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1->''♫ And if I claim to be a wise man, well\
2It surely means that I don't know. ♫''
3-->--'''Music/{{Kansas}}''', "Carry On Wayward Son"
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5[[foldercontrol]]
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7[[folder:General]]
8* How is it possible for the government to be completely unaware of the supernatural with the entire country being under constant surveillance to varying degrees?
9* How and Why did Demons go from malevolent powerful beings to affably evil and sometimes adorkable useless henchmen?
10* What's the point of goofer dust? It keeps out demons, which salt also does but is much, much more easily acquired. Made even weirder by the fact that salt is an ingredient.
11** Goofer dust also keeps out hellhounds. Same can't be said of salt.
12*** Except, in Season 5, rock salt is used to keep hellhounds out, so...?
13** I thought goofer dust did about the same stuff as salt, it was just more effective. Like, a salt circle might last you ten minutes, but goofer dust would last you twenty.
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15* We've been told countless times about the importance of family in the show, and of course Bobby's statement "Family don't end with blood". So why have the Winchesters never shown any concern about the fact that their half-brother -- also John's son, so truly a "Winchester" -- is still in the hell-cage with two archangels trying to rip each other to shreds? Any in-universe explanation for the huge Adam plot hole?
16** Part of it is they really have no way to get him out of there -- Death has no incentive to help them, and yanking Adam's body but not his soul out (as happened with Sam) I guess would be regarded as worse than not having him out at all, especially now that it's been years that he's been stuck in there. Sam nearly died as a result of a year without a soul, Adam would be a freaking vegetable after years in there. They haven't specifically addressed it since, but the situation seems to be "no real way to get all of him out, and it's not clear we'd want to anyway."
17** It was actually said by Michael, while using Adam's body as a vessel that Adam "isn't home right now." It was also part of his deal with Zachariah that Adam would get to see his dead mother again, implying the deal was Michael gets permission to enter Adam's body, and Adam's soul goes to heaven and was never in the cage to begin with. Death could have mentioned Adam being in the cage simply to mess with Dean's head.
18*** It's a stretch to claim that was implying anything. Lucifer, who was making a point at the time, is pretty much the only angel or demon not to use some variation of "he can't hear you" when someone tried to talk to the host body. Considering how common it is I'm sure there's a trope specifically for that.
19** As of "Fan Fiction", it's pretty much canon that Sam and Dean simply forgot he existed.
20** They don't need to rescue him because he was dead before Michael fell into the cage. Think about it, Cas hey assbutted Michael with holy oil in the cemetery, subsequently killing his vessel, Adam. His soul would've gone to heaven so all is fine and dandy.
21*** This is a common argument that is made on the Adam situation. But remember that angels are able to keep their host body completely alive. As long as the angel in question remains alive their host lives. They aren't meat suits like demons. Also keep in mind that it was an archangel possessing Adam. While Cas's host, Jimmy, was sent to heaven, it was because he was torn apart molecule by molecule and he was dead. Until God resurrected him. Something that didn't happen to Lucifer.
22*** You should also note that Michael was hit by that holy fire moloto, which temporarily destroyed his body, probably sending Adam's soul to heaven.
23** Except, the following season, Death specifically asked Dean whose soul he wanted him to retrieve from the cage -Sam's or Adam's. So, Adam is there as of Season 6 and likely still possessed by Michael.
24*** Who's to say Death didn't lie?
25*** The fact that Death never has, at least not to the winchesters. Plus, it wouldn't make any sense for him to lie in that scenario. At all.
26** As of "Our Father, Who Aren't In Heaven", it's been confirmed that Adam was trapped in Lucifer's Cage along with Michael until season 15.
27* How exactly does the Colt work? I understand that it's enchanted to be able to kill anything, but how? Lucifer said that the Colt could kill all but five things in creation, but how did Samuel Colt invent such a powerful weapon that could kill Angels and (presumably) Leviathans, creatures that he'd definitely never encountered before?
28** It's never properly explained and probably never will be since the Colt has been missing in action since Season 5 and no explanation has ever been given for why nobody ever went to collect one of the most powerful artifacts in existence. However the question is incorrect, it's not a vampire, werewolf, demon, angel, leviathan killing gun. It's a kill anything weapon and given what we've seen especially as far things like the Angel Blades it seems that whatever binds life to Supernatural beings does work in a bit of a hierarchy. Things that are good enough to kill angels will work on demons because demons are explicitly weaker. So while the answer as far as we're likely to ever get is 'he just did' even assuming Lucifer wasn't lying the Colt is about on par with Angel Blades and really only slightly better than those demon killing knives that Henry Winchester claims the Men of Letters could make.
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30* How come the Winchesters never show scarring? They get slashed up in basically every episode, but none of their cuts ever appear in later episodes and there's never any evidence that they were cut at all.
31** Because they've got to keep their prettiness. {{Shirtless Scene}}s aren't as fun for audiences when the subject is all scarred up.
32** In early episodes, they actually did show some small degree of scarring (nothing near what they ''should'' have shown considering how banged up they got and how little medical attention they received) but now that they're constantly being healed by angels, wounds and scars being wiped clean makes a little more sense. As for why they don't bleed out when they're constantly slicing themselves with silver blades? [[WildMassGuessing The flannel shirts have magical powers.]]
33** Dean lost a lot of his scars after being pulled out of Hell and restored by Castiel. After that, they have an angel hanging around who can heal them. Doesn't take care of all the scars, but probably a good deal of them.
34* What do Sam and Dean do for money? What do they do for food? How do they keep gas in their car?
35** I can't recall if this is canon or fanon, but a lot of fanfic has them make most of their money hustling pool. In canon, they seem to have fake credit cards.
36*** I don't remember what episode it was in, but in canon they seem to have a system of hustling pool where Sam pretends to be drunk and loses a few games, Dean pretends to get him to stop playing, the mark bets a ton of money, and Sam unexpectedly wins. Since they usually have cash on them and fake credit cards are rarely seen after the first season, things like this seem like the most likely way they earn money.
37*** Also in the Season 5 finale, Chuck mentions that Sam "used to insist on honest work" to earn money, "but now he just hustles pool games like his brother".
38*** How much money could they possibly get that way? They probably don't go for fancy when they travel, but it still takes a whole lot of gas, not to mention money for weapons, fake [=IDs=] and whatever other illegal stuff they need. I can't imagine that'd be cheap.
39*** Maybe they're really, ''really'' good at pool?
40*** Depends on how much money the other person is willing to lay down. Might be able to clear a few hundred in a night, maybe more if they're lucky.
41*** In the scene where Sam's pretending to be drunk, the mark they're working on puts down a stupid amount of money--something like several hundred dollars on one game. If the brothers are doing that once a week or so, plus credit cards, their income is probably around a few grand a month--not stupidly wealthy, but livable.
42*** It never shows it, but they kill quite a few humans maybe they loot the corpses?
43** In the episode involving dragons, Dean is shown helping himself to their DragonHoard. So in that case the demons loot their victims and the brothers help themselves after they've killed them.
44*** Credit card scams are mentioned at one point.
45*** It has also been implied that Dean has turned tricks, at least early on.
46*** [I never noticed this! This troper is curious. Where is it implied?]
47** The brothers occasionally get jobs at locations they're investigating so they can look around without attracting too much suspicion. They probably rarely stay in these jobs longer than a week or so, but they occasionally pick up real paychecks.
48** But that aside the money situation has become ridiculous as time goes by. As of Season 9, the brothers seem to have two good quality laptops, multiple high quality phones (assuming they don't have plans/contracts/pay as you go for each phone and have somehow jury-rigged them to work for free, they still would need initial outlays of hundreds of dollars to purchase some of those phones), a variety of custom-designed supernatural items like Devil's Trap handcuffs, an extensive arsenal including some seriously rare (and expensive) items, and, recently, fancy new suits for when they're pretending to be federal agents or other professionals. That's on top of gas, food, motel rooms when away from the bunker, etc. AND they're both shown always having wads of cash on them. When you factor in that the brothers are fighting right now, and presumably aren't running their usual pool hustling in their down time, where are they getting the money indeed?
49*** You're vastly over estimating their expenses. Two good laptops as of Season 9 (which is Circa 2013) would run you around a grand, the suits maybe five hundred bucks, the phones are most likely prepaid a hundred or so a piece. Hustling that much money in a week if you're good at pool is implausible but far from impossible. The arsenal isn't that expensive they mostly use melee weapons, you can get cuffs at Toys R' Us for less than ten bucks and carve the devil's trap in. Remember it's the magic holding the demon, most likely a snap on bracelet with a devil's trap written in crayon would work just fine aside from how silly it would look. Most of these things they could obtain over a few months of hard work, only they've been at this for (as of season 9) nine years as a team and most of these items would last that long. And Dean is implied to have been working with his father until he disappeared right before season one prompting him to find Sam. They probably sleep in the car a lot even if we never see it. They also probably in many ways do less driving than we actually think. Everyday most of us commute back and forth Sam and Dean drive across country. . . then sit in place probably on average for days or weeks at a time with little to no driving.
50*** They found the Devil Trap handcuffs in the bunker's dungeon.
51*** I always assumed that in addition to their less than legal schemes, Bobby helped them out some. With Bobby having no surviving family, it's likely he would have left the boys whatever he had left when he died.
52*** Bobby had a legitimate (and apparently successful, due to the amount of cars seen) business. So the above is possible.
53*** It's possible that they don't get their tech through strictly legal means.
54*** I think it's highly likely they steal, shoplift or commit return fraud or scams of that nature. My concern is how they have access to certain technology i.e. cell phone plans without billing addresses to speak of. You can't just go to a carrier and say,"I want a cell phone with unlimited everything. No, I don't have an address. This wad of cash should have me covered for the next few months. Thanks, now you'll never see me again." Also how they drive around without insurance. The impala must be registered to someone, otherwise a single parking violation, speeding ticket or toll-bridge crossing, would reveal that they're driving uninsured. Their system of fake I.D.s and credit cards would have to be extremely complex, because just paying cash and flashing a made-up address doesn't cut it for everything.
55*** i wouldnt be surprised if they used prepaid plans for their phones or set up accounts using other people's identities, like with the cards. As for registration, its been mentioned in several episodes that they switch out plates. That car probably isn't registered anywhere.
56*** [[spoiler: It's more or less explicitly shown, in "The Hero's Journey", that Sam and Dean's finances and other menial issues are handled by God, to allow them to focus on hunting and drama without being bogged down by "the small stuff". When they lose their PlotArmor, the results are...interesting]].
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58* The characters routinely impersonate people they shouldn't always be able to get away with impersonating but are never called out on it.
59** Most cops have a very distinctive walk, due to odd muscling caused by wearing heavy belts. Shouldn't someone notice that Sam and Dean very clearly do not "walk like cops"?
60*** The show is set in TV-land, so there's no distinctive cop-walk. Funny, huh?
61*** It's especially bad when they pretend to be federal agents. Ackles, fair enough, but there's '''no way in hell''' a Federal Law enforcement officer would have Padalecki's haircut. It'd be like an investment bank manager with a green mohawk.
62*** The improbable haircut goes hand in hand with the tidy appearance of hunters who travel around non-stop and live in motel rooms. It ranges from impractical to just plain impossible, so there's no way to justify it, but I personally like to think of it as an acceptable break from reality.
63*** Point. They're shown washing their clothes at a laundromat once, but that doesn't explain how their suits are always so tidy.
64*** Also, you have to understand, this is a universe where Castiel (a character who has once been described as "dresses like Series/{{Columbo}} and talks like Film/RainMan") can pass himself off as an FBI agent. ''While holding his badge upside down''. People are just that gullible here (at least in the later seasons).
65** One season 1 episode has them infiltrating a fraternity house just by claiming to be brothers of a different chapter who need a place to stay. All well and good except that most Greek organizations have some form of a secret password which would probably be expected from someone who shows up out of the blue and even if this frat didn't Sam and Dean didn't have any letters or pins. And no one even called or texted someone from the chapter they claimed to be from.
66** It was the car. When they showed up. Everyone seemed to be working on a car of some kind. So when they showed up in this thing and gave their lines, it was believable just in the way they said it. Besides that there was the death that just happened that might have been pretty distracting. Grief does things to people, especially in schools. Their arrival wouldn't have been nearly as questioned as it would be in a normal situation. It was a mix of them being confident, having the right car and showing up in a time of grief.
67*** I'd like to think Bobby has a list of all the secret frat passwords. Seems to fit him.
68** They did get called out in "Criss Angel is A Douchebag" by the magicians, who were so used to deception that they saw the signs right away.
69*** They got called out on this plenty of times, especially in early seasons. It's just that the cops usually realized it's all for the perfectly good cause of killing monsters and let them go (or end up dead before they have the chance to notify someone). Doesn't do the tiniest least to justify it as far as the law is concerned, but still makes more sense.
70*** In the first episode, Dean actually got caught pretending to be an FBI agent, and I think it happened again at some point, but not enough. They constantly go around questioning witnesses and looking at corpses, so shouldn't they walk into a real agent at some point? The closest thing I recall happened in Sex and Violence, where the agent turned out to be a siren.
71*** In 'Phantom Traveler' the real FBI did show up eventually while they were checking out the wreckage of a plane. That was one of the first episodes in s1 though.
72*** Actually they were Homeland Security, that was the first time they've pretended to be someone so official.
73** It also might be some sort of BavarianFireDrill. Basically, flipping any sort of official looking paper or card under someone's nose will get people to comply if you seem like you are allowed. This is why our teachers (law, economics, history and ethics and a few assorted others) are required to inform us how to handle a situation where someone flashes a badge and tells you to comply is make him hold the damn badge still until you can check and double check it because otherwise, someone can just flash you a student ID and you're still gonna do as they say. It gets even more noticeable when the person being shown the badge is in distress because there seems to be a part of the human brain that just wants to believe that someone else can handle this and someone else will know what to do. So I guess they just have to get the timing right as not to run into any officials and the civilians take care of themselves.
74** Also going to use literary analysis here and say Sam and Dean the characters are very different people from the actors who play them. The Sam and Dean we see are are just the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Sam and Dean in 'real life' are likely trained experts at impersonation who can and do change their haircut, walk, matter of speaking and body language as need be.
75** Like the point above about people complying, they don't think they have the ability to question it, and often those being questioned are in a fragile state because they've just lost a friend/relative so they don't even think of questioning the 'FBI'.
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77* Does it seem a little improbable that every single town they go to have their local papers archived online? Some articles even dating back to the 19th century? Really?
78** Really good local archivists? A tech-savvy local historical society? It's not that weird for bigger towns, but it's difficult to suspend disbelief at times.
79*** They do look through tons of real newspapers in libraries, though. Which I still don't get, because who would keep all those old newspapers? I used to live in an (admittedly not American) small town and the only archived newspapers in the library were scientific stuff for students.
80*** Most of it is on microfilm (seen in at least one episode). A lot easier to keep.
81*** Did they actually have everything archived on the internet? Every single newspaper? That seemed so unlikely that I found myself assuming that it's just the murder cases and other dramatic stuff.
82*** There are places, mostly schools and universities all over the world that basically have the job to keep a copy of every damn thing that has ever been printed within a certain radius. So maybe the towns don't archive the newspapers online, but someone else did.
83*** Usually these databases are online too, so using proper hacking, skills, technically, they wouldn't even have to leave their hotel to dig up information on local news. Wouldn't be as interesting though.
84** Also considering that what they most look for comes across as "weird crap" like locked room deaths, various organs/limbs missing or weirdly injured, that stuff tends to make the news and most towns keep them as a kind of tourism thing, hell, my town actually has a plate in the middle of a crossroads to mark the spot they burned witches.
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86* The family's repeated issues. Mary can't stand the thought of John dying, so she sells her soul (kind of) to save him. John can't stand the thought of Dean dying so he sells his soul to save him. Dean can't stand the thought of Sam dying so he sells his soul to save him. And then Sam can't stand the thought of Dean dying but by now the demons have thought that this whole thing has gotten a bit ridiculous and refuse to do the deal. Am I the only one who agrees with the demons on this?
87** It must be [[ItRunsInTheFamily in the genes]].
88** To be fair, you could probably write a whole essay on this. For example, it wasn't just Mary sad at John dying, John represented her hope for escaping the hunter life (sweetened by Azazel promising a quiet life too), etc. Of course, Bobby, demons and nearly everybody makes jokes about the Winchesters' "need" for self sacrifice.
89** I found that quite convincing, actually.
90** What exactly is the question here?
91*** I believe the question is whether we agree with the demons. Personally, I don't think so. When you love someone, you sacrifice for them. Most of us just aren't faced with tragedy all around us and don't have the option of sacrifice by demon to fix some of it. I'll also add Samuel to the list who definitely made a deal with the devil (well a demon anyway).
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93* How do ghosts/demons actually function when it comes to the salt issue? It confuses me because the Winchesters are constantly salting the doors and windows instead of a solid perimeter. Ghosts have been shown both passing through objects but also teleporting. I don't see why ghosts don't just walk through a wall. In the case of demons I don't see why they don't just punch through a wall or if that would be too slow drive a car through the wall. While we're on the subject why don't the Winchesters carry rock sale or salt licks and just salt the places they are staying. If I lived their lives demon proofing a place would be like locking the door. You do it every time, everywhere for obvious reasons.
94** Most magic operates on metaphor. By sealing the entrances to a space you're metaphorically sealing the entire space, which means effectively sealing it in a magical sense. As to why hunters don't do this everywhere they go, it may draw more attention than it's worth if it's not needed. If nothing else, you'd have to do it every time you went in and out of the room.
95*** I very much agree with the metaphorical magic of just sealing the entrances. Regarding why hunters don't just spill salt everywhere: remember that, prior to the end of the first season, hunters didn't really encounter demons very often. They dealt with monsters and ghosts more than anything. Salt doesn't do anything against monsters, and one can reasonably expect not to be attacked in the middle of the night by ghosts, which tend to haunt certain areas. The only reason the Winchesters and other hunters are encountering demons all the time now is because A) Azazel's grand plan brought them into prominence and now Crowley's ambition is keeping them there, and B) they opened the gate to hell, which let a hell of a lot of demons out. Even now, though, the boys are good at keeping under the radar and most demon attacks are unexpected. They probably should make a habit of salting up, though.
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97* Is there an in-universe answer for why demons are so attached to their meat suits? I know the real reason is so keep the same actors and not confuse the audience but we know MOST demons don't have the power to teleport but they can all travel as smoke, which in addition to being faster than walking or driving it's also safer, and your enemies having no idea what you look like has got to make getting within striking distance with the enemy. In fact there doesn't seem to be any advantage to keeping the same body.
98** Well, to be fair, how many recurring demons that don't have the ability to teleport do we even see?
99** Firstly, well, they probably do become attached to their vessels. They likely carefully choose them in the first place. They take particular delight in torturing others, and their vessel is probably no different. Secondly, while demons are shown to be very impulsive and indulgent, they probably know it wouldn't be a good idea to leave a long trail of recently-vacated vessels behind. If enough people start to raise a fuss about having been possessed and can give detailed information -- or if enough suspicious suicides turn up -- that just brings hunters down on them.
100** The most curious part is Meg repeatedly taking the same meatsuit -- she abandons it after Bobby overcomes his possession at the start of Season 5, then reappears in the same body a few episodes later, just in time to get used as a bridge over a ring of holy fire by Castiel. Then she shows up in the same meatsuit -- with the same outfit, no less -- midway through Season 6.
101*** The first time, we don't know how long she spent in that meatsuit before she faced the Winchesters again, but after she was used as a bridge we never saw any sign that she was actually forced out of her meatsuit on that occasion, so she probably decided to just stay in it and heal.
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103* Why doesn't every hunter bless every body/container/etc. of water they can, every time they see one? It's never been explained if blessing wears off, or how far "blessing" extends into a large body of water (does it bless a whole river if you do the ritual at the shore?)--wouldn't "poisoning the well" whenever possible generally help their cause? This presumes, not unreasonably, that few hunters have learned about non-evil vampires such as Lenore, and would want to harm and hinder all of them as much as possible. (It's too bad you can't bless water that is part of a larger whole--humans are mostly water, and if you could bless that water they'd become essentially undrinkable.)
104** Vampires and Monsters aren't affected by holy water. Only Demons get hurt from holy water. In my opinion the holy water (or at least the spell/prayer that makes it holy water) probably has some kind of half-life. SO if hunters did bless a well it probably would stay holy forever.
105** Unless it was a coordinated world wide one day strike against the forces of evil I don't think this would be a good plan. A lot of why the crap hunters pull works is because demons and vampires aren't particularly cautious. Why should they be? You're very unlikely to be prepared to deal with them at any given moment. If they lived in a world where every hose shot acid they'd start thinking ahead pretty quickly.
106** There's the above, and how many times do we see the various monsters drink water? If they drink at all, it seems to usually be beer or harder liquor, which might actually be a sort of precaution against this. The only two times I can recall seeing anyone on the show drink water at all is when Dean downs an entire bottle upon returning from Hell and when Sam takes a swig of holy water spiked with salt to prove he's not a monster. Although it'd be somewhat hilarious if Sam and Dean's solution to a warehouse full of demons was to make an absolutely massive devil's trap around the building before flooding the building with holy water.
107*** I'm pretty sure they do something similar in an episode. I remember them blessing the water to a building and breaking pipes/turning on the fire sprinklers.
108** Would holy water actually kill the demons, or just hurt them immeasurably? I'm pretty sure hunters only ever use it to expose, torture or temporarily immobilize demons. Now, sabotaging major media to play the exorcism everywhere at once would be neat, if hunters had the organization and technical know-how to do it.
109*** As stated above this would be great for a single, world-wide strike against the forces of evil but not a whole lot else. We've seen enough demons come back from exorcism to know that the ritual kicks them out of the body, it doesn't kill them. What it would do would be to inform demons that this was possible and they'd start smashing computers and televisions and the like.
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111* What is the deal with Demon eyes, white eyed demons are supposed to be the strongest right? What about Abaddon, she's the oldest after Lilith, if any demon should have White eyes it should be she.
112** Abaddon isn't exactly "the oldest after Lilith," she's just one of the oldest demons. The thing is, demon eye color seems to be an inherent trait that can't be changed, hence why Crowley still has red eyes despite his elevated position. Abaddon was most likely always a black-eyed demon that was simply imbued with some extra powers by Lucifer (the episode said that the Knights of Hell were hand-picked by Lucifer, so it's probable that there are Knights with other eye colors as well).
113** The explanation could have something to do with the fact that we know that the Knights of Hell were created by Cain. He's one of the strongest demons, but not as powerful as Lucifer, who is an angel. Maybe only Lucifer can create white eyed demons.
114** I've been thinking, maybe the reason Crossroads demons have red eyes is because they're technically the only demons that come to contact with living humans... so they get the soul of the person who sold it, feed on it, get power form it - because souls are a source of energy, and we know Crowley was hoarding them - That's probably how he became strong enough to became the Kind of Crossroads, and later King of Hell, after getting so many souls. Maybe the eyes become red because human souls, like... human's blood? Blood red? red eyes? because they're assumingly dealing with living humans, while other demons (say, Alistair and crew) get their hands on the soul after it arrived to Hell?
115** Also, Lilith was the first demon. Another Troper somewhere here mentioned that maybe Lucifer tried to "make her better" like "angelic" better (and it went horribly wrong), hence the white eyes, as in, angel's light? Or like a shirt that was washed so much the color faded? I've got no idea about yellow eyes though.
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117* The first time we saw Hell, it was an endless web of chains in a dark green stormy sky. The first time we saw Heaven, it was a labyrinth of dreams. By contrast, Purgatory appeared as an oddly material afterlife, something I assumed was meant to reflect how monsters and leviathans never manifest as spirits. But now it seems that Heaven, Hell and Purgatory have all become places that you can visit in the flesh and through which you can fight your way using physical weapons.
118** Angels have been shown to be capable of wearing their vessels in Heaven since Season 6, and it makes sense. There's no reason why three-dimensional beings shouldn't be able to exist in a higher-dimensional plane.
119** Not to mention that Heaven and Hell seem to be whatever whoever's in charge wants them to be. Azazel and Lilith wanted Hell to be chains and meathooks, but after Crowley took over it's been replaced by endlessly waiting in line. Presumably God or Michael set up Heaven and Purgatory to be the way they are.
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121* What does Hell really look like? In 'No Rest For the Wicked,' it showed Dean strapped to a rack (and it's also been said that he was). Yet, in 'The Man Who Would be King,' Hell was waiting in line for eternity. And then, in 'Taxi Driver,' Hell was just a bunch of cages?
122** Likely it has something to do with Crowley's 'Remodel of Hell' from the start of Season 6. Since Bobby was on Crowley's 'no fly' list it's also likely that anyone he actively doesn't want to reach heaven (Or just plain doesn't like) gets put in this special section for him and his goons to torture at will, everyone else probably still goes to the line.
123** Also, the reason why he converted it into a waiting line in the first place was because it was more efficient and because Hell was full of masochists who ''liked'' the torture, but according to Crowley, "nobody likes waiting in line."
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125* Burning bones kills demons. Does that mean that anyone cremated is automatically saved from Hell?
126** That's...that's a damn good question. It prevents them from becoming vengeful spirits, that's the reason hunters are typically cremated (what with their tendency to die violently and all) but we know it doesn't pull them out of Heaven (Adam got cremated, and his soul was still in Heaven), so burning bones doesn't exactly "delete" a soul, for lack of a better word. I guess not, considering John was cremated and was still in Hell, although that may have had something to do with him having made a deal. I suppose they have to become demons (or vengeful spirits) before torching the bones can kill them.
127*** Yeah, I would think that they have to become a demon before having their bones burned affects them. Basically, the deal would be what got John stuck in Hell, and from that point, burning his bones didn't affect his soul just like burning Adam's bones didn't affect him in Heaven. It kinda makes me wonder if, since he had no bones left, he could even ''become'' a demon. If so, then he would definitely have a leg up on all of the others.
128*** There's actually an early season episode where Sam and Dean have to stop a little girl ghost who is haunting a painting and killing each new owner only to find out that the girl was cremated and there were no bones to burn. I can't remember which episode it is, but Dean ends up burning the girl's doll, which happened to have used some of her hair. So it doesn't have to be bones, just a piece of their body or something closely associated with the dead person. Bobby was anchored to his flask even though his body had been cremated. So, I'm going to say that cremation does absolutely nothing to prevent ghostification or anything else when it comes to the supernatural.
129** Well, as of late in Season 8, it apparently does. "Bobby in Hell? We burned his bones. Once we did that, it was over. End of story." I guess they forgot about John being in Hell after they burned his bones. Maybe it only matters if you make a deal.
130** It's possible that burning the bones doesn't actually do anything to the soul itself. The bones or hair or whatnot serve as an 'anchor' so the spirit can remain on earth.
131** This is actually confirmed later on, basically the bones only let them stay on earth, the soul isn't (and can't be) destroyed. Every sinner burned, gets kicked straight into hell.
132** This raises a conflict with the point that burning a demon's bones will kill it. We see as much with Bobby torching that Crossroads demon and the boys being surprised about Crowley not being dead after Castiel torched "his" bones. So let's try to reconcile this. Someone dies, they can become a vengeful spirit, tied to Earth by bones unless there's a specific item they had all the time (i.e. Bobby's flask). Burning those bones cuts them loose and they presumably either snap off to Heaven or [[CessationOfExistence just go bye-bye]], as it looks like most vengeful spirits that get torched explode painfully, but Bobby was simply cut loose. Demons, burned bones equals death. However, if someone has made a deal, their soul is dragged off to Hell and burning the bones does precisely squat. The conflict with Adam's fate and Bobby's still exists (both had their bones burned, both were in Heaven post-death, but Bobby was expected to be completely gone as opposed to in Heaven), but the rest actually kind of makes sense.
133* Presumably once someone becomes a demon, they no longer need their bones or any other item to anchor them to the Earth. However, they're still "linked" to the bones and can be killed by burning the bones, because they will experience any damage that occurs to the bones. However, if the bones were destroyed when they were just a soul in Hell the link may be temporarily "disconnected" and so they wouldn't suffer the damage. As a consequence, if someone is going to become a demon it's actually much better for them to have their bones burned in advance.
134
135* Historically speaking, why is it necessary for hunters to keep the existence of monsters, demons, and other supernatural creatures a secret from the general population? After all, it is obvious that people once knew that the supernatural was real (that is where all the myths, legends, and lore come from), but since monsters, in the Supernatural-verse, are demonstrably REAL, why did people ever stop believing in them, especially since they are obviously quite dangerous to humans? In short, what is the purpose of TheMasquerade?
136** Maybe it was a way for the monsters to keep themselves from going extinct because humans became really good at hunting.
137** There doesn't seem to be much of an effort to keep things secret for the sake of TheMasquerade. Hunters only lie about the things that go bump in the night because if you tell a cop you're hunting a vampire and show him all your gear, he'll lock you up. They've revealed the truth to a number of people. As for why the average citizen doesn't believe in them? I suppose it's possible monsters went underground for a couple centuries so people started dismissing them as myth, or demons did something to eliminate all the "official" records of vampire or werewolf attacks.
138*** It seems more likely that there is no official Masquerade in this world and never was. It was always considered a bit crazy to believe in monsters because they were sufficiently rare in most cases that most people didn't see them. There were occasionally people who told stories just like the real world has Santa Claus, Yetis, honest politicians and Elvis sightings on a regular basis and enough that people are familiar with the lore but they aren't real. Supernatural still has roughly the same religions as the real world which it shouldn't since God is so MIA that most Angels only believe in him in theory because they've never seen him, Angels are so MIA that even hunters don't believe in them prior to season 5 yet there are enough gods and sufficiently powerful monsters running about that they should have their own little religions because they are both real and ACTIVE.
139*** Yeah, I have to agree with the above post. It seems that the likeliest answer is that the supernatural is simply rare enough and usually leaves behind little enough conclusive physical evidence that most people who never encounter it don't have much reason to believe it exists. And seeing as Hunters mainly deal with dangerous supernatural creatures, and their main goal is to stop them from killing people, they rarely have the opportunity to bring a werewolf or a vampire in alive to prove it to the world or much inclination to do so.
140*** In addition very few supernatural beings can even remotely be brought 'in' safely. Demons are supposedly rare until the Devil's Gate is opened and most other critters don't even have something as safe as a circle you can draw to hold them in place. While the more recent seasons introduced the Men of Letters which suggests that modern (meaning the last few decades) of hunters may have been much less efficient than hunters old it's easy to forget how much modern equipment the hunters use. Without a national weather service, and cars and freeways to travel the country tracking supernatural things is incredibly simple. Those storms that form patterns Bobby is able to google up over a weekend would have taken weeks (or someone much more paranoid than Bobby) to track down as recently as the early 90's.
141** Alternate theory: They keep up the Masquerade because they're afraid of people trying to justify murders with "I thought he was a vampire / werewolf / skinwalker / whatever."
142** For the same reason they keep up TheMasquerade in Film/MenInBlack: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
143** I really don't understand any of the above logic. First off, all it takes is one person to capture a monster and take it to a TV station for the secret to be out. They could do this for a number of reasons from fame, money, to trying to help the general public. Why would any hunter want the world to be in silence in the first place? All they would be doing is adding more soldiers and preventing people from easily dying. Them not telling would be akin to knowing what causes a fatal disease and not telling anyone about it but running around with multiple cures and healing people individually. People might freak out at first but I'm sure most people would be happy knowing there was an afterlife and they'd be able to see their dead loved ones. The truth is, the only reason they general public doesn't know is to keep the main characters with work to do. Essentially it would ruin the show, not the show's world.
144** OP here -- there are a lot of good reasons here for why hunters might not go out of their way to educate the general public about the supernatural world, but the question is, why does the general public not know regardless? I came up with this question after watching the episode "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" and absentmindedly reading up on the real-life history of Samhain, where I read that in medieval Ireland, people would make a habit of carrying bars of iron and salt on that day in order to ward off evil spirits. Since, unlike in real life, evil spirits and supernatural creatures are a very serious threat to people, why would superstitions like that have died out, to the point where only the hunters know about them?
145*** Despite what following Sam and Dean around would get you thinking monsters are still pretty rare and any particular type rarer still. So people would probably lose faith pretty quickly between the fact that most monsters don't care about salt or iron so it wouldn't help when you did run into a beastie and monsters are so rare that most people never meet anybody who's met anybody who has first hand knowledge.
146
147* While Judao-Christian mythology clearly takes the lead, is there any official word on the origin of the world or if we're taking Cas's word for being there before there were people, where all the other Gods came from? In Hammer of the Gods it outright states that the various Pagan Gods at least believe that they were around prior to God and resent him thinking he has the right to end the world at his leisure. So are they just monsters that have bought into their own hype?
148** This is mostly conjecture to the point of WildMassGuessing, but considering Jesse's power was that of human belief fueled by demon blood, maybe all humans have minuscule amounts of this power naturally. Let's say a Norse warlord named Odin and his son Thor win almost every battle they participate in. The word of mouth makes people believe they're superhuman, so by the power of common belief, they develop demigod-like powers. Their following grows and their village, Asgard, and their people, the Aesir, are look upon like gods, and so gods they become. Today, every one is a little more skeptical, so urban legends don't automatically become true, but there was a time when if people believed with all their soul, a human could become a god.
149** I think if anything, especially given their apparent reliance on having followers for their power and their number of contradictory creation myths, the Gods featured in the shows are most likely tulpas like in "Hell House". In that episode, a spirit came into existence because enough people believed the story of it. It's the same idea with a god. Though the show's mythology might be based on the idea of a Judao-Christian God having created the universe, if enough people believe in the Norse gods then the Norse gods would come into existence and so would the Hindu gods etc. Of course, since in each of their respective mythologies the gods have histories dating back to the start of creation the gods would all believe themselves to have always existed (even if the tulpas only actually came into existence long after the myths were already formed). This would allow for them to all have different beliefs about the creation of the universe and the end of the universe as part of their own tulpa backstory. This would also explain the obvious power imbalance between THE God and a room full of gods, who (though in their own mythologies may have been able the most powerful beings in the universe) were shown in "Hammer of the Gods" to be less powerful than a single archangel. It also neatly explains why there is lore on how to kill some of the gods even though those gods are apparently very much alive and apparently haven't ever been killed before (in "Hell House" the fact that people believed something would kill a tulpa meant that it would kill a tulpa).
150
151* What the hell is dead blood? How can blood be dead? The only way I can see blood being "dead" is when it's outside the body,in which case it(usually)dries pretty quickly once exposed to air. So how exactly can the hunters poison vampires with it?
152** If it's similar to some vampire lore and Interview with the Vampire it's the blood of a dead individual. It's mentioned a few times in the Anne Rice novels that that's the reason vampires don't just rob blood banks, there is no way of knowing if the donor died at sometime between when the blood was collected and when it was used. It's possible that blood only remains alive for a set period of time outside the body, magic is funny that way but unless new information is revealed I would stick with the assumption that they meant the Blood of a Dead Man and that's been shortened to Dead Blood.
153*** Since it is called Dead Man's Blood, I would guess that the blood is taken from a corpse.
154
155* How is Dean in such good shape? I don't think we ever see him work out, his diet is very high on sweets and fatty foods, he drinks ''a lot'', and he spends most of his time sitting in a car. The guy should have a lot more blubber than muscle.
156** Part of it is probably just good genes. I know people who live that life style and stay in halfway decent shape into about their thirties. Dean is only (as of this writing) 35 in Earth years, it is difficult to impossible to know if time flows differently in Purgatory, it's flat out stated that Hell is much faster but there doesn't seem to be any change for it. Also there are probably a ton of adventures the boys go on that we don't see, just standard find ghost, find bones, burn bones. Dean and Sam probably get a lot more running around than we see because a lot of their adventures are fairly mundane. They also probably drive less than it seems. Seattle, Washington and Miami Florida (chosen for being on completely opposite sides of the country and pretty close to as far apart as you can get in America) are "only" 52 hours apart assuming you're driving the speed limit. It's unlikely that they are always forced to make that trek, they mostly seem to stick around in middle America likely within ten or so hours and they probably stay in each town until the next job comes up giving plenty of time for exercise which again aside from fan service for the ladies they wouldn't show because again it's boring. They certainly never seem to be more than a few hours away from Bobby's place. To use a real life example pro wrestlers in the 90s were routinely driving around the country, drinking and doing all sorts of drugs if the stories are true and most of them were still in better shape than Dean.
157** This tropette was actually more worried about Sam's diet than Dean's--think about it, even though neither of them often "works out" (as in deliberately goes to a gym with the express purpose of burning fat/building muscle), many of their activities do require high levels of physical exertion. Even a basic "salt-and-burn" task involves digging some pretty deep pits, and while we usually dissolve from breaking the ground to finding the body, in reality they're probably spending hours at it. And of course, running for your life, sometimes while carrying the victim of the week over your shoulder, is pretty taxing energy-wise as well. Throw in the fact that both Sam and Dean are well above six feet tall, and they *should* be consuming probably in the ballpark of 4,000 calories per day. That Dean eats this much is perfectly believable... but Sam? Salads, bananas, and organic smoothies just aren't going to cut it.
158*** They do do some pretty physically strenuous stuff, but it usually seems like they have a day or two where they dig graves or get into fights, followed by several days of little to no physical activity, which is just about the worst way to stay in shape.
159*** While he's older than I am that worked pretty well for me as a Marine. They probably get a decent work out every couple of days though.
160** Sam, at least, is shown working out in recent seasons when not on hunts, and even eating real food other than salad. While Sam doesn't drink like Dean does, he does also go through a decent amount of beer, so probably gets some calories/carbs there as well. Dean is the poster boy for unhealthy living aside from exercise he gets from hunts, but seems to have lucked into some great genes. Even apart from his greasy food habit, he's suggested to be a full-on alcoholic at more stressful points in the series and you'd think you'd see some ramifications from that as well.
161** On a related note, rumour has it that Jensen Ackles actually requested fewer "Dean chows down on burgers" scenes, as in real life, he can't eat like Dean does and stay in shape!
162*** Jensen just doesn't want to. Micheal Phelps (Olympic Swimmer) eats more for breakfast than most of us eat all day and is better shape than Jensen. I know they don't work the same schedule or profession but I have a hard time believing that even with multiple takes that Jensen can't handle eating an extra burger or two a week. It's not like he's eating in every scene nor do they film every day.
163** In the early seasons, he was probably young enough to shrug it off (he was what, 26 at the start of the series?), but later on it can be handwaved with angel healing. Every time he gets resurrected or fixed up by Castiel, they squeegee out his arteries and rebalance the fat content. Angels -- the ultimate diet plan!
164*** Likely explanation as of episode 15.10? Plot armor extends to their health!
165** All the tropers above have good comments about how they can be so physically fit, and the real issue is diet. Sam would have to be taking in a lot more protein that his diet allows to have the build he has, and while Dean may have been able to get away with his diet when he was in his twenties, anyone approaching 40 can tell you it gets much harder. Exercise really isn't an issue. While they don't have gym memberships and stay at cheap motels that wouldn't have a fitness room, it isn't difficult to stay in shape if you apply yourself. Sam and Dean could spend an hour a day four days a week at a local park where they're at that has a Parcourse or something similar. A half hour of running mixed with sprints would take care of cardio. Then push-ups until you can't do them anymore, flip over and do crunches until you can't do them anymore. then pull-ups until you can't do anymore, then deep knee bends until...well you get the idea. Lather-rinse-repeat until they've done those four exercises for a half hour. That will hit all their major muscle groups and keep them in fighting shape. Deployed troops who don't have weights or cardio equipment do similar routines to stay in shape.
166* Do any of the supernatural creatures (the ones sentient enough to read, anyway) know about the Supernatural books? The demons in particular would find metric tons of very private and valuable information about their enemies in those pages, and it's very easy to verify the content is genuine since most of what was described was well-known information in the circles of Hell.
167* If you painted a demon trap on a frisbee and threw it over a demon, would it pass over them with no effect or would the demon be dragged by the trap's "walls" a few meters for as long as it kept hovering over them?
168
169* Not sure if anyone has mentioned this before, but in some episodes (especially early seasons), the Impala has searchlights mounted on each side of the windshield. I don't think Sam and Dean ever used them, but they were there. In other episodes, they're missing. They didn't come with the Impala as standard accessories, as they were not present in the flashback scene showing it rolling off the assembly lot. They also weren't there when Dean traveled back in time and helped convince John to buy it at the used car lot. You could say John installed them at one point, and then Dean removed them during one of the times he rebuilt it after being damaged, but that doesn't explain all the instances of how they are present in some episodes but not in others.
170
171* How do Sam and Dean manage to get such perfect, squared-off corners when they're digging up a grave. Why do they bother? Usually they're on a clock and they've got to dig up the grave, then salt and burn the bones before the ghost kills someone. If you've ever tried to dig a hole, squared corners are not easy.
172[[/folder]]
173
174[[folder:Season 1]]
175* In the very first episode: Why does Dean return for Sam in the first place? The timing is off for him to have heard Sam yell, unless he was lurking around outside waiting for Sam to need him (which is not outside the realm of possibility for Dean).
176** There's a deleted scene on the Season 1 DVD set that shows Dean driving away in the Impala before noticing his radio going hay-wire, lights flickering, etc., which tipped him off to supernatural activity in the area and caused him to go back for Sam.
177
178* I guess the easiest answer is Early Installment Weirdness combined with Winchesters never learn but in the pilot why are they freaking out that their father had laid salt out? In their line of work I would probably have a ring of salt around my car, in every doorway I ever passed through up to and including the shower door. That should have been evidence that he had been there but not evidence that he was in trouble. Then again we're eight years in and the brothers don't seem to have learned basic precautions either.
179** Possibly because a thick salt line is obvious and leaves noticeable traces, and hunters try to stay off the radar. On the other hand, the boys only ever lay down one line of salt at a time for some weird-ass reason.
180** Also, in the season 1 finale Bobby said that demonic possession was previously extremely rare -he'd hear about a couple cases of it a year--and that demonic activity around the world had only recently increased to the levels we see on the show. Ghosts, on the other hand generally don't target hunters unless they're aware that the hunter is trying to destroy them (or that hunter was involved in their death) so they may have thought John wouldn't have bothered with it unless he thought something was coming after him.
181*** Also, a salt line around someone you're defending is a sure sign you're fighting a ghost, as they're tethered to a specific area or object. A salt line around where you're ''staying''? That means something is coming after you, which means a demon.
182*** ^ Exactly. Prior to the gate being opened in Season 2, it seems like demons were ''incredibly'' rare in the Supernatural world, while they're being knocked off like popcorn these days (one wonders how they're getting out, since presumably no new gates have been opened). A salt line stops precisely two things - demons and ghosts, and as we see throughout the show, ghosts are typically tethered to one location, which meant that John was worried about demons.
183
184* Why don't they ever use "Christo" to expose demons after the one episode? Certainly would have made things easier along the way.
185** Because the writers ''realized'' it made figuring out who was possessed too easy and quietly {{Retcon}}ned it away.
186*** Ah. Yeah, that makes sense. Plus most of the time the demons just reveal themselves anyway.
187** I always figured it was just less effective, the more the boys learned. If you say "Christo", yeah, you'll figure out it's a demon, but now the demon is aware that you know and not incapacitated in any way if it wants to take you out. Throwing holy water or playing it safe until you can trick the demon into a demon trap is a safer way of handling things.
188*** On the other hand, considering how much of their demon disposal method involves getting the crap kicked out of them, that may not be all that different from normal.
189*** I suppose the danger of Christo is that it makes a demon flinch. Potentially someone concentrating could suppress a flinch while someone may also flinch in fear if a strange man walks up to them and starts talking gibberish, making it ambiguous. If holy water makes you burn that's not ambiguous.
190
191* In ''Something Wicked'', in the flashback, Dean was hungry and was going to eat the last of the Lucky Charms, giving Sam a bowl of Spaghettios. However, when Sam complained and insisted on the Lucky Charms, Dean went and threw out the Spaghettios. Presumably, he then went hungry. Why didn't he, Dean, just eat the Spaghettios, using another container (even a cup would do) for Sam's Lucky Charms?
192** It bothered me that it's said Dean hid them but the Lucky Charms are right on the counter.
193
194* Other than as a convenient plot device, was there ever really an explanation for John Winchester's odd actions in S1? Why leave cryptic and slightly dire messages like that phone call that cut off, send them on the SPN equivalent of a geocaching treasure hunt, and refuse to communicate with them? He was apparently getting all their messages, but didn't show up in "Faith" when Dean was about to die. Yeah, I know he explained he wanted to keep away from them "for their safety", but that doesn't really explain why he keeps them worried, sends them into danger, and doesn't show up when Dean's time is up. Is there an explanation other than narrative convenience and/or emotional abusiveness?
195** EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. And John being the worst parent EVER. I mean, this is the guy who'd leave two little kids for weeks at a time with twenty bucks, a box of Lucky Charms and a gun, after all.
196** As for "Faith" he himself acknowledges how wrong that was in "Salvation," but its never indicated it was deliberate, its entirely possible that due to burying himself in his work so heavily, he didn't get around to checking his messages until after Sam and Dean fixed the problem.
197** Likewise his hunts were to keep them distracted while he closed in on the creature that murdered his wife and ruined his family life. Basically John was worried that if he let them come that it might he kill them as well, but also knew his Son's were skilled enough to find him, unless intentionally kept them distracted. So like many things John did his intentions were good, but his methods left a lot to be desired.
198
199* They say, many times, that Azazel always makes his fateful visit to his children exactly six months after they're born. This sounds like it means six calendar months--a birthday on January 1 means Azazel comes on July 1, March 2 means he comes on September 2, and so on. But notice that this sounds like an exact timetable, but it isn't. An exact timetable would be something more like 180 days, or "half a year" (183 days). For it to be exactly six months, Azazel would have to be scheduling his operations in such a way that he uses the human system of dates. And the demons in Supernatural, and Azazel in particular, don't seem to be all that integrated into human society.
200** They do seem to have some sort of commonality with human society -- ten years on the deals, after all. They have to be somewhat aware of human time.
201[[/folder]]
202[[folder:Season 2]]
203* Why didn't Dean make a deal to save John (and Evan) from hell in exchange of releasing the demon from the seal back in Season 2 ep 8?
204** There are 2 simple answers: 1) since John sold his soul to Azazel, Azazel alone could decide to return him to Earth. 2) Even if they could have, the demon would have been RIGHTLY much more scared of what Azazel would do to them after releasing John than whatever Dean would have done.
205
206* Why in the world would Azazel keep the Colt loaded after giving it to Jake? It only has one round in it, that's literally the ''one thing'' that could kill him at the time (Sam's psychic powers having been prepubescent and Ruby's knife not introduced yet). It would have taken him literally ten seconds to disassemble the Colt, pop the last round out, and reassemble it. Did he just grab hold of the IdiotBall or something?
207** Azazel outright challenges Jake to shoot him, but convinces Jake that the satisfaction of doing so will pale in comparison to the rewards and comfort that he and his family will receive if he simply does what Azazel tells him to do. Also, Azazel was very overconfident, and did intend to shoot Dean with it. (Some have speculated that killing Dean with the Colt would annihilate his soul and make it so that Michael had no vessel to use when the Apocalypse came, thereby ensuring Lucifer's victory.)
208*** Except they have a brother and do we even have a reason to believe that Azazel was in on Lilith's plan specifically instead of just releasing demons because Hell sucks?
209*** It's a pretty good chance that Azazel didn't just know Lilith's plan but was the one who actually told her what to do. He was the one who actually spoke to Lucifer and was told by him what to do to release him.
210** Alternatively, maybe the lock on the Devil's Gate was designed (either physically or magically) so that the gun had to be loaded in order to open it.
211*** I always thought that the Devil's Gate they were at worked the way it did specifically because Samuel Colt had been the one to either close it or reinforce the lock. There are more gates then just the one in Wyoming, so it stands to reason that they have some sort of unlocking/locking mechanism on them to begin with otherwise the Supernatural universes Earth would be swimming in Demons. Samuel making his Colt the only key to one of the gates in my opinion made is extremely secure at least while he was alive.
212
213* Why, oh why would Azazel put Sam (Lucifer's true vessel, I remind you) in the line of fire at the end of Season 2, knowing how pissed Lucifer would be if he wound up dead? It seems like anyone could have broken the devil's trap in Wyoming and opened the gate, and Sam was presumably the "very special child" that Lucifer told Azazel to look for in 1972. I somehow doubt that Azazel was aware of the plan to have Dean wind up in Hell and break the first seal, and I also doubt that Lucifer was in on it.
214** He likely didn't know if Sam was the vessel or not, otherwise, why even bother making the others? He probably just figured if he made them kill each other, the one that survived would be the strongest and most worthy of Lucifer. Also, if you believe Alistair was telling the truth in OTHOAP about John being their first attempt at breaking the seal, then Azazel was in on it, but either they didn't know the seal would be broken by Michael's vessel or they didn't know that Dean was Michael's vessel (which ties back to them not knowing Sam is Lucifer's, what with the connection being their relationship as brothers).
215** Why would Lucifer be pissed? From what we can see bringing people back from the dead isn't particularly difficult for Angels, certainly not for people on Lucifer's tier. Personally though I don't think Azazel or even Lilith really knew what the game plan was. Remember Crowley seems to be the only demon who suspects that Lucifer will destroy them the moment they aren't useful.
216
217* Okay does anyone else have a problem with Azazel telling Dean that Sam wasn't all Sam and never elaborating on this??!?!?!?! I mean sure Dean questions Sam's well being for a while but we never figure out what he meant by that.
218** Season 3's plot ended up being changed significantly due to the 2007 writer's strike (Originally, Dean would not have gone to Hell and angels wouldn't have been introduced) so this is probably just another element that ended up being dropped. I believe in-universe, Sam's darker behavior was explained as him trying to toughen himself up and be more like Dean. Azazel's dialogue could be HandWaved as him having lied just to mess with Dean, which would be disappointing but in-character for him.
219** Becomes FridgeBrilliance when you consider season 6, in which the Sam that is resurrected is legitimately "not all of Sam".
220** He was lying to mess with Dean's head. He's a demon. It's what they do.
221[[/folder]]
222
223[[folder:Season 3]]
224* How exactly was Sam's plan to use Doc Benton's method of immortality for Dean in ''[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E15TimeIsOnMySide Time is on My Side]]'' to stop him going to hell supposed to work? I can understand if Dean was simply going to hell when he reached the end of his natural life; preventing him reaching the end of that natural life would allow him to avoid going to hell. However, Dean was supposed to be torn apart by hell hounds in a couple of weeks. If he didn't die straight away, wouldn't they just keep tearing at him until he either died or there was so little left of him that he was in an AndIMustScream situation?
225[[/folder]]
226
227[[folder:Season 4]]
228* Why didn't the angels intervene earlier? It's established that a) they knew Dean's importance, as well as Sam's, and b) they can heal someone recently or even long-dead, so long as they can get to the soul. Why didn't an angel -- any angel, not necessarily Castiel or Uriel or even Zachariah -- just pop down, fry the crap out of Azazel, and heal and/or resurrect Sam to stop the whole Dean's crossroads deal problem? Sam didn't even realize he'd been killed.
229** They could have done that, but you seem to be forgetting, that originally upper management kept the plan to let Lucifer escape secret, they originally made it appear to that they were trying to stop Lucifer breaking out, presumably to prevent rebellion or defection of the lower ranks, who were brought up believing Lucifer was heaven and God's greatest enemy. If they had started intervening earlier then it would have been clear they were trying to cause the apocalypse from the start, after all why protect the vessels if they weren't planning for the fight?
230*** Because even if you're trying to avoid something, you keep your hole card handy. It's like the angels resorting to Adam when Dean wouldn't say yes. You don't have to be obvious about it. "Oh, they killed Michael's vessel. Sure, we don't want Lucifer to get out, but I say we don't get caught with our pants down just in case." For reasons of the plot, it makes sense, but it still bugs me.
231** In addition to the above angels aren't omniscient. It's completely unclear as to who knew what at what point and in addition between time travel, seers, fate and God for all we know the angels specifically let these actions take place because Sam and Dean were the only ones who COULD avert the apocalypse and every crappy thing that ever happened to them was part of the plan to make them strong enough to save the world and seal off Hell. We know for example that Azazel knew his plan would work because Sam and Dean told him it would. Lucifer knew the time and place of the Final Battle. The angels clearly didn't know much about the Seals if they had they could have just positioned Angels at them, and definitely could have told Sam and Dean that under no conditions is Lilith to be killed. Unfortunately there are simply too many moving parts in Supernatural which don't have to work in any particularly logical fashion to really figure out anything the writers don't tell us directly.
232*** But they did know. They knew Lilith was the final seal, and who the vessels were. As you said, the archangels knew where the final battle would go down. And while the angels clearly knew at least what SOME of the seals were, they obviously can't track demons without looking at them, otherwise people would just be bursting into flames as angels ported in and fried them. The seals being broken still holds up, as while they may have known what the Seals were, they may not have been able to figure out where they'd be broken. I mean, two Reapers going missing could happen anywhere, and while it's implied that thousands of angels can be vaporized without putting too huge a dent in the angelic host's ranks, I doubt they have the manpower to stake out the entire planet. One gets the idea that they've also got other things going on. Maybe angels and demons are constantly fighting offscreen, which would explain why there are so few angels onscreen.
233*** I don't think they did know about Lilith. Remember Upper Management wanted the apocalypse, they probably knew what was going on. It seems pretty obvious that Castiel for example wasn't in the know about Lilith or if he was he put on a very convincing act both before and since about both his ignorance and his desperation to prevent the apocalypse. If thousands of them can be vaporized without putting a dent in their numbers staking out a majority of the Seals shouldn't be impossible. Sure some could happen anywhere but others had very specific locations.
234** I don't have an in-universe explanation, but if I'm remembering correctly, they've said that angels weren't originally supposed to be introduced to the show. The season 3 writers strike caused a lot of plot rearrangements. Dean was originally supposed to find his way out of the deal, but they ran out of time in the season. They introduced the angels in order to get him out of Hell. So the reason that they didn't interfere is because they didn't exist yet.
235** The whole point is that the angels wanted the apocalypse to happen. It was God's word, it was "The Plan" and the angels actively manipulated things behind the scenes to make it happen. Dean's deal played them perfectly in the hands, because it meant a righteous man was in hell. They then deliberately waited until Dean broke and thereby broke the first seal, kickstarting the apocalypse, before they brought him back, sowed mistrust between Sam and Dean a they were supposed to fight on opposite sides, and put Sam in the path of Lilith (Cas unlocking the panic room, Zachariah trying to stop Dean from following Sam).
236
237* The revelation that Mary and her family were hunters. It seemed like a great idea, and unexpected, but [[FridgeLogic later on]] it didn't make any sense that Sam and Dean wouldn't have found out about it at some point before this. Mary's family seemed like they were a respected family of hunters, that died under incredibly shady circumstances, and even if they weren't keen on working with others, that had to be noticed by other hunters. We're supposed to believe that the years John was searching for the cause of her death and presumably networking with other hunters, even some that might have known of her family, this never seemed to come up?
238** Because Hunters being killed is in no way unusual whatsoever, for starters. Secondly, it happened a damned long time ago and thirdly, it's pointed out in season 3 that Azazel buried the truth and killed most of the people who would've known. Dying in shady circumstances is rather, well, par for course of Hunter life. Notice your complaint hinges on some hunters MAYBE having known the Campbells 10 years later beyond that they died... and even if John Winchester knew, think the master of keeping things from his kids would've bothered to tell them? Seriously?
239*** Some hunters work together because they're family, others for the sake of convenience, but there's no real network between them -- it's just about knowing that guy who knows that other guy who works in the same field. I don't know if it's universal, but Sam and Dean in particular wouldn't have known any other hunters without Ellen's shelter and their father's old contacts.
240*** The Winchesters seem to be even more paranoid than 'normal' hunters. Never mind that, though, their father kinda liked painting his wife as an innocent soul who got tragically killed by a psycho demon -- thus his obsession with revenge. It was technically true, but not quite, and he probably never found out the details.
241*** Exactly. From what we've seen the only real ties between hunters are guys who have worked together after running into each other on jobs, or people who know Bobby. Or Garth now, I suppose. It's entirely possible that John never found out about his wife's past, because from what we see of Sam's research into the subject, Azazel killed everyone even remotely connected to people who knew about the Campbells (Which explains why monsters are running so rampant, I suppose) and it would have taken John a while to shift from "former Marine and husband" to "monster hunter," during which the demons were cleaning house and covering their tracks. Sam finds out that literally ''everyone'' who was connected to Mary Winchester died, not long after her death. "Her doctor, her uncle – everyone who ever knew her, systematically wiped off the map one at a time."
242
243* In the episode "In The Beginning" why does Dean start asking young!John about smelling sulfur and cold spots? John wouldn't become a hunter or even find out about the supernatural until Mary's death. This just doesn't make sense to me.
244** I don't remember the context, but this is a routine question. They ask pretty much everyone that if they're worried there's been a haunting (cold spots) or possession (sulfur smell). You don't have to be a hunter to smell sulfur or feel cold.
245** OP here. That's true but Dean wasn't on a case. He'd just realized that he'd been sent back in time by an Angel and the young guy next to him might be his father. Additionally in this case Dean's questions sound like he's trying to verify that this John is his father but as John was not yet a hunter, Dean's questions don't really make sense. He should be well aware of exactly when his father started hunting but here it comes off like Dean thought that John randomly had knowledge of the supernatural before Yellow Eyes/Azazel killed Mary. That is why I find this confusing.
246** At what point did Dean find out that his father wasn't a long time Hunter? It's been revealed now that he wasn't involved at all until Azazel killed Mary but I don't think Dean knew. He was five when that happened so he might not remember much before that. He refers to monster hunting as the Family Business which implies that he thought it was going on longer than just his father. While it turns out that John was apparently just that damn good, his combination of know-how and contacts suggested that he didn't piece this together on his own. It's easy to think that Dean believed he came from a long line of monster killers. Which he did, just not on his father's side. His father's side was apparently a long line of nerds.
247** Re: the sulfur and cold spots, Dean asked those questions because Cas didn't say why he sent Dean back. So in a way, it is a case. He's pretty much asking the questions he'd normally ask of civilians to try and gauge what he's dealing with here, demons and ghosts being the usual suspects. He does try and deliberately frame the questions so they don't sound crazy. As for when Dean found out how long his dad had been hunting, it's established in S1 episode "Home" that he found out the truth from Missouri Moseley (she tells Sam and Dean this). John went digging because he suspected something strange about the fire, and she told him about the supernatural.
248
249* Okay, so the last scene of ''Heaven and Hell'' made me cry and it's all Jensen Ackles' fault. But there is still so much FridgeLogic here. For one thing: HOW CAN DEAN STILL FUNCTION IF HE REMEMBERS ALL OF FORTY YEARS OF HELL?! Even the sanest, most well-adjusted person would have been rocking back and forth in a padded cell and, as far I know, nobody on this show is even nearing sane and well-adjusted.
250** Because Dean Winchester is just ''that'' badass.
251** ...No. I'm with the first guy -- he was in hell longer than he'd been alive. He'd pretty much consider hell to be his "home", and one would think have reacted a wee bit more enthusiastically in the premier when he got out of his grave. And I don't care how badass a character is, audiences and (hopefully) writers recognizes that hell is a '' pretty bad'' place to be stuck, and if you send a character there you cannot have them badass their way out of it.
252*** Dean seemed pretty noticeably shaken by it, what with him crying nearly every episode since then and having flashbacks. Also consider that he spent the last ten years of that time being the torturer and not the victim, so while I'm sure that was traumatic, probably not as much as if he'd been getting tortured the entire time. Another thing to consider is that you're applying your idea of hell to Supernatural and judging Dean accordingly, when there's no reason to believe what Dean encountered is at all similar to what we expect of hell. Ruby even states plainly that very few portrayals of hell have gotten it right save for Hellraiser, which she admits came close. Given that John spent a year in there and never took the deal Alistair gave him, either John is the master of willpower or hell must not be nearly as bad as we think it is.
253*** Even Alastair admits that John was made of "the stuff of legends".
254** Because all badasses whine and cry constantly... no... wait, I got that wrong... or you did...
255*** Because it's considered badass to be emotionally dead and unfazed by being forced to commit horrible acts in exchange for not being the victim of them? Given that Dean is more or less a deconstruction of the typical badass, this makes plenty of sense for him to be so distraught while a more typical badass would be fine. The former is slightly more realistic.
256*** I'm not so sure. Dean is still less heroic than the hero of a more idealistic show, but the fact that he was tortured for three decades before cracking seems far fetched to me. I'd get it if it was a years, or maybe even a few more if the character in question is incredibly badass, but for longer than he's lived on earth? I mean, come on. That's not humanly possible.
257** This troper is also pissed off about that turn of events. Four months, okay, I can take that, but 40 years?! How are you supposed to emphasize with that? Besides, when Dean was a spirit in "In My Time of Dying" he didn't remember anything when he came back to life. Why does he remember after coming back from Hell? Because an angel did it this time? You'd think an angel would be more considerate. I really liked the first three seasons of the show, but this whole Dean In Hell thing... not so much.
258*** Because the angels have been so considerate thus far? In any case, it's a lot easier to forget a days worth of experiences than 40 years, and you'll note that the reaper was able to bring all of Dean's memories back with a kiss, so they couldn't have been buried that deeply.
259*** I would guess it has something to do with the difference between his spirit being put back in his body (what the reaper did to him) and his body being reconstructed from/around his spirit (what I guess Castiel did).
260** It bothered me too, but I think it's common in fiction for trauma to not always be portrayed realistically, even if it's not usually this drastic. On the other hand, if it WAS portrayed realistically, Dean would be completely comatose and unable to function, making him worthless to the plot. The only in-story theory I can think of is that in Hell, a human's mind can only break so far, keeping them totally aware of what's happening. That's probably not the case, but if you really want an explanation, that's all I got.
261*** You have to keep in mind, that whole "comatose and unable to function thing" probably has a lot to do with the damage to the physical neurons in the brain, which physically change in response to our experiences. Without that pesky physical brain, that wouldn't happen. After all, what good would all those freshly-damaged-souls-turned-demons be if the "conditioning" rendered them completely helpless? Admittedly, some biopsychology is a little reconcile with the whole "soul separate from your physical body" thing, and Dean was obviously affected by his stint in Hell, but given some time, I could probably come up with plausible explanation.
262*** But if the soul doesn't get influenced by torture as much, what's the point of hell in the first place? Unless time passes differently there specifically for torture to work better.
263** You have to crank your suspension of disbelief up a notch: Maybe Castiel had some angelic magic mumbo jumbo that prevents Dean from breaking down under the weight of what he did in hell.
264** Perhaps the fact that he can keep going even remembering what he's been through is part of ''why'' they need him.
265** This Troper just thought that Dean didn't have his memories of Hell when he first got out, and they came back to him over the course of the next few weeks. Whether that's due to angelic manipulation or just a pitiful attempt at suppressing a past trauma is up to you. Either way, that would make it a lot easier to deal with.
266*** This. It didn't seem like Dean could remember everything from the moment he crawled out of his grave. He seemed very confused and disoriented at first and I doubt everything was still crystal clear. He began to get worse and worse as the season progressed and I figure that's because his time in hell was coming back to him (probably the more he hunted and killed, re-opening those buried memories). It's possible that he was able to convince himself that it wasn't all real at first, I doubt his mind could handle it all if he didn't hide the majority of what happened from himself. Didn't Alastair have to remind Dean who he was, it didn't seem like Dean remembered anything about him until he actually SAW him with his own eyes.
267*** I had figured that the angels popped up a wall similar to what Sam got in Season 7 (temporary, they don't have Death's level of juice) to help him cope and let the memories come back slowly.
268*** I'd also imagine keeping Dean in-line with threats of returning him to hell (which the Angels do a lot) would be kind of hard if he doesn't remember how terrible it was. Compare his devil-may-care attitude about it for most of Season 3 to his abject fear of returning in Season 4. Without his memories he'd be back to how he was in Season 3, scared to die but defiant and naive enough about what hell is to invite it on himself.
269** We have an entire trope for how stupid this is, OutOfTimeOutOfMind. And yes, it's very stupid.
270** I think I've figured it out. A soul outside of a body is resistant to change. Think of all those ghosts doing the exact same thing for 50 years straight. Given that they can go through decades as a ghost without changing much, it kind of makes sense that it would take a lot more torture for a soul in hell to get significantly affected.
271*** Ghosts change ALOT over time, my personal theory (backed up by weekend at bobbys) is that Demons themselves are just Jacked up ghosts, you will notice that alot of the powers ghosts have are very similar to what demons can do, so I reckon that most of the ghosts the boys encounter are demi-demonic, hell refines it and quickens it whereas in order for a ghost to naturally become demonic takes much much longer, souls seem to just get worse and worse the longer they are out of the body, but 40 years helltime is probably a light spanking.
272*** There was also the whole deal with Sam's soul; it was stuck in the cage and gathered its own memories, while his body went around doing the same on earth. In a very far-fetched attempt to justify Dean's issues, I'd say that the brain and the soul 'remember' in two different ways, meaning that when Castiel recreated Dean's body, it restarted from the personality he's had at the moment he died, and for whatever reason, only later remembered the memories that came with his soul. Okay, that made a very limited amount of sense.
273*** Also, going back a little here, doesn't the body shut down in response to trauma as a coping mechanism? It's one of your brain's ways of defending itself. That would count as a kind of escape, and Demons obviously wouldn't WANT their damned souls to be capable of ANY kind of release, so maybe being in hell forces you to remain JUST sane enough to function and fully experience the torments without offering any kind of release? That might explain why Dean is still functioning now after 40 years. Perhaps it's similar to, say, the WMG explanation of how [[Series/{{Torchwood}} the immortal Jack Harkness]] was still relatively sane after being buried alive for 1000 years: he was only sane at the ed of that because he WAS sane at the moment he became immortal. Dean can only cope with what he knows now because he was relatively (for a Winchester) sane when the whole mess started, and was literally ''forced ''to remain sane for over 30 years.
274** I agree that we should have had some explanation, but I reconciled it like this: the body/mind and the soul are separate entities. This concept is reinforced by the separation of Sam's body and soul in Season 6. Obviously there's a lot of inter-connectivity between body and soul, and a soul is capable of experiencing and feeling pain as though it has a body and mind. But when it comes down to it, it was Dean's soul being tortured in hell, not his body nor his mind. It was undeniably effective torture that felt very real and very drawn out, and when he was resurrected, he remembered all of it. However, being in a renewed body with an intact mind probably caused him to feel a disconnection from the torture of his spirit. He was spiritually empty and broken, but the damage wasn't mental because his body and his mind were dead while he was in hell. He was able to press on without having a mental breakdown or whatever because the pain was deeply spiritual, a sort of gnawing hole that didn't directly affect his sanity or physical well-being. That's how I see it, anyway. Once again, there probably should have been some kind of explanation within the show itself.
275*** And when Sam got his "flayed-alive" soul back in season 6, the torture had been much worse and longer-lasting, so it did destroy him mentally. However, even then it took a long time for the damage to his soul to take over and really send him off the deep end.
276** This troper always thought Dean's seeming lack of observable trauma from his time in Hell was nothing more than him not thinking about it. Kind of like a "I have to go on no matter what and thinking about this is going to break me and I can't deal with that right now so I'll just ignore it and hope it goes away." I believe he even tells Sam in one episode not long after he's resurrected that he doesn't want to talk about it even though Sam insists Dean needs to. I could be wrong on that last bit, though. Either way, Dean does say he doesn't remember his stint in Hell at one point, but we can see he quite clearly does. That makes me think that Dean's just trying really hard not to remember in the hopes that he'll actually forget the experience.
277** Or we could just say divine intervention, like with Cas's resurrections. Dean still had an essential role to play that he couldn't very well have done if he were permanently comatose, so God (or some other sufficiently powerful entity) prevents him from becoming so.
278** As a comparison, apparently time in the cage with Lucifer has pretty much shattered Michael's psyche even though presumably being on equal footing in power terms means Lucifer isn't capable of subjecting Michael to constant physical torture in the same way Dean was subjected to it. While it's true he was in the cage for longer than Dean was in Hell, relative to their own lifetimes Dean's was still a lot longer (Michael having existed since before basically everything). Of course, that's also assuming that Hell time really is consistently faster than Earth time which often hasn't been shown with events in Hell sometimes being shown simultaneously to events on Earth and people even talking on the phone between Hell and Earth on occasion. If anything, it would seem to be implied that time may be altered to allow torture to take place more quickly in Hell (so that you can torture a Winchester for decades without everyone having to wait around for decades while it happens) but that regular time in Hell passes as normal. If that's the case then it would suggest that Sam's soul only spent a year in the cage and Michael has only been in the cage a matter of years.
279
280* Very minor one, but why did the little girl in "Family Remains" tauntingly write "too late" in the dog's blood after killing it? It's stated that her and her brother's mental states were pretty much on the level of animals, homicidal, but not sadistically evil. It seemed like something an intelligent and sadistic killer would do, not a adolescent, undeveloped, and animalistic one.
281** {{Rule Of Scary}}
282
283* How is Pamela the BLIND psychic wearing makeup in Death Takes A Holiday? It seems a little far fetched that she could sense that.
284** The same way any other blind woman learns to apply makeup or any blind man learns to shave. It's a combination of touch, instruction and practice.
285
286* Okay, this is kind of Meta, but isn't it ''very'' tasteless to dedicate a dead co-worker's death in a episode ''where no-one can die?''
287** ...They wish the co-worker didn't die? I would've thought that would be obvious.
288*** But then they pointed out that people dying were better than the... [[FridgeBrilliance OOh..!]]
289
290* Was Alistair telling the truth about John being the originally chosen "righteous man" and spending 100 years being tortured at the same level as Dean but not breaking? Maybe I'm just biased against emotionally abusive and absent dads, but did John Winchester really count as a "righteous man"?
291** In terms of the people confined to Hell, he was close enough.
292** It would not be out of character for Alistair to have lied to Dean about it, the man is a master at torture and he knew exactly how much that information would hurt Dean. It's possible John did break but the seal remained intact, either because he's not a righteous man or because he isn't Michael's intended vessel (the demons may not have known about that last part, but the angels sure did, hence their interest in Dean). Then again, maybe John really is that stubborn. We'll probably never know for sure.
293*** Thing is, we have no idea how much John knew about Azazel's endgame. We know that he knew about the Special Children, but not what they'd be used for or why, and if he made the connection between a righteous man shedding blood in hell and the first seal being broken. Had Dean known what it would have brought on, he'd have been just as stubborn as John presumably was.
294** The standards for who qualifies as righteous are presumably set by God, who would be more sympathetic to emotionally abusive and absent dads than most.
295
296* In "On the Head of a Pin," [[spoiler: Uriel]] mentions that other angels have joined him with the goal of [[spoiler:busting Lucifer out of his cage.]] When he gets shivved, what happens to the other rogue angels? Did they just fade back into the woodwork?
297** Presumably Castiel informed Zachariah who told Michael, and, well... you know how the archangels are with the mercy.
298
299* I know it's been a while but I'm still annoyed by the end of "It's A Terrible Life" where the new angel told Dean to stop whining because his life wasn't that bad. I mean, I know the writers have to move the plot forward and that everything bad in the world happening to one character can be seriously numbing to the audience but seriously? Why go to all that trouble to BreakTheCutie that violently if you just feel that he's been complaining unnecessarily all this time? It makes no sense.
300** Now that we know more about Zachariah, this is less the writers speaking through him and just plain chillingly callous from the character.
301** Also, the message of the episode in general was kind of irritating and {{Anvilicious}}: Working for a corporation is evil! Pure evil!!! Apparently even Zachariah thinks so! Also anyone would ever enjoy a corporate lifestyle ''has'' to be a "douche" according to the characters.
302*** Hey, I agree with that point...
303*** Thing is, not everyone does. A huge percentage of the workforce in urban areas work in a corporate office. And some people *gasp!* actually are fine with it; some people like driving Priuses (something that was considered an element of "douchebaggery" in this episode), some people enjoy eating salads for lunch (another part of the whole lifestyle that was mocked in the episode), etc. Some people actually are happy in a managerial position. Does that make them all evil douchebags? You may/may not agree with it, but it's still Anvilicious, and given the fact that the writers themselves work for a network co-owned by Warner Bros and Viacom, it may be a case of TheManStickingItToTheMan...
304*** Or to put it simply, it's the whole inane {{AmbitionIsEvil}} trope.
305*** I actually thought it was not so much that the writers think the corporate life is douchey, but rather that ''Dean'' does. If it were Sam eating a salad or driving a Prius, no one would raise an eyebrow, but Dean? Dieting? Working a 9-to-5 job? It comes across as douchey because it's so far from his basic character traits that he's unrecognizable.
306*** In season 7 Sam actually does some of those things and Dean is kinda skeptical, so it's probably exactly as you said. Not to mention that the Winchesters are all too screwed up and morally ambiguous to be used to get a point across.
307
308* Okay, so Chuck writes the Supernatural books, and until he meets the Winchesters, has absolutely no idea that they are anything but products of his own imagination. How is this possible? Many--hell, most--of the brothers' hunts are bound to get national coverage, that's generally the way it goes with serial killers, yet Chuck never notices that this gruesome series of murders in Anytown USA bears an uncanny resemblance to one of his books? This is especially true for the murders that turn out to be to be caused by human beings (Family Remains and The Benders), there's no way a Serial murdering Redneck family in the backwoods of Minnesota isn't going to be plastered over every news channel for at least a month.
309** Chuck seemed to very much be a recluse -- little to no contact with the outside world beyond the essentials (food, toilet paper, et cetera...) would likely make it so he misses most of this. I can't recall, do we even ever see a TV among his possessions? Mostly, it seemed like he had been burdened with telling the stories of the Winchesters to the point where it had become his entire life. The angels are dicks indeed.
310** Alternatively, Chuck not knowing [[spoiler: is an act because he is God.]]
311*** There is also the possibility that while in [[spoiler: normal human Chuck mode, God can choose to close of the memories of his omniscience in order to seem more plausible in his act]]. [[spoiler: Then whenever he is needed or is killed, his subconscious will automatically fire up his memory and restore everything as a fail-safe]].
312** Well, if Chuck really thought he was making this all up, remember how he described his visions? They were basically just dreams to him. Lots of writers (esp on crime procedurals like Law and Order, for example) use real life sensational news stories and put them into their work. He probably just thought that the news was influencing him, kind of like "I heard about x news story, what if it had demons?"
313** There are a few problems with this theory. The first and most important being that very little of what the Winchesters do makes the news in any real way. America averages some 16,000 homicides a year. When you factor in people who are covering for the Winchesters, deaths that are chalked up as animal attacks, and times when there is no body to be found they aren't THAT famous. Most murders are local news at best even if it does involve multiple people. So it's possible even if he weren't a full on recluse to simply not notice. If he's God then that covers that. If he's NOT and he's just a prophet for the sake of argument there is an additional answer. He only writes what he sees, and he only sees what God allows him to see primarily through Angel radio. Meaning the Supernatural Books and the show WE see don't mirror 1:1. Which we already sorta know. It's not like Chuck knows when they are going to call because he's already past that point in his story, nor is HE included in his own stories. So far as we know. Additionally Becky reveals that the books show Bella selling the the Colt to Crowley. Something we the audience of the show didn't see. So it's entirely possible that Chuck wasn't given any information about any of the stories that would allow him to connect the dots. It wouldn't shock me to find out that instead of murdering red necks in the Minnesota he found himself compelled to write about the adventures of Bobby and Rufus or John and that thing that got away.
314** It's been confirmed, as of season 11, that [[spoiler: Chuck is God, and therefore was pretending when he claimed not to know]].
315
316* Also about the in-universe Supernatural books. How do none of the fans realize the stories are all too real? Not only they can track all the monsters to real-life murders across the US, and also explain some pretty gruesome "natural disasters" like the whole first Apocalypse business, but at one point (season 7's "Slash fiction") there is a nation-wide manhunt for two very notorious and unapologetic Sam and Dean Winchester. Shouldn't that have rung some alarms?
317
318* Castiel said that Dean's necklace burns hot in the presence of God, and Dean wears it all the time, but when he met Chuck, it did nothing, so how would Chuck be God?
319** Well, in Dark Side of the Moon Joshua basically said that if God didn't want to be found, that necklace wasn't going to give him away. Which kinda makes the whole bit about it being a God-detector pointless, but whatchyagonnado.
320** Plus, God kinda, you know, created the universe. If he doesn't want that necklace to detect him, it's not going to detect him, since he can just warp reality around it in a flash.
321** In addition it's entirely possible that any combination of God wasn't on Earth and couldn't be detected because he wasn't here, he didn't want to be found (either of which are supported by Joshua's claim and the fact that in the thousands of years since he vanished the Angels never set up a search party with it) Chuck might not be God and even with WordOfGod supporting that he is perhaps just like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are "separate entities" that are all God perhaps it only reacts to one of them or doesn't react to one of them and whichever is true Chuck was fine and Joshua was really saying 'don't waste what little time you have left boys. If God was going to help he would have answered your prayers' which frankly he might as well have said.
322** We now have the confirmed answer for this: [[spoiler: like was basically said above, he's God and he just turned it off.]]
323
324* Why doesn't anybody care about Jimmy? Sure, he agreed to becoming a vessel and he has to remain one for Castiel to hang around, but Sam and Dean have met and talked to Jimmy. He admitted to being at least semi-conscious the whole time and said the experience was extremely unpleasant ("like being chained to a comet"). They villainize demons for doing the exact same thing, so why don't they care about Jimmy?
325** Jimmy consented to it knowing full-well what it would entail. Simple as that.
326** There is also the fact that they like Cas and don't know Jimmy very well. It's not like the Winchesters don't have a rather serious case of hero based morality. How many assorted demons and monsters have they simply developed blinders for?
327*** Jimmy's daughter Claire [[spoiler:is scheduled to appear in season 10, so we might get some follow up.]]
328
329* So... Lilith's death was the final seal. What, exactly, was she going to do if the Winchesters got in a car accident or struck by lightning or something? Commit suicide to pop the last seal?
330** The angels would have probably brought them back to life.
331*** The answer is likely two-fold. Lilith probably didn't know that killing her was the final seal. The only hint we get that she "knew" was that she knew she was going to die before Lucifer came to Earth. Knowing that you're going to lose a given fight and knowing that your death is the seal aren't exactly the same thing. Also there is no hint that Lilith and the Angels were in this together. So yeah, the angels would have brought the boys back but Lilith didn't know that and couldn't have been planning on that.
332** OP here. I meant that Sam caught her in the middle of a ritual to do...something, ostensibly breaking the last seal. Had Sam arrived twenty minutes later, what exactly would have happened in the meantime? Was she just going to wait?
333*** There is no proof that she knew that her death was the final seal, only that she knew she wouldn't survive to see Lucifer rising. Had Sam been twenty minutes late Lilith most likely would have still been there trying to figure out exactly what went wrong with her ritual unable to fathom why it didn't work. Sam would have arrived and the same scenario would have played out. If he was later than that she'd probably move on to research and the Angels, the Higher Ups who were in on the plot, would have put Sam back on path to kill Lilith. As we learn in the Season 5 finale Lucifer's cage doesn't seem to have a physical location on earth since it's opened in a church (to free him), then a random building (when he fakes out Dean) and finally in a seemingly random field (where Sam takes the plunge) so killing her in a fourth random location would likely have had the same effect. This question really hinges on the idea that Lilith knew she was a seal which she may or may not have.
334*** The church Lilith sets up the ritual in is actually a nunnery, and is connected to Lucifer cage. It is the same place Azazel spoke personally to Lucifer in his cage and was told about what he needed to do to set up the Apocalypse. The nunnery is like a window to his cage, cause you can open it a little and talk to him but cant take him out; while on the other hand the Horsemen rings seem to make a wormhole into cage anywhere.
335*** She literally goads Sam into killing her. Why would she have done that if she didn't know she was the seal?
336*** She probably knew by then, since she would have to have been instructed not to fight back much and kill Sam. Maybe the "ritual" she was doing was fake so that Sam would think he was interrupting an attempt to break the last seal.
337*** Season 15 confirms that Lilith knew she was the final seal and let Sam kill her, and that she was actively working with heaven to make sure the apocalypse would happen. The angels did put Sam into Lilith's path already, but if this had failed, they would probably have done something more drastic.
338[[/folder]]
339
340[[folder:Season 5]]
341* In ''Good God, Y'all'', Sam realizes that he still thirsts for demon blood when he stabs the teenagers. Later in the episode, it's made very clear that they ''weren't'' demons. Why did Sam want their blood so badly, when it's made very explicit that they weren't demons and therefore not ''capable'' of bleeding demon blood.
342** Can he distinguish possessed from non-possessed blood? Probably also influenced by the illusion? General craving brought on by the sight and thought of demon blood?
343*** He can, as of 'My Bloody Valentine' -- at the very least, he recognized the demon on sight (or smell) under Famine's influence. Probably doesn't work quite as well under normal circumstances.
344*** Actually, when you watch the scene with the knowledge that it's an illusion, it delves into pure FridgeBrilliance. Watch Sam's face closely. Never once does he actually display any kind of craving for the blood. Rather, he's looking at it in a vaguely befuddled way... like he can't understand why he doesn't want it.
345*** I don't think he can truly tell them apart, but if he does know on some subconscious level that it's normal human blood, then it could still remind him that he wants the real thing. Psychological reaction and such.
346*** War seemed to imply that in a way, it's not just the demon blood Sam thirsts for, but violence in general. Though maybe he was just taking things out of context to mess with his head.
347*** War was clearly shown to be able to influence everyone's vision. There's a possibility that the mirage extended to other senses like smell as well.
348
349* The fact that we, considering the state of Raphael's vessel in "Free to Be You and Me", aren't going to meet Michael. I am sure he would have been awesome.
350** We see Lucifer interact with his vessel (Nick, not Sam) before being given permission to possess him, so there's no reason to suppose that Michael couldn't do the same with Dean. That actually brings up my own IJBM -- why the hell hasn't Michael done so, given that from what we understand he's rearing to kick baby bro's ass again. Fair enough, he probably won't have any more luck convincing Dean than the other angels have, but isn't it at least worth a try?
351** In "The Song Remains the Same," [[spoiler:Michael-in-John]] tells Dean that [[spoiler:he won't leave him a drooling mess like the other archangels leave their vessels,]] so there's hope yet. [[spoiler:And yes, he is pretty awesome.]]
352** Speaking of vessels, this has been bugging me non-stop: why was Anna's solution to the Apocalypse is to kill Sam? Won't that make his body free for the taking as Lucifer's vessel? I mean at first I thought it was the whole 'consent must be given' thing to acquire a vessel. But the episode before that, when Sam traded bodies with the teenage kid playing with witchcraft, the demons were so happy to hear that the kid had acquired Lucifer's vessel and told the kid to hand the body to them. Implying that with Sam's soul out of his body, him consenting is no longer necessary. Won't the same thing happened if he's dead? Who's the genius that thought up *that* ?
353*** Incorrect. The implication in "Meat Swap" is that the young witch will be tricked/tortured/whatever into consenting for Lucifer. Hence the demon asking the kid if he wants power, because if there's one thing being Satan will get you, it's power.
354*** In addition to the above, it seems as if angels, unlike demons, generally need living hosts. Otherwise, Zachariah would've just killed Dean off long ago so Michael could have his meat suit. Lucifer, being an angel, albeit a fallen one, would still need a living vessel. After all, he certainly needed Nick's consent. Therefore, if Anna kills Sam and the angels don't revive him, Lucifer's true vessel is dead and rendered useless.
355*** Not necessarily. Raphael re-possessed his vessel, and the poor guy was left brain-dead by the experience.
356*** Plus, Anna mentioned that after she kills Sam, she's going to destroy his corpse by scattering his subatomic particles across the cosmos.
357*** Or alternatively, which might be the closest to canon as it is implied throughout the show, that the angel can not possess a dead vessel if the vessel didn't give consent before death. So the angel needs consent, can then possess the vessel, but if the angel leaves, is exorcised out or in any other way the angel is gone, and the vessel dies after that, then the angel can re-enter the dead vessel's body again as the consent is still active. Think of how vampires in some stories (such as Buffy) need to be invited, but if the house owners die or are killed, the invitation is not undone either way. Same for if the vessel is killed during the possession. Demons can just possess a corpse, but an angel has to be "invited" in while the "home owner" is still in there. So if Zachariah killed Dean, his body is useless as Dean didn't give consent.
358** In terms of getting consent, I always assumed that the angels just ''thought'' they could get Gary to consent in Sam's place. If all that was needed to get consent was for the body to say 'Yes', Zachariah could have easily changed Dean's memories (Like he did to Sam and Dean in "It's a Terrible Life") to create a version of Dean that would consent to Michael; I'm inclined to suspect that consenting to become a vessel requires the subject to say 'Yes' as themselves, whether willingly or under torture, rather than have their minds changed so that they'll consent.
359
360* In "The End" Dean drives the Impala to a hotel. Because Zachariah got a tip-off to Dean's location, he tortures him with a vision of the future and threatens to do it again and again until Dean agrees to be Michael's vessel. Luckily Castiel teleports him out in time before this can happen, but what about the Impala? It's been established that the angels knowing where you are is bad news, so if Cas teleported Dean back to his car so he could drive away, they'd both be susceptible to angel fights and torture. Same applies too in "Abandon All Hope" where the Impala is left in an area later affected by hurricanes and other natural disasters. It's possible that Castiel can just remotely teleport the Impala to wherever it needs to be, but I don't recall ever seeing that happen, and it would contradict Cas needing to go to Jerusalem to pick up holy oil.
361*** It would probably take him less than a second to teleport back and forth to get the car and then go get the oil (except that another angel could catch him on the way, so yeah).
362** There are several occasions where Dean drives the impala somewhere and then Castiel teleports him somewhere else for his own safety. What happens to the car? If Castiel teleports him back to the car, he's putting him in danger.
363*** [[CoolCar It teleports itself to safety, then waits]]. Duh.
364*** Well, God does seem to like the Impala...
365*** God IS the Impala. Explains neatly how Lucifer was beaten.
366
367* In "The Curious case of Dean Winchester", Bobby believed that getting de-aged by the he-witch's magic would un-cripple him. It's the whole reason he even bothered gambling, as he wouldn't want to be twenty-five years younger in a wheelchair. Also, technically all he'd need to be cured would be one year of his life back, because it would take his body back to before he received the stab wound. So why didn't Sam or Dean use a chip to help him? Granted, it would mean Dean aging a year, but as "The End" showed us, he'll look almost exactly the same in five years anyway.
368** Even if that worked it might mean Bobby would just be crippled again in a year.
369** Maybe not, he was crippled when he stabbed himself, his age had nothing to do with it. Logically if aging backward would heal him, aging forward wouldn't cause him to become crippled again.
370*** But then, how would reversing his aging process do anything about his injury? It could worked if the witch's power relied on reversing-someone's-time logic, but to me it seemed like Bobby was desperate enough to rely on a 'maybe'.
371** I always interpreted this as Bobby having an off-screen arrangement with the witch, something like, "I'll let you trade 25 years for your legs." Sam barely won Dean's years back, he couldn't win enough to cash for Bobby's legs.
372** Judging by the de-aged guy they found earlier in the episode, it seems like de-aging would restore the use of his legs, but it's unlikely that general aging would re-cripple Bobby. On the other hand, hunters ''do'' have an appalling death rate, so he might not consider it a factor.
373
374* How exactly did the wheelchair-bound Bobby make it to the poker game with the witch in "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester"? If he can't walk, how would he drive?
375** There are automobiles designed to be driven by paralyzed people, as well as people with other disabilities.
376*** Alternatively he took a cab or some other way of being driven.
377*** Except we see him grab his keys. Unless he's had his car re-fitted, it's still a plot hole.
378*** Original poster here -- his Chevelle doesn't make another appearance after he gets injured, he's driving a van now. Presumably [[CrazyPrepared he just had one]] [[ProperlyParanoid on hand in case he or someone else ever needed it.]]
379*** Just to add, this was six episodes after the episode where he lost the use of his legs. Even if he didn't have a vehicle on hand that he could drive at first, it's completely reasonable to think that he would have had time and made it a priority to get one. Particularly as someone who owned an auto salvage yard, it's very possible he would have had access to the parts or even a vehicle already but, if not, he'd have contacts he could call on to get one cheap (or just to get an existing vehicle converted).
380
381* In "Point of No Return" (Season 5, Episode 18), Adam says that his mom worked the graveyard shift at a hospital, and that he had to make his own dinner and put himself to bed. Graveyard shift is usually midnight to 8 AM, or a similar timeframe, depending on the job. Wouldn't she be home to make him dinner ''and'' put him to bed? Obviously she had to sleep, but she would have had ample time to do that between getting home and going to work.
382** "Graveyard shift" more or less is any shift that runs through the wee hours. 8 PM - 4 AM would be perfectly fine to call a "graveyard shift", which would miss both dinner time and bed time in the home in which this troper grew up. 6 PM - 2 AM could technically be called a graveyard shift, too, though it would be be a bit odd.
383
384* How come Castiel was able to make an angel-banishing sigil in his own flesh? It was said before that HUMAN blood was necessary. Even if it's the vessel's blood, it's angel blood (same for demons, right?)?
385** That was said by Dean while he was explaining the functionality of the sigil to John in "The Song Remains The Same", so it's unclear why he specified it as needing to be drawn in "human blood" as opposed to just "blood," especially since he had already seen Cas draw some in his own blood by that point. It's possible that he was trying to make it sound more dire in order to dissuade John from drawing his own sigils, or that he simply didn't know there was a difference between human and angel blood by then, but at present, it does seem to be a bit of a ContinuitySnarl. However, in response to your second question; yes, it would be the same for demons, since being possessed by either an angel or a demon is known to alter the vessel's blood.
386** My interpretation: I think the requirement for the sigil is that it's drawn with the blood of a sentient being (so either human or angel works.) Dean said "human blood" because it sounds better than "sentient being blood" and only humans were present at that time anyway.
387** Maybe demons, being originally human souls, have some physical influence on the people they possess that angels don't. Hence the blood of a demon's meat suit is considered demon blood, but an angelic vessel's blood remains human blood.
388** Castiel de-possessed the body for long enough for his human host to make the sigil out of "human blood", then when he repossessed the body to activate the sigil, he was an angel, but the sigil was still made out of "human blood". In season four and five Cas was hopping in and out of that body all over the place. But in season 7 he gives up some of his blood for the spell to defeat Roman and all of the sudden it's "fallen angel" blood. In Purgatory, however, he is 100% angel and the soul of the human he possesses is gone. But in season 9, it turns out the ''body'' is still human, because it needs to eat, drink and sleep when the angelic immortality is gone from it. Castiel's body seems to possess whatever kind of blood the moment requires, lucky him.
389** Maybe Dean said "human blood" so John wouldn't think to use... chicken or dog blood or something.
390** I've been operating under the impression that the blood is "human" so long as the human soul remains in the body. Every time we've seen Castiel use blood magic Jimmy Novak is either alive, or Cas himself is the human. When he used the angel banishment sigil in seasons four and five, Jimmy's soul still occupied the body. The next time he tried to use it was on the Riet Zien in season nine, when Cas himself was human. There's even a line in the third episode of season 6 when Cas first comes back - he needs blood for a spell and grabs Dean's hand; Dean's irritated and demands why he doesn't use his own, and Cas says it won't work because he's not human. At that point, Jimmy was dead and Cas occupied the vessel alone, so the blood could no longer be classified as "human", but strictly angel.
391
392* Why are the relative power levels of beings on this show so wonky? Jesse is outrageously powerful. Why? He's just the offspring of a normal human and a normal demon. If anything, he should be ''weaker'' than a full-blooded demon (see ''Manga/{{Inuyasha}}''), not practically as powerful as God. And then you have the so-called "Pagan Gods", or what some other works would call "[[{{physical god}} Powers]]". Why are they so ridiculously weak? I get that they're basically [[{{Gods Need Prayer Badly}} tulpas]] and many of them are depowered by lack of worshipers, but still, come ''on'' people, they're still ''Gods''! They should be, at the very least, equivalent to an archangel in terms of their power over reality, and, last time I checked, Gods were immortal and, at the very least, ''nearly'' indestructible. Always. Or they're not gods. Usually only a god can kill another god. It should certainly take a whole lot more than an iron axe or wooden stake to ice one!
393** GodsNeedPrayerBadly is part of it. Also, I've been under the impression that killing gods is temporary, and they'll reincarnate soon. But that's just my personal FanWank.
394*** Needing prayer may justify some, but not all. I think Kali is still getting plenty of prayer, thank you. Hindus are a fairly big chunk of the world's population.
395*** According to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions wikipedia]], there are 3.8 billions followers of the Abrahamic religions, or 54% of the world's population (and even if you don't count Islam with Christianity, there are still around 2 billions Christians in the world). Hinduism has "only" one billion followers, so if the gods' power is determined by the number of prayers, it's normal that Kali isn't as strong as God or one of the strongest archangels.
396*** Kali isn't worshipped by the majority of Hindu's either; its doubtful if she would get the whole billion to herself. Plus, its pretty obvious that Angels and God himself don't need prayer at all. Especially since the pagan gods in this show "prayer" seems to have meant human sacrifices (which might explain Kali again, if she is worshipped but isn't being fed).
397** I know this isn't "it just bugs me" anymore, but this really just bugs me. The show was fairly consistent in showing gods as people-eating monsters that could be killed with a wooden stake. The one exception actually turned out to be an archangel. Why on earth do so many people not only expect but assume that we're working off American Gods rules here? It may suck, it may be a failure of storytelling, but that's what it is.
398*** We are going by American God Logic Because the creators cite it as an inspiration.
399** The answer here seems to be the "not permanent" one. Killing Osiris explicitly only lasts a couple hundred years. Sure, he canonically came back from the dead once, so he might be the exception rather than the rule, but it makes sense that all the gods can do the same, with varying time spans.
400*** The RL answer would be that the Winchesters simply can't beat a deity at full power. That might work in Riordan's logic with superpowered protagonists or whatever, but hunters are just normal humans in this setting and they need to stand a chance. The obvious solution would be to have them fight stuff that people can believably beat, so I suppose the writers didn't think that far. In an attempt to justify it in-universe, I'd say that the people who wrote the myths didn't know how strong the gods were in the first place, just saw that the magical being can make their lives suck as it pleases and agreed to worship it (gods were shown to be rather weak physically, but most of them still had the powers of a deity to some degree, like the scarecrow thing that brought fortune to the town).
401** As for the Antichrist boy, he seemed generally out of place in the setting. The writers realized perfectly well that he's a game breaker and made him disappear in the same episode he first appeared in, so the only role I could imagine him to have was to feed Sam's obsession with people leaning on the dark side. He could serve as a convenient Chekhov's Gun with the whole leviathan thing, but the writers of Supernatural never seemed big on the whole plot thing.
402*** Still doesn't explain why the boy is so strong. I would've still bought it if he mysteriously had powers similar to those of the strongest demons, since I doubt there is an exact formula on the subject of half-demon-hybrids, but Jess is probably on par with ''God''.
403*** Haven't you read ''Literature/GoodOmens''? I'm not sure if this is actual Biblical scripture, but most (and I mean MOST) renditions of the Antichrist is that his power is anything he believes is true, is.
404*** To answer that, no it isn't in the Bible. And "most" renditions of the Antichrist do ''not'' have that power.
405*** Actually it makes sense that the boy is so strong, now that the revelation about souls being like self renewing nuclear power stations for angels and demons. The kid is biologically human, with demon powers, so the demon powers he inherited he fuels with his human soul. Regular demons are diesel, he's nuclear.
406*** I think the main reason they made the boy so powerful was to justify the BadFuture we saw in "The End". Everybody besides Lucifer seemed to think that in a Michael vs. Lucifer fight, Michael would win, so they needed someone even stronger to take him out. In the alternate timeline Sam never rejoins Dean, Dean and Cas fail to stop Jess without him, Jess turns evil and destroys the angels as Castiel feared he would, and Lucifer takes over the world.
407*** Where do you get that?
408** Just throwing this out there... in Norse mythology the gods will age and die without special rejuvenating apples. One of them gets killed by a stake (of sorts) to the heart, just like any human would. Gods do not HAVE to be immortal, they do not HAVE to be invulnerable, they do not HAVE to be anything you seem to think they are. The traits of the gods will depend on the mythology/religion/work of fiction they come from. Turns out, in this one? They're not invulnerable, at least not all the time.
409*** "A stake (of sorts) to the heart": for the curious this is a reference to the [[spoiler:Norse god Baldr]] (the original spelling of [[spoiler::'Baldur').]] Check out [[spoiler:Baldr's]] Wikipedia page for the story of the "stake," notably the Prose Edda. It's one of this troper's personal favorites from Norse mythology.
410** I think it's stated that Jesse is powerful because of Lucifer rising. Before the Cage was opened, no one had heard anything about him. So maybe the power provided by his demon heritage is being boosted by the proximity of the progenitor of all demons, who happens to be the second strongest angel in all of Creation.
411
412* What exactly is Lucifer's motivation? We spend an entire season with the devil doing all these awful things which made sense if he wanted to destroy the world. Then in Swan Song we see that Michael and Lucifer genuinely love each other and don't want to fight. After everything Lucifer had done up to that point I can see why Michael would willingly fight his brother to the death but I don't know why Lucifer did any of what he did instead of getting out of the trap and immediately taking out the demons because he felt responsible for them call up to Michael and tell him Dad's wrong. I'm not gonna wreck this place, I'm not gonna fight you instead doing every horrible thing a monster does and then asking Michael not to fight. It just seems like he would have been much better of negotiating with Michael before doing anything than after. Given what we know about the Angels it's not impossible, or even unlikely that the angels would have figured a way to frame Lucifer anyway. Lucifer seems to be overall a decent guy in the end.
413** A decent guy who tortured a human woman (Lilith) until she became a sociopath just to prove a point? He didn't suggest to Michael that they don't fight to spare the planet -- he suggested that they don't fight because he didn't want Michael or himself to kill each other (or if you are more cynical, he didn't want Michael to kill ''him''). He was still in full "puny hairless monkey" mode regarding the human race and killing off demons was only to show that humans disgusted him even in death (demons disgust him because they are what humans can become). Its quite clear that Michael, Raphael, Zachariah and any number of other angels, maybe even the majority, agree with Lucifer that humans are worthless trash--the only difference between them and him is that they were smart enough not to voice that opinion (or act on it via trying to actively torture and corrupt mankind). And bear in mind he unleashed and was directly ordering around the 4 Horsemen and all the other apocalyptic forces that were running around in season 5. His goal was to KillAllHumans and then ask God why he cared about them as much as he cared about him, when humans are pond scum and he, Lucifer, is like, totally awesome and the greatest guy around (he seems to think God is awesome only because God created someone as incredible as him, and maybe his bro Michael and the angels in general). Lucifer caring about Michael and the angels doesn't make him a "decent guy" if he still wants to torment and kill everybody else.
414*** Have to point out one thing; Michael didn't hate humans. He never expressed any such sentiment. He was simply more concerned with achieving his "destiny" and doing what he thought a good son should do than he was with the well-being of humans. And really, he had no reason to be concerned about the humans, since from his perspective they would all either go to Heaven or get to live in paradise once he won.
415** Lucifer could be seen as a tragic character...if he didn't want to wipe the entire human race (and demons) out of existence. I mean, if you came home to your loving father one day and there were suddenly ferrets all over the house crapping on everything and chewing on your stuff and your dad said you had to love the ferrets more than him, and then had your brother throw you out onto the street for several billion years after you refused, you'd be pissed off, but you probably wouldn't a) torture a ferret until it went insane to prove a point or b) try to wipe out every ferret in the house on principle. As for the angels, it seems like some of them share Lucifer's opinion of humans, but they weren't going to openly disobey as Lucifer did. Or they could just be pissed off that the humans are screwing up and Dad's not around to deal with it. Just think of what Dean would have been going through if Sam ran around the motel rooms stringing toilet paper on the walls and screaming while John was out being a terrible father.
416** Lucifer is supposed to seem sympathetic and friendly. He's a silver-tongued, self-righteous manipulator who cajoles, coerces and tempts. That's where his real danger lies. On some level he probably believes that he is a tragic victim whose only crime was love. But that doesn't stop him from being a deeply destructive fallen angel whose contempt for humanity (and demons) is matched only by his jealousy of them. He will gleefully kill them all for that very reason -- and to stick it to his father for his perceived betrayal.
417** Alternatively, Lucifer is a fallen angel, and we've seen how well angels do in regards to free will. It doesn't seem to go very well. Despite having fallen, Lucifer is shown to still require permission to get into a vessel, which means he's probably still bound by the angelic way of thinking, which includes being unable to handle having that choice. As a result, he follows the path of destruction because that's the path that he's told he is destined to have, rather than choosing to do something other than battle Michael.
418
419* The entire basis of Season 5 was that if Michael and Lucifer fought, the collateral damage would have been massive, requiring the Winchesters to TakeAThirdOption. But we see ''tons'' of fights involving angels, including Lucifer vs. Gabriel, and in every single one the collateral damage is minimal. In fact, Angels only seem to cause collateral damage when they ''aren't'' operating through a vessel. What made Michael vs. Lucifer special? Raphael caused a lot of damage on his way to possess his vessel, but Michael managed to possess both John and Adam without much collateral, so that can't have been the issue.
420** Michael is more powerful than Gabriel, so he would have been able to put up a bigger fight against Lucifer, which would have probably resulted in them going for the big guns instead of just using angel swords. And if the Biblical Apocalypse is anything to go by, there would have been many more angels and demons involved in the prize fight (or at least warring it out in the periphery) as well.
421** I figured it was less of the fight itself and more of the implication of the aftermath. Lucifer wins, he wipes humanity and demons off the face of the earth and then...I guess cracks open a beer and reigns over the lump of charcoal that the Earth would be at that point. Michael wins, he...pulls the Biblical Judgment Day? Zachariah was the first one to say that massive numbers of humans would die ("How many humans die in the crossfire, huh? A million? Five, ten?" "Probably more.") but it's entirely possible he was talking out of his ass.
422** Lucifer and Michael are the oldest brothers, Lucifer is in his Samifer mode, Micheal is in Adam, while not Dean (none of the dramatic irony) still a true vessel, which means both are insanely powerful, only four things are stronger than they are, as for the fight, they were going to go all out, think Goku v Frieza levels of power, both are savvy enough to not go near each other or stabbyness happens, so they will go for the long range, Micheal will probably call down the strongest Laser death cannon that is smiting he can, Lucifer will probably call on all the demons he can (what Crowley did to Amara) Cas could at his strength wipe out a diner with a hand blast, imagine what two archangels can do (I reckon at least nuke a city on their own with one, also during the fight demons and angels would just simply break the masqurade, and start fighting each other, mosters will notice and either hunker down or use this fight to go "fuck it" and start attacking people in broad daylight, remember most monsters require very specific means to be killed, the implications of the prize fight is that it will cause global chaos by everything supernatural just dropping every pretense of civility due to the world ending.
423** Season 13 kind of answers and contradicts this at the same time. [[spoiler: We get to see Michael and Lucifer fight. Michael is in Dean, Lucifer isn't in his ideal body but has a boost of Nephilim grace which, by making him more powerful than Michael, should actually make him more powerful than he would be otherwise. The fight is basically nothing (they float a little). However, we do see the Apocalypse World which shows the aftermath of the fight which really was a war between heaven and hell which was followed up by an extermination of humanity by the angels. So basically, Lucifer and Michael fighting isn't a big deal in itself, but was that will follow is what will cause the damage.]]
424
425* At the end of Swan Song, Chuck aka God states family is what it is all about. But coming from him isn't that a load of BS? For starters, God abandoned his own children the angels and his treatment of his other "children" the Leviathans is not much better. Michael is forced to choose between his father and Lucifer. Apparently good is less important than family, but Lucifer was a monster who wanted to destroy everything that were not angels. Michael at worse allowed humans to exist because it is what his father God wanted. His other options were to vaguely carry on with the world letting humans suffer and Lucifer rotting in a cage or trying to make paradise and doing what his father wanted. What was the other choice? Side with Lucifer and watch all of creation be turned into hell? And if the whole thing was a test fro Sam and Dean was Lucifer correct? God made Lucifer the devil for the sole purpose of proving humans were superior to angels? Is God then just a big hypocrite and for all the talk of family BS and more like a child favoring one set of toys over another?
426** At one point, John is complaining about the hunter lifestyle and says (paraphrased), "I want Sam to go to school! I want Dean to have a home!" Yet he forced Dean into being a hunter, and when Sam went off to school, he got mad and told Sam to never come back. The point? Supernatural is full of shitty, hypocritical fathers who regularly spout off BS about their families. Gets even more interesting when you consider that John is a parallel to God, just as Dean and Sam are to Michael and Lucifer.
427** Or it could be that Chuck really isn't God.
428*** Alternatively, God and John both want to be able to choose family, but can't. John "wants" Sam to go to school and "wants" Dean to have a home, but vengeance had to come first to him. God more than likely didn't "want" to banish Lucifer to hell, but he didn't really have a choice. Banishing Lucifer would be the equivalent of having your child committed because he was irrational and violent and whatever you tried to do, it wouldn't be able to get through to him. Lucifer was willing to kill off all of humanity out of spite, and no matter how much God may have loved him, he knew that keeping Lucifer around would lead to him gaining followers and eventually wiping out humanity, so he had no choice but to put him in his cage. Plus, saying God "abandoned" his children, while that is the way everyone describes it, it really seems more like God letting his children succeed or fail on their own. No matter how intelligent they are, developmentally most angels are similar to children, after all. While he probably could have been more gradual about it, God realized that children need to grow up and think for themselves instead of just following the instruction of their parents for their entire lives.
429[[/folder]]
430
431[[folder:Season 6]]
432* Going back to early in season 6, "Two And A Half Men". Of the previously-encountered shapeshifters, two of the three had [[MotiveRant Motive Rants]], and they ''both'' referred to having been monstrous from birth (and thus [[TragicMonster being treated as a monster]]), and only later on learning how to become someone or something else. In ''this'' episode, the baby shapeshifter looks... like an ordinary baby, who just so happens to spontaneously shapeshift once. This goes against ''both'' "shifters are born monstrous" ''and'' "shifters learn to change later in life". ''What?''
433** Original Troper here, and I've come up with a couple possible ways to justify it. Either that baby is a fluke and not at all representative of how most shapeshifters are... or, the developmental arc is a bit more complex. Perhaps shifters ''are'' born with the potential to shift, but they don't know it... and accidents result in a monstrous appearance. (Horribly disfigured face where the nose, cheekbones, chin, mouth and eyes have all shifted independently of one another; one ear missing because it got pulled off, and they don't know how to grow it back; perhaps even distorted bodily proportions, because some of ''that'' has changed.) That leads to the ostracism that the shifters in Skin and Horror Movie talked about, and what they learn later on is how to actually control it, and be what they want to be instead of producing accidents like those. You folks' thoughts?
434*** The fact that baby shape shifters tend to disgustingly explode into a new person every once in a while probably has something to do with it as well.
435*** It's also possible that the baby shapeshifter actually was born monstrous but just developed the ability to shapeshift into a baby-like appearance early in its life. The human father apparently left the mother due to believing that she cheated on him (when she slept with a shapeshifter believing it to be him) so he wouldn't have known. If the baby had been born monstrous and the mother had kept that a secret then by the time the episode rolled around, with the mother dead, there would be no evidence of its initial appearance left. It's also not clear if all shapeshifters are born by a shapeshifter getting a human pregnant or some develop spontaneously as "freaks of nature" as Sam hypothesised. If it's the latter, that could explain why some of them would be born with a different appearance.
436
437* So, Raphael's goal in Season 6 is to restart the Apocalypse. Just how was he going to proceed with it? Bust out Lucifer and Michael, so that they could duke it out on Earth after all? How exactly?
438** Pretty much what you just said; he wanted to let Michael and Lucifer out so that they could pick up where they left off.
439** Yeah, seems simple enough. He was stalling so he could unite Heaven so he wouldn't have any pesky rogue angels sandbagging him. Then he cracks open the cage (presumably with the Horsemen's rings), beats the ever-loving crap out of Sam and either Dean or Adam until they give their consent, and away they go.
440*** Maybe, but how exactly is he supposed to get his hands on the rings? The Winchesters might have the three from War, Famine, and Pestilence, but Dean returned Death's ring. And it's already been established that Death is easily the most powerful being on the show (except God), and that he doesn't exactly have a great vested interest in letting Lucifer and Michael out. So what exactly was Raphael's game plan of getting Death to hand the ring over?
441*** Sam and Dean were able to bind Death relatively easily with a a spell in "Meet the New Boss", only reason it broke was because a souped-up Castiel destroyed it. Raphael would probably use the same sort of spell and order him to hand the ring over.
442
443* Live Free or Twihard. Why oh why if Sam is so smart and quick thinking, didn't he just immediately reassure Dean that he was going to be fine because Samuel had a cure for vampirism? It would have made so much more sense, and would have explained why Sam was so calm. By lying, he just made things unnecessarily complicated -- not exactly in-character behavior for someone whose MO was CuttingTheKnot.
444** The whole no-empathy thing seems to have impaired his ability to predict people's emotional responses to stuff. Maybe he expected Dean to understand it's necessary and get over it. Maybe he's just being as much of an irrational moron as the Winchesters always were, except without empathy.
445
446* The French Mistake. Why do the boys have such trouble acting? They impersonate federal agents, health inspectors, etc. all the time. I could understand them having trouble with the marks, but isn't it sort of like CastTheExpert?
447** Some sort of stage fright? The difference between pretending relatively minor details are different and having to follow a script and direction? RuleOfFunny? There are definitely some options here.
448** They aren't just pretending to be FBI agents. They have to pretend to be Jared and Jensen, people they don't know, and on top of that they have to act as themselves. It's a mind screw just for us to think about.
449** The impersonations they run (as well as their occasional money-making scams) are shown to be either something they have rehearsed many times, or complete improvisation. The skills required for a scripted performance are very different than those involved in improv; most professional acting involves a rehearsal process (to say nothing of the physical training) designed to literally make the entire show/episode/film an extended sequence of muscle memory for the actors while they apply whatever their chosen or personal technique is to express the feelings of the character. In The French Mistake, the boys are not doing a con they've run a million times, and they're not just winging it -- they were handed a script, barely looked at it, and are now attempting to remember it as they perform (as the above troper has noted) the dance of Sam and Dean playing Jared and Jensen playing Sam and Dean. "Good" acting is about looking as though you're not acting at all, and when you focus too hard, you lose that.
450
451* The French Mistake as well. Sam and Dean are teleported to an alternate reality where ''Supernatural'' is a television show just like in real life, and everyone thinks they are Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Where did the in-story Jared and Jensen go? They are not seen or heard from after Sam and Dean enter their reality, so:
452## Did the Winchester brothers [[FridgeHorror permanently take over their bodies somehow]]?
453## Were they outright deleted from existence?
454## Or were they teleported to the mainstream ''Supernatural'' universe in some sort of trans-dimensional person switch?
455** The third is the least likely, since they are not stated to have shown up there either. In any case, there's now a universe in the show where a cult horror TV show was most likely shut down after part of its cast were brutally murdered by a madman who claims that he's an angel, and the two primary stars have vanished from the face of the earth.
456** Maybe they did end up in the ''Supernatural'' universe, but were quickly killed off by some minor evil entity that thought they were the Winchesters.
457*** When Dean arrived, he discovered he was wearing makeup. Given Dean wasn't wearing makeup before he jumped through the window (presumably) this suggests that he hadn't swapped places with his counterpart from this universe. Rather, when he and Sam jumped through the window Jensen and Jared did so at the same time (on the set) and Dean and Sam then took possession of their counterparts' bodies (though managed to keep the key). Presumably, Jared and Jensen were still in there but, like with normal possession, could only watch. Then when Sam and Dean jumped back through the portal to their own universe they left Jared and Jensen's bodies causing Jared and Jensen to remain in their universe with control returning to their bodies.
458
459* In "The French Mistake" if there was no magic, why did the whole phone call by a bowl of blood thing still work? Is that a valid way to save on long distance in Hollywood?
460** Depends on the blood. You get better rates with an actor's blood than a PA's.
461
462* Eve, the "Mother of Monsters". Why is it, most people begin to get suspicious of her when they notice that she's barefoot? Do barefooters not exist in the world of "Supernatural"?
463** The hunters are so used to dealing with supernatural stuff that they actually get caught off guard a few times when their opponent turns out to be perfectly human, so who knows, maybe they didn't think of that.
464*** Maybe it's just me, but if I see a girl walking around a city barefoot, I assume she either lost her shoes somehow or dumped them because they were too painful to walk in. So really, it'd look slightly weird if said girl wouldn't show any sign of discomfort.
465
466* Why did Dean have Castiel erase Lisa and Ben's memories? It doesn't make any sense. It won't protect them, because even though they don't know who he is, he still cares for them so someone could kidnap them again to get to him. And now they won't have the benefit of knowing what's happening because they don't remember anything about demons.
467** Making them safe from demons wasn't the point, Dean wanted to erase himself from their lives so that he could let them go and they could move on. If somebody tries to kidnap them again then he'll save them just as he would anyone else; there's always a danger of that happening (although since Dean has broken ties with them, it's less likely that anyone would bother going for them when there are other people out there who are a lot closer and more important to Dean).
468*** Thing is, did Castiel just airbrush Dean out of their memories, or are they now missing a year-plus block of time from their memories?
469*** Presumably the former; the latter would be too conspicuous.
470*** Good point. But what about all the other people that knew Dean was living with them? The episode with the pod-children established that yeah, Lisa had talked with other people about that weekend she'd spent with Dean, and then he spends a year in town. Sure, someone could think that Dean just left as suddenly as he came, but what happens if he comes up in conversation?
471*** I'm not sure. I suppose that even if he does come up in conversation, her and her friends will probably just chalk up her memory gap to some form of amnesia brought on by the "car wreck."
472*** Original poster here: Lisa's lack of memories of Dean probably wouldn't come up, because Dean had them move to a different town after the djinn attack.
473[[/folder]]
474
475[[folder:Season 7]]
476* Seriously?! What possessed GOD himself into making the Leviathans in the first place! That is just a massive screw up right there! Either he did it on purpose, or he felt having a bunch of hideous, ravenous and bloodthirsty {{Eldritch Abomination}}s running around the Earth was a picture perfect idea!
477** God in Supernatural is by no means "perfect." The Leviathans were probably his first attempt at creating a living, physical being (personally I believe that the Archangels came first, but they're astral beings like God so that's different), and we know that they lack "souls" in the traditional sense, which is a characteristic that, if Soulless Sam is any indication, leaves one with a hungry and purely instinctive mentality. God might not have thought of the concept of a soul yet. Besides, Death described them as the "first beasts," so it's likely that they were supposed to fairly animal-like in their behavior.
478*** We really don't know how perfect God is or isn't. Considering that we know to some extent fate is real in Supernatural going so far as telling Castiel not to step on a specific fish because He's got plans for it. So this God set two of the most powerful beings in existence, Lucifer and Michael against each other and then trusts that his thousands of years long XanatosGambit ends with two humans preventing a fight that would have destroyed half the planet. He clearly cares about the planet given his bringing bringing Cas back TWICE and yet he didn't step in directly. The man has a plan and it seems to work very well with him only stepping in a few times.
479*** God doesn't actually seem to have that many of his own plans. Had Sam and Dean given in and become vessels, the planet would have been trashed and God likely wouldn't have done a single thing about it, because it wasn't him who was making sure that the plan happened the way it was "supposed" to; that was all Michael and the angels' doing. God just made sure that Sam and Dean had the choice to fight against the plan, because what God supports is free will. But he's gone now, so nothing that's happened since Season 6 has been the result of anything God did other than ensure that free will was an option. Also, Castiel was told not to step on the fish by "an older brother," meaning an angel.
480*** This troper finds it unlikely that something as major as the opening of purgatory, escape of the Leviathans and within a year not only have they stumbled onto a solution they would NEVER have tried on their own. Seriously how far down the list of what can kill this do you think the hunters around the world would have been before they discovered Clorox! Oh and then a tablet shows up telling how to kill them permanently and you don't think the big guy had this planned up to and including that Lucifer who really and truly didn't want to fight his brother would lose a battle of wills because his vessel caught sight of a plastic army man?
481*** God didn't necessarily want the Plan to be carried out, hence why he enabled Sam and Dean to choose free will. In case the angels *couldn't* carry out the Plan, and in case somebody *did* try to unleash the Leviathans, God wanted to make sure that there would be a way to stop them, hence why he had Metatron write down the Word. Remember, God was worried that the Leviathans would consume everything if they were to escape Purgatory, and since he didn't have an overtly active hand in the event of the Apocalypse, he couldn't control whether or not somebody else would try to access Purgatory (Lovecraft had done it pretty easily before; decades prior to the whole Apocalypse scenario, so it's not even like this sort of thing is unprecedented). There is such a thing as taking precautions, you know.
482
483* Why did Lucifer torture Sam in the Trap? Remember here's the course of events. After a year of the two fighting each other Lucifer admits that he doesn't want to fight, Sam prevents that fight and the thank you he gets is being tortured?
484** ForTheEvulz, of course. And he doesn't "admit" he doesn't want to fight--he tells Sam whatever the hell would make him susceptible to a [[DemonicPossession Satanic possession]]; pure manipulation. He is pissed off at being back in the cage and he doesn't really have anything better to do, so he takes his frustrations out on Sam. Remember that no matter how AffablyEvil and nice and reasonable Lucifer may act on the outside, underneath it all he is a narcissistic, sociopathic sadist who thinks Sam and Sam's entire species should be utterly eradicated, and he's spent the last few billion years locked up in the deepest, darkest pit of Hell plotting spiteful revenge on the human race for his dad kicking him out for a petty misdemeanor (i.e. torturing someone into turning evil and creating the race of demons). It would be more unusual if he ''wasn't'' such an UngratefulBastard.
485** There's also a theory that it wasn't really Lucifer doing the torturing: When Sam flashes back to Hell, he remembers being consumed by flames. Lucifer is confirmed to run cold and turn his surroundings to ice, but Michael has been shown killing people by setting them on fire. Granted, there's still the fact that Sam hallucinates Lucifer, but his mind is pretty scrambled by that point, and when Castiel takes on the hallucinations they change after a while, so Sam could have been misremembering.
486
487* When Dean killed Sam's Kitsune friend, a couple episodes later he attempted to justify killing a monster that killed four people for her child that he has to do the hard things and make the hard decisions. As far as I can tell, that girl did not need to die and the efforts were justified considering the people she was killing. They were much worse in general than she was, and committed much more damage to society. It feels like Dean doesn't have a leg to stand on.
488** Dean draws the line with monsters at killing, and Amy had crossed that line, even if she had sympathetic reasons for doing so. Also, just because somebody is an AssholeVictim doesn't mean they deserve to die or make killing them any less of a crime. I don't think either brother was supposed to be completely in the right about the Amy situation, but Dean's actions were justified, at least from his own perspective, even if you don't personally agree with them.
489*** In addition Dean has a very strong pro-human stance. One that doesn't seem to be particularly warranted in the Supernatural-Verse but there's that. In a recent episode he found a group of kids who were hunting and killing innocent vamps and they weren't just forgiven, the idea that they were doing something wrong was barely addressed. That's just how Dean functions and just like real people have their hiccups so does Dean.
490*** Or in other words, Dean is a racist asshole. Get used to it.
491*** With some exceptions. Of the two brothers, it's Dean who's had a vampire BFF.
492*** Calling him a racist seems uncalled for considering we're talking about entire races who go around eating and murdering people. Dean's been facing monsters since childhood and it wasn't until he was in twenties that met any monsters who weren't murders. Basically good monsters are the expectation, not the rule and even good monster can fall. The show made it clear if they kill once they won't be able to stop themselves again (Benny's a kind of exception as he already died and was brought back) hence why Cas had to kill Lenore in Season Six, she knew she couldn't stop herself killing now that she had had tasted human blood. And as for Amy, legitimately she may have been doing it for her son, but she did kill at least six people (not nice people sure, but none of them did anything deserving of capital punishment). As such she had proven she was willing to kill, she may not have intended to do so, but what happens if her son gets sick again? Or she can't find another steady harmless source of food to sustain him? Once she crossed the threshold there was nothing stopping her crossing it again. Dean knew this, and so he killed her.
493
494* In 'Defending your Life' Dean is captured by an Egyptian god of vengeance and put on trial and it reveals that he feels at least some guilt for things. Some of things he feels guilty for are debatably his fault but the lynch pin in the trial seems to focus on the idea that Dean is somehow responsible for Jessica's death because he went to get Sam to help look for their father. This late in the story (season seven) that shouldn't have flown. By this point it had been revealed that everything that happened to Sam and Dean during the first five seasons was a deliberate plot involving Azazel (Yellow Eyes) and the Arch-Angels to destroy the world and get Sam and Dean to accept Michael and Lucifer as their hosts. Had this happened before all the time travel that revealed the deal their mother made or before the angels fessed up to the plan it would make sense for Dean to feel guilty about what happened. The circumstances certainly fit but given their current knowledge his guilt makes very little rational sense. It would be one thing if they'd made it clearer that he wasn't responsible, at all, for those things and that his guilt was irrational but they play it like he has reason to feel guilty or at the very least like his innocence is confirmed not because those things didn't happen because of him but because he had no way of knowing they would happen in advance.
495** It's acknowledged in the show that those things aren't his fault, but he still feels guilty for them. It's even ''mentioned''. If Dean doesn't feel guilty, he's not. The only reason that Dean was pronounced guilty was because he didn't want Sam to find out that he'd killed Amy and gave in to Osiris.
496
497* How the heck did a witch manage to cast a spell on a Leviathan? Seriously! They're monsters created long before even the angels, and as they put it "Leviathan beats angel". So how did a still-human witch manage to put a whammy on them to keep them immobile for three days? You can't even stop an angel with Enochian -- you can only BANISH them! And if it's an archangel, holy oil doesn't stop them -- Michael comes back to a few minutes later to fight Lucifer again. So how did the witch in "Shut Up, Dr. Phil" manage to bind a Leviathan?
498** The Leviathans in general tend to suffer badly from InformedAbility and StrongAsTheyNeedToBe, they're supposedly even higher on the badass hierarchy than angels, yet are conventionally less power than even low level demons. Demons have telekinesis, angels can kill with a touch, leviathan can... Punch stuff? Angels and demons are invincible to everything except for a select few weapons or lengthy rituals, leviathans can be defeated by any normal human with a hatchet. Leviathan have been beat by humans, witches, demons, ghosts, and vampires, all of which "grunt" angel Castiel can kill with ease. My guess is that the writers initially did not plan for Castiel to return after his would-be death in 7x02, but later changed their minds due to fan outrage, so they had to pull this "leviathan beats angel" thing out of nowhere for them to remain a threat once he was back even though it made no sense with their previously established abilities. That, or they're just really, really bad at keeping their continuity straight.
499** Don't think of it as a JustForFun/SuperWeight hierarchy; picture it as more of an ElementalRockPaperScissors scenario. You can shoot a leviathan, drop a car on top of it, cut its head off, use magic on it, etc., but none of that will kill it. However, it will still yield a physical effect -- it'll still have an entry wound from the bullet, it'll still be ground into paste by the car, it'll still be rendered non-functional until it can reattach its head, and it'll still be paralyzed by the spell. Other than [[WeaksauceWeakness borax]] and the [[AchillesHeel holy bone]], the leviathans' primary weakness actually is their physicality -- hence why Bobby was able to push Dick Roman around in episode 20. Bobby existed on a spiritual plane, and as such, Roman could not detect him or fight back. With the angels, the leviathans have the same ability as Eve in that they can sever an angel's connection to Heaven, which renders the angel helpless against the leviathan's onslaught. Leviathans and Eve have that ability because they are older than angels, but just because they have a neat trick that allows them to overcome beings who rely on a physical vessel and a power source doesn't necessarily mean that they have a blanket immunity against every other form of offense. Otherwise, the bullets/car/machete would just bounce off of the leviathan's body, and the spell wouldn't affect them. As for the Enochian banishing sigil, that doesn't kill angels because it wasn't designed to. It was designed to banish them. There may or may not be an Enochian spell that allows a person to kill an angel; we don't know (but if there were, it would probably be kept top-secret upstairs). Michael's resistance to holy fire stems from the fact that he is an immensely powerful archangel, which are much stronger than regular angels simply by nature, so holy fire isn't as effective on them as it is on generic angels. Additionally, the ability to block an angel's power doesn't contradict the previously-established abilities of the leviathans in the least, and it only ''seems'' like it was thrown in at the last minute because up until that point, we had never seen a leviathan come into contact with an angel and had no reason to think one way or the other on whether or not they could block an angel's powers.
500** The Leviathans are presumably based on "Leviathan" from the bible featured mostly in the books of Job and Revelation. The only distinguishing features of Leviathan were 1. Extreme size and mass (basically a giant kraken-fish-dragon); and 2. Legendary hunger. Leviathan's size was interpreted by the writers as there simply being so many of them. It may even be possible that the black ooze is what's left of Leviathan after so many years in Purgatory and it simply spread, manifesting as hundreds of different hungering personas. As for their apparent sissy-ness, if my above situation were true, then they would all just be fragments--mere fractions of the power of Leviathan. The true terror of the Leviathans is in their nature of being The Devourer. Their only motivation is to eat, and they approached the situation in a very encompassing and practical manner. Human society in capitalist America is most vulnerable to monopolization and disinformation. That being said the best way to do this, since we can only assume that they are aware of their vulnerability to folks with big ass knives, would be to quietly cultivate the human population and eliminate all chances for humans to stop them. Their only real power comes from the fact that they are really really hungry and, like most beasts, relentless in their search for food. Our heroes stopped the guy who had all the power to make this happen and any further attempts at the same plan would fail just as hard since Crowley is no longer (and never really was) bound to any contract with the deceased Dick Roman and hates Leviathans. When you look at it this way, we might actually be looking at Fridge Brilliance. Season 7 was pretty damn scary.
501** Also, the witch was Spike.
502** Leviathans' are, in SPN, purely physical creatures, they have no soul, hence why etheral attacks like ghosts and magic hurt them, you can't fight something you have never encountered, like ever, its like if i attacked you with a weapon you didn't know was a weapon. side note: was anyone else concerned that purgatory wasn't monster hell at first, but then monsters started to go there, essentially god decided to feed monsters to the Leviathan, side side note: oh no Garth is going there when he dies!
503
504* "Season 7, Time for a Wedding!" ...is no one else bothered by the fact that Becky ''[[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale attempted to rape Sam?]]'' Sure, she specifically said that she hadn't raped him yet, which given the framing was probably an attempt to remove the UnfortunateImplications, but...wow. Really? Dean kills a kitsune on the somewhat-justified belief that she might kill again, but doesn't even lecture a woman who mind-raped and attempted to physically violate his brother? Ugh. I... for that matter, why would Becky even do that? She didn't seem all that evil before. Suddenly, willing to subject someone she supposedly admires to a lifetime of rape! Just...what? And as for whatever bullshit that demon guy told her...look, drugging someone and sleeping with them without their (non-mind-controlled) consent is rape whether they love you deep down or not. I knew the trope existed. I even knew it was widespread, but this? I didn't quite expect this.
505** Honestly it's a very easy disconnect to make. Becky clearly doesn't see it as rape, the part about what she's doing that's wrong from her view, the writer's view and seemingly Sam and Dean's view as well is that she's robbing him of his will. She's not treated in universe as being evil so much as being an obsessed fan girl, she's basically seen as being one step up from someone with a shrine built their garage. In real life it's worth noting that a lot of people have a difficult time connecting the idea of drugging (well drinking) and non-consent. Fiction very rarely treats mind control rape as rape.
506** In fairness to Becky, we were given no indication that she actually would have gone through with it. She had Sam under her power for quite a while and she basically showed him off to her friends and did some investigating with him. I think it's quite probable that the real reason that she didn't consummate their marriage is that she did realise deep down that it was wrong and that she couldn't go through with it. As to Dean not lecturing her, if that had happened it would be after her actions were revealed and before the confrontation with the demon. That scene was intentionally skipped so you didn't know the plan (so it could have happened but we wouldn't have seen it). Either way though, Sam had already called her on her drugging behaviour and Dean can't exactly call her on attempting to violate Sam when she hadn't attempted to violate Sam.
507
508* If the world and humanity was supposed to end back in season five, then why did God assign prophets for the years after (such as Kevin)
509** Because He works InMysteriousWays.
510** It's mentioned that Castiel knew all of the possible prophets, with their names "seared into his brain." If Chuck died, they could simply activate Kevin or one of the others. Also, over on the WMG page it's speculated that the apocalypse was less of a scheduled event and more of all of Creation's final exam -- if they could pass the test and avert the apocalypse, they were ready for free will, and further Prophets would be necessary.
511
512* What criteria does the Blood of the Fallen guide actually follow? Castiel is no longer a fallen angel (technically, he never even was one, he was just cut off from Heaven), so his blood shouldn't qualify. While the Word Of God could be asking for a fallen angel in a more metaphorical sense, there's really no way to quantify a metaphor. And on that note, is there something special about the King of Hell's blood? Theoretically, the King of Hell could be ANY demon, so how does the spell know the difference?
513** It was a poorly thought out DeusExMachina to a poorly thought out arc. The whole Leviathan arc didn't make any sense, they were InformedAbility villains from the start -- they are supposedly immortal and incredibly powerful, and yet the only REAL powers we see them show are shape shifting, throwing a person across the room, and standing around being beheaded -- none of them put up a serious fight. There are literally DOZENS of ways they could have killed Sam and Dean at the drop of a hat -- explosives topping the list. The guys posing as them for bank robberies? Why aren't they packing suicide vests and blowing both them and the Winchesters up instead of engaging in a wrestling match -- they can heal, after all! Their leader is a billionaire, and they can copy anybody they want -- why aren't they packing heavy automatic weapons? The FBI mole that saw the beheaded Winchester clones -- why didn't he inform the FBI that they WERE NOT the Winchesters and let the country-wide manhunt continue? Hell, offer a reward of $10 million for information on the Winchesters, and buy air time in every media outlet in the country to advertise! To top it all off, the grand Leviathan plan DID NOT REQUIRE DICK ROMAN ALIVE TO WORK. They already had the drug to pacify the population, and they had already begun distribution of said drug. Literally all the Leviathans had to do was walk outside and start eating, and they don't because..... they're really, really distraught by Roman's death? Crowley claims he has an army outside to kill them... but if it was that easy, why didn't he do it at the beginning of the season and save everybody the trouble?
514*** I was, um, kinda looking for an in-universe explanation, but I suppose that works too.
515*** I don't necessarily agree, but can't necessarily argue with your assessment. I can, however, offer reasoning for some of it. Apart from the fact that having the Leviathans just blow up Sam and Dean with explosive vests would prematurely end the show, Dick was aware that secrecy was their most important weapon, and concerned himself with keeping anything strange out of the public eye. Their efforts were somewhat hampered by that. I recall the reason that the manhunt ended being that bringing the Winchesters back from the dead yet again would strain credibility too much. In addition to that, the leviathans were just incredibly arrogant and, to their detriment, didn't consider the Winchesters to be a real threat.
516*** Regarding the threat being over, it was heavily implied that the Leviathans had a strict hierarchy and would flounder without their head, plan or no. This is the downside to their frightening amount of organization -- without their visionary, they pose very little threat. I think most or all of the commanders were taken out, and... well, that's just the reasoning that the writers went with. Obviously the Winchesters needed to find something capable of killing the leviathans, and the writers decided to make it a one-use item. They could have just as easily decided to make it a super-powerful weapon that could be used indefinitely and would easily kill any and all leviathans, but they decided that the leviathan lore would have them helpless without their leader -- perhaps paving the way for encounters with more independent leviathans in future. It seems fair enough to me.
517*** The Leviathan have been shown repeatedly to not be the brightest bacteria in the petri dish. Their defining characteristic is that they like eating things, and only follow orders not out of loyalty like angels and demons, but out of fear of being eaten by their superiors (see the Leviathan who was working with the Winchesters just because he wanted to eat his boss before she ate him) I assumed that all Leviathan are like that, so hungry that they don't even mind eating each other; the only reason they don't is because Dick would have them eaten himself. Now that Dick, the only intelligent Leviathan (except maybe Edgar) is dead, the Leviathan don't know much other than "eat everything in my way". As for the distribution, I took it as the Leviathan aren't intelligent enough to figure out how to carry out the plan, and even if they are, the chemical wears off with time; that means they have to continuously release it into the public or it will wear off. Without Dick to give orders, they have no idea how to carry out the plan into it's future stages.
518*** Regarding the question of why Crowley wouldn't just kill off all the Leviathans at the start of the season, I'd suggest it was probably a matter of numbers. Given the number of different operations the Leviathans were able to run, there seemed to be a lot of them around. They may well have outnumbered the demons walking the earth significantly. If Crowley had attacked when they had a single leader to coordinate them, they could have all fought back at once as a single army and probably won. Without their leader, they could have been picked off one group at a time by demons who outnumbered them.
519** I don't know about the "fallen angel" thing, but the rest is just something we see all the time with magic. There's no real difference between the King of Hell's blood and a normal demon's, just like there's no difference between a virgin's blood and a non-virgin's, or between a saint's bones and a sinner's. Trying to make sense of magic is always futile.
520** It might be because I try not to read too much into tv, but I thought Castiel was a fallen angel when he got kicked out of heaven for helping Dean in Season 5 OR another explanation could be when he went on his entire rampage as God at the beginning of Season 7, killing people who disagreed with him, killing hundreds of his brothers and sisters and even declaring himself God--he lost his way, he fell out of favor. I also thought they made it clear that Crowley was the new King of Hell. Other demons are afraid of him, he tells them all what to do, and he even reorganized Hell when he took over--making everyone stand in line for eternity. I may be oversimplifying, but that's what I assumed when they brought up the blood they'd need for the spell.
521* Is Frank a hunter? When we first meet him he talked about Bobby being into "that magic hooey", as if referring to everything supernatural, and indeed he seems more of a paranoid conspiracy theory survivalist type who thinks the Leviathan!Winchesters are government clones gone rogue. However, in a later episode he urges Dean to leave "the live" and talks about his family being gutted when he was young, presumably by a monster.
522* During the manhunt for Sam and Dean in "Slash fiction", did no one in the FBI or really any law enforcement agency investigation the case make the connection between the crazy murderous brothers and the main characters of a pulp fiction fantasy horror series? It would only take one google search for their names, after all, there are fan pages in canon. Certainly, the agents wouldn't go as far as believing in the supernatural overnight just from this, but if they only realized the coincidences of the towns visited by the characters and the murderers, the connection is obvious (and the fans themselves probably realized already, and were discussing about it online). They could even work with the theory that the "Winchesters" were just a couple of extreme fans gone loopy and were reenacting a bloody version of their favourite books, or something!
523[[/folder]]
524
525[[folder:Season 8]]
526* Sam gave Amelia his real name. Sam Winchester. Not Sam Cole or Sam Jones or Sam Antilles. Sam Winchester. Why did he do this? Putting aside all the monsters and demons and leviathans and whatnot that might be on the lookout for Sam Winchester, as far as the general public is concerned he went on a shooting spree and killed dozens of people a year ago. What would have happened if someone at the hotel recognized him and called the police? Or if Amelia's dad, suspicious of his daughter's new boyfriend, decided to Google him and found a thousand articles about a mass murderer with the same name and face? Isn't Sam supposed to be smart?
527** Apparently the boys are the only ones that know how to work a search engine.
528** Because most people don't google their new boyfriends, Sam is dead so when someone sees Sam and recognizes him they probably shrug it off the same way people do Elvis or Rasputin sightings
529
530* This may be asking for a fight, but why was Dean so upset about Sam not looking for him? I understand that not bothering at all was a dick move, and it's possible Sam still wanted out after dying twice and spending so much time dealing with Hallucifer and being soulless, but think about it. Upon Dean and Cas getting zapped to Purgatory when Dick blew up, Bobby was dead, the hunter network was toast, Garth hadn't come on-scene as a replacement for Bobby yet, Cas (who had been loopy at best) had vanished with Dean, and Sam had no way of knowing if they were even alive, or if they were dead, where they'd ended up. He has no leads, cracking open the hole to Purgatory or the Devil's Gate isn't going to help, the demons aren't going to assist him (considering that Crowley had just neutralized two of his major opponents), and the angels (the only side he had left to turn to) aren't exactly rushing to render aid, considering everything that's happened. All of this could be easily inferred, but a one-minute-long exchange covering all this could have plugged this hole had they said that Sam didn't even try to look. All this said, it doesn't even seem like he did anything Dean didn't want him to.
531** Sam did have a lead on Dean -- Crowley. His dialogue in SotF indicated he knew what had happened to Dean and Castiel or at least had an idea, which is something for Sam to start on. He also snatched Kevin and the Word of God, which Sam had no excuse for not going after (Indeed, in 8x01 Dean seems even more upset about this than he is about Sam abandoning him). But really, lead or no lead, I don't think it mattered to Dean. What hurt him wasn't that Sam failed to get him out, it was that he didn't try. Sam had no idea how to get Dean out of Hell between seasons 3 and 4, but he still looked for a way. Dean didn't have any idea how to get Sam out of the Cage between 5 and 6, but he still tried (and eventually succeeded thanks to Death). Between 7 and 8... Sam just didn't bother. Dean gets back from Purgatory, having spent the last year fighting for his life 24/7, apparently having lost Cas, and what does he find? Sam's been shacked up with some girl completely ignoring the problems of the Supernatural world so he can go live his perfect apple pie life. Quite frankly, it's amazing Dean was the only character to have a problem with this.
532*** I don't see how Crowley is a lead; he's not likely to help and Sam trying to break into Purgatory just seems like a bad idea. You have a point with Kevin, but that may be down to Sam just freaking out (he had just watched his brother and Cas vanish into thin air). And IIRC, Dean didn't try to get Sam out of the Cage between S5 and S6; he went and shacked up with some girl, just like Sam did after S7. Dean definitely stopped hunting, which is one of the things he has a problem with Sam doing in between S7 and S8.
533*** Actually, Dean did try to get him out (even though Sam was already out and Dean just didn't know it). He said, in the very first episode after Sam got back, he, "collected hundreds of books, trying to find anything to bust [Sam] out" and "Of course [he] didn't leave it alone!".
534** I acknowledge the dickery of not looking for Kevin and simply retiring instead of continuing to hunt, but I have to contest Crowley being a lead. We've established putting him under a Devil's trap and trying to negotiate only gets you a hellhound to the face, and Crowley has literally nothing but trouble to gain by helping Sam in any fashion. On the other hand, you're right, there's no sign that he even tried to contact Crowley or the angels in any way. He just freaked out and started driving.
535
536* So what exactly is Sam's problem with Benny? Sam knows that it's possible to be a monster and not be evil (Madison, Amy, Kate, Lenore, etc.) so the whole "he's a vampire" thing doesn't hold much water, especially when Dean's made it clear Benny isn't hurting anyone and he's ready to kill him if he ever does. The thing with Martin wasn't Benny's fault and Sam hated him before it happened anyway.
537** I think this comes down to a few things. First of the "good" monsters several of them have had to be put down for one reason or another and between Meg, Ruby and arguably the angels as a whole Sam might simply be done giving the benefit of the doubt.
538** There may also be an element of jealousy, and of guilt. Dean is gone for a long time, and Sam doesn't even look for him. When Dean returns, he's accompanied by his new best bud who is constantly calling him 'brother'. Sam and Dean have never had any relationships that compete with each other before.
539** It was pretty obvious it was a reaction to Dean's killing the kitsune Amy Pond (no, not [[Series/DoctorWho that one]]). Sam wants to give her a pass and Dean kills her behind Sam's back and basically calls him an idiot for wanting to let her go. After that, there's no way Sam is going to give Dean the benefit of the doubt for having a monster buddy.
540*** Whether or not Dean did the right thing by killing Amy is a bit of a contested issue with the fanbase, but at least from his own point of view he was justified: Amy was killing people, and Benny is not. Sure Amy had a good reason, but she was still killing people (it was touched on as early as season 1 "Faith" that trading one life for another wasn't right, even if it's an AssholeVictim). At any rate, if Amy is truly the reason Sam wants Benny dead, then that suggests that he knows Benny is innocent and doesn't care, and that he just wants to kill him to hurt Dean, which makes him even more of a JerkAss.
541*** Plus, Sam already forgave Dean for killing Amy and admitted that he was right to do it in "The Mentalists". However, that didn't stop Sam from bringing her up again in "Southern Comfort"...
542*** He only mentioned her to point out Dean's hypocrisy; Dean allows Benny to live because Benny is his friend, but he refused to let Amy go even though he knew how much Sam cared about her. As for Sam being a jerkass about it, he has spent the entire series trying to convince Dean that not all monsters are evil, and each time, Dean has shut him down about it and thrown it in his face to call him naive. Now suddenly Dean is best friends with a vampire who ''admits to having killed people in the past''--keep in mind that he murdered Amy out of his belief that any monster who kills even ''once'' needs to be put down--and it's actually pretty easy to see why Sam might be upset.
543*** Plus, even though we knew (and thankfully he was proven as such) that Benny was innocent of those murders in "Citizen Fang," from Sam's perspective Dean was trying to defend a monster that was dropping bodies simply because he knew the guy, something that Dean had never let slide with him.
544
545* When vampires, werewolves and similar monsters die, they go to Purgatory. There, they can be killed, again. So, do they respawn somewhere else in the forest, or what?
546** Or as Castiel put it in a later episode: "If you murder a monster in monster heaven, where does it go?". At least the question is here.
547*** They probably end up in the Empty.
548*** I read a fanfic that speculated that they just keep on restoring themselves in a different part of Purgatory until they just gave up trying to kill Dean and Benny
549
550* Castiel being a monster magnet in Purgatory. Apparently this is the reason he initially abandoned Dean, that's he afraid the Leviathan will come after him for revenge. But Castiel didn't kill Dick Roman, Dean did. Sure, Castiel helped, but that just means the Leviathan should be after both of them and not just Castiel. And apparently, it's not just Leviathan that are after Castiel, but every single monster in Purgatory. But Leviathans aside, Castiel is probably the single most badass guy in Purgatory. If anything, his presence should ''repel'' monsters. Given how easily he can roast vamps, werewolves and whatnot, shouldn't they want to stay away from him? It's like the writers wanted Castiel to be a burden, but really didn't think it through. And while we're at it, Dean being human apparently allows him to escape from Purgatory, possibly taking others with him. Is Benny really the only guy in Purgatory who wanted to capitalize on this? Everyone else just seems to want Dean as a quick meal.
551** For Castiel, it could just be that he's an angel -- Leviathans have shown not to like them all that much in the past, and his being in Purgatory was sending out a constant, huge "ANGEL HERE" signal. Regarding the way out, it could be that the other monsters simply either don't know (neither Benny or Dean would be the sharing type) or don't believe them and instead think "Hey, a human. I remember those being super-tasty."
552** It doesn't seem like any of the other monsters know or care -- most of them don't seem all that interested in talking, either. Maybe after a few hundred years in that place you just go feral. Plus, how many of those monsters have even ''seen'' an angel? Wasn't it like two thousand years between the last angel being on earth and their return? As for Cas being more of an asset than a liability, he wasn't exactly in peak form when they got dropped into Purgatory. From what we saw when he first got his memories back, it seemed to be taking serious exertion just to kill a few demons (although that may have been the memories coming back as well). Monsters hunting him probably just feel some sort of disturbance, head over that way figuring it's something to eat or kill, and find Cas. A theory as for him abandoning Dean -- at that point, Castiel is looking for "penance" for what he did in Heaven, which when you consider what he says a little later on, can be taken to mean [[DeathSeeker "getting his ass ripped to shreds by monsters for all eternity."]] He knows there's '''no way at all''' that Dean is just going to let that happen, so he tries to keep his distance to give Dean some cover, let him die, and take out as many monsters as he can on the way out. What confuses me is how there were Leviathans in Purgatory, unless some got left behind or were replaced when Cas put the souls back before being taken over at the start of Season 7, since the beheaded Leviathans are explicitly not ''dead'' dead, just disabled, and only Dick Roman was truly perma-killed.
553*** Perhaps I wasn't paying attention but I thought the monsters in Purgatory could just sense Cas and headed in that direction. He left Dean because he was essentially a glowing neon light displaying 'Come and Get it!' to every beast in the place his penance was just him staying behind instead of allowing Dean to save him. As for why are their Leviathans in Purgatory two answers come to mind. First is that Cas simply didn't get them all, he got hundreds or thousands but there were simply more of them. The other is that Word of God be damned perhaps decapitation IS fatal for leviathan and it just takes a while before they starve, either that or the leviathans that have been decapitated after a certain amount of time simply decide to 'bib' themselves and take the trip back to Purgatory rather than live forever as a head in a box. Bibbing does seem to be perma-kill status as far as we can tell. Crowley also seems to imply at the end of the Season 7 finale that his demons did some clean up work once Dick was dead given the extreme risk of using the weapon to defeat Leviathan maybe killing one of them via those means was enough to break their immortality spell. Otherwise God left behind an awful weapon that requires incredibly rare ingredients to make, is one use only and essentially kills the wielder. How exactly did he plan for humanity or even Angels to fight off a plague using such an absurd tool?
554*** I believe the in-universe explanation was that the other monsters could "sense" Castiel. In season 4, Ruby reacts in horror to Castiel, recognizing how dangerous his kind is to hers even without having ever encountered an angel before. My question is why Castiel thought Dean would be better off on his own. Cas had no reason to believe that Dean and Benny had found a way to escape Purgatory, so from his perspective his plan was to lead monsters ''away from Dean'' so that Dean would...not be killed as quickly? Live a little bit longer in Purgatory? Alone?
555
556* Why is it, the whole time Dean and Castiel were in Purgatory, Castiel grew a beard, but Dean remained clean-shaven?
557** He probably just used Ruby's knife.
558*** [[MemeticBadass Facial hair is too scared of Dean to dare to grow on him.]]
559*** Dean had knives -- confirmed by Jensen Ackles at the end of [[http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2012/10/supernatural-jensen-ackles-previews-pirate-vampires-plus-what-castiel-is-hiding-from-dean.html this article]].
560*** Jensen has talked about how he wasn't allowed to keep the beard since the episode that he was directing was the first one filmed of the season. Chronologically, that episode took place after he got out of Purgatory, so he had to get rid of the beard.
561
562* Season 8: Where are all the Leviathans? I get that after Dick's death their hierarchy would be in a bit of a shambles, and Crowley's goons dealt with a bunch of them in the s7 finale (all the ones in the building), but there'd still be a good number around America either setting up new plans or going on an unstoppable rampage.
563** Apparently it's past "a bit of a shambles." If Crowley is to be believed, Dick was the only leader they'd ever had since the beginning of time. It's unclear how many Leviathans there were exactly, but many of them were gathered at Sucrocorp when the boys launched their attack, and Crowley's demons apparently cleaned up after they took down Dick, which would explain how Sam managed to make it out of there. If there are any left, they're disorganized, uncertain of what to do, and more than likely scared shitless now that it's been decisively proven that yes, they '''can''' be killed. With implements that are quite easily obtainable, no less. I mean, not many people have machetes in their garage, but borax is pretty easy to come by.
564
565* Why are Sam and Dean still killing demons in Season 8 rather than just exorcising them and at least ''trying'' to save their hosts' lives? I mean, if they're planning on sealing the Gates of Hell forever, automatically banishing all demons from Earth and permanently trapping in Hell, that's as effective at stopping them for good as killing them is, and has the added possibility of the hosts surviving and being able to go on with their lives. Didn't Sam and Dean use to feel, you know, ''bad'' whenever they didn't save the hosts? [[spoiler:Sam and Dean never actually seal all the demons away, but they didn't know that when they were going around stabbing tons of people to death.]]
566** Yeah, they did feel bad in the past. They've gotten a lot darker and more ruthless, if you look at their Season 1 personalities compared to now. Besides, when the demon is actively trying to kill you there's not a whole lot of time to trap them and exorcise them. The only reason they got away with that in Meat Swap and when Crowley was holding Lisa and Ben hostage was because the demons didn't want to kill the boys.
567** They haven't really shown much concern for killing the hosts since at least season four or five. Nothing quite like the very near end of the world to give you a perspective change. Besides a lot of that was back before they had the colt and the demon killing knife. Let's face it if we learned anything from Meg it's that demons aren't usually too careful about what happens to their meat suits and going through the motions of trapping and exorcising them is a lot of personal risk to take on for no guarantees where as in the earlier seasons an exorcism was literally the only way to deal with a demon that had any chance of taking.
568
569* Why doesn't Abaddon know where the [=MoL=] Bunker is? She was ''right there'' when Larry gave Sam the coordinates! At some point after killing Larry and taking Sam hostage, wouldn't she take the coordinates from Sam and find out where the Bunker (that she was planning to go to) is? And even if she didn't [[IdiotBall (for some dumb reason)]], why isn't she trying to pry the Bunker's location from Sam and Dean--she must have figured out that they have been to the Bunker while she was [[AndIMustScream incapacitated]], since they got both the location and the key. Sure, she's got her sights set on conquering Hell now, but surely all the objects of mass-destruction and tons of secret occult information stored there would help her in that? She heard Larry say how incredibly useful they'd be to her in causing the chaos she loves so much. Did that bullet to the brain scramble her mind or something?
570** Aaand now Gadreel has turned against the Winchesters and he knows full-well where the bunker is. Which means Metatron can find out where the bunker is from him. [[IdiotBall But they're apparently not doing anything about it.]] Wow.
571*** He killed the prophet and without a prophet to read the tablets Metatron and Gadreel just aren't concerned about the Winchesters. At all. It's been established in the past that Crowley is just about the only supernatural being that actually respects the brothers. It helps that as far as we can tell Metatron was so far off the grid he didn't know about the Apocalypse and Gadreel's been out of commission as well. So they both have no real idea who they are screwing with.
572
573* Why does the hitherto abandoned and vacant MOL bunker have electricity and water? The boys are obviously living rent free, but did they get the utilities hooked up?
574** Considering Sam's shock at finding that they have those utilities set up I think it's clearly some kind of magic.
575** It's not too hard to believe that a facility of that scale would have something akin to a generator and a water filtration system, as a secret society wouldn't exactly be a secret if the local Water and Power guys know where their bunker is.
576
577* Why on earth did the demon in "Goodbye Stranger" call Meg... well, "Meg"? It's fine for the Winchesters, since that's the first host they saw her in and they don't know her real name, but why is another demon--who presumably knows her real name--calling her that? Did the writers just forget that it's not her real name? Were they too lazy to come up with a real name for her? [[ContrivedCoincidence Or ''is'' that her real name?]]
578** Probably for the same reason the angels appear as their hosts in heaven. Laziness, lack of creativity or inconsistency between the writers. The only in-universe reasons I can think of is that the demon didn't know her real name, or maybe demons just don't like bringing up their human lives.
579*** Them appearing as their hosts in heaven is probably both to save on CGI (Zachariah has three faces and one of them is a lion!) and for our convenience so we don't have to figure out who is who for the brief scenes that happen in heaven. Considering Hell and Purgatory seem to be physical locations you can get to by taxi it's entirely possible the angels with vessels do take them to heaven with them. As for Meg maybe that is the name she goes by.
580*** This is outright confirmed by Zachariah in 'Darkside of the Moon' (Also he has six wings and four faces, not three, one of which is a lion!) Sam and Dean and presumably the viewer see them as humans because they are limited. So it is explained in-universe though out of universe it's to save on CGI or avoid having multiple twinkling lights conversing.
581** It might not be that strange for Meg's "real name" to be Meg. Crowley was called Fergus [=MacLeod=] as a human but at some point started calling himself Crowley. Presumably demons do shed their human names at some point. It's pure speculation but maybe they end up taking on the names of their first long term host.
582
583* Crowley, King of Hell, spends all of season 6 trying to find a way into Purgatory. Then season 8 reveals that Hell has a door that leads to Purgatory. [[FlatWhat What]].
584** Hell doesn't technically have a backdoor that leads into Purgatory; [[ExactWords Purgatory has a back door that leads into Hell]]. Sam had to remove the rock before he could actually use the portal to enter Hell, so presumably, the portal is only two-way once the rock has been removed. When it's sealed on the Purgatory end, there's no functioning portal on the Hell end. Besides, Crowley's goal was to open a portal to Purgatory and absorb the souls, not to actually enter Purgatory (as he would have most likely been consumed by leviathans should he have actually gone there). Simply going into Purgatory wouldn't have done him any good (on the contrary, it would have put him in danger); he needed a spell that would allow him to absorb the souls in Purgatory, and assuming that he was able to complete the ritual, it would benefit him more to be on Earth than in Purgatory, since the only thing he could use his soul-augmented god powers for in Purgatory would be... nothing, really, since it'd be an empty wasteland with no more souls (as they would all be inside him).
585** Unfortunately, when Sam rescued Bobby from Hell, ''he left the damn thing open.''
586
587* Why, when Sam rescued Bobby from Hell, was their having salted and burned his bones a problem? It's been well-established by that point that angels can re-build a body from a shattered wreck (in Dean's case) or a salted and burned pile of ashes (in Adam's case) without much problem. So it's not like they ''couldn't'' bring him back, it's just a matter of the trials. Why even bring it up?
588** They weren't really on good terms with Heaven at that point.
589*** Except at the time they had a fully-mojoed angel on the payroll.
590*** Cas might have been an angel, but he also wasn't on good terms with Heaven at that point. Heaven brought Adam back, and it seems Cas was the one to rebuild Dean's body after pulling him out of Hell, but both of those were done when the angel had access to Heaven.
591
592* This may be me forgetting about something, but how exactly does Charlie know about Castiel in "Pac-Man Fever"? As far as I can remember, there's been no mention about Chuck actually publishing the books that would represent seasons 4 and 5, as the book series ended with Dean going to hell. Cas is not mentioned whatsoever in "The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo" and "LARP and the Real Girl", so unless Charlie's been doing some hard-core stalking (which I wouldn't put past her), she read about it in the books. (It's definitely implied that's where she found out about it too, as she calls him 'dreamy' and I doubt anything else she's going to find on the internet will describe Cas in quite that way.)
593** Either Chuck's publisher or Becky probably published the season 4 and 5 manuscripts after Chuck disappeared.
594** Confirmed in "Slumber Party".
595
596* If only 4 angels have seen God, as Anna says in "Heaven and Hell", and Metatron was one of these angels, which of the 4 archangels never saw God? This assumes that Joshua, the gardener angel who talked to God, was not one of the 4 angels who saw God.
597** There's Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, Raphael, Meta -- crap, you're right. Retcon, maybe? Or maybe Raphael never saw God, which would explain his inability to recognize Chuck. If Chuck was God.
598** It's Supernatural and that goes double when dealing with angels. If something said contradicts something we've seen assume we have an unreliable narrator. It's not like the the Higher Ups in Heaven haven't been lying through their teeth for thousands of years. Best guess assuming that's wrong is that Metatron and/or Joshua haven't seen God but the former is more likely.
599** Okay, new theory! Anna wasn't counting the archangels, just plain grunt angels, which leaves Joshua, Metatron, and two other halos who met the old man.
600** Maybe "seeing God" and "talking to God" are different. The archangels actually saw Him, but Joshua and Metatron only ever heard his voice, similar to how the angels can communicate to their vessels with their true voice. Unless I'm forgetting something and it was explicitly said that Metatron saw Him face-to-face; didn't he just write down His will on the tablets?
601** [[Recap/SupernaturalS11E20DontCallMeShurley Don't Call Me Shurley]] seems further at odd with the "only 4 angels" story. [[spoiler:God Himself]] claims there is nothing special about Metatron as he was just the angel closest to the door when God entered the room. That would hurt Metatron's feelings a whole lot less if the room had such a select few angels to begin with.
602*** It's possible that Anna was only referring to current living angels in heaven who had actually seen God. If someone asked you how many people in your company had ever met the boss and a hundred people had but everyone except Bob who'd met the boss was either dead or had left under suspicious circumstances, then you may only really count Bob. With Lucifer having fallen it's not implausible that the angels wouldn't have counted him and with Gabriel missing (and Anna maybe even thinking he was dead), at the time of this statement there were only two archangels in heaven and Metatron. While [[Recap/SupernaturalS11E20DontCallMeShurley Don't Call Me Shurley]] does suggest other angels had seen god, this would have been a very long time ago and for all we know none of those angels were even alive anymore. So you only have two archangels who should definitely have counted (unless she was specifically talking about "angels of the non-arch variety"), possibly Gabriel and definitely Metatron. That's only four.
603
604* In "Clip Show" (Season 8, Episode 22), why was Castiel breaking an egg and dumping its contents on the floor of the convenience store? I could understand him leaving the refrigeration unit door open and accidentally knocking over a shelf because he was preoccupied, but the egg just seemed to be... I don't know, him trying to look like some sort of crazy person? It had nothing to do with [[spoiler: [[HoYay Dean's gift basket]]]], as far as I could tell.
605** Castiel is an Angel, he probably doesn't understand how humans consume eggs and was investigating it, I thought that was the purpose of the seen, just a confused Castiel grocery shopping.
606** Castiel spent the entirety of the previous episode being horribly injured, after weeks if not months of constantly moving from one place to another with nothing but coffee to keep his strength up, and then when he ''finally'' manages to get back to Sam and Dean, Dean is angry with him and won't accept an apology. The poor guy was mentally and physically fried, and trying to regain enough control over himself to do something as simple as shopping must've been quite difficult for him. Hence the uncomprehending child-like actions in the grocery store.
607*** It is peculiar though, that Castiel can remember bits of obscure trivia such as humanity's first discovery and consumption of coffee beans, but he does not understand eggs. However, the real headscratcher was his near-smiting of the convenience store clerk over the lack of pie. Cas had spent weeks teleporting from one restaurant to another to evade angelic pursuit. By that point the concept of if-this-store-doesn't-have-it-then-go-to-another-one should have been obvious to anyone with intellect greater than a child. Hence the reason many fans perceive the whole scene as having been yet more ShipTease on the part of the writers, as opposed to just Cas holding the IdiotBall, again.
608*** It's possible that Cas knows how eggs work in theory, but had never touched one. He picked it up out of curiosity, didn't realize how fragile it was, and it broke. As for the pie thing, I agree with the below poster that it was probably frustration. Another possibility: Cas was too weak from his wound to teleport much at that point (explaining why it took him so long to teleport to meet Metatron at the restaurant that Metatron's crepes had already come out; Cas had to muster up some strength first.)
609** First, I assume that Cas and the eggs was a shoutout to Clerks. I might be wrong and it's been a while since I watched that movie but I swear that scene is straight out of that movie. Second, I think Cas is checking the eggs for something. He's an angel and can probably see some qualities that we can't. As for the near smiting of the clerk he's frustrated with the entire situation. As is mentioned above he's had a rough (couple of years) and pretty much everybody he ever knew is either dead or upset with him. Some are both.
610** If you look at the scene closely, he accidentally sets the six-pack of beer on top of the carton of eggs. He probably noticed it leaking, opened the carton and was wondering what in hell he'd done now. As for his behavior with the clerk? He's frazzled, worn down, probably still off his game from being shot in the gut by Crowley, lost the angel tablet, lost Dean's confidence in him, and is in the process of screwing up the supply run, so the guy is probably on a shorter fuse than normal.
611** Cas understands perfectly well how eggs work, he doesn't understand how ''social rules'' work, or at the very least he flouts them on purpose. While most people would be thinking, "I'd better be careful to not break this merchandise, or else people will think I'm weird and I'll get kicked out of the store," Cas has no such hang-ups.
612
613* Is it just me, or should we really NOT be rooting for Sam not to take the final Trial here? Yes, Sam will die, yes, Dean would be devastated, but how can the writers really expect the audience to not put every single Demon related death on Sam and Dean now? Yes, the sacrifice thing had been done, but so much time had been put into the trials this season and now it just seems pointless, yes I get that Dean finds Sam to be more important then strangers that they have to save, and vice versa, but at the same time, this is not a Lucifer vs Michael situation where the planet would be roasted if either or both of them said yes, this is not a deal that lands them in hell, at worst, they go to heaven, and have a chance of being thrown out and put back on earth. They are soldiers in a pointless war that one or both of them will end up dead in a much more horrific way anyway, so why can't Sam and Dean accept the fact, that they will be saving thousands of lives with only ONE fatality? And more importantly, how are we supposed to cheer for them after this? Because, like I said, every single demon related death that happens from now on is THEIR fault.
614** Are we supposed to cheer them on? I understand that they're the protagonists, but they still do plenty of things that we shouldn't be cheering on. If the writers expect us to side with Dean on this one, then what the hell writers? But if they're just telling us a story that was a perfectly interesting development.
615** Besides, is it just me, or does Sam look like he's dying anyway?
616*** I think the point here is that Sam and Dean have spent their entire lives sacrificing everything they ever cared about save the world. It's not at all healthy to martyr yourself constantly (an idea that has been brought up on the show before.) Sam only has one life, Dean only has one brother. That Dean was unwilling to sacrifice Sam is understandable, and he justifies it with the idea that they can find a better way, TakeAThirdOption. Yes, it's morally ambiguous, but isn't everything on this show?
617*** Sam only has one life? Are we watching the same show cus by my count he's on at least his third go round. It's mentioned by Joshua that God wanted them to remember Heaven that time so considering Dean's been to Hell and Sam to Purgatory they've clearly gone down, canonically, at least twice each at this point.
618*** Except it isn't morally ambiguous, it's clearly the wrong thing to do, and again, you cannot put one person's life in front of thousands, perhaps millions of people just because they are your family, yes it's sad, but at WORST, Sam goes to heaven and Metatron, while a massive asshole to the Angels, he likes humans and likes the stories they have to tell, so I doubt Metatron is going to fuck with Sam when he has no reason to, so really what downside is there that makes the death of so many people okay?
619*** No, from an objective point of view, you really really shouldn't save someone from your family if it means that innocents will die. But, well, humans have the strong tendency to not think objectively; it's part of what makes us us. Now, I don't know about you, but even though my brother and I may not be as close as Sam and Dean, I think I sure as hell would burn down a city if that meant saving him. And I, at least, have other family and close friends - Dean doesn't, not really. Is it an incredibly selfish thing to do? Yes. Is it objectively wrong? Yes. But would all too many humans act differently? Probably no.
620*** Interesting phrasing with the "downside." Sam asked the counter of that question in mid-season 9: "What is the upside to me being alive?" He also said to Cas that his own life wasn't worth more than anyone else's, and lashed out at Dean in anger for "saving" him one too many times. By that point, not only had he not closed the Gates, but the previously-captive Crowley was walking free, an apparently-psychotic angel was healed up and on the loose, and Kevin had been killed by Sam's (possessed) hand--all because Dean couldn't stand the thought of Sam dying. While Show hasn't addressed the Hell Gates directly (and in fairness to Dean, Sam did agree to "stand down" from the last Trial), Show ''has'' acknowledged that Dean's "Keep Sammy Alive!" directive has turned full on pathological at this point, and ''has'' lead Dean to do some seriously morally shady things this year. So while the brotherly speeches and hugs in the church were heartwarming at the time, it does have a more sinister hue to it now with recent events. I don't think even Show wants us to think abandoning the Trials was 100% a good thing at this point. Entire metas have been written on this topic, but part of Dean's character arc for Season 9 seems to be getting to a point where he acknowledges limits in how far the brothers should go for each other, and that he needs ways to define himself that don't involve Sam or killing monsters.
621*** Why not? It would be different prior to say season five but the brothers are aware that Heaven is real. They are aware that you apparently don't need to be a saint to get in and worse the angels as a whole are only slightly better for mankind than demons. Even as of Season 8 if anybody but the King of Hell was trying to prevent his home dimension from being cut off forever we'd be cheering him. He really hasn't done anything Jack Bauer wouldn't.
622** Season 9 hasn't addressed this directly with Hell, but we see that since Heaven is sealed, souls are clogging the Veil between Earth and Heaven instead of moving on. Presumably if Hell had been sealed, something similar would have happened, and "bad" souls, instead of going to Hell, would likely have wound up turning into vengeful spirits with no where to move on to, and therefore almost impossible to get rid of. Of course, the brothers had no idea about this at the time, but in hindsight, not closing Hell may have been the right move.
623[[/folder]]
624
625[[folder:Season 9]]
626* What ever happened to Jimmy Novak? Especially now that Castiel is human. Is he still in there?
627** I'm pretty sure his soul is in Heaven because [[spoiler: Castiel died]] multiple times, and so he probably wouldn't survive, although his vessel did
628*** Cas' dialogue in My Bloody Valentine indicated Jimmy was still present inside him during that episode, and at that point he had already been killed and resurrected once. Unless God just decided to do it differently the second or third time, he was probably still there.
629** It's been confirmed, in "The Things We Left Behind", that Jimmy is long since gone to heaven, having gone away after one of the two times his body was disintegrated by an archangel (whether by Raphael at the end of season 4 or Lucifer at the end of season 5 is debatable).
630*** Lucifer. Cas states that the vessel being destroyed 'at the atomic level' is what drove Jimmy out. Chuck picked a tooth out of his hair at the start of season five, so Raphael definitely didn't go atomic. There's also the aforementioned implication that Jimmy was still around in season five, so it's clearly the second smiting that did it.
631
632* Why didn't the other angel recognize Ezekiel when he saw him? That seems rather suspicious. Castiel recognizes the name, so there is an angel named Ezekiel out there, but what if it's not really him?
633** [[spoiler: Because it wasn't really Ezekiel, and Gadreel -- who the angel actually was -- had been locked up in "Heaven's deepest dungeon" for an eternity, so virtually no angels knew what he looked like.]]
634*** [[spoiler: That's still a bit of a problem. Angels seem to all recognize each other on sight, presumably because of a "true face" similar to demons. So while it makes sense that Gadreel has been MIA so long that nobody recognized him why wasn't it immediately obvious that this WASN'T Ezekiel unless he's also on some kind of severely extended vacation.]]
635*** [[spoiler: Knowing that somebody exists is not equivalent to knowing what they look like. Just because some angels have heard of Gadreel does not mean that they met him personally or know what he looks like, and thus, they would not recognize him upon seeing him.]]
636*** [[spoiler: Of course not, the fact that nobody recognizes Gadreel makes perfect sense. Why didn't anybody recognize that he wasn't Ezekiel though? Just because I cannot identify who you are doesn't mean I can't call you out for not being who you claim to be. So the real mystery is why doesn't anybody know what Ezekiel looks like despite angels apparently being few enough in number that Gadreel choose a name people would recognize presumably so they wouldn't ask too many questions he could answer instead of claiming to be Bob from the 8th Choir's 51st Garrison.]]
637*** [[spoiler: He never actually told another angel that he was Ezekiel. He told Dean when Dean stuck him in the holy fire ring after the other angel had already been taken care of, Dean told Cas over the phone and Cas never saw possessed!Sam during the first half of the season, and the only angel he met face-to-face was Metatron, who already knew (presumably because he'd been watching from Heaven). It's likely why he didn't want Cas to stay in the bunker; he was afraid Cas would see him at some point and the story would have to come out, and Cas would be able to realize that it wasn't Ezekiel.]]
638
639* In season 9 how isn't Sam aware that he's being possessed? Jimmy described it as being chained to a comet and Sam has been possessed by an angel before. I know Gadreel wasn't in control most of the time and wiped Sam's memories from when he was in control, but wouldn't Sam notice the 'chained-to-a-comet-ness'?
640** Presumably Cas was making no effort to conceal his presence from Jimmy.
641** Also, Castiel was a full-powered angel at the time. Gadreel was barely holding it together and was using Sam to heal as much as he was healing Sam.
642
643* In 9X03, Dean comments re: Castiel having sex with April, "Our little Cass, he gave it up to a Reaper!" Except, Cass *was* married briefly in season 7 (whatever became of the woman is left unexplained); did Castiel ever specifically tell Dean off-screen that the marriage was never consummated, or what?
644** Considering they met when Cas was a naked, dazed amnesiac with barely any demonstrated sex drive, they might have found it weird to try that out.
645
646* How many angel vessels *are* there? In 5X01, Lucifer (granted, he's a liar) informs his prospective vessel that there are "very few people" like him--but now in S9, angels are finding vessels left and right, often in groups such as choirs or Bible studies, and somehow every member of these groups is eligible. We do know from 9X03 that some people are absolutely not fit to be vessels, and will explode violently if they try; Bartholomew's nonchalant response suggests that this isn't unusual enough to warrant more than a shrug. The fact that Castiel had to use Claire and not Amelia Novak in 4X20 is explained to be due to the fact that Claire inherited Jimmy's potential, so the implication is that if he had used Amelia it would not have ended well for her either. Is the probability that any particular human is eligible to be a vessel simply subject to whatever serves the story best?
647** While yes there are as many angel vessels as the plot demands Lucifer is a special case. Like Michael and Raphael he has a very specific vessel. That's why his vessel was slowly dying, it couldn't handle the strain of an archangel but a standard angel would likely have been just fine for as long as he wanted. There are probably lots of possible vessels, maybe even a 50/50 ratio. It's clearly high enough that the angels are willing to adopt a try and see method and low enough that when one pops they shrug and try again.
648
649* In the flashback scenes of "Slumber Party" Dorothy says that she cut off the Witch's head. Obviously she either reattached it or grew a new one. Which brings up the question of why she couldn't do the same thing with her tongue.
650** Perhaps the Witch is able to reattach body parts, but not regenerate them. If Dorothy had managed to hide or destroy the tongue (destruction is more likely, and it would be easier to do that to a severed tongue than a severed head), the Witch probably couldn't get it back.
651
652* In 9X10, Cass and Dean decide to recruit Crowley to help cast the angel out of Sam. Why don't they just try the sigil from 9X09 again, and guard it this time to ensure that nobody tampers with it?
653** They might not have wanted to try that with Crowley hanging around. And they needed him to locate Sam/Gadreel in the first place.
654
655* In "Road Trip", instead of using Crowley's angel-hacking contraption, why don't they just use the suppression sigil that Dean tried to use in the previous episode? The only reason why it didn't work then was because Gadreel tampered with it in advance.
656
657* The First Blade. Did Crowley have so much faith in the Winchesters' ability to overcome Lucifer and Raphael that he declined to mention the First Blade because he wanted to have an ace in the hole in case Abaddon came back from oblivion? It's like the leviathan and Purgatory all over again where one has to wonder why Cas and Crowley didn't try THAT to stop the end of the world. Just how many super awesome we should have used this earlier weapons are there?
658** First of all, we don't know if the First Blade could kill a Leviathan or an archangel. It wasn't said to be a kill-anything blade.
659*** Unless it's specifically a kill Demon Knights blade and nothing else needs fear it I would have put it on the list of things to try. Same as I would have put open Purgatory on the list. They didn't have time for that and it might not have worked but that's not a reason not to try.
660** In S5, it appeared that Crowley earnestly believed the Colt would kill Lucifer and it didn't--after that, he probably figured that there was no way the Winchesters would trust him again with another plan to use a special weapon to kill the devil. Note how he waited until Dean was alone--at a very low point and quite vulnerable--before approaching him with the proposal to try the First Blade. Alternatively, maybe Crowley just didn't have the knowledge/resources to track down the Blade in previous seasons.
661** Early in Season 5, Crowley gave them the Colt, a magical kill-anything weapon, which they lost. Then, near the end of the season, he gave them Death's Scythe, an even more powerful kill-anything weapon, which they also lost. At that point, he probably figured trusting them with yet another kill-anything weapon would be like flushing it down the drain.
662** The Blade is useless without the Mark of Cain, and Cain isn't exactly the personable type. Also, they had no idea where the Blade was -- it had been lost for who knows how long -- and Crowley had the Colt in his possession when Sam and Dean came knocking. Going after the Blade would have been unnecessary considering he had the Colt, and considering that the Leviathans predate angels or demons, there's no guarantee the Blade would have worked.
663
664* What is the deal with Sam and Dean's break-up, so to speak, in season 9? It's not believable, and it's just kind of weird. Sam says he wouldn't bring Dean back if Dean had almost died. Is this supposed to be suspiciously out of character, or are we supposed to buy it? What changed about Sam that he wouldn't bring Dean back to life? And what's up with the whole "we can hunt together or we can be brothers, not both" ultimatum? None of it seems to have had any logical build up that led to it, other than Sam wanting to die after the trials. This show has a bad habit of dropping things and never addressing them again, and I'm worried that this is going to be one of those things, rather than a [=RoboSam=] case, where there turns out to be an explanation.
665** I actually don't think Sam's claim that he wouldn't bring Dean back is out of character--given the *exact* same circumstances. Sam is not saying he doesn't love Dean, or that he wouldn't want to save him (although that is what Dean is hearing, thus generating a lot of tension). Sam is saying that he would not *violate Dean's will* even in order to save his life, but where Dean wants to live, Sam would absolutely fight for that; this is evidenced by both "Thinman" and "Captives," in each of which Sam saves Dean's butt from the week's bad guys. Sam also doesn't literally mean he doesn't want to be brothers--he means he doesn't want to keep playing the "brother" card Dean always has to justify poorly strategized, morally dubious, or dangerous actions "because we're family."
666*** But Sam ''did'' want to live, in both Sacrifice and I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here. In both cases, he made a clear and conscious decision to keep living. In the latter case he didn't know exactly what he was agreeing to, but he did know that Gadreel was offering him a chance to stay alive and he took it of his own free will. Any attempt at claiming he was ready to die before Dean intervened is just him retroactively changing the story to [[NeverMyFault push all the blame on Dean]], because at any point he could have simply said "No" and carried on dying.
667*** He freely chose life, that much is true (which invalidates the argument some have made that Sam was suicidal and thus in no mental condition to make what was essentially a medical decision on his own behalf). But he thought he was choosing an unspecified plan that ''Dean himself'' offered, and he never in a million years would have thought Dean would conspire to violate a well-understood, long-standing desire on Sam's part not to be possessed by any angel (especially after the trauma with Lucifer), ''especially'' without telling Sam that's what the plan would entail. Sam trusted Dean and Dean betrayed that trust. I don't think Sam is blaming Dean for talking him out of finishing up the trials, I think he brought that up as evidence for his case that Dean's motivation here isn't to save Sam so Sam can have a life worth living--it's so Dean can have Sam. Were it not for the Gadreel fiasco, I don't think Sam would harbor any resentment at all for Dean's speech in the church at the end of s8.
668*** But Dean made this decision knowing full well it could destroy his relationship with Sam. And it did -Sam and Dean are absolutely miserable together now. He even initially left to work on his own once Sam found out about it. That's why I don't buy that Dean acted out of his own interests -He's probably even less happy with the current situation than Sam is. He just places a higher priority on Sam's life than on Sam's or his own happiness. His decision was also coming on the heels of their talk in Sacrifice, where Dean had to reassure Sam that he came above all else. It's a fine line Dean has to walk between loving San too much or not enough, and whenever he guesses wrong, Sam flips out. Also not helping Sam's case is that he can't seem to make up his mind what he's upset about -In "First Born" it's getting Kevin killed, in, in "Sharp Teeth" it's not being able to trust Dean, in "The Purge" it's that he was ready to die--which makes him come across as being angry for the sake of being angry, and the fact that in hindsight Dean's decision was objectively correct. Had he not dealt with Gad, Kevin might be alive (Metatron ordered his death independently of the deal, Sam's possession gave them a window to try, but he might have found one anyway since Kevin wasn't staying in the bunker 24/7) but Sam, Cas, and Charlie would be dead, their spirits would be trapped in the veil like Kevin's is, and Dean would probably either be dead or possessed by Abaddon, none of which Sam has acknowledged.
669*** It's unreasonable that Sam should be angry about more than one aspect of Dean getting him possessed by an unknown entity and this getting a friend of his killed? He has to pick one thing he didn't like about it and stick to it so it doesn't look like he's seesawing on his position? How about he was ready to accept death and move on but then his trust in Dean was betrayed (by Gadreel pretending to be Dean to get Sam to say yes and also by Dean agreeing to this without consulting Sam and helping Gadreel keep it secret from Sam so he ''couldn't'' make an informed choice on it) just when he thought that they had finally cleared the air between them and they were finally on even footing again? To Sam, that doesn't reflect well on Dean--it means Dean doesn't respect or value his choices as a person when they conflict with Dean's wants, that Dean refuses to learn that maybe they should stop working with shifty monsters he knows nothing about and has no reason to trust, and that Dean also refuses to stop screwing with the natural order and risking another Apocalypse by not letting Sam die when it's his time to go. In Sam's opinion, ''all'' of that is really, ''really'' shitty. Regardless of whether or not it would've happened anyway, Dean's decision to have Sam possessed also got Kevin killed by something using Sam's body. In Sam's opinion, that's ''also'' really, ''really'' shitty. It's also kind of shitty to say that Dean's man-pain matters more than Sam's in this situation, when Dean was one of the ones who did this to him. Dean's unhappiness that his brother is mad at him shouldn't exonerate him because he hasn't even apologized and has instead made it clear that he doesn't regret it and would, in fact, do it again ("The Purge"). As for what would have happened if Dean hadn't chosen that route, Sam, Cass, and Charlie's spirits might not have been stuck in the Veil since Charlie's soul apparently went to Heaven in "Slumber Party" and that happened after Sam and Castiel would've died, so they probably would've also gone to Heaven; the gates of Heaven were only closed later. Kevin may or may not have been killed by Metatron, since Kevin would've been in the bunker and Metatron had no idea where it was, so he wouldn't be able to get to him even if he wanted to. As for Dean, it depends on what he would've done if Sam died and if he couldn't save Cass or Charlie (assuming he was around for those), but if he killed himself, again, he probably would've gone on to Heaven. If he stuck around long enough for Abaddon to get her claws on him and he couldn't get away, yeah, he probably would've gotten possessed and been going through a FateWorseThanDeath while Abaddon used him to get into the bunker, kill Crowley, and lay claim to all the Men of Letters' knowledge and artifacts for herself and the forces of Hell. [[{{Understatement}} That probably wouldn't have gone well.]] It's hard to weigh whether Gadreel possessing Sam was a good thing in the long run or not in a wider sense because we can only speculate, but so far in the show it's being painted as a bad thing that Dean did to Sam with the end-result of an innocent casualty and also Sam's trust in Dean being broken. (Despite this huge rant, this troper isn't really sure what her personal view on it is--she's seen both Dean stans and Sam stans' stance on it. To be honest, she doesn't really care because she's over the brother drama and only cares about the demon storyline anymore, but the tons of hate Sam is getting made her want to try her hand at defending him since he used to be her favorite character. Old loyalties, you know.)
670*** As can be seen above, this has been a ''very'' divisive issue in the fandom, but to answer the actual question, there does not appear to be any supernatural influence on Sam, and he was just that pissed. Further along into the season, and also suggested by actor [[WordofGod Jared Padalecki]], it's becoming apparent that Sam's harsh words were more him lashing out in the moment, and do not reflect his true feelings towards Dean. Many have taken issue with what Sam has said, but in fairness, he was reeling from quite a bit at the time. As the poster above mentioned, he was simultaneously coping with the fact that he had been possessed for months, that the person he trusts and loves more than anyone else tricked him into it and lied to him for months, that someone else he was close to died by his own hand, and the usual Winchester should-be-dead survivor guilt. Additionally, while the viewer knows how badly Dean felt about doing all that, Sam has seen little of that--indeed, Sam's harshest speech, in The Purge, came after Dean doubled down and said he did the right thing and would do it again, not acknowledging the parts of it that caused Sam pain--though in fairness to Dean, it seems like the MoC was affecting him by then. Even taking out Sam's desire or non-desire to die, which the writers have admittedly not been consistent on, it's reasonable to assert that Sam would have preferred to die than be possessed by an unknown entity for an undetermined period of time. Finally, it's important to remember Sam's history here--his whole life, supernatural forces have made Sam their plaything. He finally thought he had been freed of all that as of "Sacrifice," only to discover that Dean, of all people, put him at the mercy of yet another supernatural force instead of just letting him go on in peace. This conflict is actually being handled better than others in this show (like, say, S8...), as each brother has a pretty valid standpoint. We understand why Dean would go this extreme to save Sam. We can also understand why Sam would never be okay with it, even if not everyone likes his reaction to it.
671*** As for saving Cas, Charlie, etc, one good point I've seen is that if Sam were an object, it would be fair to debate whether or not the possession was objectively a good thing. Since Sam is a person, he really should have had some self-determination over his body and how it was used.
672*** The thing with Charlie was a continuity error or her just being mistaken. Kevin's dialogue makes it clear that no soul has entered Heaven since the angels fell.
673-->'''Kevin''': I couldn't. I can't. No one can. Heaven's closed for business. Everyone who's died since the angels fell are just stuck inside the veil, waiting. And it's bad in here. Like DMV-line-times-infinity bad.
674** Ah, Metatron probably thought that [[CreatorsPet Charlie]] was the only one worthy of being in Heaven with him and let her and her alone into Heaven. (I wrote that as a joke, but the scary thing is that the writers would probably agree.) Yeah, you're right--unless something had happened to save them all, they'd all be stuck in Limbo.
675*** Kevin could be mistaken (he admits that communication inside the veil is difficult) and Metatron only closed off Heaven to human souls around 9x09. It would coincide with him "flipping a switch" to ensure that no more prophets would be called after Kevin's death.
676** Additionally, while the MOC doesn't seem to affect Sam at all, it certainly affects Dean, and that affects how Sam reacts to him. As mentioned previously, Dean ''did'' feel quite guilty over the possession, trickery, and deception--until he got the MOC. Even when Sam was initially de-possessed (pre-MOC) Dean fully expected Sam to be pissed as hell in the aftermath, and felt so guilty and screwed up about everything that had happened that he left to hunt alone. The problem is, Sam and Dean didn't really discuss the possession at all until after post-MOC, and then Dean's attitude started shifting and he started doubling down, saying that they should just move on and forget about it (Sharp Teeth), that he did the right thing and he'd do it again (The Purge), and that he basically didn't know what was up with Sam these days (Thinman). These responses are all in marked contrast to the first half of the season (to be clear, I'm not attempting a Dean bash here, simply describing how the MOC has affected his attitude and character--it is a dark arc, after all). [[WordofGod Jensen Ackles]] has since said that Dean has become a much more black and white thinker because of the MOC--in his current state of mind, all he can reason is that Sam's alive and that's good, therefore the possession was good. Dean's failure to acknowledge (to Sam, who, we must remember, didn't see all of Dean's guilt earlier in the season) the crappier parts of what he did (or, seemingly to Sam, that Sam has a right to be upset at all) is almost guaranteed to be maddening to Sam, since there ''were'' bad things around the possession, and to him, Dean is just refusing to admit it. It didn't help at the time that Sam was barely aware of the MOC (and apparently too deep in his own issues at that point to look into it), certainly didn't know how it was affecting Dean, and couldn't put Dean's approach to their argument in that context. But since the MOC isolates the person wearing it, Sam's words did inadvertently make things a whole lot worse for Dean, emotionally distanced him, made him less inclined to even try to connect to Sam, and fed further into their rift.
677
678* So did Sam and Dean take an afternoon off from the worst estrangement they've ever had to hit the mall and buy spiffy new suits before "Captives?"
679** Maybe they had to because their old ones were ruined by some monster on a previous unseen hunt. They do come in contact with a lot of blood and other bodily fluids.
680
681* So, the sigil for the Knights of Hell is "pre-Enochian." Except Enochian is the language of angels, and there's no indication that it was ever predated by another angelic language. The angels themselves predate the Earth, and thus the human race, and thus the demon race. By all rights, Enochian should be the oldest language on Earth. So why are the Knights using a dead language far older than they are, how did they find out about it, and what beings did this language even belong to--Leviathans? Whatever God and Death are?
682** Maybe it ''is'' an older language and Lucifer taught it to Cain who taught it to the other Knights.
683** It could be she meant "pre-Enochian" not with respect to the Enochian ''language'', but rather the time period before Enoch, the ancestor of Noah after whom the Enochian language is named. She could've said antediluvian and meant roughly the same thing, but since this tropette doubts the show is currently interested in working the Flood into its mythos, they avoided a word that would've called attention to it.
684*** They did mention the Flood before though. It was what Death did when it walked the Earth before being imprisoned.
685* Why were the soulless people harming themselves, writing on the walls with their own blood, and killing themselves? That goes against everything Soulless Sam established about his increased sense of self-preservation. For that matter, why were they so easily angered when they were supposed to be emotionless?
686** Sam suggests that each person reacts differently to being soulless and it seems to be true. In his case he was driven and willing to take any risk. Maybe these people had something about them that was truly screwed up and they felt they needed to be punished?
687
688* Abaddon is mining souls to create demons? FlatWhat. We know that creating demons takes decades at the least, centuries is probably more realistic. Time passes much more quickly in Hell and Dean spent I believe 60 years in Hell during his trip and didn't come back with any powers. Without the time lapse that Hell provides, trying to create demons on Earth is clearly far too time consuming to be practical by any estimation. If her supposed reasoning wasn't that she didn't want to wait for the rank and file demon to pick a side it would be a fun side project but as it stands it's a little like going into your enemy's house with a handful of seeds while cackling that one day the tree will destroy his fortress.
689** Not only that but how and why do demons suddenly have the power to harvest souls that (I'm assuming, since they were all said to be nice people beforehand) were not destined for Hell, had not made any deals, and thus the demons had no claim to them? Why haven't demons been using that way all along to turn the whole human race into a massive army of about eight billion demons (plus however many pre-existing demons are around)? Why bother with crossroad deals at all?
690*** This is given a HandWave earlier. Abaddon calls out Crowley on being a bitch with his deals and that demons should simply take what they want. Abaddon (and Cain) throw a fair amount of kinks into the established mythos however that are difficult to work around.
691*** We know that a soul's time of reaping pertains to the Natural Order, and Abaddon, being a bloodthirsty warrior instead of a carefully-thinking leader, is reckless and likely doesn't care about the consequences of her actions. Plus, every leader of Hell in the series thus far has followed the rules, so those rules may come from very high up. However, as of right now, the cosmic order is completely out of whack, so there aren't many entities left who could do anything about her. Death seems to be AWOL, Metatron is setting himself up to be Chuck 2.0, and the archangels are all indisposed. And as for the torturing thing, Abaddon may have other methods of torture that are more effective, or maybe she has a quicker method that has the downside of producing weaker demons. That would explain the need for multiple factories; compensating for their weaker power with raw numbers. At any rate, here's something that could apply to both points: aside from Crowley, Hell's culture has always been quite resistant to change. Abaddon's methods, ironically in a manner similar to Crowley's, may have been rejected for being too reckless and extreme.
692** Small correction: Dean spent 40 years in hell (equivalent to 4 months in Earth time). As to why demons have the power to harvest souls that don't belong to them: The episode "Mother's Little Helper" confirms that Abaddon's pretty much just ripping them out of people's bodies, with no care as to whether or not she's "allowed" to have them. She may also be cheating on deals and having people killed before their 10 years are up, like Guy was doing in "Season 7, Time For A Wedding".
693
694* Was the Colt ever explicitly destroyed? [=S5E10=] 'Abandon All Hope' seems to be the last episode it was seen in and Castiel failed to retrieve it but since then at least four years have gone by in universe and I doubt Leviathan and Demon Knights round out the the five things the Colt can't kill.
695** They might've run out of bullets.
696** Crowley gave them more ammo, but a game-breaker ranged weapon like the Colt would turn every episode into "find whatever monster is chowing down on innocents this time, then shoot it in the face from across the room," rather than the usual method of "find the monster, get your ass kicked for ten minutes, then narrowly survive and kill it." They haven't found it because the writers don't want them to find it.
697** The Colt was written out of the show temporarily in Season 3 and permanently in Season 5, because it became too powerful. It's a gun that can kill anything, fine. But at that point the only things they could kill with it that they couldn't without it were demons, and they had Ruby's knife for that. Conveniently in Season 4, the season after the disappearance of the Colt, Angels showed up, and are only capable of being killed by their own weapons, which are swords; another close-ranged weapon. If the gang still had the Colt then Dean could easily just shoot any Angel that came near them, but that wouldn't be dramatic. And after the Colt was permanently written out in Season 5, a few seasons later we got the Leviathans; monsters from Purgatory that were pretty much invulnerable to anything except borax (which wouldn't even permanently kill them, just burn them like holy water), decapitation (which, while permanent, still didn't "kill" them and gave them the option of coming back at some point a la Abaddon) or another Leviathan eating them. (Which was very unlikely) If they still had the Colt, Dean could have just walked up and shot Dick Roman without even giving a crap, and the Season 7 plot would be over pretty quickly. Then, in Season 9, Abaddon appears, and can only be killed by the First Blade. Unless someone shot her with the Colt assumedly (unless Knights of Hell are like the Archangels, and can't be killed by the Colt either). Once the writers decided to make demons the go-to fodder in Season 3 and replace the Big Bads with more powerful beings, they realized that having a gun that could kill anything was overpowered. So they wrote the Colt out and Ruby's knife in; a weapon that can kill demons and monsters, but not Angels.
698** It's been confirmed, in "Stuck In The Middle (With You)" that [[spoiler: the Colt has been in the possession of Ramiel, a Prince of Hell, since Season 5. It is permanently destroyed by Dagon in "The Future".]]
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708* When oh when will the Winchesters visit the Winchester Mystery House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House
709
710* A devil's trap carved on a bullet traps demons, that's fine, but it seemed previously that the shot needed to go through the head. That was why Henry Winchester allowed Abaddon to get as close as he did instead of carving up a dozen devil trap bullets and shooting them at someone who probably wouldn't bother dodging. That episode makes a lot less sense in retrospect to knowing the bullet hitting them is good enough.
711** Bullets leave these things called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exit wounds]]. Meaning, that the soft fleshy torso might not actually catch the bullet. The skull generally will, if the gun is a low-power pistol.
712
713* I love Crowley as much as anybody but they didn't kill him why? Even if you accept (as many do) that Crowley has ultimately done more good than harm aiding them against Lucifer and Michael, Dick Roman and Abaddon. Given what's approaching five seasons of Earth suffering the fallout of no leaders in Heaven, Crowley could point out the last thing they need is another power vacuum but, as it stands, Dean was in a kill craze with the First Blade and we're left to believe that Sam agreed not to kill Crowley for what? It almost sounds like the Winchesters and Crowley really have no intention of actually killing each other.
714** Doylist reason? Bad writing. Watsonian? Er...they still needed him to track down Abaddon? It's a plot hole.
715*** Abaddon is freshly dead at this point and Crowley held in place by a demon trap bullet seemingly if not completely helpless probably powerless. Metatron was still running around though and even if he didn't contribute to that battle (at least not after getting the First Blade) they may have figured it's better to keep someone in play with some actual juice. Especially since Castiel's powers were all over the place.
716*** Pretty much pure speculation here, but it could be leaning to "better the devil you know" territory. Offing Crowley would create a power vacuum, and considering the last contender to step up to challenge the throne was a Knight of Hell, there's no guarantee who else would scrabble to the top of the pile in Crowley's absence. Not to mention, Crowley (begrudgingly) owes his position to the Winchesters now, which may give them some pull later on. Or that's how I would explain it, anyways.
717
718* What exactly is the problem with letting Gavin stay? Perhaps the spell needs to be done again so he vanishes from the boat instead of wherever he did vanish from but the lore about not changing the past (lore the boys could have cared less about when it came to killing a Phoenix, saving their grandparents, and even possibly not being born at all) is about keeping someone alive who should have died or vice versa and the ButterflyEffect that follows. None of it discusses disasters where everybody died and that person magically being brought to the future where they are never found by anybody looking for them. I don't even think this qualifies as changing the past any more than Henry never coming home because he died in the present.
719** The problem, for what it's worth, is that Gavin did not disappear in the past. He went down with that ship. And for reasons we don't know became a ghost who was summoned up prior to blackmail Crowley. It didn't really work but there is at least that Butterfly to deal with.
720
721* In season 5 when Lucifer was summoning the Four Horsemen it's made fairly clear that Reapers are a specific entity and not a job title so is Tessa special or was that some kind of goof?
722** I've been asking myself that same question. When did Reapers become some kind of angel? Nothing I know of before hand ever suggests that they are some sort of subspecies like the cupids.
723** This tropette didn't mind the Retcon *too* much at first; Reapers are a class of angel, okay, Dean didn't know that before, but he figured it out somewhere along the way, 'k. But THEN she realized that the ability to see the angel possessing a human (instead of just the human's face) is one that angels retain even if they lose their grace, as evidenced by Anna (or was it just demons she could see? I can't quite recall) as well as Cass himself when he recognized the Riet Zien in 9X06, "Heaven Can't Wait." If that's the case, he should have instantly known that April was a Reaper when he first met her. What gives?
724** Three things in response to these questions:
725*** 1) Anna could see demon's true faces, but there's no indication that ex-angels can immediately recognize each other. When Cas recognizes his Riet Zien brother, the guy just teleported into the house with him, so he ''knows'' he's dealing with an angel. He likely figured out which one through behavior and body language, whereas with April he had no reason to suspect she was supernatural. He also didn't recognize Hael in 9X01 as an angel until she told him she was. The fact that Gadreel was afraid of Cas being around him makes me figure that, while he didn't expect Cas to instantly recognize him as an angel on sight, he was worried that if Cas did realize Sam was possessed, he would, like he did with the Riet Zien, be able to figure out which angel it was after a brief observation, or at least figure out that Gadreel ''wasn't'' Ezekiel, whom Cas seemed to know personally.
726*** 2) As to Reapers, I've dealt with that by imagining that reapers are related to angels, like some sort of cousins (the two do have some similar abilities, as would be needed to ferry souls to Heaven), but that angels and reapers generally don't interact with each other, as Cas didn't even bother trying to talk to the reapers in the Carthage - presumably they would have ignored him, although that might have had more to do with them being in some kind of thrall awaiting Death's arrival. However, with the gates of Heaven shut and the crapfest of angel skirmishes going on on Earth, the angels would naturally be running into reapers far more often and the two cousin species decided it was best to team up for the time being, especially since the reapers couldn't really do their regular jobs properly at that point. In fact, since the souls were just ending up stuck in the Veil, they probably ''really'' wanted to take out Metatron, moreso than the angels. Tessa was going crazy, and the other reapers likely wouldn't have been in much better shape, so the reapers would have been willing to work with the angels. Flash forward to season 11, and we've got Billie, who's not hanging around with any angels and whom Cas doesn't seem to really know. At this point, the bulk of angel fighting on Earth is over, so reapers like Billie would revert back to ignoring the angels again.
727*** 3) What I thought was weird was that the Veil was ''still full of souls'' in season 11, which apparently the reapers hadn't bothered to clean up. I figured with Metatron booted out the souls would be back on track, but clearly not if Kevin was still in the Veil, so either Heaven can't figure out how to get its souls coming again, or the souls are coming in again but the ones caught in the Veil are simply stuck and nobody cares about them. I'm going with the latter. The angels probably don't consider it their problem to dig souls out of the Veil, and the reapers may have gotten used to the screams and don't care any more. Which makes the reapers douches, but who on this show isn't?
728
729* In 9X23, Castiel makes a Star Wars reference, and Gadreel stares blankly, not getting it at all. But Gadreel was in Sam's head for months, with access to all his thoughts and memories, as we are told in "Meta Fiction." Even if we assume Gadreel only accessed these cognitions as they occurred to his vessel, did Sam honestly not think about Star Wars even once during the entire time he was possessed?
730** I can easily go six months or more without thinking about Star Wars (or any given franchise) and without remembering the line Sam may have thought about Star Wars but nothing relevant to the reference. I don't think the information comes out one hundred percent intact so Sam sitting down and watching an Episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars might not bring up memories of Greedo Shot first or that's not a moon.
731** To be fair, Castiel was in Jimmy's head for ''years'' and doesn't understand any of the references the boys make.
732** Well yeah, but I always assumed Cas's clueless shtick was because he refrained from combing through Jimmy's memories, something that would have violated his vessel's privacy. Pretty much every other angel seems capable of understanding stuff than Cas because they probably absorb all of their host's memories the second they step in, like demons. But since Cas is actually reasonably ethical, he used the body, but left Jimmy's mind alone.
733
734* Whatever happened to Missy from "The Benders"?
735** She became an Amazon and Sam shot her.
736** Sanitarium.
737
738* Whatever happened to Damien, the half demon?
739** Teleported himself off to "written out of the story"-ville. The writers immediately realized he was a game-breaker and put him on a bus.
740** You mean Jesse Turner? His powers only increased when Lucifer was out of the Cage and walking the Earth. Now that Lucifer's locked up again, he's probably not as powerful. And possibly still in Australia.
741
742* If the Leviathans killed Frank Devereaux, why did they need Charlie to hack into his files? There was plenty of blood all over his mobile home; if even one of the Leviathans touched that, they'd be able to turn into Frank and have access to all of his memories. With that, they wouldn't ''need'' any of the information on his computer, and even if they ''did'' want into it, the Leviathan who turned into him would know exactly how to access it.
743** Dick Roman explained it. Charlie has "something" that makes her unique (human ingenuity?) and therefore isn't capable of being replicated by a Leviathan. Knowing [[CrazyParanoid Frank]] he probably would have made an encryption very difficult for even him to crack on the off chance that the Leviathan turned into him, so they still wouldn't be able to get to it. Presumably they couldn't replace Frank for the same reason they couldn't replace Charlie.
744
745* Why do Sam, Dean, and other monster hunters stockpile on so many firearms, when most of the monsters seem to be [[ImmuneToBullets impervious to normal, non-magical guns]]?
746** It could be because hunters lose their guns all the time and are living on the road, so they might not have time to see a gunseller who can provide the kind of discretion they need, since hunters typically use fake identities or have other circumstances or obvious issues which prevent them from obtaining a gun legally. It'd be kind of inconvenient for them to have to sit around somewhere for a week waiting for their background check to go through, or to drive to the closest hunter-gunseller when there are potential cases along the way. So they visit the seller once, stock up a b
747** There are plenty of monsters that non-magical guns can take out. Werewolves, shifters, skinwalkers, etc. It's usually the bullets that need to be special, like silver or salt for ghosts. It's just that Sam and Dean often take cases involving demons and stuff that other hunters might not be able to handle, so we see the special weapons come out more often with them.
748
749* So where exactly is Michael? Because looking into the cage all we're being shown is Lucifer. Even worse, for some reason no one seems to be willing to bring up the point that he was sealed alongside Lucifer, much less that he even exists. When Sam and Dean are arguing back and forth about Sam going to the cage Lucifer's the only Angel that's ever brought up, as if he's in there alone. This is somewhat frustrating because of the two Micheal certainly seems like the one you'd want to ask for help, being the good to Lucifer's evil (Though he admittedly does have reason to be angry at the Winchester's). Furthermore, as an Archangel, and the older brother to Lucifer, he would have logically been there when the Darkness was sealed away, so isn't it likely that he at least knows just as much about it as Lucifer?
750** The Cage we're seeing isn't ''the'' Cage, but a replacement designed by Rowena to hold Lucifer temporarily. The reason Sam asks Lucifer instead of Michael is because "God's" visions seemed to tell him to.
751
752* How, exactly, did Dean kill [[spoiler: Death? Obviously Death still exists as people have been dying all over the place in season 11, but shouldn't that be impossible now that there is no more Death?]]
753** [[spoiler: I don't think there's ever been any indication that Death himself, or even reapers, are required for people to die. Same as War, Famine and Pestilence being gone doesn't mean their namesakes no longer occur. Named characters die and pass on to their various afterlives without any interference by Death or reapers. Adam is ferried up to Heaven and back down again by Zachariah. When Bobby dies, ends up in Hell, comes back as a ghost, and is eventually killed for real by the brothers burning his flask, Death is no where to be seen. At best, Death was implied to be an incredibly powerful being with the ability to control the fate of any "living" being; at worst he's a [[BadassInANiceSuit dude in a cool suit]] with unspecified powers. Besides, the whole "reapers are actually angels" BS makes reapers totally redundant. So as for how Dean was capable of doing the deed? Either it's a reverse WorfEffect (simply to show how powerful post-Mark of Cain!Dean is) or Death was never actually that powerful in the first place.]]
754*** [[spoiler: War specifically said that he could not die because it's impossible to stop war. Slicing off the rings only caused the horsemen to lose their ability to manifest in the real world, and we got confirmation later that they were still alive (though unable to manifest again) so it doesn't seem like they are just titles. Just because we don't SEE the onscreen passing of the characters (since they are ghosts at that point) doesn't mean that Death or his reapers weren't there to guide them.]]
755
756* How can Castiel say 'yes' to Lucifer? He's not a vessel, he 'needs' a vessel. Jimmy. Now fanon suggests that at some point Jimmy's soul was allowed to pass on and Castiel got to keep the body because reasons. Which leaves us with a lot of issues. Like what happened to Cas? He should just go out and find another person willing to say let him take over. Jimmy not being Sam (or at least a Winchester since clearly Adam was good enough for Michael and it was implied that John managed to house Micheal as well without damage) should start deteriorating quickly with Lucifer inside. The entire season 5 plot was about how Lucifer specifically needed Sam and not just a random Meat Suit. So even if he could beat the Darkness all Amara has to do is dodge Lucifer for in an absolute worst case scenario for her however long it takes him to burn through every man, woman and child on Earth. And that's assuming she can't take Lucifer in a fair fight which as Sam points out seems unlikely.
757** The season 10 episode ''The Things We Left Behind'' turned that fanon into canon. James Novak's soul has been in Heaven since the first time his body got vaporized. And while it allows Castiel to appear human without keeping on mistreating that poor guy, I agree that it makes the whole "vessel" business really iffy.
758** Remember that Cas lost his Grace in the Season 8 finale, making him basically a human. As his vessel no longer contained it's original soul, presumably Cas "became" the host of that body, and when he regained his Grace, he got back his powers but that more or less became his default body, similar to how Anna continued to use the body she had as a human when she regained her Grace, even though that was apparently never human to begin with.
759** I actually figured that Cas was a ''better'' vessel than Sam, because Cas's vessel was specifically rebuilt ''by God''. It took 40 million Purgatory souls and a stack of ''Leviathan'' to make it start deteriorating. God made that sucker durable. Also, it seems that Cas's vessel is a special case in that he does own it because basically God personally gave it to him. Jimmy's soul went to Heaven after Lucifer destroyed Cas, so when the vessel was reformed without the soul, its ownership went to Castiel. Even prior to his stint as a human in season 9, he was able to pop in and out of the vessel with no problem - he explicitly stated that he spent a year as a "multi-dimensional wavelength of celestial intent" before season 6, so he must have been out of his vessel during most of the civil war in Heaven. Presumably he could store the vessel in the ether or something and just grab it whenever he needed to visit Sam and Dean.
760** Cas was likely able to survive being a vessel for Lucifer simply because Chuck willed it to be so. he can depower Lucifer entirely with a thought, keeping his power from burning out Castiel and his human vessel would be simple.
761
762* Where are Michael and Adam in the Cage? When we see the cage in season 11 only Lucifer is in it.
763
764* Am I the only one confused about the portrayal of demons/angels without bodies? On Earth a ghost can interact with the physical world, but a disembodied demon/angel can't really. But in heaven, hell and purgatory, angels, demons, humans, the embodied and the disembodied all interact with each other as if there's no distinction. Castiel said he was a "multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent" as an angel, but we see angels like Lucifer in the cage (disembodied) acting like plain humans. It just feels like the reason is the budget rather than an in-universe explanation.
765
766
767* In Season 7 "Of Grave Importance", Bobby tells Annie that he ran away from his reaper. But where was Annie's reaper? I am guessing that reapers (being angels) are more powerful than ghosts, so it's not like they couldn't fight Whitman Van Ness. Dean had Tessa as a reaper in the hospital in season 2 but at least he had a choice whether to become a ghost. Why didn't Annie?
768** The ghost dude trapping all of the other ghosts had some major spiritual mojo going. It's possible that he was somehow able to keep reapers out of the house, so they couldn't get the souls. Kind of a lame explanation, but it's the best I got.
769
770* In “All Hell Breaks Loose” Bobby claimed that it would practically take an A-bomb to destroy the giant Devil’s Trap and that a full blooded demon therefore couldn’t get across. I understand that a demon couldn’t just rip the tracks up with their bare hands but is the trap really that much of an obstacle for them? People have broken iron railway lines with regular explosives before. Even if they didn’t want to, say, stand a few steps back and throw explosives at the tracks, there must some demon out there with enough money to just hire a demolition crew who could go in and break the line for them (even getting it done in a few spots to make it harder for it to be fixed). I understand that demons don’t generally favour the “just hire a guy” route, but it would seem to have let them solve this problem years earlier.
771** In all likelihood most demons didn't know or care about it. There are a few things that are easy to forget if you've been watching for a decade. Prior to opening the the Hell Gate demons were incredibly rare. Bobby and Rufus had never seen one prior to getting mixed up with the Winchester Boys and the trap is out in the middle of nowhere. So the idea that only a few demons are even aware of it is pretty plausible. Additionally one of the few that does know, Yellow Eyes/Azazel also knows what's inside. Without the Colt he doesn't have any reason to get in. Finally, even prior to the shake up in Hell Crowley was already King of the Crossroads and presumably one of the more powerful Demons. Enough that even if he couldn't move openly against Azazel subtly guiding his forces as far from that location as possible (which again probably wouldn't bother Azazel one bit) was likely within his power. I think Bobby is speaking in equivalents here, obviously not a real nuke but something along the power of a human soul would be needed.
772*** I'm not denying that most demon's didn't care about it and that there are plenty of reasons for it to be left alone. The question is simply why it would be claimed to be that much of an obstacle that it would need the equivalent of a nuke to break through. You only need to break part of a devil's trap to render it ineffective and given the trap is still just made of iron standard explosives would be enough. In equivalent terms, that's a lot less powerful than a human soul or a nuke.
773** The Doylist reason is the hunters would be overwhelmed in a week if demons, vampires, and other assorted nasties did the intelligent thing. The Watsonian reason? Demons are dumb. Really, ''really'' dumb. To the point that they repeatedly walk into devil's traps and fail to just pick up Sam or Dean and snap their necks in favor of tossing them across the room.
774*** The trap has been intact for a long time. Maybe the guy who made it enchanted it so it couldn't be broken in one place, otherwise it would repair itself, it had to be fully destroyed.
775
776* Whatever happened to the three other horsemen rings? I know from an out of universe perspective the explanation is simply that there was never an interesting time to reintroduce them. However, you basically have three of the most powerful artifacts from the show, conveniently pocket sized, with no established long term harm, and they can be worn by a human character. Given how powerful Dean became when wearing Death's ring (if he still had the ring he could just walk up invisibly behind someone and kill them with a touch) it definitely seems like they should have come up at some point when facing one of the enemies they don't know how to kill (even if just as something to be dismissed as too dangerous to use).
777** At a guess, the writers either forgot about them (as they did Adam) or are refusing to address the issue to leave them available for later use. Presumably they stashed them someplace "safe" like they did Death's ring before Dean returned it.
778
779* What are reapers? Originally they seemed to be a distinct species/race presumably descended from Death himself who at the time was touted as God's equal. At least he claimed he would reap God when the time came and that neither of them could remember who was eldest. Amara makes no mention of a third and in fact much of her conversations about God seem to confirm that God created the Universe essentially because he was lonely. Later Reapers were revealed to be a job type for angels, similar to a Cupid. Now we've got Billie who doesn't seem to be just another angel who stepped up. For starters at this point an angel threatening Sam and Dean would need a bit of swagger to not simply get told off by Cas but when the S11 finale hits she comes through with a couple hundred thousand souls that apparently Cas didn't have access to and God seemed to not even know about. [[spoiler: In God's defense he was at death's door and possibly not thinking clearly.]]
780** remember that even God didn't mention Death that much, its clear Death and God know each other, Death probably demanded that God make him a few helpers, so God used the blueprint he knew, Angels, so Reapers are Angels in design with all the same powers and abilities but with the added ability to reap souls. also originally they were just an aspect of Death, but after the rewrite after s3, they introduced angels and basically (stupidly) retconned Reapers as a subtype of angel.
781** This is part of my response for another couple of questions, but I'm just going to repeat it here. I imagine that reapers are related to angels, like some sort of cousins (the two do have some similar abilities, as would be needed to ferry souls to Heaven), but that angels and reapers generally don't interact with each other, as Cas didn't even bother trying to talk to the reapers in the Carthage - presumably they would have ignored him, although that might have had more to do with them being in some kind of thrall awaiting Death's arrival. However, with the gates of Heaven shut and the crapfest of angel skirmishes going on on Earth, the angels would naturally be running into reapers far more often and the two cousin species decided it was best to team up for the time being, especially since the reapers couldn't really do their regular jobs properly at that point. In fact, since the souls were just ending up stuck in the Veil, they probably ''really'' wanted to take out Metatron, moreso than the angels. Tessa was going crazy, and the other reapers likely wouldn't have been in much better shape, so the reapers would have been willing to work with the angels. Flash forward to season 11, and we've got Billie, who's not hanging around with any angels and whom Cas doesn't seem to really know. At this point, the bulk of angel fighting on Earth is over, so reapers like Billie would revert back to ignoring the angels again.
782
783* It's very possible I missed something but at the end of "Criss Angel Is A Douche bag" why does Vernon end his friendship with Jay? I understand he was upset over Charlie's death but Charlie was using black magic to kill people! Yet Vernon is upset with Jay for stopping a murderer but he's fine with Charlie killing people if he gets immortality out of it?
784** Even if they were morally justified in doing it, if someone killed your best friend, would you feel like going for a beer with them? It's possible that Vernon knew what Jay did was right but it could still be hard to look at him. Besides, we don't know Vernon's values. Vernon, at least, seemed intrigued by the possibility of immortality. In fact, once he learnt about it he seemed quite willing to allow people to die so he could be young again. He may not have seen anything wrong with what Charlie had done. A few moments before Charlie was killed, Vernon was looking at the possibility of being young again and living forever with his two best friends. He wanted that. Then one of those friends ruined it by killing the other. It's not surprising that he'd be upset with that friend.
785* Two questions about the episode "Lucifer Rising". 1. Who changed the voicemail Dean left for Sam? 2. If Azazel's real goal was to find Lucifer's vessel and he only got the order in the 70s then who or what are the other generations of special kids he mentioned in the season 2 finale?
786** 1. Presumably Zachariah, being the face of the angel dickery. 2. Alternate vessels for Lucifer, breaking the seals, some part of a future "leading demon armies" idea that never came to pass when the Apocalypse got derailed, or just generally causing chaos. Demons are supposed to get off on that, apparently.
787
788* How is Amara the 'Yin' to God/Chuck's 'Yang'. She (mostly) justifiably pissed off that she's been locked away for billions of years and even then she has a lower actual body count than Lucifer or probably even Azazel. She certainly isn't blindly destructive or anything that would truly put her as a balancing force to Chuck even if she hadn't been locked away for billions of years.
789** She destroyed several worlds that Chuck made before she was locked away - indeed thats ''why'' Chuck locked her away. Her destroying worlds doesn't really have anything to do with her imprisonment.
790
791* The season 10 finale has Cas, Sam, Dean, Crowley and Rowena gathering souls to make a bomb and kill Amara. The morality of this is never questioned even a little which is worrisome. We've seen enough of souls in Heaven to know they are sentient and happy. Hellbound spirits and perhaps even ghosts (if they weren't insane) might be happy to end it all and help humanity but that's not the norm. If you accept what we've seen, that destroying a soul is essentially destroying a conscious being why not just ask actual humans. If you need the power of 10,000 suns and each human being equals 100 suns I'm certain you can find more than enough living breathing hardcore religious people who would literally crawl over each other to be first in line. Hell you've probably got enough people in any major city, especially with the sun dying.
792** They didn't have time to ask. Chuck was dying and at best they had only a few hours. They didn't have time to try to explain the situation to a few hundred thousand people the situation and try to prove that the dying man (Chuck) was God. To most people God is invincible and conjuring up 10,000 suns should not be a problem yet Chuck could barely manage teleporation. Crowley stated his stash of souls were gone and could not go to Hell to get more. The angels would not allow the souls in their safekeeping to be used. What other option did they have? And it was season 11 finale not season 10.
793
794* In Season 10 "The Hunter Games" Sam and Dean ask Crowley to retrieve the First Blade. Crowley tells them it's in a crypt in Guam with his bones. What possible reason did he have for telling them that? Firstly, he didn't want them to get the blade so he had no logical reason to give them any hints to its whereabouts (but that's forgivable given Guam is a big place and he could certainly teleport quicker than they could drive there). However, more importantly, there was an earlier episode (Weekend at Bobby's) when the Winchesters went to Scotland to Crowley's grave and threatened to burn his bones. That episode established that you could kill a demon by burning their bones if you knew where their body was. At the end of that episode Crowley had to move his bones specifically so the Winchesters didn't know where they were. He may not have given the Winchesters an address but he was casually giving them a giant hint about how they could kill him in future using a tactic they'd nearly succeeded with before (in fact, they would have done had it not been for agreeing to let him live in exchange for him helping Bobby). We also see that he puts his original name on the crypt (which Sam and Dean should know from the earlier episode) which seems rather poorly thought out for someone who should logically want to hide their identity.
795** Considering that Crowley can do whatever he wants and the boys apparently have no intention of just shanking him like they should have years ago, he probably wasn't worried. And knowing Crowley, it could very well have been a trap.
796
797* In Season 10 "Dark Dynasty" why didn't Sam and Dean call Cas (who was worried and on standby) and have him [[spoiler: Angel over to the hotel and rescue Charlie? He wasn't really doing anything at the time and he's got his grace back so he's at least at part power. And as strong as the Stynes might be, they're still human and can't really do much against an angel. It seems like a horrible oversight.]]
798** [[spoiler: He didn't have his wings back and so couldn't teleport there. He couldn't have gotten there any faster than they would have and probably would have gotten there after them (too late).]]
799* According to Keep Calm and Carry On, there hasn't been a single monster-related death in the U.K. since 1965. Thing is, that's far more than ten years before the series began, when Bela's parents were killed by a Deal.
800** It's possible their claims were exaggerated or at least only "technically true" by using a certain definition of "monster". I suggested this point on the WMG page that maybe demons (and hell hounds) aren't in the definition. We've seen Crowley teleport into Scotland (Weekend at Bobby's) so clearly a Crossroad Demon could enter the UK and kill people without the Men of Letters stopping them. I also suggest that witches and ghosts might not be (since people can become witches and ghosts while inside the country, meaning there's no way to detect them at airports and the docks which was mentioned was part of their strategy). So maybe "monster" for their definition only includes things like vampire, werewolves and shapeshifters. Perhaps restricting the definition of monsters allows them to keep their "perfect" record.
801** Crowley was in Scotland for about maybe 10 minutes at most, and the area looked vaguely highlandish, remember, MoL weren't conceived yet, but in canon, they probably did get the alarm (sigil?) a demon was in Scotland,but was gone by the time they got there, or maybe demons because of their, here one moment, gone the next teleporting, they can bypass the little sigils, remember Toni said they had Sigils in every ENTRANCE to Britain, Demons just pop in and out, no need to take a ship or a train or plane, like other monsters, so I think they attibute their "perfect" record to monsters, not demons.
802** Either way, the point is even if we assume that the Men of Letters get notified and even if we assume that the Men of Letters are just that good that they can stop any demon they encounter without a single death (unlikely given we've already seen one killed by a human), a halfway competent demon could easily commit a small massacre long before the Men Of Letters could show up. So this does support the idea that their definition of monster probably doesn't mean "supernatural being" and that their "no monster deaths" is far from what a hunter would consider a perfect record.
803** We've got confirmation. the Men of Letters struck a deal with Crowley where Demons would not kill people normally, but anyone stupid enough to make a deal with them are fair game since they "deserve it" and presumably this extends to killing people as a part of the deal.
804
805* Does time actually pass faster in Hell than on Earth? It's been stated that Dean was tortured for years when he was in Hell, the same for his father. It seems to be a common assumption that time passes faster in Hell than on Earth in general. However, this never really seems to be clearly depicted elsewhere. When Bobby got out of Hell he didn't seem to act like decades had passed since he'd been gone. While people talked about Sam being tortured in the cage, I don't recall them mentioning it being for centuries. Demons who've gone to Hell and returned never act like centuries have passed since they were on Earth. No one ever comments on the fact that, with Crowley spending so much time on Earth, Hell effectively has an absentee leader for years at a time. Crowley has even been seen talking on the phone while in Hell (in "The Devil in the Details") to Earth which at least implies that time is passing at the same rate for people on both ends of the call. So is time actually sped up in Hell generally or is it just that time is fluid in Hell and can be sped up for particular reasons (like if you want to torture someone to break them more quickly) but normally time passes as the same rate as on Earth?
806** Time was stated back in S4 to go faster in Hell, that Dean was down there for a few decades. The Cage originally was a separate dimension from Hell so that is irrelevant though presumably Michael and Lucifer were in charge there. In theory Crowley might actually be popping in and out at speeds we can't perceive or Hell runs itself to a large degree. In reality if the president of the United States vanished we could go on for quite a while without it effecting the average person. But really the plot just forgets at times.
807** Dean being in hell for decades, doesn't discount the ability of time being fluid in hell and being able to be sped up for particular reasons as was stated above. I'm struggling to remember a time when the time difference has been shown or mentioned since hell has become a frequent visiting place. If time is fluid and normally doesn't move differently to Earth that makes perfect sense, particularly explaining the thing with the phone but if it's supposed to be different all the time it should at least come up now and then.
808** [[spoiler: Adding to this, in “Our Father, Who Aren’t in Heaven” Adam specifically mentioned that it’d been ten years since he had seen a burger. It would seem odd for him to refer to the amount of time that had passed on Earth, if it’d been centuries for him since he’d last seen a burger. This suggests time had passed at the same rate in the cage as it’d passed on Earth during that time. Since the cage is in Hell, this implies time can’t move faster everywhere in Hell.]]
809* Okay I know this this posted above but with the Colt reappearing and taking what appears to be a high place in the weapons category we need to go back to what it can't kill and how "things" is defined. We know it can't kill Lucifer because we tried that. So was Lucifer a special Archangel or is Archangels one of the things it won't kill? Because presumably God, Amara and Death are three things it can't kill. But with Micheal, Raph, and Lucifer we're at six. But if God and Amara are one (presumably being the same whatever deity class) and the Archangels are one we're down to three leaving two slots open for what it can't kill.
810** What do you think they're going to roll out as the BigBad for the next couple seasons?
811** Just a couple of things to mention (some of them from the above discussion). First, the wording was, "five things in all of creation". Arguably, God, Amara and even Death don't count as in creation and so wouldn't be on the list of five. Second, I'd think Cain should be included (at the time the statement was made, the mark wouldn't let him die). Third, if we accept that the statement only applies to some archangels and not others, we do need to consider the question of how you'd know that (it's easy to know someone's immune; the Colt doesn't kill them, but hard to know the Colt can kill them unless there was a weaker archangel or equivalent being the Colt did kill). Finally, the list of five would of course not include any being not in existence at the time the statement was made.
812
813
814* Why in the future where Sam says yes to Lucifer, but Dean says no to Michael and leads that survivor group, did the angels not use Adam as a vessel, Lucifer was already using Sam, and Dean wouldn't give his consent to Michael. In the future did the angels not know about Adam or what?
815** Could be the demons managed to take Adam prisoner after he was resurrected but before the angels got there (like Sam and Dean did when they snagged him after his resurrection).
816** I think the Endverse makes more sense if you think of it as a vision Zachariah constructed in order to manipulate Dean into saying yes, rather than an actual possible future.
817
818* Why doesnt Dagon just possess Kelly Kline and just carry the nephillim to term that way?
819** I know this is at least partially Buffy logic, but when Darla was pregnant - and the baby had a soul - Darla was temporarily a vampire with a soul because technically a soul was inside her. By similar logic, even if the baby-daddy is Lucifer... Lucifer's still an angel. The baby has angel's grace, and who knows what that will do to a Prince of Hell's system. Plus, according to Dagon, nephilim always, without question, kill the mothers and Dagon probably doesn't want to take the risk.
820** Later in that season it's established that Lucifer's child will protect its mother, even to the point of resurrecting her after her suicide (though it is never stated whether this is true for all in-utero Nephilim). This troper would say it's not too much to say that it would have smote Dagon if she had attempted to possess Kelly.
821** It's also possible that the mother being possessed by a demon could have messed up the child. Jesse's mother (who says she was a virgin) was possessed by a demon throughout the pregnancy and the child ended up half-demon. The baby gets all its nutrients from the mother and we know that being possessed by a demon changes the body (hence why demon blood is different from human blood). Given the effect on Sam of having some demon blood as a baby, being connected to a demon's system for nine months as it develops probably would have resulted in the baby turning out with a demon half which Lucifer presumably didn't want. Speaking of Jesse, it was also shown that during the actual birth the demon inside his mother lost control so it was better to have Kelly on side.
822
823* How is Mary able to beat Lucifer back into the spacetime rift in the finale with just normal Enochian brass knuckles? One could give her the fist, maybe even the second hit based on Lucifer being shocked or impressed at her resolve, or even him just being arrogant enough to want to show her how futile it is to fight him, but she hits him unopposed like five times! At literally any point during the fight he could have torn her in half, or just snapped his fingers and annihilated her on a sub-atomic level, as he's done in the past. How does she manage to beat him?!
824** The plot seems to bend where the Enochian brass knuckles (or angel-dusters as I prefer to call them) are concerned. That Watt Lady was able to take on Dean and Cas easily in spite of Dean (who shouldn't have been impacted at all) having put up a much better effort against actual monsters and Cas having survived an extended period being hunted by heaven even while completely human. Perhaps they have some sort of magical ability to render any opponent unwilling to use their full strength against you?
825
826* Season 12 in general, most notably the episode "Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets", make it very clear that nephilim are considered to be a very serious and dangerous threat to the cosmos, such that even a rumor of one of them being conceived is enough to justify an angelic kill squad being dispatched to Earth. With that in mind, has there been any in-universe explanation for why Jane, the nephilim from "Clip Show", was basically ignored by Heaven until Castiel and Metatron needed her?
827** I don't believe it was ever stated explicitly. Castiel at the very least didn't know about her. His response upon learning who she was was, "She's the offspring of an angel and a human? I thought that wasn't allowed" which confirmed it was definitely against the rules. When Metatron called her an abomination, Castiel didn't disagree that she was (merely saying it wasn't her fault). It's probable that if the angels knew about her, they would have done something about her. The fact that they did nothing suggests they most likely didn't know about her (Metatron being an exception since he had access to a lot of secrets the rest of heaven didn't and was willing to hold on to them/use them for his own ends). Angels have hidden on Earth/deceived heaven before so it's not unreasonable to think a nephilim could have.
828
829* If The Darkness existed before Chuck, and is stronger than him, why would killing her mean the death of chuck and vice versa? Her existing before Chuck implies that she, at one point, was not a part of a Cosmic Keystone-esque relationship and thus was not reliant on keeping her 'brother' alive. If the darkness cannot exist without the light then would not both be equal in age and if both are supposedly a "yin-yang" like cosmic relationship, would not they be both equal in power and strength?
830** The Darkness may not necessarily have started out needing God. It's entirely possible that they only became bound together when God came to be, or perhaps later during their "time" together as the only things in existence. [[MindScrew God may even have come into being specifically because he needed to exist but didn't.]] On the topic of their power comparisons, Amara was said to embody "destruction" while God embodies "Creation." It's likely not that he's weaker than her, it's just that Amara's powers are innately offensive while God's are creative. She can "destroy" him but he can't exactly "create" her into nothing.
831
832* In season 13 episode 4, [[spoiler:we find out from what appears to be the personification of The Big Empty that it's where everything that dies goes if it doesn't have a mortal soul. Unlike humans and monsters who go to heaven or hell or purgatory, angels and demons go to The Big Empty and "slumber" dreamlessly forever.]] Okay, that does make sense. But then it says that nothing, not even God, [[spoiler:can bring back something from The Big Empty.]] This claim is impossible. God has brought back Castiel multiple times with apparently little trouble, and in season 11 He strongly implies that all He'd need to revive even an Archangel is the right materials. God very clearly can do what [[spoiler: The Big Empty]] claims He can't, and since it's [[spoiler:read all of Castiel's memories]], it definitely knows of the above incidents. Why would it claim something that both it, Castiel and the audience knows for a fact isn't correct?
833** Good point. Some speculation...maybe God can only recreate these beings, not technically bring them back. That would suggest Castiel would exist in [[spoiler:The Empty]] in multiple forms with a new version being recreated each time he's brought back and one existing there. Alternatively, it may have something to do with the passage of time. [[spoiler:Angels and demons may not arrive there immediately (though not being conscious they wouldn't realize it). There may be a window, not necessarily using time as we understand it, within which God can retrieve them. It's only once someone ends up in The Empty that they become impossible to resurrect.]]
834*** OP here. If God's [[spoiler:resurrections]] turn out to have actually been [[spoiler:recreations of identical clones]] all along, [[FridgeHorror it would pop open a whole 6-pack of cans filled with horrifying implications.]] As for the time aspect, it would be illogical for Castiel to have even arrived in [[spoiler:The Big Empty]] yet seeing as God was prepared to [[spoiler:resurrect an archangel who's been dead of almost a decade]] if only he'd had the right materials. If the latter isn't there to be out of reach yet then the former shouldn't be either.
835*** Regarding the idea that Castiel couldn't have arrived there yet, that depends. There's no reason to assume that the window is the same each time. [[spoiler: Maybe being more powerful Archangels take a lot longer to fade from our reality and reach the Big Empty than regular angels or seraphim, with their "tether" to Earth needing to break down first. So God normally has a small window to resurrect Castiel, which he normally used, and had a much larger window for more powerful Archangels.]] Also, as I recall the line, it was that no one "has any pull here" including God. Possibly, that's not the same thing as resurrection being impossible. It may effectively mean that even God can't wake someone up. However, there would be ways to enter [[spoiler: The Empty]]. If so and if someone were close to the entrance, they could be retrieved [[spoiler: (on a place that's been around for eternity, and if the entrance is where the newest deaths are coming in, even those killed a few years ago would still be relatively close to the entrance)]]. Once brought back to God's domain, they could be resurrected [[spoiler: (This would also explain why Billie believed she could throw Dean into The Empty and he'd be dead permanently if he was going to be too deep to be retrieved)]].
836* In season 13 episode 5, [[spoiler: Billie the Reaper returns, now having become the actual incarnation of Death in the Supernatural universe. If this is true, how and why was she doing Death's work and having way too much power for just a reaper before she actually gained them? She says the first reaper to die after Death becomes the new Death, but way before that she whipped up millions of souls in the palm of her hand with a snap of her fingers in season 11, something well beyond what a reaper should be able to do. Such a feat of power would logically have made her a danger even to an Archangel, but apparently she was just a normal reaper at the time? She wasn't actually Death's replacement back then, so why and how was she so powerful?]]
837** The real answer is that the show is completely inconsistent on Reapers what, they are, what they can do. Originally they seemed to just be guides to the after life with no actual ability to force you to do anything. That's how ghosts are made. Then they were walked up a bit and given the ability to force you, then they were Angels after the Fall. But if that's true then the moment Death died they would have gotten together do whatever Angel Mediation is (or just race to stab themselves unless suicide doesn't count) and picked a new Death immediately not waited until on of them was randomly taken out. So the real answer is that like most media with magic and the such it eventually becomes obvious that nobody planned this far in advance and it shows.
838*** Alternatively, do we know for a fact that [[spoiler: that the Reapers were aware of it beforehand? The way that the previous Death talked, it seemed as though he was also the first Death; it could simply be that, before Dean came along, Death had never died before and thus the fact that "the first Reaper to die after Death becomes the new Death" was a fact of reality that they were simply unaware, and Billie only learned of it when she died and took up the mantle.]]
839* Also from season 13 episode 5, [[spoiler:the new Death tells Dean that she - as Death - can now see the "bigger picture" and that Sam & Dean really have something in the universe that they must still do. If this is true then why did the previous Death want them dead, even going so far as to make deals with them in exchange for making it happen? He too should've known that they have yet to do these things that even Death wants done.]]
840** [[spoiler: Being able to see the bigger picture doesn't necessarily mean having the same perspective on it. She may be Death now but the old Death was still a different being with different opinions. He may have known about their role in the cosmic fabric and still believed the universe was better off without them. It may be like the apocalypse when they both had a role to fulfil and yet, if necessary, Adam could act as a stand-in. No one was irreplaceable. Perhaps the previous Death believed that it was better to eliminate them and allow someone else to take their place. Having lived as long as he had, his perspective could only be wider.]]
841** The Big Picture may also be in constant flux instead of written in stone, that seems to be the implication of Billie's Dean Dies Library. Pretty much every time a Winchester comes back from the dead things get worse. It's entirely possible that we are so far off the reservation that what was a glitch in the Matrix is now your skeleton key.
842** it's possible Billie always intended to do her plan from the final season, something the original Death wasn't interested in.
843* In "ScoobyNatural," how did the Mystery Inc. and the brothers drive to the haunted mansion when, if they were in "A Night of Fright is No Delight" in which the mansion in question is located on an island?
844* [[spoiler: In “Let the Good Times Roll”, how did Michael and Lucifer find “a most holy man” whose blood they could use to open the rift? Given that almost all of humankind has been wiped out, how are there any even slightly holy men left?]]
845** [[spoiler: Four possibilities suggest themselves. Firstly, they may not have needed to actually find one and may have just found some blood preserved somewhere (Sam and Dean's original plan) which is easy to do when you can teleport anywhere in the world instantly. Secondly, Michael did have some humans working for him such as Kevin Tran. You have to figure that of anyone, devoutly religious people are likely to be the most loyal to Michael and may be kept alive and used to serve him (such as to infiltrate other human groups). That would mean that their blood could be available to him. Thirdly, Father Luca had apparently been declared a most holy man by the Pope. Archangel outranks Pope so it's possible that Michael could make his own. Finally though, Archangels do have the powers of time travel and resurrection so even if there was no "most holy man" blood anywhere they could have either gone back in time or brought someone back to life to get it.]]
846* So why did Ruby bother to repower the Colt? It's one of the few weapons with the potential to screw up the plan of getting Sam to rely on his demonic powers. If she wanted to still give Bobby a reason to listen to her why not tell him how to make a second knife? It's less effective due to being short range and it doesn't work on demons higher on the food chain like Lilith and Alistair.
847** If you want the meta reason, the writers probably hadn't decided to make Ruby evil at the time of the episode, as the writers' strike forced an abrupt ending to Season 3 that resulted in Season 4 containing angels among other plots. In-universe, unlike the knives, the Colt is one of the few weapons that demons would have at their disposal in Season 4 to deal with angels. Knowing that her boss kicking off the apocalypse would result in the angels coming down to earth to interfere, she probably had the Colt remade in preparation for the upcoming demon vs. angel war. Ruby was probably planning on letting the hunters score a few wins with the Colt and then taking it so that the demons would have an easier time dealing with angels.
848* In [[Recap/SupernaturalS06E18Frontierland Frontierland]], if they only had a 24 hour window and knew the Phoenix was going to be killed some time on the 5th of March, why did Cas send them back to noon on the 4th of March? Colt's note just said "Gun killed a Phoenix today" (referring to the 5th of March). If it hadn't turned up until 12:10 PM on the 5th of March then they would have had to leave before it arrived. If Cas could control the time it would have been better to have them arrive some time later in the day on the 4th so their odds of still being there on the 5th when the Phoenix was were increased. If it had to be noon, noon on the 5th would make more sense (since they only needed the ash and even if the Phoenix had been killed in the morning its ashes would likely still be around at noon).I suppose it's possible the time of day is completely random but in that case sending them back to the 4th still has the same issues (since if it's a choice between missing it because you're early or missing it because you're late, at least being late gives you some chance to collect the ashes).
849* Why was Dean (hosting Michael) and Lucifer's fight so underwhelming? We were led to believe that a fight between two archangels would put a strain on the very fabric of reality itself, but the friggin' ''church'' was mostly undamaged.
850** My theory is that Dean was holding back to avoid such an outcome and Lucifer was doing the same just for funsies.
851* What happened to the guy who was Michael's vessel in the Apocalypse world? As soon as that version of Michael jumps into Dean his old host apparently ceases to exist. He seems like someone Sam and the crew would want to keep around for his familiarity with Michael.
852** Hosting an angel is dangerous even at the best of times and archangels are even worse. Sam, Dean and Adam were able to host Lucifer and Michael with no side effects because they were literally bred for it (Adam less so but still close enough). Odds are Michael's old vessel was braindead after he left.
853
854* Regarding the death of, well, Death, and what we learn about Death and Reapers in later episodes: Presumably Death's library of all the ways anybody is killed doesn't extend to how he himself is killed? Either that, or he's being deliberately obfuscatory when we first meet Death and he invites Dean to contemplate just how insignificant Death finds him. You'd think Death might find the person who reaps him just a tad significant. Other possibilities: He doesn't actually consider his own reaping significant as the job itself continues and a new Death is promoted; and/or he is being really obfuscatory and recognizes the Winchesters as having some sort of cosmic significance and apparent ability to cheat their own fates and really is on their side but doesn't want to show it, which explains Appointment in Samarra and agreeing to get Sam's soul back even though Dean didn't follow through on his deal (as well as wanting to give a lesson about cheating fate...).
855* OG Death looked outright surprised at the moment Dean killed him, so it seems he hadn't at all expected it - which would also make sense, since he also told Dean he would reap God one day. It sounds as if there are multiple "death books", but the most probably deaths seem to be mentioned repeatedly, with less probable deaths as outliers (based on Season 14, when Billie - "New Death" - told Dean that "all his books had changed to the same death, except for one.") Additionally, based on the same comments by Billie, these books aren't carved in stone, but can change and update if circumstances change. That is to say, there genuinely may not have been a written outcome as of Season 5 that Dean Winchester would kill Death in Season 10. It would have been massively unlikely (not least of all because no one expected the show to go on that long). At the time Death spoke to Dean in Season 5, they were at the precipice of a theoretically-Apocalyptic battle. Even if Death was aware that both Sam and Dean would survive that and that Dean would eventually acquire the Mark of Cain, he **surely** never anticipated that Dean would somehow overpower a curse specifically designed for brother-killing, and manage to kill him instead.
856
857* Is the reality of the show the original universe or just the latest universe [[spoiler:created by Chuck? The former idea is supported because Amara was apparently imprisoned by the angels of the show's universe while Chuck repeatedly calls them the real Sam and Dean. However the latter is supported because why would Chuck create a new universe to watch Sam and Dean when he hasn't seen the original versions kill each other, and in the episode where he confirms Sam saw his memories his comments imply that those were previous versions of Sam and Dean he had created before the current versions. Does Chuck simply create new universes from scratch or does he alter the history of one universe to create a new version?]]
858
859* [[spoiler:Why didn't Jack get rid of all the monsters before leaving?]]
860** Out of universe so that they could do what they did in the finale and possibly do sequel series. In universe it's probably supposed to be that Jack didn't want to interfere at all so he put everything on Earth back exactly as it was before, the good and the bad.
861
862* I know this is really late, but how can there be multiple versions of the Archangels across the Multiverse? Like the other Primordials, they're ''older'' than the universe, so they should be older than the formation of the Multiverse, right? And didn't [[spoiler:Chuck]] say that making Archangels is really time-consuming and difficult? How did he make so many Michaels, Lucifers, Raphaels, and Gabriels?
863** Because Chuck lied about how hard it would be to make new Archangels, just like he lied about Michael being too crazy to let out of the cage. And just like how he left Gabriel in the hands of Asmodeus. Those rare elements he'd supposedly need to make them? Only existed in the first place because he created them. He's GOD, there are no established limits on his ability to create. As for the duplicates, they're likely copied from the originals whenever Chuck wants to play with a new world. So in the beginning there were one set, the ones from the show world, and then Chuck just copied and pasted whenever he got a new idea.
864* Why is Daphne worried about going to Hell? What did she do to warrant that fearful attitude?
865** Premarital sex with Fred. Don't act like it doesn't happen, we can all tell.
866** If you were provided with proof that the afterlife was real, you'd probably at least briefly worry over whether or not you're going to the undesirable end of that regardless of how you've lived your life. Daphne probably just had a brief paranoid freak out rather than suggesting she's led an immoral life.
867** Breaking and entering, possibly. How often has the gang actually gotten ''permission'' to snoop around all those reputedly-haunted properties?
868** In a kinda funny way, a [=YouTuber=]'s sidekick suggested it was because she assumed it was due to her fashion sense.
869** Or maybe it's an EasterEgg reference to how, in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated'', it's Daphne who opened the Gate of Fire to the closest approximation of Hell the Scooby Gang ever set foot in, in any incarnation.
870* [[spoiler: If the gang learned the ghost was just a scared boy, would it put them at ease to know some ghosts are just normal people?]]
871** Hmmm, yes and no. They’re more frightened of the idea that the afterlife, and all supernatural elements implied, actually DO exist. That the spirit in question [[spoiler:was just a frightened child]] may only slightly ease their minds about that particular case. To say nothing of the fact that said ghost, regardless of age, killed several people.
872* Wouldn’t it have been easier for Dean to explain to the gang that he, Sam, Castiel, and the ghost are from a parallel universe where the rules are a little different and the supernatural does exist, rather than pull a StatusQuoIsGod at the end?
873** A similar question is what would happen if Sam, Dean and Castiel ''didn't'' do so and left the Scooby Gang thinking (knowing?) that ghosts do exist? Would only the Winchesters' copy of that episode be affected, would all copies of that episode be affected, or would all ''Scooby-Doo!'' episodes that exist be altered through a ripple effect?
874* If it's been established that ''Scooby-Doo!'' takes place in the same universe as some DC Comics content (''ComicBook/ScoobyDooTeamUp'', ''WesternAnimation/TheNewScoobyDooMovies'' (Batman and Robin as guest stars), ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndBatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'' cameos in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooWrestlemaniaMystery'', maybe more -- because surely the existence of magic, the supernatural, aliens, etc. would be public knowledge), then why is the gang so surprised to learn that the supernatural exists? Unless you don't consider any of these entries as canon to this episode...

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