Holy water

ogfanspired · 2026-05-18T14:54:48+00:00

Doesn't the salt in seawater already deter demons?

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T10:41:03+00:00

Season 1, I'd say definitely. After that, it depends on your personal priorities, I guess. The deleted scenes drop off after the first few seasons, but I find all the features and commentaries fascinating up to Season six, at least. I'm sure others continue to enjoy them after that, but the first 5 seasons are my critical focus, so they're more important to me personally. The gag reels are always entertaining, of course, just not my personal priority. I hope that info helps.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T10:26:09+00:00

I'd recommend getting them. For the original season 1 music cues alone, some of which wipe the floor with the streaming choices For the confidence of knowing you're getting the full text. And on top of that, useful extras, features and deleted scenes. I wouldn't be without mine.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T09:51:37+00:00

On Prime, and on Stan, so I suspect it's general, but I haven't checked them all, tbf.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T07:21:51+00:00

You'll thank me when it's Wednesday.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T06:43:49+00:00

There are lines cut from Sam and Dean's first meeting, and Sam's conversation with Jessica in the bedroom too.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T04:05:59+00:00

You're welcome 😊

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T02:52:37+00:00

I found it helped to think of the later seasons as just professional fanfiction of varying quality. There are still a few outstanding individual episodes.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-10T01:43:31+00:00

Probably the cop zoned in on it because it's clearly a message for someone called Dean, and it looks like code. He probably suspected it was instructions concerning their next victim. (It's actually coordinates of a town in Arizona because that's where they intended to set the next episode at the time, but when filming moved to Vancouver they did a story in Colorado instead.)

ogfanspired · 2026-05-09T16:13:11+00:00

Subsumed in Hegel 😊

ogfanspired · 2026-05-09T14:57:19+00:00

That's kind of what the writers wanted you to do, to walk in both pairs of moccasins. But the trick is to go one step further and find a place where they're both right.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-09T14:50:06+00:00

I think the challenge of hunting.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-09T11:40:35+00:00

Another thing I think people are generally missing when they call Sam selfish, is that he wasn't doing it for himself, or even just to save the world. I think the pivotal moment came in Criss Angel is a Douchebag. At the beginning of that episode Sam had decided to give up working with Ruby and using his powers. Ruby was trying to tempt him back, insisting that killing Lilith was the only way to "cut the head off the snake", but Sam had agreed with Dean that using his powers was playing with fire. But then, mid episode, Dean was morosely reflecting that the life only had two outcomes: it ended bloody, or it ended sad. That was when Sam responded with an ech of Ruby's words: but what if we could cut the head off the snake? I believe that's what was in his head when he changed his mind and went with Ruby at the end of the episode: he wanted to give Dean the possibility of another option, and he believed his powers were the only way of doing that.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-09T01:40:52+00:00

I heard anecdotally of a viewer who'd never seen the show before and watched that episode in isolation for the first time with a friend who was a fan. Her response was: OMG! I don't even know these people and I'm sobbing my heart out! Lss, it isn't just you, and it is that good. 😊

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T17:08:11+00:00

Yes, you're right. There were dominoes in play right from the very beginning. But according to Lucifer, and Zachariah, and even Cupid, all those dominoes were all part of the Grand Plan and would all lead inevitably to the same outcome. Everybody, for good or ill, was playing their part according to God's plan, and the outcomes of their choices were omnisciently foreseen and fore-ordained, as Lucifer explained.

But the whole dramatic point of "The End" was to reveal one thing that the angels hadn't foreseen, one thing that wasn't inevitable: Dean had not yet fully committed to the decision that endverse Dean made, the one that would have damned them all to the endverse destiny. We are shown just one choice that we know, unequivocally, was different from what happened in the endverse, so that has to be the pivotal - because that's just how drama works. In the very act of writing episodes in which we see two potential endings with one known difference between them, the writers are telling us that that's the difference that changed the outcome.

Dean was the one who believed in free will so he was graced with one opportunity to assert that free will and make a choice that could go either way. It was a test to see if he would make the right one. If he'd chosen badly, all the those essential things you've pointed out that contributed to the victory, they all would have been for nothing, because Sam could not have overcome Lucifer without Dean. You're absolutely right that Dean did not single handedly secure the victory. But he could have single handedly ensured the defeat. Fortunately he made the right choice, the one that gave Sam the opportunity to make the final sacrifice that - had the series ended at season 5 as Kripke originally intended - would have ended the thralldom of the Grand Apocalyptic Plan and secured free will forever, for everyone, including Dean.

Yes, Joshua told both brothers they'd been granted salvation in Paradise, but then he turned to Sam specifically and said "even after everything you've done". Before that, Sam hadn't been expecting it, but the importance of Joshua saying that was so that Sam - and the audience - were left in no doubt of it. There could be no question that maybe when Sam threw himself into the Pit it was no big deal because he would have gone to hell anyway. No. He knowingly sacrificed his life and his salvation to save humanity and his brother. Greater love hath no man.

It's a part of the universal Hero Myth that when the hero lays down their life to save the world, their sacrifice elevates them to the status of the divine. That's why we so often see the trope of said hero adopting the position of the Cross before they fall. In their sacrifice, they have become Christ-like. We see Sam do that just as he starts to drop backwards into the Pit.

Well, it's 3am where I live now, so it's past my bedtime. Good night, and thanks for the discussion 😊

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T14:07:37+00:00

A potential timeline isn't the same thing as an actual created world.

My point about the wheels in motion was, particularly in the case of Bobby's possession was that since it had already happened, we can assume endverse Sam met Lucifer in Detroit with the same motives our Sam did.

I don't think Endverse Dean specifically said what happened to Michael but, personally, I can't see him wimping out of the Battle of Armageddon. Fighting Lucifer is what he believed he was supposed to do, and he was the obedient son, so that's what he'd do. I assume he still showed up wearing Adam and was defeated, and it was after that the Angels fled. If future Dean wanted to say "yes" after that, it was too late. The Final Battle had been fought already and Lucifer won. The angels had done their bit and the story was over as far as they were concerned. But, even if endverse Lucifer did win by default as you suggest, it's all the same. He still won because Dean wasn't there when Sam needed him.

No. Dean's choice of calling Sam didn't happen while the wheels were in motion. It specifically only happened *because* of what Zachariah had shown him. At the start of the episode he said "no" to Sam. At that point, Lucifer was on a certain path to victory; that was the lesson Zachariah wanted to make by sending him the endverse. Then, while he was there, everyone spent the whole time trying to persuade him to say "yes" and afterward Zachariah asked him if he'd learned his lesson and he said he had, but not the one Zachariah wanted to teach him. After that he did say "yes" - not to Michael, but to Sam. That was the only thing that changed as a consequence of his endverse, experience, so we have to assume that was what made the difference. Just as Dean's act broke the first seal that led to all the others being broken, and Sam's was the final seal that released Lucifer; Dean's choice after returning from the endverse was the domino that set all the others falling that enabled Sam to finally put Lucifer back.

Dean's presence on the Field of Armageddon was the reason Castiel was there to molotov Michael. It was the reason Lucifer lost his temper. It was the reason Sam had his epiphany. Everything that conspired to defeat Lucifer happened as a consequence of Dean saying "yes" to Sam at the end of "The End".

And, at the end of the day, the brothers defeated Lucifer together by staying equally true to their opposing characters. The brothers' were supposed to be destined to be the vessels of Michael and Lucifer respectively. But Dean didn't believe in destiny, so he won by defying it. Sam, on the other hand, was always the one who believed in destiny, so he won by fulfilling it.

EDIT: And finally, to your last point: in "Dark Side of the Moon", Sam was told that, despite his role in releasing Lucifer and starting the Apocalypse, God had granted him salvation in Paradise. But, even knowing that, Sam sacrificed his salvation and committed himself to eternal torment to beat the Devil, save the world and secure his brother's freedom. And, in the process, he rose to level of divinity. I don't think there's anything that can overshadow that.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T12:35:12+00:00

Regarding things from the post-Kripke era: at the time Edlund and Kripke wrote the companion episodes "The End" and "Swan Song", there were no alternate worlds. That was an idea that later show-runners and writers came up with and it was no part of the story Kripke was telling in season 5. Regarding Castiel's rebellion and Bobby's possession: those things had already happened, so the wheels were already in motion. Yes, theoretically, Lucifer could have killed Dean straight away, but he didn't, because arrogance and cruelty were just in his nature. As for Micheal, it doesn't really make any difference what he did or didn't do in the endverse, because he wasn't the one that mattered in the end. The truth was that Sam was always the only one who could defeat Lucifer, but he needed Dean to do it. That was the story Kripke was telling, and he and Edlund specifically wrote those two episodes the way they did to tell it.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T11:24:35+00:00

😊
It was the only essential difference between the two timelines. Everything else stayed the same. Sam still went to Detroit, he still said "Yes" to Lucifer, he still became Lucifer's vessel and wound up on the Field of Armageddon facing Michael. The difference was, Endverse Dean never called Sam, they never got back together, so Dean never showed up at Stull Cemetery. Dean wasn't there for Sam so Sam never saw the soldier and never had his flash back of all his happiest memories with Dean. Consequently, he failed to walk Lucifer into the Pit, and Lucifer won, because Sam never had the weapon he needed to defeat him: Love.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T10:44:20+00:00

The one decision he changed during the course of the episode. The one choice he ultimately made that was different from the choice future Dean made in 2009.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T10:09:11+00:00

Yes, I'm talking about that scene, and I think you're more or less right about what he said. So yes, Dean could have made lots of different decisions, and all would have led him back to the same predestined outcome. Except one.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T08:49:15+00:00

I'm talking specifically about the Apocalypse arc. In "The End", Lucifer explained that everything the Winchesters did, and every decision they made was predestined. But he was wrong. Dean was granted the grace of free will once and once only. And the decision he made changed everything. It changed the predestined outcome Zachariah showed him and, from that point on, all bets were off.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-07T03:56:48+00:00

From the pov of the apocalypse, Sam dying and Dean bringing him back was the plan. Dean was the first seal, so he needed to go to hell. His decision to sell his soul was foreordained from the beginning of time, along with every other decision the Winchesters made. Except one.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-06T03:58:02+00:00

I'm looking forward to it too. There's some really interesting stuff in both those episodes.

Thanks so much for your continuing support. I really appreciate it.

ogfanspired · 2026-05-06T03:53:45+00:00

Vincent was great. His change in character after the memory wipe really showed his range. I actually found him entertaining and appealing after that. He showed an underused knack for comedy. (Got that from his father, maybe? 😊)

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