SPN 11.22 We Happy Few

May 23, 2016 20:16

SPN 11.22 We Happy Few



One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you
only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
-- Frank Zappa

Oh Chuck, you unreliable narrator you. I see what you did there.

Amara: That's your story, not mine.

So the plan, "God's plan", changed quite a bit from what he wrote for Metatron. Or did it?

How do you get humans, angels, demons, witches, the devil and God himself to come together in agreement of a plan to save the world?

You tell them something they will agree to. Something they already believe in.

Lucifer believed he was wronged by his Father. That he was owed an apology. He also wouldn't have believed an apology that came too easily. Chuck played him perfectly.

Chuck: I can't say I'm sorry if I'm not. What he wants an apology for, I did for humanity, for the world.

Lucifer missed the bigger picture standing right in front of him because his mind was set.

Chuck: To create the world I had to lock Amara away, and when the Mark corrupted you and I saw that you posed a threat to humankind I did the same with you.
Lucifer: No, you betrayed me. You gave me the Mark to lock her away, and when it changed me, when it did what the Mark inevitably does, you threw me away.
Chuck: No, son. The Mark... you always cast a jaundiced glance at humans. The Mark didn't change you. It just made you more of what you already were.

Maybe Lucifer was owed an explanation from his Father. Maybe he owed an apology himself that never occurred to him to offer. As much as Chuck's actions had hurt and angered him, he never realized how much his own actions and failures hurt his Father. Or that Chuck would set him up to be stopped, again, from posing a future threat to the world. Chuck's priories had not changed. After Amara, what would Lucifer be getting up to? Especially if Chuck's real story ends with Amara, as shared with Metatron?

Sam: Then you go about starting the Apocalypse again, because you're an old dog and that's your trick. (11.10)

Or in Chuck's words:

Chuck: Tell me, could I have kept humankind safe with you on the board?

Chuck has a two-fold problem to clean up. Amara was the most pressing, but Lucifer also had that "jaundiced" view of humanity. He wasn't going to change. So Chuck told him what he needed to hear because he already believed it: that yes, he had been special in God's eyes, that he had been abandoned, that he had been loved. It might even have been the truth. It just wasn't the whole truth. The whole plan.

Why did Chuck's plan sound so different than what he originally wrote in his biography?

Everyone kept commenting on the new plan. Let's see, there was:

Angel: That's a... very simple plan.

Rowena: Simple, bordering on insane.

Sam: We always sweat this stuff, these choices. But for once, we have God on our side. I mean, for once, we can actually just do things His way.

Rowena: Doesn't this strategy strike anyone as a wee bit un-strategic?

DING DING DING!!!

And we have a winner. This plan was never meant to be the real plan, just the prelude. It was meant to fail.

The only way to change Amara's mind about creation, about the value of humanity and the world they existed in, was if she already believed it herself.

Dean: Why keep her in play? So she can escape and we can go through this all over again?

Amara wasn't going to be convinced by anything Chuck said to her.

So what about Chuck's original plan?

Dean: How is death by your sister a strategy?
Chuck: I know her. (11.21)

He had to know how she would react to the idea of being recaged again.

He didn't have to stop Lucifer again -- he let Amara take care of that problem for him.

Amara: Goodbye nephew!

As for the Winchesters, did anyone really think Chuck was going to go another round of putting the Mark on another person when it would end up eventually failing again... or Dean would do exactly what Sam did for him and save his brother, leading to Amara's escape, and back to Dean's words of going through this all over again?

Chuck had to put on the show, because that is what Amara believed to be the truth about herself and her brother.

Amara: Tell me, if you won't change, why should I?

Chuck's original plan was for Dean and Sam and his other chosen ones to be the firewall saving the world from Amara. He didn't specify how they could achieve this.

And Dean wasn't intended to be a mere spectator, he is Chuck's ultimate bait to prove his argument.

There's a value, a glory in creation... that's greater and truer than my pride or my ego. Call it grace, call it being! Whatever it is, it didn't come from my hands, it was there, waiting to be born. It just is. As you and I just were. Since you've been free I know you've seen it. Felt it.

Chuck knows Amara. He is fully aware of that bond between Dean and Amara. So his playbook did change from his last takedown of her. Instead of sacrificing her freedom to preserve the world, he sacrificed himself, trusting in his creation to convince her or stop her.

Dean: Amara, what have you done?
Sam: He's dead. God's dead.
Amara: No. He's dying. My brother will dim and fade away into nothing. But not until He sees what comes next. Not until He watches this world, everything He created, everything He loves turn into ash. Welcome to the end.

Amara needed to believe she had won, so Chuck gave her that. But she hasn't yet fully absorbed the fact that turning all creation into ash would include Dean.

What that means for our finale... I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure it's gonna hurt, because sacrifice has been the name of the game all season long.

spn

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