#interesting parallel

OH GOSH. You know, I love the Love Triptych in the middle of s11, and this episode is the second of those three. In case you weren’t around here when s11 originally aired, there was a weird theme through the first half of the season of “thematically or literally paired episodes.” And this is a theme Dabb has played off of extensively in his era. Heck, I even wrote just a few weeks ago about how Carver’s final episode as a writer (11.01) essentially handed off the story to Dabb (11.02).

11.01 and 11.02 were two halves of what was effectively a single episode, you know?

11.03 and 11.04 were about getting their bearings, getting back to a baseline from which they could all begin to move forward

11.05 and 11.06 were literally also in the same town, both dealing with Amara eating souls

11.07 and 11.08 were both MotW cases that had little bearing on the mytharc, but both dealt with themes of childhood innocence lost and revenge, which DO bear on the overall s11 themes– Amara looking for vengeance against Chuck for locking her up at the beginning of creation

11.09 and 11.10 were the two episodes either side of the winter hellatus, the cage, Lucifer, and Amara. Like 01 and 02, they both work as two halves of a whole episode narratively.

and that’s where the “paired” episodes ended. and for full disclosure purposes, I’ve been trying to answer this question for the last several hours, and just spent a LOT of time going through my tags trying to find those posts I discussed these paired episodes in, but I only got as far as 11.03 or so in my blog retagging project, and unfortunately a lot of those posts just… aren’t tagged, so I can’t find them atm >.> Someday I will actually finish tagging everything properly. But this is also why the descriptions above are so… lacking in meta value. It’s late, I should be writing, and yet I’ve spent three or four hours surfing through early s11 meta now, and I’m officially forcing myself to stop for my own good :P

BUT! That brings us to the three “middle episodes” of s11, which I think of as the Love Triptych.

11.11: Finding happiness by following your heart. And the monster and other themes in the episode were about love and heartbreak and pining and regretting sending your ex poop emojis, you know? :P Dean also (before he’s attacked by the banshee everyone was convinced was going to attack Mildred, who may have had a weak PHYSICAL heart, but who had the strongest EMOTIONAL heart) began confessing his fear of Amara’s control over him to Cas(ifer), and had a wonderful heart to heart talk with Mildred about the secret to happiness. Which does also directly relate to your comment above, because of Cas’s deal with the Empty being about him finding true happiness, you know? (and heck, Mildred’s speech was framed around literally sitting and watching a sunset, the sun shining on their faces through the window as they talked about finding happiness)

11.12: Familial love– what makes a family. Explored through Jody and Alex and Claire finding their footing as a family, and Sam and Dean being drawn in as an extension of their family. It was also about the perennial Supernatural theme of what you do for your family, for the people you love.

11.13: Toxic obsession, mislabeled as love. The witch in the episode who controlled the qareen used the monster to punish people for their toxic relationships by literally tearing out their hearts. And when the qareen came for Dean, it wore Amara’s face. At the end of the episode, Dean confessed his feeling of weakness in Amara’s presence.

"Frederick Barbarossa (December 1122 – 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick I (German: Friedrich I; Italian: Federico I), was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190."

"His nickname of Barbarossa (meaning "Red Beard"[2] in Italian) "was first used by the Florentines only in 1298 to differentiate the emperor from his grandson, Frederick II ... and was never employed in medieval Germany"[2] (the colour red was "also associated in the Middle Ages with malice and a hot temper";[2] in reality, Frederick's hair was "blond",[2] although his beard was described by a contemporary as "reddish").[3] In German, he was known as Kaiser Rotbart, which in English means "Emperor Redbeard"."

"Frederick joined the Third Crusade and opted to travel overland to the Holy Land. In 1190, Frederick drowned attempting to cross the Saleph River, leading to most of his army abandoning the Crusade before reaching Acre."

- Wikipedia, Frederick Barbarossa

I couldn't agree with you more!

Madara himself points this out by saying that Hashirama is confusing the cause for the end. In other words, the means Hashirama chose to reach his goal of peace created conflict instead. Hashirama, as an Edo Tensei, agrees with Madara's assessment.

Hashirama understood that the Warring States were cruel and that they had to be brought to an end. The problem is that Hashirama never understood the "goal" of the Warring States. It's not just that people liked to kill each other, it is that people sought out peace but through violent methods.

And Hashirama falls victim to that same pattern of thought.

He believed that a village would bring peace, that it would join people together, and that, if fully realized, it would protect their most vulnerable. It was a dream born from the trauma of losing his loved ones. And to achieve this dream and protect it, Hashirama and those who came after him accepted all means.

But aside from the idea of "joining clans together", this philosophy is still a perfect match with the Warring States. In the Warring States, it was "clan vs. clan". In the new era, it was "village vs. village". And just like in the Warring States, protecting peace with violence only bred war.

In the end, Hashirama lost sight of his original goal: Protecting children. By shifting it to the village instead, the village was no longer obligated to protect the children but the children were obligated to protect the village. But there is no peaceful future in a world that poisons its children with war.