dean did kind of almost destroy the world... again. oops.

at this point, they seem to have maybe learned some kind of lesson. we broke the world, maybe we should not do that again if possible

when Dean is believed to be dead in Alpha and Omega/Keep Calm and Carry On (aka the only good episodes that contains that phrase) we don't really get to see a full reaction from Sam because he's held captive for almost the entire period of time between thinking Dean is dean and discovering Dean's alive. He probably would have not done anything crazy at this point?

in First Blood they both seem moderately okay with the prospect of the other dying, though they definitely would have fought over who it was going to be for a WHILE if not for the interruptions that nulled the contract

in Let The Good Times Roll, Dean says yes to alt!Michael to save Sam and Jack (and probably the world). So much for learning a lesson somewhere

when Dean is ready to lock himself away to keep Michael trapped in Damaged Goods/Prophet and Loss, Sam won't let him, but there's no real sacrifices here, he just talks him out of it

I'm sure I'm missing examples, but the point is, no one learned anything. Dean will still always sacrifice himself for Sam, Sam's only major sacrifices have been for the world at large, and when it comes to saving one another, Sam never really took it as far as Dean did. Again. not saying Dean is the "better brother" or anything like that, just that Sam letting Dean die in Carry On really can't be counted as character Growth when like. that's already happened several times. Sam didn't need to learn not to die for his brother. Sam, perhaps, needed his brother not to die.