More Gavin and Rowena (and Fergus) in Family Feud (12x13)
OK WAIT. So, this boy whose abusive father worked him harder than an animal and actively prevented him from learning to read...
...ran away on a ship with the village teacher who (probably secretly) taught all of the village children. (Even though she turned out to be a super bitch who judged Fiona, the implication is that perhaps Gavin leaned on his village, and that he wanted to learn.)
AWWWW GAVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG HE IS LIKE ROWENA AT HEART: Bouncy, cute, and dorky, but also he wanted to READ. To LEARN.
Her petting his shoulder when he gets upset about the prospect of his beloved being a vengeful ghost... I don't think it was all an act.
Rowena is the perfect example of a person who can merge love and cruelty because she is used to freezing her emotions and putting them last on her hierarchy of needs/survival/operation. For her, this dissociative states can coincide.
It seems fitting Gavin would feature in an episode about children and learning and opportunities. These are the things that were denied to Rowena (initially) and also to Gavin during the primes of their respective lives.
University-level learning:
& this is where we find Gavin facing his past, in the place of learning that was denied to him during life:
Note: Two empty chairs behind him, which ofc make us think of the two MacLeods we know, Crowley and Rowena, but also of Gavin's life, how his parents weren't there for him.
Who not only didn't teach him... but actively STIFLED his growth on purpose. (His father, who battered and abused him.)
Teachers. And also parents. Parents, after all, are our very first teachers.
I love that after this meeting, one of Gavin's first focal points... is for the victims. He really IS different than Rowena and Fergus. He doesn't want Fiona to be alone, of course, but his very first show of emotion... was for the poor people.
When Sam and Dean let him in on the solution, it seems like THIS is what seals it for Gavin. Saving the people affected by his time-jumping is a choice he makes swiftly and with confidence.
It's very heart-coded of him.
This is a choice I think the likes of Dean Winchester or Jack Kline would be likely to make (among others). I think Gavin would very MUCH be on their wavelength.
Despite what she will tell us later, Rowena is having a lot of mixed feelings. She doesn't like it, but she's also amazed by Gavin's heart, I think.
Then Fergus shows up. And THIS is a devastating thing, always. It's the the matter of the parent who decided to TRY to do right for their kid too late.
Fergus raises a hand to try to take his kid and RUN from this loss, and VISUALLY it becomes a father reaching for his son, paralyzed in time.
This is the thing Crowley doesn't want you to know he loves. And afterwards, it becomes this terrible, frozen image of a lonely father reaching for empty chairs by a hearth.
All the things that made him a successful demon eradicated his chance to be there for his own damn kid. (Aside// It's no accident that in the episode where he regained some humanity was in parallel with a father who ATE his own children.)
Before she says goodbye, Rowena takes another look at that face, fondly. I think she admires him, Gavin. I think she'd like to be more like him.
(But what a horror to realize you're too late for your child)
it make me think of Rowena's scene in Funeralia, where she's screaming because:
