some big bad side plot would be alright to keep the action going and of course monster of the week stories but imagine how powerful it would have been if sam’s deteriorating mental state and sense of reality had been the main driver and how creative the writers could have gotten with it? as well as some long lasting trauma effects besides the hallucinations. i mean it is debated but he had to have been in hell for well over a century. 180 years was always my estimate and its hard for me to even grasp that kind of a length of time seeing as its more than double an average human lifespan. he spent longer with lucifer than he ever did on earth or with dean. that’s genuinely so insane to think about. what does two lifetimes (possibly longer) of imprisonment and torture do to a person, especially someone who always has that nagging feeling that maybe they never really got out because their tormenter is literally lucifer and could genuinely be capable of something like that?

i know the cw does not know how to handle the trauma they put their characters through because even dean should have been more affected after his 40 year (40 year!) hell stay but something like that should deeply and permanently affect you. something that messed up should be dealt with in the narrative accordingly. i’m just saying all this because the only part of season 7 that really ever stuck with me was sam’s psychotic break arc and is the reason i rank it so highly on rewatchability despite not really caring about it as a whole because i go back and rewatch episodes like 7x02 and 7x17 more than i’d like to admit. i’m not saying it should be the sole storyline but it should have been way more present and constant and way more fucked up and scary. anyway