#uhuraha

oohhh we’re breaking out the ESSAY here huh. i fucking LOVE season 9. 10 is… it’s hard to say actually because i really started to burn out in the front half of ten the first time around. i’m rewatching now and forming more coherent opinions but i think for me the lead up lands better than the follow up so i’m just gonna focus on 9 for now

ok so season 9 rights… for me 9 is about breaking things down to build them back up. facing consequences for your actions. throwing dean especially out of his default patterns. it’s tough and sad and mean but it’s also just soooo juicy. also i like to do what i call season nine surgery. you can cut out almost all the bad eps without losing any of the main plot. bloodlines? i don’t know her. #not my season nine

almost everything at the start of 9 is a direct consequence of things that happen in 8, in a way that doesn’t feel arbitrary. cas deals with the consequences of the angels falling, dean with deciding to put sam above the rest of the world, even crowley with the fallout of the demon cure.

with cas, we see him gain new perspectives and an agency that he didn’t have before. it fucking hurts to see cas kicked out of the bunker and trying to survive on his own as a human. (side note: the one concession to crit i will give is that while it wasn’t emotionally OOC for dean to kick him out, it is OOC to not set him up with any support, but that’s the writers not understanding homelessness in my view). but that experience leaves him able to make rational informed decisions on his own - unlike the way he jumped into power in the godstiel arc. this is a cas who is finally becoming confident in who he is, as contrasted to honey!cas’ avoidance and then of course the angel lobotomies. he has to lose everything and come back from it to grow.

similar principle with dean: his decision to save sam over everyone else, and to deeply violate his autonomy to do so, is extremely in character and also extremely unhealthy. as is hiding it from him afterwards. and he faces extreme consequences for that. mid s9 dean is in a really low place and it’s entirely his own fault. and we all know how low his self worth is, and how he views himself as a tool (#daddy’s blunt instrument). and THAT’S what the mark of cain is. it’s not about him being violent. he’s not in control of himself and he doesn’t enjoy it (besides when he’s actually a demon). it’s an impulsive decision that’s about making himself into the tool that can kill abbadon, literally, rather than facing his problems with sam.

and then he faces the consequences of that impulsive decision. and then into season 10 we flip the script. dean can’t default to caretaker mode any more, he has to let sam take care of him. and - and this is CRUCIAL - he learns from the experience. sam and dean are on relatively more equal footing in s11 and 12; he talks it out at the end of 11 instead of fighting. the end of s12 undoes a lot of work but that’s a whole other essay. but for me dean is at his emotionally healthiest at the end of s12 and that wouldn’t have happened without the experience of the MOC bringing problems to the breaking point.

anyway i haven’t even gotten into crowley or just how FUN some of the eps are or metatron best villain but this is long enough already

</3 thank you the world quite simply wasn’t ready for me to say sometimes characters that are milfs are deadbeats and should have 20k character studies written on them.