Listening to Phelous & Lupas' podcast right now and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's fed up with this show's constant use of torture. It happens every other episode now, and they don't even mention that they torture the innocent possession victims anymore.
Role Model
Once they got Ruby's knife, the writers got lazy, and the brothers stopped giving a shit about possession victims.
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
In the premiere, Sam says that Dean is dead when he finds out he's possessed.
That's kinda a big leap. Since when did being possessed mean the victim was dead? Yes, nine times out of ten the demon will kill the victim out of wear and tear, but considering there are human lives on the line, you'd think they'd at least stop to think about it.
@Nate I like that interpretation.
Or...Not really, now that I think about it. The angels (at least the ones at the top of the pack) wanted the seal to be broken. I wouldn't be surprised if there were angels "helping" Castiel that were sabotaging the mission until Dean or John broke.
And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.
Role Model
They might've just not sent down people right away. Dean had broken the seal at least one real world month prior to getting busted out.
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
Dark Matter
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
From what I gathered from the episode, Dean and Crowley left immediately after the former resurrected as a Demon, without informing Sam. Before that, last time Sam saw Dean was when he 'died' from the stab wound he got from Meta-turd.
And Sam was then trying to summon Crowley IIRC, who didn't show up and then disappeared with Dean.
Tl;dr version:
- Dean gets shanked
- Dean 'dies'
- Sam tries to summon Crowley
- Crowley doesn't show up, Dean revives
- Dean disappears with Crowley
With regards to the meat suits. Lately, presumably due to writer laziness, they act as if the host is irrelevant.
Case in point, they refer to 'Meg' by the name of her host, who is long-dead.
They only 'care' about Castiel, with no regard to Jimmy whatsoever.
Demons have the excuse of wearing out their hosts, but Angels don't. Angels presumably keep the host alive with their healing powers, but no one (even the Winchesters) cares about the Angel vessels when they die.
edited 12th Oct '14 3:43:57 PM by Sykosis
What was in your right hand is hope; And in another hand is something else to fade.
Exactly what was going on with the angels and Hell and seals is a bit mysterious and I like it that way. It's the good kind of mysterious where we have clues (like Zach said the "grunts" weren't aware the angels were throwing the war) and Cas really thought it was God that had need of Dean. But how much beyond that? Were some angels on the retrieval squad traitors that sabotaged? Or was the squad all earnest but maybe understaffed? Did the higher ups warn Hell about the incoming siege? Lots of fun theories to play around with.
Word on the angel bodies and I think I said that way up further in the thread: We KNOW angels heal the body they are in (established SEVERAL times in show) so therefore stabbing an angel definitely kills the host (unlike demons which can inhabit and animate dead bodies).
As for Cas... I like to imagine that one of the times he was brought back he was just given a new body that looked identical to Jimmy's so that the boys could identify Cas. It's a lot easier to imagine that Jimmy's soul was released and got to go to heaven (making Cas the sole occupant) since like... S5 premiere than to imagine things like graceless Cas soul sharing body space with Jimmy soul.
Heh, you know what they need to do? Bring back Jimmy's daughter. Let her troll the angels some.
Role Model
Yeah, I'm pretty sure "Jimmy" was released once when Cas died.
I forgot demons could possess previously dead bodies.
I agree that we don't need to know everything and some mystery is good.
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
Yeah for awhile now the possession rules of the show follow some solid logic & rules.
- Ghosts - Can force possess, but (apparently) only the living.
- Angels - Can possess only the living as they require permission, but can rez dead.
- Demons - Can force possess living or dead (being a combo of the prior two) but cannot heal/rez.
Role Model
I forgot ghosts could possess.
How often do they fight something that isn't an angel or demon now, anyway?
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
They fight demigods weirdly often. In all of season nine, they fought exactly one creature that wasn't previously established, like a demigod, ghost, angel, etc. (the pishtaco).
And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.
Huh, last night's episode was... not that bad. If the show can keep up this level of effort and quality this could be a pretty good season.
Must Keep The Web Intact
So I just started season 9 while waiting to get my hands on the 3 last seasons of Breaking Bad.
Sweet lawdy, how and why is this still going.
I'm really starting to realise I prefered this before the Angels where introduced.
The Great Northern Threadkill.
I thought the same. Of course, I also thought that this arc might yet again take too much away from the monster of the week format.
Me, too. I liked the whole Inigo Montoya scene. Poor guy has no idea what he's getting into.
Last season started with too many subplots and the season ended up with not a lot of focus. It looks like the same might be happening again now, but we'll have to wait and see.
Yeah...don't be too optimistic. IMO, most of the best episodes are pre-angel, but season four was good, partly because it was different and the angels were a big part of that.
Dark Matter
Jog my memory on the in-universe timeline.
Cole says Dean killed his father in 2003, and I assume it's currently 2014-2015
Dean's only been a Demon for 4 months.
Are we going by 1 season IRL = 1 year in-universe?
Cos if we are, that means that
- the incident occured 11-12 years ago **that time corresponds to somewhere between pre-season 1 and before season 2.
Assuming canon isn't being violated again, that would be before the Winchesters found out about Demons and were still 'good' guys.
Which means that for Dean to break into a house and kill Cole's father would mean that Cole's father was a 'target' aka a monster. But Cole seems 100% human
Something doesn't add up.
It would make more sense if he did it in the 4 months he was a Demon.
What was in your right hand is hope; And in another hand is something else to fade.
Maybe Cole's father had been replaced by a shapeshifter or a ghoul or some other monster. Or maybe Cole's father wasn't really Cole's father.
You're right on the timeline, Cole is SUPPOSED to be 22-23 roughly. (but then is a retired Marine and has a family?)
I'm with you that it is probably not a demon (especially because the father looks dead from a sliced throat and demons don't die to that unless you have Ruby's knife which isn't due until 5 years later). We're looking at either a swapped monster (shapeshifter?) an infected monster (werewolf?) or a case where the Dad was the victim of a monster, Dean took care of it, and kid!Cole misunderstood what was happening.
Could be a lot of things. The rugaru was a regular human for many years, much older than Cole. A shapeshifter seems very likely. Perhaps something transformed, like a vampire or a werewolf. Probably not demonic possession. Maybe it's something else entirely. They fought a lot of miscellaneous creatures back then. There are certainly many things that can take the place of a human.
So, I'm guessing there's some sort of time limit on the trials? If theoretically they're left open, then Sam would never be able to perform one of these rituals without completing them. He just completed the third trial with no repercussions though, so...
And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely means that I don't know.
Yeah, at least one part of the trials is uttering some rituals after completing them.
I like to think of it like a World Of Warcraft quest. You complete the 1st trial and you get a magic debuff on your character which has a time limit. You have to complete the 2nd trial before the debuff runs out else it doesn't count, but it does reset the debuff timer.
The debuff has run off Sam's character for awhile so yeah, the trials don't count as complete, he'd have to start over.
I don't remember much about the trials ("season gr8" my ass) but wasn't Sam very weak because of them? Isn't that the reason he needed to be saved by an angel in season 9, because he almost died? That could be the debuff, which means that when Sam was healed the trials were essentially cancelled.
Yep, that's my thoughts.
I'd put this in spoiler warning but quite frankly the closing scene in Tues' episode was so poorly done we SHOULD have had something like this to set it up.
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/supernatural/supernatural-mystery-who-is-th-54921.aspx
<— Uncovered details on the mystery woman.
Dark Matter
...wow
That didn't last very long.
Three episodes in and Dean is back to being human.
Castiel has been Grace'd by the assistance of Crowley
New mystery character. For a second I feared that it was Abaddon again, despite getting shanked last season.
And Cole is still out there. Don't really give two shits about him.
This co-dependence between the Winchesters is getting old. Those two fools are never gonna let each other die, are they?
I can picture, even when they're both in their 80s (or older) they still won't let each other die cos they can't live without each other.
And that's just sad.
What was in your right hand is hope; And in another hand is something else to fade.
Thanks for the refresher, guys.
I'm pretty sure that John just badassed his own way out of Hell once he got bored of frustrating Azazel and Alistair.
The sad, REAL American dichotomy