#thank u spn kaira for typo checking this 😭

[godsprettiestprincess]

Good morning everyone I am fed up and finally have the motivation to do this, so welcome to

What the fuck was up with Azazel

(A breakdown of his canonical instructions, actions, and the plan we can assume he had from that)

(Aka why Sam isn’t as special as he seems, Lucifer isn’t as at fault as everybody thinks, and nobody in the show knows as much as we do — TLDR at the bottom!!)

I wanna start off my saying that this whole thing is messy as fuck, and the transition from him as the main antagonist to the apocalypse plotline is disjointed at best so any misunderstandings are completely understandable.

TIMELINE:

1972 (s4): Azazel goes to St. Mary’s Convent in Ilchester, Maryland (apparently built on top of the spot where Lucifer was first sealed away). There he possesses a priest, slaughters roughly a dozen nuns and — we can assume — does a ritual that allows Lucifer to speak through one of them. This succeeds and the conversation goes as follows:

Azazel: Father, look… I’m not exactly the praying type, but still… I made the sacrifice. I got you a bag full of nuns. So, uh.. can you hear me? Can you whisper through the door?

Lucifer: I’m here, my son.

Azazel: It’s so good to hear your voice, padre. I’ve been searching for you for so long. You have no idea. The others have lost faith. Dickless heathens. But not me.

Lucifer: You’ve done well.

Azazel: So, uh… how do I bust you out?

Lucifer: Lilith.

Azazel: Lilith? Father, she’s… trapped neck-deep in the pit. It won’t be easy.

Lucifer: Lilith. Lilith can break the seals.

Azazel: Yeah, okay. But what do I do?

Lucifer: You must find me a child. A very special child.

Azazel: What do you mean? What child?

1973 (s4): Dean gets sent back in time and meets John and the Campbells. Using present day John’s journal he learns that Azazel is attacking nearby families and decides to try to kill him, dragging the Campbells into the hunt on accident while trying to gather information. Dean, Mary, and Samuel intercept Azazel at Mary’s friends house, where he’s trying to make a deal with her. Mary attacks him and he mentions that he likes her (saying “Where the hell have they been hiding you?”), then flees his vessel when faced with the colt. Azazel then possesses Samuel and follows the family home and Dean accidentally tells him who he is (John & Mary’s kid) while trying to get Samuel on his side. Azazel reveals himself and they have this conversation:

Azazel; Future boy, huh? I only know one thing that’s got the juice to swing something like that, you must have friends in high places. So, I kill your mommy? That’s why you came all this was to see little ol’ me?

Dean: Oh I came here to kill you.

Azazel: Hey. Wait a minute. If that slug married your mommy, are you- are you one of my psychic kids? ……No. Not you. Maybe you got a sis. Or a bro. That’s terrific. That means it all worked out. After all, it’s why I’m here.

Dean: So that’s what this is about — these deals you’re making. You don’t want these peoples' souls.

Azazel: No. I just want their children. I’m here to choose the perfect parents, like your mommy.

Dean: Why her? Why any of them?

Azazel: Because they’re strong. They’re pure. They eat their wheaties. My own little master race. They’re ideal breeders. Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, no one’s breeding with me. Though Mary… man, I’d like to make an exception. So far, she’s my favorite.

Dean: So why make the deals?

Azazel: I need permission. I need to be invited into their houses. I know, I know — the red tape will drive you nuts, but in 10 short years, it’ll all be worth it. ‘Cause you know what I’m gonna do to your sibling? I’m gonna stand over their crib, and I’m gonna bleed into their mouth. Demon blood is better than ovaltine, vitamins, minerals, it makes you big and strong!

Dean: For what? So they can lead your discount demon army? Is that your big plan?

Azazel: Please. My endgame's a hell of a lot bigger than that, kid.

Dean: Endgame? What endgame?

Azazel: Like I’m gonna tell you. Or those angels sitting on your shoulder. No. I’m gonna cover my tracks good.

1983 (s1): Azazel breaks into the Winchester house on Sam’s 6month birthday and makes good on his deal, feeding Sam demon blood. Mary interrupts him, recognizes him, and is murdered, pushing John to become a hunter. He presumably goes through with this with all the other families he’d been making deals with 10 years ago during this time as well. (This is the first batch, which includes all the other named special children we meet.)

1983-2005 (pre-canon): Sam is routinely watched/contacted by demons working for Azazel, most obviously when a demon possesses his friend Brady, introduces him to Jess, then kills her the same way Mary was killed — pushing him back into hunting. (Though this probably happens to him more than usual over his life because of his favored status and Johns position as a hunter, given Azazel directly contacts/manipulates both Webber/Ansem (2x05) and Scott (2x10) that we know of, the assumption that Sam was the sole focus of this kind of control (because of him being Lucifer’s vessel or otherwise) is likely inaccurate.)

2006 (s1): John has tracked the same demonic omens that showed up before Azazel came to collect and killed Mary to Salvation, Iowa. When they get there Sam begins to have visions about a specific family & 6month old child* that Azazel is targeting. John is lured away by Meg and kidnapped, and Dean tries and fails to shoot Azazel but saves the family. Azazel possesses John and goes with Sam & Dean to their safe house after they rescue him and tells Sam that there’s a plan for him & the other kids.

2007 (s2): Scattered throughout, we meet more people with Sam’s abilities. Eventually, Sam and 4 other psychic kids (Jake, Andy, Ava, and Lily) are transported to an old ghost town in South Dakota, where they’re attacked by demons that kill one of them, Lily, for trying to escape. Azazel reaches out to Sam in a dream and tells him the game, that this is a hunger games style final test, he only needs the one person alive to be a leader, and Sam is the one he’s rooting for*. Ava kills Andy with a demon and Sam catches her. She reveals that she’s been here for 5 months already, participating in matches with other groups like this and winning all of them, and that she’s the one who killed Lily. She tries to attack Sam and Jake snaps her neck. With the demon attacking them out of the way Sam tries to get Jake to escape with him but Jake refuses, saying only one of them is going to escape. They fight, and Jake manages to kill Sam by stabbing him in the back, winning the contest.

As Dean & Bobby mourn Sam, Azazel contacts Jake and tells him there’s things he needs him to do, and that if he doesn’t comply Azazel will torture & kill his family. Dean summons a demon and takes the deal to trade his soul for Sam back to life plus a year to live. Him, a now resurrected Sam, Bobby, & Ellen discover a massive devils trap containing a gate to hell that demons are circling around, and Azazel sends Jake into it to open the gate. Costing him his life, Jake opens the gate with the colt and demons come pouring out, breaking the lines of the massive devils trap and letting Azazel in. He joins the fight and thanks Dean for bringing Sam back, but gets attacked by John’s ghost and drops the colt, letting Dean get his hands on it and kill him. Ellen & Bobby get the gate closed, John disappears, cut to black.

BREAKDOWN:

What we can put together from all this convoluted nonsense orchestrated by a liar is this: Azazel's instructions from Lucifer amount to ‘free Lilith, get me a special kid’. Azazel takes this information and starts looking for a way out of hell for Lilith, finding the gate to hell in Wyoming with the giant devil’s trap around it. Naturally, realizing that no pure blood demon could break this, he “realizes” what the special kid would be for — a human with demonic abilities that could be used to help break the seals without being bound by usual demon restraints (potentially acting as a successor to Azazel himself). With this in mind he starts planning to make one, finding people to make deals with to gain access to newborns. Mary Winchester is not on this list until she goes to him on information from Dean, sent back in time by angels, but he successfully adds her to it last minute and gets access to Sam, unaware of his importance.

From here, canon starts, and we see his plan actually unfolding. Deals are collected upon, Mary and many other parents interrupt and are killed, John starts hunting Azazel, and Sam & the many other special kids in his generation grow up. At 22 their powers kick in and they start getting weeded out, being manipulated by Azazel into more and more extreme things and dying from them, until it’s time for the death matches. Groups of kids with more and more potential are thrown together to see who wins, until the last group, containing Sam, is assembled and the winner is picked. The special child gets put to good use and the gate is opened — but Azazel dies, and we never get to see where the rest of the plan would have actually gone.

*Azazel also mentions other generations of kids with demon blood in this conversation, which tracks with the baby he was targeting in s1, and also gives more credit to the idea that he didn’t know he already had what Lucifer had told him to look for (Sam)

TL;DR

Azazel‘s goal was freeing Lilith, it’s the angels fault Sam was fed demon blood, and the whole project never had anything to do with vessels.