#spn2.17

[incesthemes]

god i just love heart. it's such a good episode. sam doesn't want madison to die because madison is an allegory for himself and sam does not want to die. he doesn't want to be a monster. he sees himself in madison and he desperately wants her to be good because if she is good then so too, maybe, is he. and killing madison is admitting that there's no hope for him and that he can't be saved.

what's particularly thrilling about this episode though is the way this allegory interacts with dean, and particularly the developing relationship between sam and dean.

namely, sam refuses to let dean be the one to kill madison. he takes up the mantle and expressly disallows dean from being there when the bullet is fired. throughout the episode, even, dean is sent on the wild goose chase while sam stays close to madison. and oftentimes, these chases are initiated by sam, who urges dean to follow the trail. it comes off, in the end, as if sam is trying to actively prevent dean from interfering with what he needs to do. which is, ultimately, to kill madison.

when sam begs dean not to be the one who kills madison, he is ultimately talking about himself. the message of the episode is that he doesn't want dean to kill him. this is a striking difference from playthings, where sam begged dean to kill him. sam spends much of this span of time between the two episodes grappling with the depth of dean's love and his fears of the inevitable (his own monstrosity). and the turning point of these episodes appears to be the direct midpoint between 2x11 and 2x17, born under a bad sign—it's where dean insists that he will save sam no matter what happens. and from then on, sam's fears turn from the inevitability of his monstrosity to the desperate hope that dean will, in fact, save him. his dependence on dean for stability and hope is growing, and he comes to trust in dean as the only person on earth who can save him from the promise of the monster.

madison is therefore a conduit through which this discussion about their fate is had: if dean is successful in killing madison, then it becomes a confirmation of sam's fears. if dean kills madison, he is killing sam. he's going back on his promise to sam. it's a betrayal of the highest degree, and sam must prevent that at any cost. and so he disarms dean and sends him away from madison, never lets him get too close. and in the end, when he realizes his efforts were futile, he kills madison himself. metaphorically, he kills himself before dean can do it for him, which is a subversion of fate in itself. he may not be able to prevent the monster, but he can destroy it with his own power, and destiny will be thwarted because dean's hands will be clean.

and as such, this is a microcosm, a foreshadowing, of swan song. where the metaphor becomes real and the monster inside of sam is indeed killed by sam's own hands, leaving dean's bloodless. more than anything, 2x17 heart insists, sam will not let fate run its course. if he can't prevent his own fate, then he will prevent dean's. so he kills madison; so he throws himself into the pit. it's the ultimate act in service of the brother and therefore the ultimate act against destiny. and well i just think that's neat.

[incesthemes]

the thing about heart is that it details a prophecy for sam that's very unlike all of the messaging we've had up to this point. madison is attacked ("mugged") by glenn and turned into a werewolf, and this causes her to undergo a radical transformation of self:

her transformation is wholly positive; she becomes a better person, more confident and assured and willful in ways she couldn't muster before. of course this metamorphosis stems from her having become a werewolf. not only was her physiology changed, but so was her psychology. her life got better, not worse, because she became a monster.

madison is an allegory for sam. she harbors the same monster sam is afraid is inside of him, both unaware of their monstrosity yet capable of such great violence because of it. as the season 2 finale approaches, sam's fears are at a heightened state, unable to compromise his own anxiety with dean's overwhelming confidence in him. when madison is revealed to be the monster of the week, it's a damaging blow that proves to sam he can't escape the fate azazel has laid out for him.

which of course is the plot of many episodes up to now. the thing that makes this different, though, is that the transformation from human to monster is framed as something empowering and emboldening.

madison is happy after her transformation, seemingly for the first time in her life. becoming a werewolf gave her the power and strength she needed to turn her life around for the better. because sam is paralleled with madison, this implies that such a transformation can belong to him, as well. if only he embraces his power, his destiny, he can have everything he's ever wanted.

the other notable thing here is that seasons 1 and 2 establish very, very clearly that the choice both sam and dean must make is between their fate or their family; the two are entirely incompatible, and there is no third option for them to pursue. what this episode implies, then, that the way sam will achieve actual happiness is not only through accepting his destiny, but by choosing it over dean.

compare this to kurt: the episode parallels not only madison and sam, but kurt and dean. kurt is the stalker ex-boyfriend who sam and dean become convinced is behind the werewolf attacks. he takes the blame for madison's crimes because he looks the part—at this point in the series, we're embedded in a subplot revolving around dean getting caught up with the law, while sam is conveniently exempt from a criminal record himself. provenance too provides the outline for this subplot: looks are deceiving, and the real monster, the real criminal, the real danger is the innocent-looking bystander to the scary family member's crimes. the ghost melanie is overlooked as the killer because she's just a little girl, she couldn't possibly kill her whole family, and besides isaiah looks mean and strict; it must have been him.

kurt is "possessive and controlling and [likes] to punch people." madison clings to him because she was "too insecure to leave." and season 2 is a plot that puts dean in the position to control sam's fate: his own fate is to kill sam, to control him in the most physical and literal way. he is the cain to sam's abel, and the narrative across season 2 establishes this. and even when dean fights against this fate, sam clings to dean because he's insecure about his own fate. he's afraid, and when he's afraid he gives himself over to dean completely.

all this to say, madison left kurt when she became a werewolf. if sam embraces his destiny, he will by force have to abandon dean—the parallel is clear and damning. and so what this episode implies is that the only way sam will ever have power, have agency, have strength and confidence of his own is by leaving dean and becoming the monster he's so scared of.

and this is an interesting alternative to the messaging of previous episodes. madison isn't the first character to imply that sam can be so much more if only he would accept azazel's plan for him (hello, meg), but it's the first time it's been framed in such a positive light. and it's corroborated, too, by episodes like scarecrow and the benders, which insist that the family, the collective, is a twisted, evil thing that invites destruction and rot. "we're stronger together" is a blatant, baldfaced lie when held up to the likes of burkitsville or the bender family, both of whom lift off the mask of the family and reveal the writhing terror underneath. and no matter how hard dean fights to save sam, he is in the end just the stalker ex-boyfriend holding sam back from reaching his full potential.

at the tail end of the series of episodes i lovingly refer to as sam and dean's codependent honeymoon sits this ominous about-face, this sinister reminder that just because family can save sam from one hell doesn't mean it's not another in its own right. what sam must choose between is power and freedom of an extent most people could never conceive at the sacrifice of his humanity, and the codependent shackles which bind him to his brother for eternity. what sam must choose between is monstrosity or captivity. then here comes heart, and heart has the audacity to ask the audience and sam himself: is monstrosity really all that bad?

[incesthemes]

heart is a great episode, and it's placed perfectly in the timeline of season 2 as it builds up to the finale. it functions as a perfect symbol of sam's character arc, and the fact that he's the one who kills madison at the end is another nail in the coffin as he loses hope for himself. he's been saying it from the beginning that dean has to kill him if he can't be saved, but this episode fully reckons with what that entails, for both of them. their roles are reversed throughout this episode, and by doing so they have to come to terms with what that means for sam as they get closer to the end

i'm really impressed with how the plot of the episode parallels the emotional plot of the season and how that works to heighten the tension and inspire a sense of dread toward sam's potential demise