SPN 9x9 - Holy Terror
(ii)
OMG, how GREAT was the way things went down with Dean went down in the last third of the episode. Oh, he’ll lie to and undermine and gaslight Sam for weeks on end, but as soon as he found out HE got played, THAT light a fire under his ass and turned him 50 shades of blasé as to whether Sam could survive throwing “Zeke” out. Note, too, how he managed to keep the whole confrontation about why he “let” Zeke in initially and skates over “Sam’s” “he’s still in me?” comment - Dean STILL feels OH SO TERRIBLE about the least indefensible course of action and tap dances around the rest of it. (It’s still bizarre to me that SAM was going to be the lawyer in the family. Sam could grind away for decades and wouldn’t have Dean’s instinctive ability to maneuver an argument into happening on his terms. I don’t condone Dean’s behavior, but I am in awe of his skill.)
I didn’t miss that it all went as wrong as it did because Dean wouldn’t admit what he did to anyone else. Kevin inadvertently gave the game away because he knew there was something Dean wasn’t telling him - if Dean had spit it out when he told Kevin what to look for, Kevin wouldn’t have been pressing by the time Gadreel got back. And if Dean had come out with it and told Cas that he’d helped “Ezekiel” possess Sam, Cas probably would’ve understood he needed to get there and help out. But Dean was in such denial, focusing on image management because he was realizing how much control he didn’t have about anything of substance, and Kevin paid with his life.
But even before the shit hit the fan at the end, Dean was clearly off his game with everyone. I love how Dean tried to moralize his way into getting his way with everyone and for once it wasn’t working?! He tries to belittle and smarm Cas out of being involved in the case and that doesn’t work; he tries to cajole Gadreel into just throwing caution to the wind and work with Cas because hey, Cas is nice to Dean, and that turns out to be a losing proposition too. And I don’t know if that was…Dean didn’t realize how far out of his depth he was with the war between the angels, or if his salesmanship was slipping after his recent realization of how badly he’d screwed Sam and himself.
(iii)
The angel war is EVERYTHING I HAVE WANTED FOR SO LONG.
Dean might be losing his shit, but Metatron has even more game than we saw at the end of last season. “YOU HAD ONE JOB, GADREEL!” is not the kind of thing friends lead with?? (But it is how Dean talks to Sam all the time.) He said it to destabilize Gadreel, make him feel like ~~he’s so lucky Metatron is deigning to talk to him.
Metatron’s assertion that Heaven feels empty rings a little hollow to me. Presumably he wasn’t screwing with Cas, when he said “come and tell me your story” at the end of last season? So he’s got a dimension full of people whose stories he could hear. He’s got every writer who was a decent human being during their lives at his disposal. I think he just wants an army.
There was actually a lot of cool, subtle stuff happening for Cas throughout the whole episode. As much as he struggles to adapt consciously, Cas is extremely responsive to people’s expectations of him. Sam and Dean expect a vulnerable awkward cutie-pie Cas, and I don’t think Cas is being disingenuous when he behaves exactly that way. Theo treats him like he might have a little bit of clout, and so he snaps into power player mode. Being reactive like this makes a lot of sense with where Cas is: after all, he spent centuries and centuries as someone who was expected to be wholly responsive and take no initiative, and if he didn’t comply he would be forced to do so. And now he’s responding to warring interdimensional factions who all have it out for him.
(iv)
The spectrum of “I did what I had to do!” is really interesting here. Did they? Cas was holed up and held at bladepoint, it’s tough to blame him for not wanting to leave his fate hanging on Theo’s competence and loyalty. But…would he have done this anyway, in order to get back in the fight, to feel useful and like himself again? I’m inclined to think not, since he probably could have gotten the jump on Muriel, but I also think that these considerations were a part of why Cas decided he “had to” do what he did. Dean might have an argument that he “did what he had to do” in helping “Ezekiel” possess Sam at first, but whether or not he “had to” wait that long to let Sam in on the whole thing is another story. And Gadreel’s claim that he “had to” kill Kevin rings pretty hollow, even if we know he had emotionally and politically understandable reasons for throwing in with Metatron.
(v)
So here’s what we learned about Gadreel
(vi)
I am probably the only person in SPN fandom to say this, but the “Sam” situation wasn’t as dark as I was thinking. That’s largely because “there is no more Sam” is not something I’m about to take at face value, and only half because OH LIKE YOU WOULD REALLY DO IT. What I think is happening is that Gadreel is losing his grip on the distinction between himself and Sam. After all, he hasn’t possessed a vessel in eons, if ever; he might not have a great understanding of what’s happening.c&p'd off a tumblr post:
if Sam doesn’t have some say in what’s going on, why in the world is Dean still alive? I mean, think about it from an amoral rational-actor perspective. You’re on the run from everyone in the universe, you clearly have no qualms about killing humans, and you leave the one guy in the world who’s onto you without a scratch on him? There’s nothing we know about Gadriel that explains him acting against self-interest to this extent.
What would explain it, and what I think is happening, is that Gadriel is losing his grip on the lines between himself and Sam. It makes sense if he thinks Sam is gone because he’s not aware of himself as a separate entity from Sam. Then Sam doesn’t know to fight back against him, so he couldn’t prevent the conscious choice about Kevin, but he could still be a major or default player in Gadriel’s subconscious. It wouldn’t occur to Sam to seriously hurt Dean, and so it doesn’t occur to Gadriel, even though tactically it clearly should.
Supporting this, I think, is just how convincingly he pretended to be Sam down in the workroom. Like…I don’t think he was entirely pretending? It’s not like he can draw on memories of times Sam has stood up to Dean. If he was drawing on extant memories and making a conscious effort, why would he have hit Dean? Sam is pretty adverse to hitting Dean even in self-defense and has only ever taken the first swing when he was seriously doped up - ie, a reasonable angel would be worried that would tip Dean off. And if he was just trying to get the jump on Dean so he could get to Kevin without incident, he could’ve locked Dean in the workroom or angel-whammied him into unconsciousness. That scene makes the most sense if he’s really feeling Sam’s hurt on some level.
I think we’re seeing the extension of the Sam-Cas parallels that have existed for so long. I don’t think Cas will be able to hold onto another angel’s grace indefinitely, any more than I think Gadreel can keep his grip on Sam permanent.
(vii)
I am fretting a bit about what Sam has to come back to. You know? He was used to kill Kevin. Whatever they have to do to get him back isn’t going to be pretty, and if it’s onerous enough it’ll just reinforce the “Dean does so much for me so obviously I can’t question anything he’s done to me” mindset he’s had for so long. And then there’s the question of whether he’s just under, or whether he’s conscious and silenced and around for everything Gadreel does. OH, also, acto Wikipedia, the biblical Gadreel is apparently associated with Azazel. Obviously the psychological scars are going to be awful enough, he might as well get to be a superpowered uber-Sam after the whole ordeal.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/319919.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
OMG, how GREAT was the way things went down with Dean went down in the last third of the episode. Oh, he’ll lie to and undermine and gaslight Sam for weeks on end, but as soon as he found out HE got played, THAT light a fire under his ass and turned him 50 shades of blasé as to whether Sam could survive throwing “Zeke” out. Note, too, how he managed to keep the whole confrontation about why he “let” Zeke in initially and skates over “Sam’s” “he’s still in me?” comment - Dean STILL feels OH SO TERRIBLE about the least indefensible course of action and tap dances around the rest of it. (It’s still bizarre to me that SAM was going to be the lawyer in the family. Sam could grind away for decades and wouldn’t have Dean’s instinctive ability to maneuver an argument into happening on his terms. I don’t condone Dean’s behavior, but I am in awe of his skill.)
I didn’t miss that it all went as wrong as it did because Dean wouldn’t admit what he did to anyone else. Kevin inadvertently gave the game away because he knew there was something Dean wasn’t telling him - if Dean had spit it out when he told Kevin what to look for, Kevin wouldn’t have been pressing by the time Gadreel got back. And if Dean had come out with it and told Cas that he’d helped “Ezekiel” possess Sam, Cas probably would’ve understood he needed to get there and help out. But Dean was in such denial, focusing on image management because he was realizing how much control he didn’t have about anything of substance, and Kevin paid with his life.
But even before the shit hit the fan at the end, Dean was clearly off his game with everyone. I love how Dean tried to moralize his way into getting his way with everyone and for once it wasn’t working?! He tries to belittle and smarm Cas out of being involved in the case and that doesn’t work; he tries to cajole Gadreel into just throwing caution to the wind and work with Cas because hey, Cas is nice to Dean, and that turns out to be a losing proposition too. And I don’t know if that was…Dean didn’t realize how far out of his depth he was with the war between the angels, or if his salesmanship was slipping after his recent realization of how badly he’d screwed Sam and himself.
(iii)
The angel war is EVERYTHING I HAVE WANTED FOR SO LONG.
Dean might be losing his shit, but Metatron has even more game than we saw at the end of last season. “YOU HAD ONE JOB, GADREEL!” is not the kind of thing friends lead with?? (But it is how Dean talks to Sam all the time.) He said it to destabilize Gadreel, make him feel like ~~he’s so lucky Metatron is deigning to talk to him.
Metatron’s assertion that Heaven feels empty rings a little hollow to me. Presumably he wasn’t screwing with Cas, when he said “come and tell me your story” at the end of last season? So he’s got a dimension full of people whose stories he could hear. He’s got every writer who was a decent human being during their lives at his disposal. I think he just wants an army.
There was actually a lot of cool, subtle stuff happening for Cas throughout the whole episode. As much as he struggles to adapt consciously, Cas is extremely responsive to people’s expectations of him. Sam and Dean expect a vulnerable awkward cutie-pie Cas, and I don’t think Cas is being disingenuous when he behaves exactly that way. Theo treats him like he might have a little bit of clout, and so he snaps into power player mode. Being reactive like this makes a lot of sense with where Cas is: after all, he spent centuries and centuries as someone who was expected to be wholly responsive and take no initiative, and if he didn’t comply he would be forced to do so. And now he’s responding to warring interdimensional factions who all have it out for him.
(iv)
The spectrum of “I did what I had to do!” is really interesting here. Did they? Cas was holed up and held at bladepoint, it’s tough to blame him for not wanting to leave his fate hanging on Theo’s competence and loyalty. But…would he have done this anyway, in order to get back in the fight, to feel useful and like himself again? I’m inclined to think not, since he probably could have gotten the jump on Muriel, but I also think that these considerations were a part of why Cas decided he “had to” do what he did. Dean might have an argument that he “did what he had to do” in helping “Ezekiel” possess Sam at first, but whether or not he “had to” wait that long to let Sam in on the whole thing is another story. And Gadreel’s claim that he “had to” kill Kevin rings pretty hollow, even if we know he had emotionally and politically understandable reasons for throwing in with Metatron.
(v)
So here’s what we learned about Gadreel
- Gadreel, the angel who took the fall for Lucifer invading the world.
- He wants to be able to think of himself as a good guy, and possibly even more wants to be thought of as a good guy.
- He’s a true free agent. He is a pariah even among angels, and he’s running scared from everyone. That said, he did go way out of his way to help Sam and Dean. That means he knew who they were and was willing to take a big risk for their sakes. But why, when any angel with an ounce of sense - and he appears to have plenty - would leave the widest possible berth between the two most famous vessels on the planet?
- Right now, I think the answer is that after all those millennia of isolation, Gadreel wants to belong somewhere. With Sam and Dean; with Metatron; whatever. He wants to be a part of something. Look how desperate he is for Metatron’s approval; how he needs to justify and explain himself to Dean.
- I do think he’s lying about not hearing everything that goes on between Sam and Dean. He has to be constantly scanning all information Sam might take in if he’s going to keep himself under wraps. But why lie? To keep Dean acting as normally as possible around Sam? To be able to pretend that he, Gadreel, is on the receiving end of that affection, rather than Sam? Just ‘cause? And how different is he from Dean, then, who’s been sticking his head in the sand and pretending that Schroedinger’s Winchester is actually Sam?
- I cracked a joke about Zeke appropriating the bitchface but I actually think it was kind of important? That active, expressive, Dean-we-talked-about-this face when they first run into Cas at the crime scene was subtly, gloriously, Sam.
- Gadreel seems to be…how to say this…psychologically porous, more so than most angels: he’s both highly manipulative and highly susceptible to manipulation. By the last act of the episode I had a strange feeling that I was watching Jared Padalecki playing Gaius Baltar.
(vi)
I am probably the only person in SPN fandom to say this, but the “Sam” situation wasn’t as dark as I was thinking. That’s largely because “there is no more Sam” is not something I’m about to take at face value, and only half because OH LIKE YOU WOULD REALLY DO IT. What I think is happening is that Gadreel is losing his grip on the distinction between himself and Sam. After all, he hasn’t possessed a vessel in eons, if ever; he might not have a great understanding of what’s happening.c&p'd off a tumblr post:
if Sam doesn’t have some say in what’s going on, why in the world is Dean still alive? I mean, think about it from an amoral rational-actor perspective. You’re on the run from everyone in the universe, you clearly have no qualms about killing humans, and you leave the one guy in the world who’s onto you without a scratch on him? There’s nothing we know about Gadriel that explains him acting against self-interest to this extent.
What would explain it, and what I think is happening, is that Gadriel is losing his grip on the lines between himself and Sam. It makes sense if he thinks Sam is gone because he’s not aware of himself as a separate entity from Sam. Then Sam doesn’t know to fight back against him, so he couldn’t prevent the conscious choice about Kevin, but he could still be a major or default player in Gadriel’s subconscious. It wouldn’t occur to Sam to seriously hurt Dean, and so it doesn’t occur to Gadriel, even though tactically it clearly should.
Supporting this, I think, is just how convincingly he pretended to be Sam down in the workroom. Like…I don’t think he was entirely pretending? It’s not like he can draw on memories of times Sam has stood up to Dean. If he was drawing on extant memories and making a conscious effort, why would he have hit Dean? Sam is pretty adverse to hitting Dean even in self-defense and has only ever taken the first swing when he was seriously doped up - ie, a reasonable angel would be worried that would tip Dean off. And if he was just trying to get the jump on Dean so he could get to Kevin without incident, he could’ve locked Dean in the workroom or angel-whammied him into unconsciousness. That scene makes the most sense if he’s really feeling Sam’s hurt on some level.
I think we’re seeing the extension of the Sam-Cas parallels that have existed for so long. I don’t think Cas will be able to hold onto another angel’s grace indefinitely, any more than I think Gadreel can keep his grip on Sam permanent.
(vii)
I am fretting a bit about what Sam has to come back to. You know? He was used to kill Kevin. Whatever they have to do to get him back isn’t going to be pretty, and if it’s onerous enough it’ll just reinforce the “Dean does so much for me so obviously I can’t question anything he’s done to me” mindset he’s had for so long. And then there’s the question of whether he’s just under, or whether he’s conscious and silenced and around for everything Gadreel does. OH, also, acto Wikipedia, the biblical Gadreel is apparently associated with Azazel. Obviously the psychological scars are going to be awful enough, he might as well get to be a superpowered uber-Sam after the whole ordeal.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/319919.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.