Season 11 anon, with a quick second thought because I ran out of room in my last ask. Sam was very adamant about saving Len and scolds Dean for thinking that they might have to kill Len saying “we can’t kill him yet, he hasn’t done anything” as if given their history with the soulless Dean’s not on the right track. Especially as Sam hasn’t spoken to him. Dean seemed to be being realistic about, given the situation, they might have to stop Len and in their history that includes killing. Vs Sam, possibly motivated by the guilt of this being his fault, has this idealistic or impractical approach as Amara ate the soul so there is no saving or fixing in that situation. The fact that Sam is being framed as the “voice of reason” and Dean as willing to just blast away, I guess I’m not happy with that word choice but here we are, feels like a huge step backwards in terms of character growth because over that past ten seasons Dean has been becoming more empathetic to “good” monsters (his MoC days excluded) while Sam has been becoming less sympathetic perhaps in general not just towards those who aren’t human.
Hello again :) This is, naturally, going to be a bit shorter, since this was just a follow up ask; hope that’s okay! I get what you’re saying about the situation, and I agree. Sam is very — as you put it — idealistic (which, imo, stems from the fact that his “goodness” comes from his morals, as we’ve defined them, and not from his values), whereas Dean is realistic verging on, tbh, cynical.
Frankly, while I think that Sam’s we can’t kill anyone unless it’s the last possible alternative is noble, he also takes it too far. I also agree that Sam is pretty consistently viewed as “the voice of reason” in contrast to Dean’s trigger-happy-ness (yes, that’s definitely a word, shhhh) and that’s aggravating too. Given that the brothers are perched squarely on the divide between right and wrong, the fact that he’s stating absolutes like that (we never kill anyone unless it’s the last alternative) and abiding by it in all contexts isn’t good. He should be a bit more adaptable to the situation, because what’s right in one context might not be right in others. (Like, for example, the statement that “killing is bad.” It’s true, generally, but self-defense — despite having the same result of loss-of-life — is usually considered not-bad.) The context is what changes the acceptability or not of an action, whereas Sam tends to take one point and apply it in all situations, regardless of what’s going on, and, given the nature of their fictional universe, that luxury isn’t always present. Take the contagion in the earlier eps we discussed: yeah, it was possible — and, indeed, it happened to shake out well — that he could have found a cure. But was it likely? No. Additionally, as you and I have discussed, he might well have gotten people killed in the meantime. In that context, it turns into a trolley problem — whether to exchange one lives for many, or, perhaps more accurately, when to make that exchange — instead of a situation befitting Sam’s one-size-fits-all don’t kill unless absolutely necessary mentality (because, technically, in these situations, there’s always another alternative: letting the trolley smash through five people instead of taking out the driver). The same is true of soullessness, where they’re but in the dilemma of to take out the person (and possibly harm an innocent who was never going to go dark side) or not to take out the person (and possibly let them harm other innocents before they can be stopped).
I do agree that the showrunners/writers/et al. did make Dean a bit more… ruthless? maybe? in this episode — judging from my vague recollections of the episode, as well as the transcript online — relative to his seasons-long arc, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it is a bit of a too-sharp step back; on the other, he did just come off of being in a situation (i.e. having the MOC) in which he was in a vaguely similar position to the people in question. Because he had the Mark, he’s experienced the sensation of trying to do the right thing and not necessarily being able to/being corrupted by the supernatural side of himself, so it kinda makes sense that he wouldn’t want to trust that Len would be able to resist his soullessness. Especially since he knows how Sam and the others reacted to being soulless. It’s kind of an “I couldn’t do it, Sam couldn’t do it, and all these other people couldn’t do it; it’s naive to assume that he’ll be able to do it” situation. (And all this is pointedly not helped by the fact that he’s Sam’s exact opposite. Sam is “neutral”, but trying to be “good”; Dean is “good”, but thinks he’s not. So Sam has this idealistic view of “oh, Len’s a good person, he can fight this, he’ll be fine” because he wants it to be true and Dean is looking at the situation from more of an “oh, come on, he’s a good person but he’s not gonna be able to resist it any more than you were, he doesn’t deserve to die because he hasn’t hurt anyone yet but we can’t take that chance, so, I, the resident Bad Person, shall deal with it” mindset.) Anyway, that was a long way of saying: I think Dean shouldn’t have been portrayed as ruthlessly as he was, but it also does make some sense that he’d be more ruthless than before. If that makes sense?
Thank you for the ask, and I hope that made sense :)
