Yes, that for sure. I think it may be relatively undamaged somehow is what I really mean. I don't know that I think Michael is protecting it, though. I just don't know... something.

Maybe in Hell Michael and Lucifer are in their orginal Angelic forms and that is why Crowley was able to pull Sam out of the cage. (Assuming we can believe anything Crowley said.)

Thus - Sam's soul is just hanging out as a disembodied entity not tied to Lucifer.

I don't think that we can possibly go through all the sadface trauma that would result from Cas being right. But I think it serves the story very well for everyone to assume it is the truth.

I was thinking re earlier discussion, why are we making the assumption that Mary is in Heaven? I'm completely unspoiled but suspect that is why show is building up the mythos of Purgatory. I think that is where Samuel came from and why he may want to get Mary out. He still might have come from Heaven but if he didn't have Mary with him there (where one assumes he would have had the time and opportunity to assuage his guilt if she was with him) then he may suspect he has to get her out of Purgatory.

All of this may be moot however with Crowley gone. He was the only one talking about getting the location of purgatory. No one else has been interested in it, have they?

I'm still unclear on how Crowley had the mojo to get Samuel out of heaven, if he was there. But I can't see why he would have gone to hell or purgatory.

I'm rewatching now, and I still don't get what Samuel means about Dean choosing Sam over Mary.

why are we making the assumption that Mary is in Heaven?

Are we? Which is to say, I have pointed out that we don't know where she is, because show has deliberately not told us when the topic came up.

I think all Sampa means about Dean choosing Sam over Mary is that either Sam gets his soul back or Mary comes back--he sees those as contradictory, because of how the boys are working at odds with Crowley.

Oh, I get it.

But why does Dean say "Break an ankle" when he's fighting the demons? That was odd.

Crowley's demons were always very well clad, I have to say.

Crowley doesn't know where Purgatory is, he can't have gotten Samuel out of it. And if Purgatory is where dead vampires and shapeshifters, etc. go when they die (do they have souls? It's so confusing) sending human souls who aren't bad enough to go to hell there seems pretty mean.

Granted, it's not a very nice universe.

I was thinking that maybe because we don't know the laws of who goes to Heaven and who has done questionable things but maybe not bad enough for hell, that perhaps Mary making the deal with YED qualified her for some time in purgatory before Heaven. Isn't that some of the lore, that Purgatory is for not bad people but those that just weren't clean enough to go straight to Heaven. After their cleansing time, then they go on to Heaven.

I'm pulling this out of my butt with no theological instruction, but since show often does the same thing, I think that is fair practice. I might check wiki to see what show is probably using as rules for Purgatory.

We have no information that humans go to Purgatory, but Mary was a spirit, so maybe the rules for her are different.

I doubt we can extrapolate any rules from outside onto Purgatory, because starting with "monsters go there" I think they broke loose from most other canon.