The boys are being told over and over again how parallel their stories are to Michael's and Lucifer's, and can't they see they MUST follow the same road as Michael and Lucifer? However, one thing is glaringly different: Whereas Lucifer and Michael's relationship seems irrevocably severed, Sam and Dean have overcome what separated them and are united again in common purpose.
Also, as far as I know, angels don't have free will. They are bound to follow God's directive, or which fate is laid out for them. Mankind does possess free will. Therefore Sam and Dean have the option of making their own choices about which roads to follow.
Because I am finding myself frustrated and feeling like I'm talking at cross purposes with people, for those of you who do not think that Jo and Ellen's deaths were deaths with agency (which is I think a completely separate issue from the overall treatment of women on Supernatural, by the by), what is your reasoning? Because I'm just not getting it. They went out fighting, not as passive victims.
I keep going back to D'Argo in PKW, or Doyle in Angel, or Vasquez and Gorman, or any fatally wounded character in a war movie who stays behind to cover the exits.
Perkins was responding to ita's post, Morgana, not yours.
I can't help Plei, because I think Jo and Ellen made all their own choices in this episode.
Well, the angels have been acting out. They have some sort of free will. But I can see why their lockstep makes them obsessive about Sam and Dean and the idea that they are fated to play out a pattern paralleling them. And why they're blind to what humanity has always had over them and the wrench it might throw in things.
They're all very convinced of the inevitability of events, even though each angel sees something different. Sam and Dean see things they have to try to change, not steps they have to retread. They don't know what or how, and that's probably what saves the world, if not them.
Man I will be sad when Ackles isn't on my screen anymore. For some reason I'm pessimistic about him getting to flex the acting chops in the same way. Like Enver Gjokaj. I feel more sue JP will be okay.
While I was satisfied with their being allowed to go out in a blaze of glory by their own choice, perhaps one element is that the specific threat they died stopping were goon-level minions who seemed to have no specific purpose other than being sicced on Our Heroes? It did strike me that hellhounds are a fairly bush league threat compared to prior confrontations Ellen has survived against the Second Horseman and Azazel, and their inclusion rather than the usual possessed thugs (who can be exorcised) seemed tailored to ensure that someone had to make that last stand.
The hellhounds scare Dean. They might be lesser than demons or the like, but we've seen the horror they can wreak.
To me, though, it doesn't matter what the battle is, it's that they're choosing to fight. Sure, the circumstances fell out in a less than apocalypse-right-now-ish way, but they had already chosen to join the Winchesters in this fight. And it's not insignificant to me that, given their history with them, this is a battle they wanted in on anyway.
It did strike me that hellhounds are a fairly bush league threat compared to prior confrontations Ellen has survived against the Second Horseman and Azazel, and their inclusion rather than the usual possessed thugs (who can be exorcised) seemed tailored to ensure that someone had to make that last stand.
I don't see them as bush league, though. We've seen hellhounds target at people very rarely, and usually fatally, with the fatalities including Dean, as ita references. They're not smart or cunning, but they're effective and tenacious.
