#spn5

Could ‘was’ become an ‘is’ to me, Then would I ask no more than this; Or could, for me, the time that is Become the time that is to be!—

roy le grange claims that dean was "picked" by god. his method of choosing is never quite revealed, its mechanisms overshadowed by his wife's more insidious schemes. the episode ends on a bitter note: that god is not healing people, and dean's atheism is more correct than sam's faith.

however, this axis begins to flip in 2x13, when dean does concede to the possibility that some cosmic force is moving pieces on a higher plane. the questions that were left unanswered in 1x12 are given proper attention here, and though definitive answers still elude them until season 4-5, the issues are no longer being ignored. and then zachariah tells dean he is chosen, destined to be the michael sword. it recalls, then, the episode so long ago when roy le grange told dean that god "picked" him. and because of that interaction, dean remains alive to fulfill his destiny.

so you have to wonder—was dean's salvation a coincidence, or was a higher power truly whispering in roy's ear? 2x13 makes a strong defense of the latter being true. if an unseen force can tell father gregory who deserves to live and who deserves to die, that same force can equally tell the faith healer speaking the gospel in his tent. and if this is true, if it was god or the angels dictating who roy should save, then that calls into question the moral character of the angels, nearly four seasons before they even appear. if the angels are willingly guiding roy's hand, then they are complicit in the use of reapers to kill those his wife deemed deserving of death. they are complicit or even accepting of her victims, and therefore they are taking a moral stance by not intervening and by enabling the continued abuse of power.

the first apocalypse was caused by the absence of love, and the second was caused by too much love. their love is a destructive force that has world-ending consequences.

and i was stricken by the veracity of it, actually. like when you're just writing things down and suddenly you're overcome with a sense of rightness and truth to what you're saying. when everything finally comes together and it all makes sense.

because that's more or less what it is. sam breaks the final seal to the cage because he thinks dean doesn't love him anymore, a conjoined effort between the fight he had with dean before he ran back to ruby and (presumably) zachariah's influence over the voicemail sam received when dean called to apologize. it was the sudden, dreadful lack of love between them that pushed sam over the edge and forced his hand.

and then in season 10, it's the presence of love, the enmeshed relationship that the toxic, twisted thing between them has become, that released amara. sam's willingness to be in a fully enmeshed relationship with dean, coupled with dean's unwillingness to kill sam, coupled with sam's determination to save dean at any cost, is what causes the second apocalypse.

importantly, this can't happen until after sam reaches a new depth and breadth of love for dean (or more accurately, until he accepts the true depth and breadth of his love for dean), because he's been holding himself back, never quite letting himself go too far since he got out of hell. they have to take that step further, and once they do, the balance in the world is thrown off and the force of the winchesters' love becomes earth-shattering.

there's a dance they have to play because too little love and too much love both have, quite literally, apocalyptic consequences. they find this out in the worst ways possible.

and how fitting is it, then, that the way the world is saved both times is through the willing and mutually accepted sacrifice of each other? that the only way the world can be at peace is through one of them finally letting the other sacrifice himself for the greater good? dean lets sam jump into the pit; sam lets dean bring a soul-bomb to amara; and the world is saved.