Once again, prompted to meta by the insightful and interesting conversations that go on in the comments to previous metas. Several people said things, both in response to my metas and in response to Abra's, that have encouraged me to do a little more thinky-thinky on Sam than I've really been doing. And that thinky-thinky, as it turns out, shines a bit of a different light on the episode Criss Angel is a Douche Bag to my way of thinking. And a far less doomful one, much to my own relief, as perhaps it will to yours.
(Important Caveat: Anyone who provides spoilers in comments rather than just their own thinky-thoughts on where the series might be going will be beaten, cut, hung and then killed. I'm jes sayin ...)
This Ends Sad or Bloody ... Or, You Know, the Way the Fans Want it To
Given Sam's choice at the end of CAiaDB, take for a moment the idea that The Magician's Tale was a cautionary portent (thanks, ColtShot, for that term) of the future Sam will suffer if he continues on the path of turning his back on his demonic powers. That would be Sam "doing the right thing," and the inevitable endgame of Sam making that choice is that Lilith will succeed in raising Lucifer to the coming of Hell on Earth. In which case, Sam and Dean would continue to fight evil, they would simply be doing it in a post-apocalyptic world where the odds against them make Dean’s assumption that the gig ends sad and bloody look a wee bit optimistic.
And there’s Sam message here:
If you "do the right thing" in turning away from your powers and the potential to be more than you could ever be without them, you will lose everything that matters to you personally, and end up hating yourself for making the choice you made. And in that situation, what value is having done the right thing?
And Sam gets the message. And heeds it.
So not wanting to face the fate of becoming an old hunter who still hunts in post-apocalypse Earth, having lost everything that matters to him (assumably Dean, given how much more likely Dean is to get himself killed on any hunt that Sammy is), and only having the cold comfort of being able to say "I did the right thing" as a counterbalance to those losses that, in the end, means absolutely nothing … Sam chooses to accept the corrupter's card rather than do the right thing. He accepts Ruby's offer to help him develop his powers to a strength where he can stop Lilith just as the magician now feels he should have taken the immortality card rather than "doing the right thing" by turning away from it.
There’s a enormously deep repetition resonance to this idea as it relates to both family and self sacrifice … themes the show consistently embraces as their driving dogmas. And that resonance has to do with John teaching his boys one essential lesson that keeps biting them in the ass:
When the stakes are high enough, you do whatever it takes to win, no matter what the cost to yourself. And then John proves out this lesson in reality as well as in theory (do what I do AND what I say) by selling his soul to save Dean.
So John sacrifices himself, body and soul, to save Dean. And in turn, having learned this lesson from his father, Dean sacrifices himself, body and soul, to save Sam. So being John’s son and Dean’s brother, Sam learns the lesson twofold and sacrifices himself, body and soul, to save the world. And with the world ... Dean.
Beyond that, I’d like to point out that Sam is fighting Lilith exactly the way John taught him to. Just as the colt was the only way to kill the YED, so John and the boys ran from the YED until they had the colt and could turn to face him; so has Sam identified himself as the only weapon capable of stopping/killing Lilith. And as the colt must have specific bullets to destroy Azazel, so must Sam have his demonic powers to defeat Lilith.
He can't exorcise Lilith the way they've always exorcised lower demons (Do you really think something like that works on something like me?). And judging by how easily Alistair, a lower demon than Lilith, shrugs off Sam's attempt to blow him back to hell with his mind, Sam’s powers clearly aren’t strong enough to defeat Lilith, yet. So taking a page out of The Book of John: How to Sacrifice Yourself for Those You Love? Sam does exactly what John did after the YED killed Mary: he goes to ground with a teacher (or in John’s case, a series of teachers) to figure out how to use and control his skills, and then he hunts to practice/strengthen/hone those skill on other forms of evil until he’s strong enough to face the only reasons he's hunting in the first place. As for John, it was Azazel; so for Sam, it is Lilith.
So in terms of how Sam responds to the cautionary lesson in The Tale of the Magician? Rather than grow old, ever hunting, having lost everything that matters to him as the price for having "done the right thing," Sam decides to do the wrong thing and go out in a blaze of glory facing Lilith. Because he knows his demonic powers are the only thing that can stop Lilith. Just as he knows that stopping her will end him, beit by killing him in defeat or turning him to the dark side in victory, having indulged his demonically gifted powers just as both Ava and Jake did, and now understanding, having been told by feakin angels, that he will suffer a similar fate if he continues to use them.
So when Sam goes to Ruby at the end of CaisDB? He’s making his choice. He’s opting for the blaze of glory route over The Magician’s Tale. And he’s doing it because he is his father’s son and his brother’s brother: a Winchester, as defined by their willingness to sacrifice themselves in the stead of others, particularly those they love.
So in the context of how this all plays to a less dire end than I originally saw as the portent of this particular episode in how the series endgame might play out?
John sold his soul in the name of love and saved himself from hell. Dean sold his soul in the name of love and angels saved him from hell. So the pattern would seem to dictate that if Sam sells his soul in the name of love, someone will save his dumbass from spending an eternity in hell just as someone saved both his father and his brother.
I vote for Dean in that role. How he might go about doing it? Don’t know. That’s the value of threatening dire consequences (which are still in place, BTW: spoil me and I will beat, cut, hang and THEN kill you!) to anyone who offers spoiler-based speculation rather than just thinky-thoughts they came up with on their own based on aired canon. You get to unwrap that present the way it was intended to be unwrapped: on Christmas morning, when all the anticipation of getting what you want and fretting that you won’t get what you want has been somewhat sadistically whipped to a fever pitch by those who may SAY they love you, but who, in reality, far more love to watch you squirm because they think that kind of thing is hilarious. Jackasses (in the fondest sense, of course).
But even without knowing how he might go about saving Sammy from the pit (though suspecting that it might have something to do with Castiel thinking for himself and acting out of love for Humanity in a way that might potentially damn his ass as well … and thus define him as the personage his name and attitude both imply he actually is), this new light on the text of this particular episode indicates to me that such a thing might be a far more likely endgame for Kripke & Co to pursue than a final conflict between brothers that requires one to die to save the other … which kinda flies in the face of their "in the end, this is about family" core theme. And if that’s the way the game plays, after having saved the world from Armageddon and saved one another from the pit, that would pretty much leave things right where they started, with evil still running amok and innocent people still needing the Winchesters to continue on as they always have: hunting things, saving people.
And in addition to being a far less nihilistic interpretation of things (love buys you nothing but eternal sacrifice and inevitable loneliness), this kind of endgame both resonates with the hopeful resolution to the YED storyline (the trunk shot at the end of IMToD with the boys saying "We’ve got work to do") AND offers the advantage of keeping the fangirls from gathering up their pitchforks and torches and storming the gates with blood in their eye.
And, you know, it also leaves open the possibility of a movie at some later date. In 3-D. With a hockey-masked villain. Who carries a pick ax. But succumbs, in the end, to rocksalt peppered into his ass by Jensen Ackles. And Latin laid upon his ears by Jared Padalecki. And just general bad-assery ass kicking as performed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Direct by Kim Manners, of course.
contemplative
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