InsaneJournal

SPN S3-S5 Arc
Before I go on to discuss what I think might take placein SPN S5, I wanted to throw out a quick observation about toothbrush use in SPN. If I remember right, the first time we ever saw them used was in S3, in Mystery Spot. The day started out normally – normal for Winchesters anyway. Then we see Sam thinking something strange was going on the next day as they brush teeth again, something abnormal in their normality. Jump forward to JtS, and we see Sam outside the Impala brushing his teeth. I mentioned in my meta on that episode that Sam's comfort with their itinerant existence, and Dean's groaning awakening, indicated the changes between the two. It's something of a reversal from the MS appearance. In that one, Dean woke Sam by goofing around, and the two went through their morning routine together. In this one Dean's the one dragging himself awake, and Sam is all business, they're not on the same page. We then see tooth brushing one last time, in The Rapture. Dean is somewhat jocular as he teases Sam. But Sam – he's in trouble. There's no situation normal in this toothbrush appearance at all. In some ways it's an echo of MS, in that something abnormal is happening beneath the surface, only this time Sam knows just what it is. But unlike MS, he's not turning to Dean for help, to explain himself. Dean's still teasing him, still taking the situation lightly, even though perhaps he shouldn't. But Sam can barely pretend everything's ok.

What also struck me as a parallel here is that once again superpowered forces are at work, messing with their lives in a very direct way. MS was also all about Sam, even though Dean's death was the focus. In Rapture, what's going on with Jimmy and Castiel is the focus (Castiel is gone, Jimmy free to return to a "normal life"), but the episode is bracketed by Dean, living a content existence in his head, and Sam, locked up in Bobby's basement as the reality. As in MS, Dean is blissfully ignorant of what's happening until the end (for him) when Sam confronts the Trickster. Here, Dean finally confronts reality in Sam's blood drinking, and takes action. The last time, Dean's death changed everything. Here, Dean being alive and ready to intervene may have changed everything too. Sam's stubborn obsession brought Dean back to life in MS, but in S4 it may have resulted in his own death.

Which leads us to S5, and looking back at what S4 was all about. I think it could be quite interesting indeed to have a possessed Sam be the big bad of the season, and Dean in knots trying to figure out what to do. (It would be pretty anticlimactic if Lucifer is killed in the first three episodes!). Alternately the writers might have a Sam trying to either wean himself off of his powers, or learning how to use them in some sort of middle road. I personally hope that's not how they go, because I think it would be too much of a retread of this season: Big Bad doing evil things offscreen, Sam struggling with what's going to define him, Dean wondering what to do about it all while being jerked around by the angels. I think S4 delivered enough stellar moments of the brothers falling apart that this general plotline worked, but a S5 doing the same would be too much.

What would be very useful for Sam's character if they decide to do JP as Lucifer next season, is that at the end, when Dean succeeds in banishing Lucifer (because that would have to be the ending), Sam has learned what evil really is by having to coexist with it. His own identity as Sam would be quite clear for perhaps the first time in his life. He would no longer be "brother of Dean" or "son of John" or "not a hunter" or even "psychic kid with terrible destiny." He would be well and truly Sam. And it seems to me that this is part of Sam's tragedy, that he has been trying most of his life to define himself in opposition to things, and that he's felt, as a result, that what makes him happy brings suffering to others. By contrast, Dean has tried to define himself in congruence with things – to be more like Dad, to do what Dad deems important, but unlike Sam has been less aware of what he really wants just for himself. Like Sam, Dean carved out little niches of things that were important to him, but fortunately for him these were largely things that fit in with his lifestyle.

It seems to me that if S5 ends up with Sam's struggle to define himself as a whole individual, separate from other influences, that Dean has already traveled Sam's road, albeit offscreen. During his time in hell he learned what it was to be truly Dean, on his own, with nothing to hide behind any longer. And regardless of what he did in giving in to his own violent side just to survive, his return proved that Dean was as much himself as he'd ever been, albeit with an awareness of the dangerous and ugly part of himself that he didn't know how to live with. But unlike Sam, he didn't see it in a long-term way, in terms of destiny and what his role was, although Castiel and others did their best to put those thoughts in him. Dean has always been worried about today, not tomorrow. His struggle was to go on each day knowing who he was, and, as the season went on, who he wasn't, and having to come to terms with that. However he has been just as vulnerable as Sam to being told that his abilities alone are what's needed, no matter what it does to him as a result. When Castiel got Dean to torture again, he told him it was for the greater good, and no one else could do the job. While Castiel was filled with doubt as to this assignment, this was not otherwise that different from what Ruby had been telling Sam all along – kill Lilith, save the world, by becoming an evil killer himself. And in each case I think the angels and demons succeeded because both Sam and Dean were both struggling to deal with failure. This, it seems to me, is what S4 has been about. How do you come back from a terrible failure? How do you prevent your failures from defining you? Sam and Dean both falter in the same way, by letting other people tell them who they are, as they prey on their guilt and despair. Both of them want to stop being themselves and be someone else, someone who can avoid or fix the failure. Dean wants to be devoid of feeling, at rest in a way that would only come with death, able to somehow run away. Sam wants to become powerful, invulnerable, able to challenge the beings who have made his family suffer. He may hate the road he has to take to get there, but Sam very much wants the end prize.

And I think in that we can see these roads fork in the different struggles Sam and Dean had in TL. Sam is restless being just one of the pack, he's sure there has to be more, he wants to be able to call the shots. It turns out "normal" isn't always that appealing. Dean has the sort of security and acceptance he's always been denied in his life. For this episode, each of them has literally escaped being who they were. Absolved of their separate failures, they go about rebuilding themselves, with similar end results. Sam is always ready to question why and strike out on his own. Dean is always ready to hold back, make Sam think about what he's doing. But, as he complains to Bobby in Lucifer Rising, he's always in the position of chasing after Sam. He doesn't realize in TR that he's Sam's lifeline, his tether, for good and for bad. Sam doesn't want to be held back, but he also doesn't want to go it alone. In TL, it is only when Zach talks to Dean that he realizes he doesn't want that future of peace and security, not if he has a chance to make a difference. And this happens all over again in Lucifer Rising. Sam asked him to join him, and he said no, until Bobby made him take a look at the long view. And he realized that the things he wanted for himself came at a price he wasn't willing to pay. Dean finally stopped focusing on his failures, and his desire for escape, and instead focused on what he was good at and what he could do. He believed in himself again.

I think many people pointed out how S3 seemed to embody stages of grief. It was ostensibly grief about Dean's impending death, but I think it was really of each Winchester coming into his own. Dean's denial of his ticking clock and isolation from Sam (finally broken in Fresh Blood), and Sam's denial about being able to save Dean were all ways in which they had to confront changes that were coming. Anger from Dean in Dream and from Sam in MS, bargaining in LDC for Dean, and from Sam in "Time" were all efforts to define who they were. In Dream, Dean sets himself apart from John in a way he has been unable to face all season. In Time, Sam proves he is willing to do anything, even turn himself and Dean into one of the very first monsters John hunted, in order to keep them together. What we didn't see really was depression and acceptance. Although Sam tells Dean more than once that he had to move on and make his own decisions after Dean's death, I don't think Sam ever accepted it. Sam's depression stage was pretty evident in Last Summer though. I think Dean's took place in hell, but I think acceptance came only this season for him, in the final episodes of the season. All of the people pushing and pulling on him this season – his mother, Sam, Bobby, the ghost of his father , Castiel and the other angels – have led him to realize who he is, and who he isn't.

In the same way as Dean has been moving away from his ideas of who Sam, John, Mary and he have been, Sam has been moving towards them. In JtS we see how much of John he has internalized, and he tells Dean he's come to see eye to eye with their father on some things. Finding out about Mary's background has, to some degree, helped ease Sam's sense of isolation in the family as the one cursed. He learns, for example, that the death and pain in the family didn't start with him, but with their mother, and perhaps well before that. Even if she had lived they might never have been anything but hunters. He starts feeling that, instead of having brought this curse to their family, he might be the one to finally turn it around. He starts moving towards his family's view of him – as a hunter who can't afford weaknesses, as an important part of the family -- and away from his earlier idea of who he could be as embodied by weeSam in ASS and Levee.

I'm not sure how the writing team could represent Sam's continued existence and internal battle with Lucifer for control if he gets possessed (easy to do in print, less so visually) but I think it could be done in S5, and would certainly pose an acting challenge for JP. The ending would also be yangst out the wazoo because if in 5.1 Lucifer quickly possesses Sam, he and Dean would never have had the chance to reconcile. Sam would never find out that Dean never sent him that message. Of course, the show could end with Lucifer being exorcised and Sam and Dean being reunited. That doesn't sound much like Kripke, though. Instead, it might be that they get a moment near the end where Sam is Sam again and he and Dean make-up in 2 minutes and then both die. And we'll all be shaking our fists at the screen and screaming. I don't know where the talk of a S6 fits into that picture, but I'll be very interested to see what the theme of S5 ends up being.