I'm wondering about the mechanics now. Cas has eaten souls and made them a part of himself before. Is it possible that he could have just eaten the bad parts of Sam's, leaving the rest as a functional whole?

Still not buying that Sam's trauma would exceed what he had to have experienced containing 30-40 million monster souls that had been in Purgatory for thousands of years and a bunch of Leviathans that had been there for hundreds of millions if not billions.

Why does one have to assume the experience of being tortured by Lucifer in a cage in hell is comparable to "living" in purgatory? I can't find a reason to support the idea that the souls that Cas ingested were in torment, and that there was any personal malice in that experience.

What do we know about the environment of Purgatory from canon, and most specifically, what sort of a time the monsters would have had there? Maybe their memories are all pleasant.

Either way, being hatebanged by Luci is supposed to be a special case, isn't it?

Trailer we already saw: [link]

Interestingly, it doesn't seem that Dean actually gave up drinking when he said he would. I was actually half okay with him doing that, but am happier that he didn't.

Also, it seems that not only will we see him drinking, which we've seen plenty of, we'll see him drunk, which we have seen rarely (I contend not at all).

I do wonder if we're driving closer to some sort of moral or resolution of his alcoholism. I'm wary of that.

In Christian theology (I think, I'm not actually a very educated Christian), purgatory is sort of endless boredom. It's nothing, not good, not bad, more like an endless layover with no real distraction.

Bobby described it like this:

It's like the backside of your worst nightmares. It's all blood and bone and darkness. Filled with the bodies and souls of all things hungry, sharp, and nasty.

However, that doesn't mean that the monsters wouldn't enjoy it. Just that it wouldn't be good times for humans. But Cas didn't ingest human souls, so I don't know what mood they'd be in.

Hell is now like the theological description of Purgatory. Which is a good gag, and even a nifty comment on the forward-thinking nature of Crowley, but I don't really like it from a universe-construction point of view. I want a place of sheer and abject terror, where all the most horrible things we can envision are happening, to everyone, and repeatedly. That isn't Earth, I mean.

I never thought of that.

It is a little irritating. Like, if Dean or Sam had been sent to hell a few years later, they would have been just waiting in line, not being flayed alive.

The idea of being remade into something horrifically other with predatory/cannibalistic instincts strong enough to overwhelm even love for your family and having your soul yanked away from its rightful destination post-death to hang out with Mother-of-All in some kind of void doesn't seem that pleasant to me. Madison and Lenore certainly seemed tormented by their situation while living, and then you multiply that by 15 to 20 million. I suppose there could have been some Jasmine-like effect going on with the dead monster souls once they made it into Purgatory.

We've heard Purgatory described in very negative terms by Bobby's research materials (of dubious accuracy) and as a wasteland by Dr. Visyak.

Like, if Dean or Sam had been sent to hell a few years later, they would have been just waiting in line, not being flayed alive.

Anti-climactic, isn't it? Dragged to the afterworld by hellhounds, and then...that? Talk about dissipation of impact.

The idea of being remade into something horrifically other with predatory/cannibalistic instincts strong enough to overwhelm even love for your family and having your soul yanked away from its rightful destination post-death to hang out with Mother-of-All in some kind of void doesn't seem that pleasant to me.

But they're not being remade. They're just being sent. I don't see how their souls are being yanked away from their rightful destination--vampire "souls" go to purgatory. That's their rightful destination. We've not been given the impression that vampires are wandering around the earth angsting about their current condition, and waiting for an afterlife in which to give that existential pain free rein. With exception of the vegetarian posse, they all seemed pretty okay with what they were doing.

I have no reason to think that their afterlives were filled with anguish based on their life-lives. Madison and Lenore were pointed exceptions, for the purposes of the narrative. If they'd been typical, there'd have been no story there.

We've heard Purgatory described in very negative terms by Bobby's research materials

Which I quoted upthread, but again--while I imagine that's highly unpleasant for the people that end up there, I still have no idea that the monsters that end up there are in a similar torment to being singled out by Alistair (my assumption is that Dean's hell experience was worse than most people's because of the focus) or being locked up with Lucifer and Michael (similarly, I assume Sam's hell experience was worst than just about anyone's, period).

Ooh, that is an interesting idea.

@jarpad

@stjude Heres the final tally-In just over five short months, @WinchesterBros and the supernatural fandom raised over $80,000 for you! :)

That's with his and Genevieve's matching dollars. Pretty fucking cool. That's how you mobilize fans for a good cause.