#but they're doing a lot of the groundwork for a potential 'we saved each other' narrative between them

[mittensmorgul]

Sam and Rowena? I’m still bitter about Sam and Eileen. Hope it’s ok to say that. I want Sam to have a significant other but I don’t get Rowena.

Hi hi! And absolutely, it’s fine to say you’re bitter about Eileen, because damn… 

*takes five minute break to feel all the rage about 12.21*

Okay, now that that’s set aside for a moment, I’m going to attempt to speak rationally about this. Let’s see how well I do. Y’all can grade me at the end. :P

Yeah, for the entire two episodes that we came to know Eileen, it really did feel like they were setting her up to be a potential love interest for Sam. They used many of the same tropes they’ve used for other potentially romantically linked characters (*coughdestielcough*), and gave Eileen a family history and personal goals that narratively paralleled Sam’s. Her parents died when she was 6 months old, and she was forever changed by a supernatural being who killed them. She was raised in hunting, but always had a desire to pursue the study of Law. She and Sam spoke a common narrative language, as it were.

And then in 12.17, we learned that she and Sam had carried on a close communication for more than a year. It was clear from that little skype chat that even though she communicated with both Sam and Dean, and that they did all discuss matters related to hunting and general life stuff, that it was Sam she had a much closer relationship with the second she effectively said goodbye to Dean and continued her personal conversation with Sam.

That whole conversation– two episodes before the Mixtape reveal– was yet another reminder that “things happen offscreen,” and “Sam and Dean have personal emotional connections with people that develop even when we’re not actively being told about all the details on a weekly basis.”

Dean: All right, well, what are we lookin’ at here?Eileen: Working on it.Dean: Well, go get ‘em, Eileen.Eileen: That’s the plan.[Dean gives Eileen the 'thumbs up’ and Sam shifts the monitor back towards him.]Eileen: Bye, Sam.Sam [smiling]: Bye.[Sam disconnects the call]Dean [smirking]: That’s cute.Sam: Come on.

And then 12.21 happened. And dashed that potential. If 12.21 didn’t inspire more coda fic than any other episode, it’s gotta be near the top of the list. *I* wrote coda fic of 12.21…

Eileen is actually alive and what we saw was some sort of trick. Eileen was never there and Ketch actually killed a shapeshifter made to look like Eileen to rattle Sam and Dean, but she’s actually still in hiding. She’s too good for that, and wouldn’t have allowed herself to be caught out like that…

I mean, all of that could still be true, and her apparent death at the jaws of a Hellhound controlled by Ketch was just the most pointless … it didn’t even bear the narrative trigger that Charlie’s death did (i.e. the other pointlessly gross murder of a woman in the most horrific way possible just to further the manpain). The worst of Eileen’s death, to me, is the fact the same writers are attempting to ~do something~ with the character who murdered her. It’s not even remotely clear what that something is, but they’ve given him a half-assed redemption arc that none of the other writers seem to want to touch (and good for them, honestly).

So yeah, I definitely understand the bitterness.

But like with Charlie, the other characters have to keep living, and they’re put into new situations in which they grow and change and as a result of continuing to live… they do move on.

Take Rowena, for example. She’s been in near 30 episodes to Eileen’s two (It’s not really fair to include 12.21 in Eileen’s count, even). And she has had a pretty incredible personal character arc as we’ve learned more about her. Rather than spend half an hour recounting her entire plot history, I’m just gonna point everyone to her page on the superwiki for a quick, bare bones assessment of the technical plot details of her evolution from enemy to adversary to reluctant ally to possibly… friend…

http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/Rowena

So now that we’re all refreshed on how Rowena has managed to grow closer and closer to the Winchesters, let’s consider why. Because again, her redemption has always been closely tied to Sam. And since 13.19, quite literally on a cosmic scale through the revelation that all of Billie’s books on her fate end with her death because of Sam.

The show has paralleled Sam’s struggles since s10 directly to Rowena. Think back to their uneasy alliance during s10 during a time when Sam was going off the rails in an attempt to save Dean from the Mark. He hallucinated Rowena in 10.19, in an episode where the hallucinations were specifically crafted to drive the person experiencing them to their own death. And now Sam will apparently be the cause of Rowena’s eventual demise… although the mechanism of that isn’t textually clear yet, there is a definite potential romantic reading to it.

That information came to light in 13.19, in an episode where Rowena had to confront the ghosts of her past via her grief and all her regrets about her life and her lost son. It was also an episode where she was forced to confront reality, and to lay that baggage aside so she could move forward with her life. Where she had to acknowledge that her choices now could change her fate, that she was no longer the victim of fate that she’d been battling against since her lover abandoned her in poverty with a baby more than 300 years ago.

Sam was critical in her even getting to that point at all. He helped her (against Dean’s advice) restore her powers so that she could protect herself and finally achieve the security she’d been fighting for against the Grand Coven, against the old Men of Letters, against Lucifer, against the world in general that drove her to seek shelter from people who would only abuse her along the way. Sam did that. He was framed as the key to her being able to save herself, as well as the potential eventual cause of her demise.

But what if it isn’t literal death that Sam will bring her, but a choice? She’s kept herself alive for hundreds of years, resurrected herself at least three times in canon alone, and is effectively immortal because of it. But… what if she chose something else? What if, like Lily Sunder, she made the choice to stop pursuing immortality? What if she laid it aside because she was able to find true happiness in a human lifetime? They effectively opened the narrative doorway to that possibility, while putting Sam in the position to be the one waiting to unlock the door for her.

Eileen was an excellent narrative mirror for where Sam was back in s11 and s12, but through it all, Rowena has been given what has the potential to be a much deeper, more meaningful personal connection to where I’ve been hoping they would take Sam for years now.

Sam has struggled against his own nature, over what he perceived was “done to him” when he was a baby, and whether he’s even human or not, since season one. Rowena being a natural witch, born with these powers and choosing to do good with them now because she’s finally in a place of security where she can even consider that option, could potentially mirror Sam finally feeling at peace with his own entire life, you know?

Because Rowena has never run from her own powers, or from the reality of the Supernatural. She’s had essentially the entire opposite issue to Sam’s lifelong conflict of resisting that life. And from what we’ve seen so far of Rowena’s journey in relation to Sam, they very well could be setting up a “meet in the middle” sort of balance between them.

Rowena is perfectly positioned to confirm to Sam that he’s not a freak, that he’s wonderful exactly how he is. And Sam’s perfectly positioned to confirm to Rowena that she deserves safety, security, and happiness and can choose to fight for something bigger than her own personal survival.

I mean… what’s not to get here?

eta: Also please just let someone be there for Sam. Let someone care about him and take care of him and give him a kiss and a hug and be there for him in the morning. Let him have nice things.

Same with Rowena.