SPN Meta: Various topics on 4.03 - Meta Overflow post.
As re-directed in my 4.03 Reaction post, this is where the meta and spec ended up.
Meta, theory, speculation, capslocking, keymashing, cursing, and free-association on characters plot developments and things in or implied by 4.03, and throughout the series aired to date and some tie-in material.
*KEYMASH* *CAPSLOCK* OMG HOLY BANANA BOATS!
Okay. Now maybe I'll be rational. But probably not. *points at... well, let's call it a title*
Particularly (now that we're under the cut-tag), this will include meta/spec/theories on: Mary and Dean; YED's endgame, overall plan Sam's role in it and wild spec about where that's leading; and time travel mechanics and quantum physics because Kripke's in my frigging sandbox there. Sort of. I am not a Time Lord or a quantum physicist, but I've read some crap, and have a lot of background stuff for Quantum Rock. Oh yes, and future-past events in Quantum Rock got a little bit more Kripke'd, but less than I thought they might, yay. Still, Kripke needs to get out of my fic notebook.
Kripke also needs to stop trying to sneak SPN:Origins material into televised canon sideways. 'Cause hrmf.
(Other people have probably thought of most of this more coherently than me, I've been avoiding current Meta for fear of spoiler slippage for a long while)
Flailings relating to Mary and Dean
Mary isn't a willing or unwitting pawn, she's an unwilling pawn, who, I think, fought back retroactively against YED by having Dean.
I figure she encouraged John to go back for another stint with the Marines, maybe, to make sure he had combat training and would be able to help deal with whatever was going to go down in ten years. Also to get him out of the way during the first few years so she could do research and look for solutions without awkward questions.
See, she's a hunter, she'd have contacts, probably. I'd bet she did some research, found out that at the ten year mark from a deal, on the same day of the deal, deal-makers had kids. She may or may not have found out anything about what happened to them after they were born, I'm betting not, because the last batch would have been making their deals in the early '50's so info would be extremely sparse. Maybe she didn't find anything, just knew that bad crap was gonna go down in ten years, but I'm thinking she found out about kids being born on Deal days.
I'm also thinking that in most cases as has been seen in the show, the kids were first-borns, or only children. No older sibs, because the deal-makers were too freaked about their deadline to think about settling down and having kids, and after that they were kind of weird and tweaky.
So, she knows a demon's coming calling, and maybe that it's got something to do with a future kid. So she figures on giving the kid an older sibling to watch out for him. Or something. So, she maybe she does some research into birth omens, religions of various types, anything that might help a kid versus demons, or make the Light side whatevers more likely to take note of him. Probably almost entirely crap stuff, but Mary being a fighter with her back to a wall is going to try anything. Not that she's giving him psychic powers or any such nonsense, or making him into anything but what he is, just kind of for luck or something. *handwaves because I have no idea what I'm talking about, really*
Now for the part that blew my mind and makes me think some part of the above shash is right.
At first I was trying to figure out what significance Dean's birthdate might have, but then figuring a birthdate is hard to nail precisely, and conception is sliiightly more controllable. Also ...loath as I am to make reference to it... there's the scene in Origins #4. (DAMN YOU KRIPKE FOR ATTEMPTING AN END RUN AROUND MY DEFENSES AND MAKING ME CONSIDER THAT COMIC IN ANY WAY POTENTIALLY CANON!!!) So maybe there was a point to that.
Now, when was Dean's conception, maybe a significant date, maybe the spring equinox, some kind of balance and bringer of new life implications? Figuring out from birthdate of Jan 24th, 1979... According to this ... "Your date of conception was on or about 3 May 1978."
So. May 2nd. Five years after the date of the deal, and five years before the due date, which is Sam's birthday. Kripke, you smug-assed s.o.b. YOU'VE BEEN PLANNING THIS FROM THE START YOU BASTARD! Not like we didn't know that but Ho-Lee crap. Don't know how accurate that is or correlateable to real human gestation periods, but it's probably what Kripke went with, being nine months before Dean's birthday. I cannot believe that. So. Obviously, there's something important or interesting about Dean's conception. *mutters*AndpossiblyitwasobservedbyoneofYED'sminionsorsomething BUT NOT THAT STUPID BLACK SHUCK *growls*
BUT! May 2nd, 1978 was NOT a full moon like in the comic so although the date is apparently important, to me the comic isn't canon and that stupid mutt never existed and MY DENIAL IS INTACT KRIPKE! BWAHAHA! I SHALL REMAIN STRONG! \o/
And that's when I got ambushed by capslocking:
CANNOT BRAIN!!!
OMG CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON!!!! OMG *FLAILS* IT'S FROM MARY NOT JOHN!!@!!!! OH MY FRIGGING GOD!!!! DEAN IS MARY'S WAYWARD SON!!!
OMG!@!! Hunter network! *flail* WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF MARY HAVING FOUND AND LEFT THE PENDANT FOR BOBBY TO GIVE SAM TO GIVE DEAN!!!! ONLY SHE DIDN'T SAY TO GIVE DEAN JUST 'TO GIVE HIS PROTECTOR' AND BOBBY ASSUMED JOHN AND OMG!!! *flails* AND AND! MY THEORY THAT BOBBY HAS A PENCHANT FOR "ADOPTING" YOUNG SOLO HUNTERS!!!! OMG!@!! SO while John was off in the Marines and being a badass, Mary went berserk on the hunter network, dug up info, made plans, schedule a conception date and maybe did ritual stuff and NETWORKED WITH FRIGGING BOBBY!!!! OMG!!! WHO ADOPTED HER INTO HIS 'KEEP TABS ON' LIST AS THE DAUGHTER OF LOST HUNTERS AND AND HE'S WATCHING HER KIDS NOW AND I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CAPSLOCK!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! *FLWIKLRW:JKRFH#WIURD@WJK*
*breathes* Okay. Gah. (Yes, I am crazy. I am aware of this. *nods*)
I had the brief thought that maybe the Witshire kid had changed his last name and his child was Jess, but of course not. She would have had a birthdate close to Sam's, not the same day as Dean's, because she'd have been born on her father's deal day, not conceived on it. It was a pretty, shiny thought for a while, but no. Still. There has to be some significance to it now that it turns out there might be this significance to Dean's.
Anyway, so, we get to Mary in the Pilot. She's completely forgotten about that guy who was desperately telling her not to get out of bed on some date or other, which with the whole 'parents getting murdered' thing and subsequent logistical mayhem since she does continue to live in the town probably slipped her mind or got transposed for her Deal day in her memory, because memory is funny like that. Her ten year anniversary of her deal day is past, and she figures it's done with, whatever it was. She's got a strong faith as mentioned on the show and is still doing the 'angels are watching over you' thing when she tucks Dean in at night. But she's so relaxed and getting on with her life that she no longer assumes that flickering lights are anything but a light bulb going funny. She's gotten right out of hunting and is living her dream. And then YED comes back and screws everything up to make it into precisely her worst nightmare. Bastard.
Ya know, that made a lot more sense when it was mostly keymashing. *scratches head*
YED and plans and end game
If you like Sam, you may hate this, but it does return to a positive outlook for Sam at the end, sort of. Please bear with me.
First thought: YED is a serial entity, regenning through PsyKids, that's why the 22 year delay. The winner of the Psychic showdown will become New!YED, and/or get sent to Hell when he gets offed by whoever's around on earth defending against such things. Therefore, New!YED is Sam. Each cycle, each seeded kid dies or is killed by hunters or whatever, goes to hell, comes back to re-seed. Seeds the babies with a mixture, bits of demonsmoke bound into blood otherwise it's just meat suit blood and does nothing. I thing now also this establishes a kind of 'blood-affinity' that will let the New!YED/winning PsyKid be a perfect host body for Lucifer, should all the seals get broken.
Why Six Months: Here's were I reveal my inadequate grasp of Googled early child development, since the scene I wrote up back in August 2006 to explain this idea is Kripke'd in all the vital parts.
6 month birthday. This is when YED stops by and taints the kids, right? Well established canon fact. Aside from the basic and practical concerns of waiting until the exact ten year anniversary has passed so the person who made the deal will be off whatever guard or watchfulness they may have set up, what is significant about the six month birthday?
Well, Google and assorted parenting pages tell me that when a child is six months old, he (using he since Sam is a he) is on the verge of developing a sense that there are things in the world that are not "me". Prior to that, it's all one big wiggly world, they don't realize the things they see are separate from themselves. After that, there is 'me', and there is the rest of world as 'not-me'.
So. If something was introduced to the baby at that stage, before he develops that sense that some things are 'not-me', something like a piece of demon-smoke would not be recognized as not-me.
YED feeds the babies blood. Now there has to be more to that blood than just blood or he'd just be feeding them blood from some random meat suit. He has to send part of himself with the blood, part of the demon-smoke. Watch the scene where YED feeds Sam the blood, (only don't get distracted by the cgi'd blood feeding,) watch the baby's eyes. They flash yellow.
YED just fed Sam a part of himself. It incorporates, and starts growing. I posted a weird host theory before as a part of something else which doesn't make a lot of sense now, but now I think that it's not just any demon.
I also think that this cycle of YED's, with the picking of the best and the rest are killed off, is kind of like pruning extra flowers off a fruit tree to get bigger fruit (no, I'm not that I'm saying Sam is a big fruit *facepalm*). The bits of himself YED's fed the failures dissipates, disappears or possibly drags their souls down to Hell.
Part of the point of all that is to regenerate himself. Particularly on this go-round since Dean's so helpfully informed him that he's going to be killed. So, it's kind of a distributed immortality, or an off-site backup. Not just for the purpose of perpetuating himself, though, for the purpose of securing a host for Big L for when they get all the seals open, which is what they have been trying to do every single cycle and so far failing.
YED brought the Colt to the gate loaded. He didn't have to do that, especially since he knew Dean would kill him. He could have ditched the bullet. He could have swapped out the bullet. He made sure Jake knew the gun would kill him. But he already knew Jake wasn't going to be the one to kill him because Dean told him so in the past *facepalm* arg. So he was unthreatened by Jake, because he knew he wasn't Dean. ALSO, because YED was very seriously told that he was going to be killed by Dean, he's seeding the kids with more of an eye to self-perpetuation than making some kind of blood affinity for Big L to home in on, maybe.
Also also, because he knows Dean kills him, he didn't kill Dean in the graveyard. He was calling the shots for his own death, because he knew it was going to happen, who was going to do it, what with, and had already developed his backup plan for survival.
And now we cone to the whacked out plot-arc theory portion involving Sam.
Now, how does this effect Sam. Sam would have had that bit of YED incorporate at the age of 6 months. This does not mean he's not Sam, or that he is evil and has no choice about it. I... it's a horrible metaphor, but I'm thinking it's going to be a little like alcoholism. Which is why Bobby keeps asking if Sam's been doing any of the psychic stuff through Season 2, because he's got an idea that using the powers strengthens some demonic part. (Which also explains why Ava went casually homicidal so fast, hm.)
Sam will be pulled out of the situation he's in by Dean, they'll figure out Sam's got YED inside, and Sam will swear off using the powers, which is helping the YED part grow and become dominant. Only Sam won't be able to just cut right off, because there'll be some situation where the only way to get out of it is to use the YED powers, and his will will get slowly eroded, maybe he'll hide their use from Dean, and will get back into the same situation, and over time, YED will come to the fore, only this time there may be a (Ruby-organized, or remnant of an earlier 'Sam's Army') bunch of demon allies who'll keep Dean away, so YED comes to full, probably right when seals are breaking all over the place and things are extremely dire.
That's the point when it will look like Dean VS Sam. But it's Dean VS YED, and that's what he'll keep insisting, even if Sam asserts that it's just him in there and he's not possessed and can do anything under the sun to prove it, since he's been doing exorcisms and drawing Devil's Traps and making Holy Water since he was a kid, none of that stuff would have an effect on him because he's built up a resistance over time. Like Iocaine powder.
Then as things get worse, I suspect we're going to get New!YED in Sam doing a 'knife in the heart' maneuver to keep Dean from trying to pull the YED part out *sighs and looks at fic notebook* after which things will get truly desperate.
All that, and I still think no matter how bad it seems or gets, the family bond is going to win out in the end, and Sam and Dean will end up together as a family and continuing on.
Gaaaaah. Needs moar coherence. *headdesk*
Quantum physics, fate and free will
Now. Allow me to acquaint you (or refresh your memory) regarding what's often called the 'observer effect'. If events are observed in a time stream, they cannot be changed. It's kind of like quantum theory, or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, where when something is observed, it locks in that one possible state, the one it's observed in, as the state that it must be. All other possible outcomes or choices, or possibilities can no longer apply, except in a parallel world where a different state was observed.
SO. What the heck does that crap have to do with Supernatural and this episode in particular? By bringing Dean back to observe (and in the process influence in a non-insignificant manner) his pre-birth past, Castiel insured that it would come to pass. This is Dean, getting Fated. Because he always was Fated. Yeah, it's a causality loop.
That 'all roads' thing? Dean and Sam are Donna Noble. They are heading to a seventh dimensional crux, where all potential timelines, all decisions and their outcomes lead to a point, because at just that point, if things aren't done the right way, the universe ends. (Oh dear god.) This doesn't mean there is no free will. Any choice is possible. But all choices will lead to the same ultimate end because that end is the end of everything and if the right people don't do the right things then, there will be no more world to have free will in.
*whimpers*
Gaaahhhh. I feel like my brain's been pounded with a meat tenderizer. Sorry this isn't more coherent, but hopefully it kind of gives you a picture into what's been making me beat my head against various walls since this episode aired. Probably stuff other people have thought of and stated more clearly, maybe a whole lot of hooey.
NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO PROMO FOR ANY UNAIRED EPISODES IN COMMENTS PLEASE! THAT INCLUDES ICONS! NO SPEC OR THEORIES BASED ON SPOILERS EITHER, PLEASE!
Meta, theory, speculation, capslocking, keymashing, cursing, and free-association on characters plot developments and things in or implied by 4.03, and throughout the series aired to date and some tie-in material.
*KEYMASH* *CAPSLOCK* OMG HOLY BANANA BOATS!
Okay. Now maybe I'll be rational. But probably not. *points at... well, let's call it a title*
Particularly (now that we're under the cut-tag), this will include meta/spec/theories on: Mary and Dean; YED's endgame, overall plan Sam's role in it and wild spec about where that's leading; and time travel mechanics and quantum physics because Kripke's in my frigging sandbox there. Sort of. I am not a Time Lord or a quantum physicist, but I've read some crap, and have a lot of background stuff for Quantum Rock. Oh yes, and future-past events in Quantum Rock got a little bit more Kripke'd, but less than I thought they might, yay. Still, Kripke needs to get out of my fic notebook.
Kripke also needs to stop trying to sneak SPN:Origins material into televised canon sideways. 'Cause hrmf.
(Other people have probably thought of most of this more coherently than me, I've been avoiding current Meta for fear of spoiler slippage for a long while)
Flailings relating to Mary and Dean
Mary isn't a willing or unwitting pawn, she's an unwilling pawn, who, I think, fought back retroactively against YED by having Dean.
I figure she encouraged John to go back for another stint with the Marines, maybe, to make sure he had combat training and would be able to help deal with whatever was going to go down in ten years. Also to get him out of the way during the first few years so she could do research and look for solutions without awkward questions.
See, she's a hunter, she'd have contacts, probably. I'd bet she did some research, found out that at the ten year mark from a deal, on the same day of the deal, deal-makers had kids. She may or may not have found out anything about what happened to them after they were born, I'm betting not, because the last batch would have been making their deals in the early '50's so info would be extremely sparse. Maybe she didn't find anything, just knew that bad crap was gonna go down in ten years, but I'm thinking she found out about kids being born on Deal days.
I'm also thinking that in most cases as has been seen in the show, the kids were first-borns, or only children. No older sibs, because the deal-makers were too freaked about their deadline to think about settling down and having kids, and after that they were kind of weird and tweaky.
So, she knows a demon's coming calling, and maybe that it's got something to do with a future kid. So she figures on giving the kid an older sibling to watch out for him. Or something. So, she maybe she does some research into birth omens, religions of various types, anything that might help a kid versus demons, or make the Light side whatevers more likely to take note of him. Probably almost entirely crap stuff, but Mary being a fighter with her back to a wall is going to try anything. Not that she's giving him psychic powers or any such nonsense, or making him into anything but what he is, just kind of for luck or something. *handwaves because I have no idea what I'm talking about, really*
Now for the part that blew my mind and makes me think some part of the above shash is right.
At first I was trying to figure out what significance Dean's birthdate might have, but then figuring a birthdate is hard to nail precisely, and conception is sliiightly more controllable. Also ...loath as I am to make reference to it... there's the scene in Origins #4. (DAMN YOU KRIPKE FOR ATTEMPTING AN END RUN AROUND MY DEFENSES AND MAKING ME CONSIDER THAT COMIC IN ANY WAY POTENTIALLY CANON!!!) So maybe there was a point to that.
Now, when was Dean's conception, maybe a significant date, maybe the spring equinox, some kind of balance and bringer of new life implications? Figuring out from birthdate of Jan 24th, 1979... According to this ... "Your date of conception was on or about 3 May 1978."
So. May 2nd. Five years after the date of the deal, and five years before the due date, which is Sam's birthday. Kripke, you smug-assed s.o.b. YOU'VE BEEN PLANNING THIS FROM THE START YOU BASTARD! Not like we didn't know that but Ho-Lee crap. Don't know how accurate that is or correlateable to real human gestation periods, but it's probably what Kripke went with, being nine months before Dean's birthday. I cannot believe that. So. Obviously, there's something important or interesting about Dean's conception. *mutters*AndpossiblyitwasobservedbyoneofYED'sminionsorsomething BUT NOT THAT STUPID BLACK SHUCK *growls*
BUT! May 2nd, 1978 was NOT a full moon like in the comic so although the date is apparently important, to me the comic isn't canon and that stupid mutt never existed and MY DENIAL IS INTACT KRIPKE! BWAHAHA! I SHALL REMAIN STRONG! \o/
And that's when I got ambushed by capslocking:
CANNOT BRAIN!!!
OMG CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON!!!! OMG *FLAILS* IT'S FROM MARY NOT JOHN!!@!!!! OH MY FRIGGING GOD!!!! DEAN IS MARY'S WAYWARD SON!!!
OMG!@!! Hunter network! *flail* WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF MARY HAVING FOUND AND LEFT THE PENDANT FOR BOBBY TO GIVE SAM TO GIVE DEAN!!!! ONLY SHE DIDN'T SAY TO GIVE DEAN JUST 'TO GIVE HIS PROTECTOR' AND BOBBY ASSUMED JOHN AND OMG!!! *flails* AND AND! MY THEORY THAT BOBBY HAS A PENCHANT FOR "ADOPTING" YOUNG SOLO HUNTERS!!!! OMG!@!! SO while John was off in the Marines and being a badass, Mary went berserk on the hunter network, dug up info, made plans, schedule a conception date and maybe did ritual stuff and NETWORKED WITH FRIGGING BOBBY!!!! OMG!!! WHO ADOPTED HER INTO HIS 'KEEP TABS ON' LIST AS THE DAUGHTER OF LOST HUNTERS AND AND HE'S WATCHING HER KIDS NOW AND I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CAPSLOCK!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! *FLWIKLRW:JKRFH#WIURD@WJK*
*breathes* Okay. Gah. (Yes, I am crazy. I am aware of this. *nods*)
I had the brief thought that maybe the Witshire kid had changed his last name and his child was Jess, but of course not. She would have had a birthdate close to Sam's, not the same day as Dean's, because she'd have been born on her father's deal day, not conceived on it. It was a pretty, shiny thought for a while, but no. Still. There has to be some significance to it now that it turns out there might be this significance to Dean's.
Anyway, so, we get to Mary in the Pilot. She's completely forgotten about that guy who was desperately telling her not to get out of bed on some date or other, which with the whole 'parents getting murdered' thing and subsequent logistical mayhem since she does continue to live in the town probably slipped her mind or got transposed for her Deal day in her memory, because memory is funny like that. Her ten year anniversary of her deal day is past, and she figures it's done with, whatever it was. She's got a strong faith as mentioned on the show and is still doing the 'angels are watching over you' thing when she tucks Dean in at night. But she's so relaxed and getting on with her life that she no longer assumes that flickering lights are anything but a light bulb going funny. She's gotten right out of hunting and is living her dream. And then YED comes back and screws everything up to make it into precisely her worst nightmare. Bastard.
Ya know, that made a lot more sense when it was mostly keymashing. *scratches head*
YED and plans and end game
If you like Sam, you may hate this, but it does return to a positive outlook for Sam at the end, sort of. Please bear with me.
First thought: YED is a serial entity, regenning through PsyKids, that's why the 22 year delay. The winner of the Psychic showdown will become New!YED, and/or get sent to Hell when he gets offed by whoever's around on earth defending against such things. Therefore, New!YED is Sam. Each cycle, each seeded kid dies or is killed by hunters or whatever, goes to hell, comes back to re-seed. Seeds the babies with a mixture, bits of demonsmoke bound into blood otherwise it's just meat suit blood and does nothing. I thing now also this establishes a kind of 'blood-affinity' that will let the New!YED/winning PsyKid be a perfect host body for Lucifer, should all the seals get broken.
Why Six Months: Here's were I reveal my inadequate grasp of Googled early child development, since the scene I wrote up back in August 2006 to explain this idea is Kripke'd in all the vital parts.
6 month birthday. This is when YED stops by and taints the kids, right? Well established canon fact. Aside from the basic and practical concerns of waiting until the exact ten year anniversary has passed so the person who made the deal will be off whatever guard or watchfulness they may have set up, what is significant about the six month birthday?
Well, Google and assorted parenting pages tell me that when a child is six months old, he (using he since Sam is a he) is on the verge of developing a sense that there are things in the world that are not "me". Prior to that, it's all one big wiggly world, they don't realize the things they see are separate from themselves. After that, there is 'me', and there is the rest of world as 'not-me'.
So. If something was introduced to the baby at that stage, before he develops that sense that some things are 'not-me', something like a piece of demon-smoke would not be recognized as not-me.
YED feeds the babies blood. Now there has to be more to that blood than just blood or he'd just be feeding them blood from some random meat suit. He has to send part of himself with the blood, part of the demon-smoke. Watch the scene where YED feeds Sam the blood, (only don't get distracted by the cgi'd blood feeding,) watch the baby's eyes. They flash yellow.
YED just fed Sam a part of himself. It incorporates, and starts growing. I posted a weird host theory before as a part of something else which doesn't make a lot of sense now, but now I think that it's not just any demon.
I also think that this cycle of YED's, with the picking of the best and the rest are killed off, is kind of like pruning extra flowers off a fruit tree to get bigger fruit (no, I'm not that I'm saying Sam is a big fruit *facepalm*). The bits of himself YED's fed the failures dissipates, disappears or possibly drags their souls down to Hell.
Part of the point of all that is to regenerate himself. Particularly on this go-round since Dean's so helpfully informed him that he's going to be killed. So, it's kind of a distributed immortality, or an off-site backup. Not just for the purpose of perpetuating himself, though, for the purpose of securing a host for Big L for when they get all the seals open, which is what they have been trying to do every single cycle and so far failing.
YED brought the Colt to the gate loaded. He didn't have to do that, especially since he knew Dean would kill him. He could have ditched the bullet. He could have swapped out the bullet. He made sure Jake knew the gun would kill him. But he already knew Jake wasn't going to be the one to kill him because Dean told him so in the past *facepalm* arg. So he was unthreatened by Jake, because he knew he wasn't Dean. ALSO, because YED was very seriously told that he was going to be killed by Dean, he's seeding the kids with more of an eye to self-perpetuation than making some kind of blood affinity for Big L to home in on, maybe.
Also also, because he knows Dean kills him, he didn't kill Dean in the graveyard. He was calling the shots for his own death, because he knew it was going to happen, who was going to do it, what with, and had already developed his backup plan for survival.
And now we cone to the whacked out plot-arc theory portion involving Sam.
Now, how does this effect Sam. Sam would have had that bit of YED incorporate at the age of 6 months. This does not mean he's not Sam, or that he is evil and has no choice about it. I... it's a horrible metaphor, but I'm thinking it's going to be a little like alcoholism. Which is why Bobby keeps asking if Sam's been doing any of the psychic stuff through Season 2, because he's got an idea that using the powers strengthens some demonic part. (Which also explains why Ava went casually homicidal so fast, hm.)
Sam will be pulled out of the situation he's in by Dean, they'll figure out Sam's got YED inside, and Sam will swear off using the powers, which is helping the YED part grow and become dominant. Only Sam won't be able to just cut right off, because there'll be some situation where the only way to get out of it is to use the YED powers, and his will will get slowly eroded, maybe he'll hide their use from Dean, and will get back into the same situation, and over time, YED will come to the fore, only this time there may be a (Ruby-organized, or remnant of an earlier 'Sam's Army') bunch of demon allies who'll keep Dean away, so YED comes to full, probably right when seals are breaking all over the place and things are extremely dire.
That's the point when it will look like Dean VS Sam. But it's Dean VS YED, and that's what he'll keep insisting, even if Sam asserts that it's just him in there and he's not possessed and can do anything under the sun to prove it, since he's been doing exorcisms and drawing Devil's Traps and making Holy Water since he was a kid, none of that stuff would have an effect on him because he's built up a resistance over time. Like Iocaine powder.
Then as things get worse, I suspect we're going to get New!YED in Sam doing a 'knife in the heart' maneuver to keep Dean from trying to pull the YED part out *sighs and looks at fic notebook* after which things will get truly desperate.
All that, and I still think no matter how bad it seems or gets, the family bond is going to win out in the end, and Sam and Dean will end up together as a family and continuing on.
Gaaaaah. Needs moar coherence. *headdesk*
Quantum physics, fate and free will
Now. Allow me to acquaint you (or refresh your memory) regarding what's often called the 'observer effect'. If events are observed in a time stream, they cannot be changed. It's kind of like quantum theory, or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, where when something is observed, it locks in that one possible state, the one it's observed in, as the state that it must be. All other possible outcomes or choices, or possibilities can no longer apply, except in a parallel world where a different state was observed.
SO. What the heck does that crap have to do with Supernatural and this episode in particular? By bringing Dean back to observe (and in the process influence in a non-insignificant manner) his pre-birth past, Castiel insured that it would come to pass. This is Dean, getting Fated. Because he always was Fated. Yeah, it's a causality loop.
That 'all roads' thing? Dean and Sam are Donna Noble. They are heading to a seventh dimensional crux, where all potential timelines, all decisions and their outcomes lead to a point, because at just that point, if things aren't done the right way, the universe ends. (Oh dear god.) This doesn't mean there is no free will. Any choice is possible. But all choices will lead to the same ultimate end because that end is the end of everything and if the right people don't do the right things then, there will be no more world to have free will in.
*whimpers*
Gaaahhhh. I feel like my brain's been pounded with a meat tenderizer. Sorry this isn't more coherent, but hopefully it kind of gives you a picture into what's been making me beat my head against various walls since this episode aired. Probably stuff other people have thought of and stated more clearly, maybe a whole lot of hooey.
NO SPOILERS OR REFERENCES TO PROMO FOR ANY UNAIRED EPISODES IN COMMENTS PLEASE! THAT INCLUDES ICONS! NO SPEC OR THEORIES BASED ON SPOILERS EITHER, PLEASE!