Sorry if someone has already mentioned this, and if I’m reading into this incorrectly, but with Sam now being connected to God is it paralleling Dean’s connection to Amara? I feel stupid for asking, but I was just curious. Thank you!
Yep, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention it that explicitly yet, but yep.
I mean, we got a visual reminder of the Mark of Cain visibly on Amara in 15.02. That the physical mark that connected Amara and Dean. And in the same scene we got a visual reminder that it’s approximately in the same location as the wound now connecting Chuck and Sam. In the scene where Amara pointed out that Chuck has been weakened, that he’s no longer “whole,” and pointed out that fact was specifically due to this injury.
She even paralleled Chuck’s situation to the majority of her existence where he’d kept her locked away behind that Mark, and compared it directly to what Chuck’s experiencing now as a result of that wound-- literally a thing of his own making. He made that gun that Sam used to injure him.
Oddly enough, because I just wrote this thing about Chuck’s GoT comment about narrative structure and storytelling in Supernatural, this just makes me feel even MORE strongly that the story itself is reminding us over and over again just what a terrible author Chuck is.
And on every possible meta level, and every past incident where a Heaven-Aligned being attempted to force Dean into compliance, to present Fate and Destiny as something he had zero power to change-- every single time these characters have been proven wrong. And yet... Chuck has continued writing the stories that attempt to force TFW into compliance with his desired ending. It’s like he doesn’t know these characters at all, you know? And yet he keeps trying to force them to do His Will instead of their own. And the events of 14.20 were him SNAPPING because he couldn’t take yet another round of his desired tragic ending being foiled by his favorite characters.
Because Dean is clearly wrong in his assessment of what their lives have been and meant. Cas is right in that THEY are real. But Dean’s just feeling SO tragically cut adrift by the revelation that Chuck has literally been FORCING them into these situations over and over again, burying them in the burden of solving increasingly implausible situations only to have an even larger cosmic burden dropped on them. He’s questioning the fundamental foundation he’s built his self-identity on-- the notion that people, families, that HUMANITY ITSELF means something, and that his own choices have meant something in the grand scheme of things.
Their conversation in 15.02 is an interesting reversal of the conversation in 4.22 where Dean first convinced Cas to rebel:
CASTIEL: Try to understand -- this is long foretold. This is your...DEAN: Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn?CASTIEL: What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam.DEAN: You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it. (CASTIEL turns away) Look at me! (DEAN grabs CASTIEL’s shoulder and turns CASTIEL back to face him)You know it! You were gonna help me once, weren't you? You were gonna warn me about all this, before they dragged you back to Bible camp. Help me -- now. Please.CASTIEL: What would you have me do?DEAN: Get me to Sam. We can stop this before it's too late.CASTIEL: I do that, we will all be hunted. We'll all be killed.DEAN: If there is anything worth dying for... this is it.
And right now, I’ve got 6.17 on the TNT loop, and this also feels like another iteration of these big themes that the show has been pounding out for... ever... (reminder that this is after Sam and Dean wake up with reality restored, and Sam asks Cas if he actually killed 50,000 people to keep them safe, and Cas replies that they were never born, which is different than killing them all, so this is a pretty heavy convo and not something flippant):
DEAN Hold on. Uh...So, if you guys went a-and changed everything back, then that whole timeline or whatever, it just got erased?CASTIEL Yeah. More or less.DEAN Well, then, how come he and I remember it?CASTIEL Because I wanted you to remember it.SAM Why?CASTIEL I wanted you to know who Fate really is. She's cruel and capricious.DEAN I'd go so far as "bitch."CASTIEL Well, yeah. You're the ones who taught me that you can make your own destiny. You don't have to be ruled by fate. You can choose freedom. I still believe that that's something worth fighting for. I just wanted you to understand that.
Cas has been fighting Fate and Destiny for a long time, too. He’s been trying to choose Freedom for himself at least this long. THIS is as fundamental to his story going forward as it is to Sam and Dean’s.
And this Freedom is symbolized through Amara having earned her way free of confinement by Chuck, and now Chuck’s confinement represented in the Mark binding him to Sam.
We know that gun was designed to shoot “intent” rather than physical bullets, and that it affects the shooter and shoot-ee identically. So... it begs the question... what was Sam’s intent when he shot Chuck, and how is that manifesting in Chuck’s current state? And Sam’s?
I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT HOW SAM IS LITERALLY AFFECTING CHUCK FOR ONCE, INSTEAD OF THE OTHER WAY AROUND!