#sambition

In a season that heavily hangs with issues of power dynamics and class, Sam meets his match in Rowena, and he immediately enters into a power struggle with her.

In his dogged pursuit TO FIX THE THING, Sam is becom like Magnus, like Mr. Cuthbert. In his trying to tame Rowena this season, he becomes the most MEN OF LETTERS he have ever seen him:

The Men of Letters is the masculine-stereotyped "Warlock," the match to the often feminine-stereotyped Witch.

They hoard knowledge and manipulate others to do their dirty work. (Importantly: Because they've been hurt, and because they're afraid.)

We think back to the line in Paint it Black:

OLIVETTE: Hoarding unbelievable power for their own amusement. Smug, self-righteous bastards. The Men of Letters. ... ROWENA: I see the truth, and it’s pathetic. You let these Men Of Letters pillage the greatest trove of magical secrets in the world and did nothing.

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We see in The Werther Project what happens when a MoL goes "bad:"

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A Man of Letters isn't just a class divide here; it's set up to be Rowena's natural enemy.

The MAN OF LETTERS one of Rowena's symbolic bulls. Sam is a "bull" to her flaming "matador."

But when faced with him, Rowena doesn't know quite what she wants to do. Kill the bull? Subdue the bull?

Ride the bull?

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Rowena can't help but be intrigued.

And ah, look. It's the symbolic family diner... They are flanked by checkerboards, not dartboards. For better or worse, The family diner is the Family Diner for a reason. I think it's notable that they're meeting here and not there. (You'd expect them to meet in a more neutral SPN space, like *bar/Roadhouse of Good Pals.")

Anyhoo, immediately we see that Sam doesn't balk at Rowena's monstrosity. He isn't even taken aback by her darkest of motivations/emotions:

She certainly looks taken aback.

When she looks at him, she sees an ugliness.

(Crucially, it is what DRIVES this ugliness that will really wind up drawing her closer to Sam in the end).

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For now, they start trying to impress each other with their brains.

Her initial instinct is to flutter and try to impress him.

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When she reveals she can't read the book in its present form without a codex, Sam immediately starts his power play, shutting the book.

This forces her to parry, and parry she does!

Flawlessly:

ROWENA: "You're desperate. You can stop pretending you're not."

As they talk business, both of their eyebrows rise, interested despite trying not to be:

*eyebrow raise*

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She talks of a witch who was victimized, Nadya:

And this further underlines what will become their power struggle. Sam will become his worst self, putting the boot on her neck, becoming the worst kind of MAN OF LETTERS.

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Later, Sam calls her, and she can't help it, but she's excited. She's quick to match brains with him, and what leaks out?

Her desperate need for friends that challenge her.

And he's intrigued, too, but the lure of their mutual dark ambition.

"Great. Thanks."

Sensing a GOODBYE, Rowena is startled to discover that she doesn't want him to hang up. (Rowena is, at heart, a loser who has to struggle making friends.)

She stammers, then she practically engages in a bit of HAIR TWIRLING HERE:

He shuts her down: "I'll take my chances."

She scoffs, disappointed.

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Ultimately, she can't resist trying to goad and challenge Sam—to "Toro, Toro" him and try to tame what he represents.

We see Crowley do this, too. His play is to goad and mouth off, especially when he's bitten off more than he can chew and is trying to convince everyone that he's "the top in the relationship."

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As for the rest of the episodes...

Sam's subconscious knows that witchcraft can be incredibly evil, but he can't help want to strive for ambition, for power, for hidden knowledge, for EVERYTHING. Sam is like a Solomonari in this way. The SCHOLOMONAR. (Tradition says they became the Devil's students, either being instructed by him, or becoming a servant to his commands It's actually a bit different when you get deeper,but that's at least the Westernized version of it.)

As Dean longs for a "simple" world of 24/7-360 total war where he does warfare "all he's good for" without consequence, Sam longs for a world where he can think and strive to achieve ANYTHING without consequence.

A world where Sam can admire Rowena's and Mr. Cuthbert's brains without feeling guilty:

ROWENA (figment): "I know what I'd said about your kind (Men of Letters), but oh. The man who came up with this? The craftsmanship of the box, the sadism of the spellwork... It's all so... deliciously baroque."

There is a direct line being drawn between Sam... and Magnus. (And Rowena, tangentially.)

In Sam's mindscape, he gets to do what he feels he is good for: the pursuit of knowledge. Dean is the ultimate soldier without the need for decision-making, and Sam wants to be the ultimate librarian without consequence.

With that in mind, he also wants to impress Rowena, to impress someone who's brain he found impressive:

He wants to crack a code with her. Together. To show her that he knows things, can figure out things.

CHARLIE: Besides our hair, we got nothing in common.

ROWENA: Let me tell you about you.

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Or rather... let me tell you about ME

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Rowena's a loser. She doesn't fit in.

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And the hard-scrabble life made Rowena nihilistic, emotionally untethered, and steeped in a kind of moral relativism that only stokes the fires of her cruelty.

Pain created this armor.

I can't decide if Jack would commiserate and win Fergus/Crowley over or not. Because it's about the order of operations.

Jack had a "shitty" father, just as Fergus did, but Jack won Rowena over with just a few damn words:

Rowena fell head-over-heels for Jack, and she behaved with him (saving him when he was sick) in a way not unlike OSKAR.

Jack is the foster "son" with a "new, younger man" (Sam).

Crowley might hate him on Rowena-grounds alone.

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And all OSKAR says is: I hope I haven't hurt you (by letting myself get caught and brought here like this).

ANYWAY

What Crowley's doing here...?

This isn't unlike how Crowley behaved with Sam in the previous season, making him (and Dean) "UNDO" the people they saved:

Aside//

As much as he hates Crowley, Sam is in season 10 becoming more like him (and also like the dark scientist-type: MoL Cuthbert). While Sam is critically different in that he's not doing this for the sake of cruelty itself, it's still some heavy collateral damage he's engineering in order to save his family.

But whereas Dean is reeling from a newfound empathy and humanity for the absolute horror show-reality of being a demon in Hell (Dean and Claire Novak are absolutely mired in forgiveness in s10), Sam is still bent on revenge...

...and for his part, Crowley himself is a lot like Sam, too.

Crowley keeps lying to others and himself, sidestepping his part in dangling Dean to Cain (he never EVER apologizes, only pragmatically tries to "help" ...but mostly uses it as an opportunity to hurt his mother).

It's sooooo crunchy how Crowley SAYS he's doing Hell favors in a season where what we actually SEE onscreen is him continuing to abuse his underlings and struggle under the weight of a continued LACK OF RESPECT.

(Which is... also beautifully illustrated through Demon Dean-humanity, who IMMEDIATELY and INSTANTLY chafes against how Crowley rules and... even dare I say gains more respect as a leader than Crowley for the actual two seconds he's around?)

ANYWAY

Maybe deep down, both Crowley and Sam WANT to be leaders... and can't understand why they struggle so much with it. (Compare this with Dean and Cas who are assumed de facto leaders often, but theyFEAR becoming cruel/authoritarian rather than starting there.)

i.e. Crowley never apologizes for his manipulation or for the MoC. We see him sidestep the opportunity to do so in Inside Man with "So she's a liar," and "Must run in the family." Then Dean sadly pivots, because he realizes he's not going to get that kind of care, not even as a friend, while Crowley meanwhile sucks up the Dr. Phil opportunity to talk about his own problems with his mom.

And Sam to my knowledge... never apologizes for Oskar. At least not onscreen. I think it's possible with how close Rowena and Sam become that it came up at some point in their relationship.

OR as I've said before, weirdly, their cut-throat desire to sacrifice others for love is something they LIKE about each other (SEE: Funeralia for example.) In Rowena's world, motive counts. (x, x, x)

Because Sam's (and Cas's) motive in killing Oskar was protecting family, she could respect that. And so, she brought the weight of her revenge on Crowley, whose motive was really mostly personal, just absolute cruelty.

Once Rowena helped send Gavin back to his timeline and hurt Crowley in the same way she was hurt, she likely considered the issue a closed circle. (And again, in that moment, Crowley turns his ire on HER, not Sam and Dean for their impersonal part in Gavin. Because they're not family to him in the same way Rowena is.)

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ANYWAY

Sam Crowley parallels drive me insane. Oskar Jack parallels drive me insane, too.

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EDIT: This scene with Crowley above circles all the way back again in 13x23 with the Lucifer-Sam-Jack confrontation. It just NNNNNNGH

The Lucifer-Crowley parallels will drive you insane too, with crucial aspects of their personalities aligning at numerous crossroads. Here, Crowley makes Rowena kill the family she loves (Oskar) & in 13x23 Lucifer wants Jack to kill the family he loves (Sam).

I don’t exactly have textual support for this but I suspect that Sam would have more readily embraced a Heavenly destiny, because it represents rising above his class background. Whereas Hell represents thriving in a place that is literally beneath him. (Well, it wouldn’t have been him per se…that was a bait and switch trick where he would have been “boy-king” in body only—a sham class rank built to entice his ego into said trap with the lure of false power. But the overall point stands!)

Don’t get me wrong; I support his rejection of Hell. In-text, it’s healthy to reject the nihilism and disinhibited-loss-of-free-will that Hell can tend to represent.

But it is interesting that even his Hell destiny was molded to appeal to his sambition.