SPN sorta-meta

[xaara]

I was going to do this tomorrow. But then it happened tonight.

My first reaction to this episode was squee, because c'mon people, it's been a long time.

My second was a bit more measured and is still working itself out as I’m writing this. Dean reveals the "secret" and Sam has a completely disproportionate reaction. So far this season, Dean's angsted about his father, about the fact that his father sacrificed himself for Dean, about the job. Buried under all that is the idea that Sam could turn evil, and that it's Dean's job to protect him, up to and including killing him if necessary.

Which could be an interesting, disturbing, exciting secret. Except it's not.

It’s not even really a secret.

The demon, in one of the most-quoted lines of last season, talks about Sam and all the children like him. He's clearly planning something. He's not planning to plant daisies. Therefore, he's planning to use non-daisy-planting Sam for his own goals.

I'm going to assume the demon isn't stupid. (Disclaimer: What they say about assuming, etc. Maybe the demon is stupid, in which case, disregard following.) I'm also going to assume that he's done his homework. If the storm or war or whatever you want to call it is coming, it's because he knows who to call up, who's going to be useful to his ends. He knows Sam can be turned, and he has a plan for how to bring it about.

Something I wanted to point out before getting started on this: Sam, as far as I can tell, doesn’t think he really has powers per se. He thinks he has either a passive role in which he receives input from a variety of sources, some reliable and some unreliable, or he’s consistently being toyed with by the demon. He can’t decide whether he wants to receive visions, and he doesn’t have a power he can use, like telekinesis or mind control or, y’know, flying or bending time or something.

As far as I can tell, the visions have either been consistent and not always plot-forwarding, or plot-forwarding and inconsistent. The first ones we know about are the ones Sam has about Jess, which were intense and let him know in plenty of time. Conclusion: either he’s clairvoyant or the demon wants to play the guilt angle later. Later, he sees Jess as a...vision? Hallucination? In that scene where she disappears behind the light post. Conclusion: either he’s grieving pretty intensely or the demon is messing with him.

ETA: I had a paragraph about Home and then I cut-and-pasted it to the bottom to work on it and ended up leaving it out altogether. Oops. Home. Sam gets a vision of a woman in his old house, clearly in distress, clearly in need of help. He swallows his pride, his worry, and tells Dean. They drive to Lawrence; they save the day. But the episode does two interesting things: it introduces Sam to and contrasts him with another "psychic," Missouri, and it follows up on the visions Sam had of Jess before she died. Conclusion: Sam can't see inside other people's heads like Missouri can, but he can see the future. This may or may not have anything to do with Yed. After all, the house is scarred because of Yed, but he doesn't have anything to do with the poltergeist directly. Probably.

The season progresses until Nightmare. The vision that brings Sam to Max (and the other two in that episode) seems to forward the clairvoyant theory--he knows what’s going to happen, and although he can’t always prevent the events from taking place, they aren't, as far as I can tell, a huge demon set-up. In that episode, he also moves things with his mind. Which he doesn’t repeat, and hasn’t shown signs of trying to repeat, but which Max can do effortlessly. Max, on the other hand, doesn’t mention ever having had visions. Conclusion: either Sam’s telekinetic or he can somehow tap into other people’s powers.

The show leaves the visions alone for a while, but returns to them in Simon Said. They're similar to the ones in Nightmare--they show another kid, other deaths. Again, this kid has powers he doesn’t, but doesn’t have the visions. While Andy and Webber can make people do things by speaking or thinking at them, they aren’t telekinetic. Their gifts don’t affect Sam, but he also can’t use them, even when Dean’s in imminent danger. And Webber, the one who’s evil here, breaks the dead mom on the ceiling pattern. So we’re basically to square one, but in a more complicated and interesting way.

Croatoan is problematic. There, the visions bring Sam specifically for the purpose (I think?) of seeing whether he can be infected by the demonic virus. This is an issue for a few reasons. First of all, doesn’t the demon know whether Sam can be affected? What exactly is the virus and why does it disappear from the blood samples after a few hours? Are the people now part of the demon army? Do they have powers? Was Doctor Lady working with Duane and Yed all along? Conclusions: Kripke Yed either has no idea what he’s doing or is doing something so subtle that even those of us with the luxury of futons and wireless internet can’t figure it out.

Now, in Hunted, the visions bring Sam together with other psychic people. Or more accurately, they bring other psychic people together with Sam, because this time he doesn’t actually get the visions. Scott can electrocute things with his hands (which is totally a cool power--you know those little rings you wear that shock people when you shake hands with them? Multiply that by six million. Yeah. Anyway.) But Ava, Ava has visions of people dying.

Finally. Someone who has Sam’s power. Someone who might be able to help him understand his power. Someone he might be able to play off of and talk to and work with.

But then she murders her fiancee and takes off or is abducted by a demon who murders her fiancee and takes off.

I don’t get it.

I’m just going to put that out there, lay it down, and stop feeling stupid about it. Because I don’t. Get it.

I’ve come up with a few possibilities, but none of them quite work for me. First, maybe this is foreshadowing. Look, the girl with the visions is sort of like Sam with visions and she went ambiguously evil and so will he! The problem with foreshadowing, though, is that you can only recognize it in hindsight. So it’s an option I’ll leave open but one that will only be possible to prove in the future.

Second, maybe this is part of a master plan. That seems pretty heavily implied, what with all the war talk and army-building. But what’s the point? What’s the demon fighting for? Is Yed an actual character, or is he just Chaos incarnate, messing with people because he can? If he is just Chaos, then why is Sam important? Is Sam only important to us because we’ve gotten to know him?

Third (and my favorite) is that Yed has a plan whose details are not quite together yet. So he’s putting together an army. And he’s got these kids. But he doesn’t have leaders within the group--he needs officers, generals. People who have the skills to see what’s going on, to react to it, to deal with it. Which is where people like Sam and Ava come in. They hover above the fray, watching it, monitoring it, giving feedback where necessary, and enabling the people with hands-on powers to do the dirty work. But in that case, why doesn’t the demon just possess Sam and be done with it? Are the powers outside his control? They seem to be under his control in Croatoan, but were those “visions” just masquerading as real ones for the strange obscure virus test?

I’m sure other people have opinions and thoughts on this--I’d love to hear them. Am I missing something large and obvious?

Comments

[xaara.livejournal.com]

lol, my roommate and I are so used to calling him Yed that I forget sometimes that I should note the abbreviation somewhere. :P

*runs off to your journal to check out the response*