Supernatural Season 8 - speculation
Wow, hi!
Coming in out of the cold to add a few thoughts of my own to the mass of speculation surrounding Season 8 right now. Please note that there may be spoilers for anything that has been aired, but that anything beyond 8.14 is a mystery to me so all else is total speculation. (And I'd like to keep it that way, pretty please with a cherry on top! :) )
I'll cross post this to a couple of comms, would love to hear people's thoughts up to and including being shot down in flames by the weight of evidence that I've overlooked, as I'm sure I've missed plenty.
I have all the same niggles as other people when it comes to the first half of S8, especially the Sam and Amelia story. However, call me naive (because it’s true) but I genuinely don’t think this is down to shoddy writing or character inconsistency. And I have faith in Jeremy Carver, and will continue to have faith until long past the point where it is in any way sustainable, because I just can’t help myself when it comes to Supernatural! So here’s my response to a few points.
Sam didn’t look for Dean:
I see the same character inconsistency here as everyone else. I can pull up plenty examples of times when they have both apparently been alone and have immediately gone looking for each other. As one excellent reviewer pointed out, if this ‘we said we wouldn’t look for each other’ rule was followed, the Benders would have taken Sam out way back in Season One .
However, I’m pretty certain Sam did look for Dean - he just doesn’t remember doing so. Obviously Crowley wasn’t in the mood to be helpful, but he knew where Dean was, so he may have told Sam. If Sam summoned a demon (SOP in attempts to find each other) they could have told him. Given he’s supposed to be a bright guy, the evidence of his own eyes could have told him - they had devised the plan together to blast Dick Roman back to Purgatory, Dean (and Castiel, who couldn’t have died, after all) were in the blast radius and all three were suddenly missing. Doesn’t take Einstein to figure it out.
Assuming none of this worked, Sam had another avenue of enquiry before he could consider himself truly alone - the angels, who he knows how to summon (Balthazar, anyone?) and who had a personal interest as one of their own was also missing. To me, going to them is the only course of action that makes any sense.
Let’s say he summoned an angel (Samandriel, possibly, but either way) who was working for Nefarious Naomi. She doesn’t want Dean out just yet, for whatever reason, and she uses mind wipes as one of her tools. She mindwipes Sam (plants who knows what now I come to think of it - maybe he has some residual programming, unless that’s just for angels) and sends him on his not-so-merry way, convinced that he has no further recourse and that Dean is dead.
Amelia:
Not sure about this one, but my feeling is that Amelia is either a) an angelic construct put in place as a distraction for Sam, b) an angel or c) a human who is being similarly manipulated, but I’m not so keen on c). My instinct is a), she’s not a dream, we more or less have evidence of that now, but she could still be a major distortion of reality. To date, the only interaction anyone but Sam has had with her is Dean’s text, and he got that number off Sam’s phone so that doesn’t prove much.
Also (flappy hands!) the last character called Amelia on the show was - dun dun DUN - Jimmy Novak’s wife! Direct angel connection! I’d love to think this was deliberate. I know, I know.
“Them”:
The mysterious allusion that Benny the Vamp made when they were closing in on the portal. One can only assume (I can only assume) that the angels told Benny where to look, created the portal, in exchange for info on how to hitch a lift. The angels, in fact, were totally in control of how and when Dean left Purgatory, and probably coincided this with Don’s ‘return’ so that Sam would be free to join him.
The fact that Cas chose to stay behind - could be a genuine choice, could be that Naomi wanted him to stay behind. Without knowing her Grand Plan, it’s hard to call, but I’d hazard a guess it was Cas’s choice - she seems to want him with Dean and Sam for spying purposes. Note - and to me this was a huge flashing red light - the first time we saw her with Cas, she didn’t ask him about Crowley, the tablet or any of that, she said ‘Tell me about Dean and Sam’. Which was interpreted as ‘Give me news about the tablet’ because at that point it amounted to the same thing.
*makes mental note to go back and see what Sam was up to when Benny called Dean away*
So:
My prediction is that Sam (and Dean - Sam can only complete the trials if Dean is involved, just as it took both of them to kill the hellhound, even though Sam delivered the death blow) will complete the three trials, but that Nefarious Naomi and her squad will somehow be on hand to prevent the closing of the gates of Hell. This brings into play a few other loose ends - Crowley’s half of the tablet, the fact that there’s an angel tablet, the fact that Dean and Sam know something’s up with Cas but haven’t figured out what yet, and the fact that there is a way to tap into the default programming of angels for further information. (Castiel might want to run and hide about now!)
In conclusion - ANGELS!
Coming in out of the cold to add a few thoughts of my own to the mass of speculation surrounding Season 8 right now. Please note that there may be spoilers for anything that has been aired, but that anything beyond 8.14 is a mystery to me so all else is total speculation. (And I'd like to keep it that way, pretty please with a cherry on top! :) )
I'll cross post this to a couple of comms, would love to hear people's thoughts up to and including being shot down in flames by the weight of evidence that I've overlooked, as I'm sure I've missed plenty.
I have all the same niggles as other people when it comes to the first half of S8, especially the Sam and Amelia story. However, call me naive (because it’s true) but I genuinely don’t think this is down to shoddy writing or character inconsistency. And I have faith in Jeremy Carver, and will continue to have faith until long past the point where it is in any way sustainable, because I just can’t help myself when it comes to Supernatural! So here’s my response to a few points.
Sam didn’t look for Dean:
I see the same character inconsistency here as everyone else. I can pull up plenty examples of times when they have both apparently been alone and have immediately gone looking for each other. As one excellent reviewer pointed out, if this ‘we said we wouldn’t look for each other’ rule was followed, the Benders would have taken Sam out way back in Season One .
However, I’m pretty certain Sam did look for Dean - he just doesn’t remember doing so. Obviously Crowley wasn’t in the mood to be helpful, but he knew where Dean was, so he may have told Sam. If Sam summoned a demon (SOP in attempts to find each other) they could have told him. Given he’s supposed to be a bright guy, the evidence of his own eyes could have told him - they had devised the plan together to blast Dick Roman back to Purgatory, Dean (and Castiel, who couldn’t have died, after all) were in the blast radius and all three were suddenly missing. Doesn’t take Einstein to figure it out.
Assuming none of this worked, Sam had another avenue of enquiry before he could consider himself truly alone - the angels, who he knows how to summon (Balthazar, anyone?) and who had a personal interest as one of their own was also missing. To me, going to them is the only course of action that makes any sense.
Let’s say he summoned an angel (Samandriel, possibly, but either way) who was working for Nefarious Naomi. She doesn’t want Dean out just yet, for whatever reason, and she uses mind wipes as one of her tools. She mindwipes Sam (plants who knows what now I come to think of it - maybe he has some residual programming, unless that’s just for angels) and sends him on his not-so-merry way, convinced that he has no further recourse and that Dean is dead.
Amelia:
Not sure about this one, but my feeling is that Amelia is either a) an angelic construct put in place as a distraction for Sam, b) an angel or c) a human who is being similarly manipulated, but I’m not so keen on c). My instinct is a), she’s not a dream, we more or less have evidence of that now, but she could still be a major distortion of reality. To date, the only interaction anyone but Sam has had with her is Dean’s text, and he got that number off Sam’s phone so that doesn’t prove much.
Also (flappy hands!) the last character called Amelia on the show was - dun dun DUN - Jimmy Novak’s wife! Direct angel connection! I’d love to think this was deliberate. I know, I know.
“Them”:
The mysterious allusion that Benny the Vamp made when they were closing in on the portal. One can only assume (I can only assume) that the angels told Benny where to look, created the portal, in exchange for info on how to hitch a lift. The angels, in fact, were totally in control of how and when Dean left Purgatory, and probably coincided this with Don’s ‘return’ so that Sam would be free to join him.
The fact that Cas chose to stay behind - could be a genuine choice, could be that Naomi wanted him to stay behind. Without knowing her Grand Plan, it’s hard to call, but I’d hazard a guess it was Cas’s choice - she seems to want him with Dean and Sam for spying purposes. Note - and to me this was a huge flashing red light - the first time we saw her with Cas, she didn’t ask him about Crowley, the tablet or any of that, she said ‘Tell me about Dean and Sam’. Which was interpreted as ‘Give me news about the tablet’ because at that point it amounted to the same thing.
*makes mental note to go back and see what Sam was up to when Benny called Dean away*
So:
My prediction is that Sam (and Dean - Sam can only complete the trials if Dean is involved, just as it took both of them to kill the hellhound, even though Sam delivered the death blow) will complete the three trials, but that Nefarious Naomi and her squad will somehow be on hand to prevent the closing of the gates of Hell. This brings into play a few other loose ends - Crowley’s half of the tablet, the fact that there’s an angel tablet, the fact that Dean and Sam know something’s up with Cas but haven’t figured out what yet, and the fact that there is a way to tap into the default programming of angels for further information. (Castiel might want to run and hide about now!)
In conclusion - ANGELS!