feliciakw | SPN - post-"Survival of the Fittest" speculation (Reply)

There are so many places they could go with Dean being in Purgatory and Sam left on his own.

I'm thinking Dean will be there for three eps, making it its own little mini-arch. A three-act story with a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe extend it to four eps, depending on how interesting it is.

My main concern right now is how changed Dean will be when he returns. Dean is human, so he's not even supposed to be there to begin with. I can't imagine that this will be the same type or quality of trauma that Dean underwent in Hell, because it looks like he'll have the opportunity to fight back. But will he be "Dean" when he returns? Will he have to make alliances to stay alive while he's there? Whom will he run into (any and all monsters he's killed during his lifetime--with maybe the exception of ghosts. Do we know for sure that ghosts go there, since ghosts are actually human spirits?) while he's there? Amy (awkward), vampires (of which he was one, for a time), Madison, Todd Stashwick's 'shifter, Gordon, the striga, his daughter Emma (there's a family reunion I'd want to skip), stuff we haven't even met yet . . . so many possibilities . . .

It'll be like Old Home Week, in a really, really bad way.

This has also gotten me to thinking about what I consider to be a "monster." I've seen people suggest that Gabe might be in Purgatory. But the interesting thing is that I don't consider angels to be "monsters," and so I'm thinking, why would he be?

Meanwhile, Sam's resources are limited. Sheriff Jody, Tamara from M7, and the hunter with the daughter whom we met this season are the only ones coming to mind. Charlie maybe, and Frank if he's still alive. Possibly Death and/or Tessa, too. I'm also rather hoping that Enias is in hiding rather than killed and that we might see him again.

Crowley wins all the evil cookies. In one strategic move, he eliminated 3/4 of those who are the biggest threat to him: Dean, Cas, and Leviathan Dick. The only one left is Sam, and as I said, Sam's resources are extremely limited.

I keep wanting to watch the promo for the next ep on YT, and then I remember they haven't even started shooting the next ep yet. Wah!

This might be as interesting a summer as the summer between S3 and S4. Not quite as angst-filled, because sending Dean to Hell was downright traumatizing. I spent the entire season telling myself how they would not actually send Dean to Hell, and then they went there. And then Kalquessa pointed out that they couldn't NOT go there. And I spent the summer reading "happy" fic where Sam gets Dean out and fic that made me cry with Dean suffering eternally and never getting out and fic that freaked me out with Dean coming back as a demon. *shudder*

This really does ring reminiscent to me of S3 when Dean was in Hell, which they didn't really address in great detail once he got back. Some aspects of it were handled really well (the ambiguity of Hell, leaving it to our imaginations), and some were sort of left by the wayside (taking the time to deal with Dean's post-Hell issues).

This almost feels to me like a "do over," like this is an opportunity to address those things from Dean's POV that didn't get addressed the last time. And since this is Purgatory and appears more "substantial" (a dark and creepy tar pit Fire Swamp-type place), we might actually get to see Dean in action here.

And Sam saving Dean like he didn't get to do in S3.

But they are gonna have to come up with something truly amazingly phenomenal if they want to match the awesome surprising awesomeness that was the introduction of Castiel in "Lazarus Rising," let alone top that reveal. Probably best not even to try.

All in all, this might keep me posting at random over the course of the summer and early fall (Show doesn't come back until October next season), so bear with me when I kind of go on tangents, yeah?