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"I had to look up to see the gutter, and beyond the gutter I saw the stars."
On manipulation, hitting bottom, hope in the darkest hour, and some speculation on what makes Sam and Dean so special.
Before I get started, I have to say that my niece has the worst timing ever. Literally two minutes before the season finale began she called me and we spent 20 minutes talking. Thank God for DVRs that allow you to start to watch a show while you’re still recording it!
First of all, I must convey my relief: BOBBY LIVES!!!! And he’s made of awesome. His words may have been directed at Dean at that particular moment, but does anyone else get the feeling he’s been dying to say something along those lines to all three Winchester boys over the years? Family can suck, family can cause you pain - get over it already. He was absolutely right on two points: (1) that while John was a very brave Hunter, he was a coward when it came to being emotionally honest with this sons and accepting them for being something other than what he wanted them to be; and (2) Dean is a better man than his father.
Lucifer Rising ended up really not being about Lucifer at all; nor was it about good vs. evil or brother vs. brother. It was about manipulation - the results of a season of manipulation for Dean, Sam, Castiel and us viewers. Despite the differing motivations, what the angels wanted turned out to be the exact same thing that the demons did: to get the Apocalypse started. The figurative strings each side pulled to get the boys to do what they wanted them to do were practically visible as Zachariah and Ruby let their true colors show. By letting outside influences nudge each of the boys into being so blinded by their fears, anger, the flattery these outside influences were giving them and complete bullheadedness about sacrificing themselves to save the other instead of listening to their own instincts and trusting each other, the Winchester boys let themselves get torn apart in a vicious “I’m right and you’re wrong” argument that in the end didn’t mean anything at all (and many of us viewers fell into the same trap). Each step of the way the angels and the demon separated Sam and Dean and emotionally isolated them from each other, and by the time each Winchester boy figured it out it was too late.
There was absolutely nothing subtle about the final stages of Zachariah’s manipulation of Dean and Castiel. It showed not only just how little he cared about those he believed to be beneath him but also just how little he thought of them. Anyone who spent any time getting to know Dean Winchester would have known that while he might like a pile of cheeseburgers and a bucket full of beer it’s not going to distract him from his brother being in danger; but Zachariah chooses only to see the base desires of humans so that’s all he thinks he needs. When Dean doesn’t take the bait, he goes for the jugular: he tells him that he was the one to start the breaking of the seals, that he’s already agreed to obey the angels, so shut up and do your part. Translation: you’re hands are already dirty and you’re already in this up to your eyeballs so don’t think you can just back out now.
He’d already done the same thing with Castiel in 4.21 doubt in my mind that Zachariah had Castiel release Sam from the panic room to break him, to make him think he’d gotten his hands so dirty and gotten so entrenched in bringing on the coming Apocalypse that he had no other option but to help see it through. I found it interesting that he referred to angels like Castiel as “groundlings”; that term is used to describe the part of the audience during Shakespeare’s time that stood closest to the stage because they couldn’t afford to pay for seats. The use of the term spoke volumes about Zachariah’s view of the angelic class system: “groundlings” like Castiel are placed closest to the action - i.e. humans - because they aren’t good enough for “the good seat” in Heaven. With all his smarmy thinking that he understood what could break Dean and Castiel and condescending self-righteousness, Zachariah was the first bad guy since Gordon Walker in Hunted that made my skin crawl. There’s nothing more horrifying than someone who thinks he’s right and justified doing terrible things.
Ruby, on the other hand, had two years of up-close observation and a healthy understanding of the way Sam’s mind worked, allowing her to operate much more subtly and effectively. She presented herself in equal parts as the perfect companion (telling Sam he could stop the Apocalypse, comforting him by telling him that maybe he can work things out with Dean when everything was over and done with, and gently scolding him when he said he didn’t expect to come out of his final battle with Lilith intact) and, in her own words, “the little fallen angel” on Sam’s shoulder (telling him he can’t stop now when he protested that they were going too far in kidnapping the nurse and reminding him that he’s always killed the hosts along with the demons when he’s used the knife). By changing Dean’s voicemail from one of reconciliation to one of condemnation she proved herself the ultimate manipulative bitch, presenting Dean as the source of pain while she was the source of comfort and sealing the deal in getting Sam to do exactly what she wanted. Yet at the same time I also got the impression that at least some of her feelings for Sam weren’t faked. They were twisted and awful, but she seemed to genuinely expect him to get over his horror and revulsion and accept Lucifer’s rewards and a place in the demon world. It was fitting that Dean and Sam’s first act of working together after their separation was to kill her - a symbolic rejection of the evils to come and the beginning of the destruction of the barriers between them.
I previously thought On the Head of a Pin and When the Levees Broke were Dean and Sam’s point of hitting bottom, respectively. Turns out I was wrong. Bottom isn’t a state of complete emotional distress - it’s reaching a point where you can’t go any lower. Dean realizing those angels he sided with solely to save Sam from having to be the one to sacrifice what he was to stop the apocalypse were actually planning all along to throw his little brother (and the rest of the world) to the wolves, and that he couldn’t even contact Sam to warn him? Dean’s bottom. Sam trusting Ruby, sacrificing so much of who he was and risking Dean’s love for him to stop Lilith and the Apocalypse only to find out she’s been manipulating him for two years and that him killing Lilith was the last seal? Sam’s bottom. But there’s a freedom in knowing that things can’t possibly get any worse: the realization that you can stay where you are or you can start climbing up. Dean accepting that he wants Sam, not just Sam-the-innocent, and Sam admitting he was wrong with a tearful apology were the first steps of an upward climb for the boys individually and for their relationship.
The season all about separation ended by showing the symmetry between the two boys: both of them were manipulated, both sides gave into their “dark side” feelings, and both sides will need to forgive themselves and each other if they’re going to get through the upcoming fight. In the end it doesn’t matter that Dean unwittingly broke the first seal or that Sam unwittingly broke the last seal: what really matters is the 64 seals that got broken deliberately because of the tandem forces of demonic and angelic scheming. Yet even in the end, when things can’t get worse in terms of the Apocalypse, I felt more hopeful than I ever did at the end of season three: no matter what’s about to happen after Lucifer rises, Sam and Dean are side-by-side and going to face it together.
Speculation: Ruby said Sam didn’t need the demon blood. Why is that? I have a borrowed and modified theory, first presented by Monique Brathwaite at the Supernatural Heavy Meta Poisoning Live Journal site (I don’t remember the date) and in Café Press’ book Some of Us Really Do Watch for the Plot: A Collection of Supernatural Essays: that Sam - and Dean too, I believe - descend from the Nephilim (children born from unions between angels and humans) through Mary’s bloodline. That could explain Sam not really needing the demon blood, why Dean specifically was the one Hell needed to break the first seal (a righteous man with angel blood torturing people in Hell - sounds like a seal to me), and the particular disdain angels like Zachariah and Uriel had for both of them: they aren’t just smelly upright monkeys - they’re half-breeds and living reminders that angels aren’t so much better than humans, as they’d like to believe.
Is it September yet?