#it’s actually really cool to see this random civilian woman have faith she can reason with the Hulk

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #251

[themyskira]

Some disordered (spoilery) thoughts on the movie

Some things that I liked

Kid Diana racing through the streets, lighting up with excitement as she watches the warriors train. The not-at-all-innocent “hello, Mother” when Hippolyta catches her out (literally).

An active, bustling Amazon society. Amazons going about their days. Amazons sparring together, Amazons taking pleasure in one another’s company.

Diana’s compassion. Her instant willingness to risk her own life in the face of others’ suffering. 

“I am willing to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Like you once did.” “You know that if you choose to leave us, you can never return.” “Who will I be if I stay?”

Hippolyta’s love and grief and pride. The parting gift of Antiope’s headband -- the iconic tiara.

Diana’s palpable delight in the little things -- The sight of a baby. Snow. Dancing. Celebrating townsfolk. The taste of ice cream.

(The ice cream moment, by the way -- so, so, so much better than the comic book scene it’s derived from, which was actually awful.)

Her refusal to walk past injustices or to sacrifice individuals for the greater good. Steve, the military intelligence man, forces himself to ignore the suffering civilians and focus on the mission, which will ultimately prevent greater suffering. Diana can’t accept that, won’t accept that. No other relief is coming for these people. She steps out into No Man’s Land.

Facing Ares at the last with that simple, powerful conviction: for all the darkness in human hearts, there is also the capacity for great love, and she’ll fight for that every day if she has to.

The use of the BvS quote in the trailer is thoroughly misleading: this isn’t the story of why Diana walked away from mankind. It’s the story of why she continues to fight for humanity, believing in people’s ability to rise above their darker impulses.

Some things that I did not like

DIANA IS A RASH, NAIVE IDIOT.

And yes, this is a young Diana, an untested Diana on her first journey into Man’s World. I realise that. I expect her to screw up, to misjudge things and have her preconceptions challenge. I expect there to be a learning curve.

Even allowing for that, the Diana in this movie is a complete dickhead.

She’s an adult who still believes in fairy tales. She thinks that humans are completely good and pure, and only the corruption of outside forces causes them to do bad things.

Over the course of the movie, she is continually confronted with situations that challenge this view. She meets good people who have done bad things -- people who don’t always have the luxury of standing up for principles, and people who’ve made terrible choices for right reasons. She witnesses and learns of corruption, discrimination and dispossession. Again and again and again.

And she learns nothing from any of this.

Because when she thinks she’s killed Ares (and oh, I’ll get to that bit of stupid), she is shocked -- shocked -- that people don’t immediately lay down their weapons.

And when Steve floats the possibility that maybe, maybe war is just a little more complicated that “the devil made them do it”, she can't fucking deal with it and decides “FUCK Y’ALL, YOU DON’T DESERVE MY HELP. NEVER MIND THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS I WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT BEFORE, THEY CAN ALL FUCKING BURN. IF HUMANS AREN’T PERFECT CREATURES OF VIRTUE THEN THEY DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE.”

but no I don’t think I’ve adequately explained what an absolute boneheaded twit this woman is.

Her naivety goes beyond the usual fish-out-of-water hijinks. She has no awareness of the people around her. She cannot make intuitive leaps. She doesn’t take on board what she’s told. She has no interest in planning or considering the consequences of her actions, which means that Steve’s constantly trailing one step behind her lecturing her about how she can’t do whatever it is she's about to do.

“OH NO I DON’T NEED A PLAN I’LL JUST RUN INTO THE PARTY AND MURDER A DUDE AND THEN THE WAR WILL MAGICALLY END I SEE NO REASON TO TALK ABOUT THIS FURTHER THERE IS NOTHING THAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG IN THIS EQUATION”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE NEED TO THINK THIS THROUGH. WHY WOULD WE SECURE THE POISON MURDERGAS AND PREVENT IT FROM BEING DEPLOYED AGAINST ANYBODY WHEN WE COULD KILL A GUY ON A HUNCH I HAD INSTEAD. GOD STEVEN IT’S LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO STOP ME FROM ENDING THE WAR”

She comes to the conclusion that General Ludendusseldorfendorf is Ares in disguise based solely on the fact that he is he one spearheading the German murdergas project, and obviously humans are not capable of doing evil things on their own, and it’s not like there are hundreds of other people involved in the production of these weapons or at least there are but she doesn’t know any of their names so she can probably pre-emptively rule them out and just go murder Ludenhoodendooden.

Sure, it helps that Ludenhorfledorf is an absurd cartoon villain of the sort who is prone to cackling maniacally and shooting his own men at random. Who, when Diana finally comes face-to-face with him, spends most of the conversation talking about the massive hard-on he has for war and slaughter and Ares specifically. But you kinda want to be sure before you jump to the dramatic speechifying and righteous murdering.

Gary Oldman Ares is awful. Everything about the gods is awful. Ares murdering all the gods. Zeus as a loving, self-sacrificing, pseudo-Christian god. Zeus replacing the role of the goddesses in the Amazons’ story. Ares describing himself as the god of truth URGH. The utter bullshit of Ares’ “boooooo humans are assholes, I want them all to die so much so that the world can be decent again” urgh fuck off mate you are such a disappointing villain.

And could anybody else figure out the logic in his ranting? because fuck knows it’s still eluding me. “oooooohhh I have so much faith in humans’ ability to fuck themselves and everybody else over that I’m actually helping to negotiate Armistice! I’m literally doing everything I can to stop the war because I know that in the end it will have no effect and humans will bomb each other into oblivion! and I won’t have had anything to do with their destruction! Sure, I very deliberately put the tools for mass slaughter in the hands of the select few people in this war who had both the desire and the power to use them, thus giving them the ability to overpower the majority who had turned their efforts to peace, and to escalate the conflict against the wishes of their leaders! But really it’s humanity as a whole that is the asshole here!”

Dr Poison is more plot device than character. She has no backstory, no arc and no personality. She’s a generic evil minion whose only pleasure in life comes from devising new ways to murder people with chemicals. She is wasted.

If Etta Candy were a rose by any other name, I might have liked her. I like Lucy Davis as an actress, and though I found the character a bit... overly quirky-loveable-British-comic-relief-girl... it was nice for Diana to have a potential female friend in what was (outside of Themyscira) a very male-dominated cast, and it would have been nice for them to interact more.

My sticking point with the character is that she was supposed to be Etta Candy. Who will always be, in my head, a fierce, fabulous, fearless, ass-kicking Texan lady. Quirky British “we use our principles, although I am not averse to engaging in fisticuffs should the occasion arise” haha jolly good... ain’t gonna cut it for me. Though I acknowledge that this is getting into nitpicking.

Steve annoyed the shit out of me. He is both the brains and the heart of the movie. He is the one who ultimately teaches Diana to love humanity, to fight for them, to be a hero. Diana wants to help end the war, but Steve’s words are what spur her to defy her mother’s forbiddance. She throws herself into the fight against Ares, but Steve’s sacrifice and the love and dedication behind it are what empower her to defeat him. She wants to help from the start, but it’s Steve who teaches her not to fight for people because they “deserve” it, but because it’s the right thing to do. It’s Steve who teaches Diana true compassion.

Throughout the film, Steve is the one trailing after Diana trying in vain to make her see reason. He’s the one making the plans to actually stop Ludendude from committing chemical genocide while Diana is crashing from scene to scene all “OKAY I WILL GO END THE WAR NOW. WHICH WAY IS THE WAR AGAIN?”

Steve is smarter, more understanding, more competent and more compassionate than Diana.

Also, after Diana sees Steve naked he spends the next two or three scenes anxiously assuring her that his dick is, in fact, larger than average.

(Diana knows about sex because she’s read all the books, urgh)

The sword is a misdirect: the weapon Zeus left the Amazons to counter Ares is Diana herself. Kind of cool as a general concept, except that this effectively replaces Diana’s “brought into being by a mother’s love” origin with one in which she is a weapon bequeathed by the Supreme Patriarch. Also, the foreshadowing of this was the exact opposite of subtle, taking some of the power out of the eventual revelation.

This origin also means that Diana is the only child on Themyscira, which adds to this whole... woman-child thing about her that I really don’t like. Because the movie requires her to go from “why are those people holding hands? because they’re together? well, you and I are together, why shouldn’t we hold hands? what do you mean it’s not the same? of course I know about sex I have read lots of books about human biology” to fucking (and, the implication is, losing her virginity to) Steve and... euuugh.

also 140 minutes is a fucking slog, man.

idk there is probably more to say but I feel like I’ve stopped being coherent.

[mittensmorgul]

5.17 and 5.18, or How does any of this make any sense whatsoever if you don’t “see the destiel?”

Short answer: It really doesn’t make sense whatsoever if you try and remove any of the destiel subtext. Like, zero sense.

Because there’s four (or five, if you count Adam, but he’s literally a plot device again and not an actual character... he is the red herring) things that Save Dean Winchester in these episodes:

the father-son love of Bobby

the sibling love of Sam

Lisa and Ben as the symbolic representation of Dean’s devotion to protecting all of humanity

(Adam the red herring that proves these other three ^^ because he DOESN’T fit any pattern and was never a real part of their family and actually flat-out rejects his ties to the Winchester family in favor of choosing his mother over them, even at the cost of selling out the rest of humanity to do so... he is literally the Anti-Winchester who Dean is willing to risk his own life to save ANYWAY)

And Cas. The absolute devotion of an angel who gave Dean everything, up to and including his life. Several times over. And whose heartbreak over Dean’s resignation to give in is one of the key things that gives Dean a reason to keep fighting, and the strength to deny Heaven’s plans for him at the last moment... and Dean hasn’t really wavered in that faith again since...

Okay, that said, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get this party started, with:

5.17: a bunch of demons herd Sam and Dean to Crazytown

Also, 5.18, because it follows directly on from 5.17 thematically, and I couldn’t figure out a way to separate out the overlaps so I just sorta... kept writing :P

Because of that, under a cut because this is longer than most of my single episode posts:

ROB: I hate to tell you this, but those were demons and this is the Apocalypse. So…buckle up.

I mean, tell us something we don’t know...

PASTOR GIDEON: Who would have thought the Apocalypse could be so romantic? Marriage, family—it’s a blessing. Especially in times like this. So hold on to that. 

everyone it town is getting hitched because there’s no time like the present to make things official than at the end of the world (where premarital sex has been declared a sin by a “prophet” who’s actually the Whore of Babylon)

Cas’s voicemail skills have come so far...

CASTIEL’S VOICEMAIL: You have reached the voicemail box of: CASTIEL: I don’t understand why, why do you want me to say my name CASTIEL presses random buttons.

After what Pamela said to Dean in 5.16, about maybe Heaven wasn’t such a bad place to go after all, and that maybe Dean didn’t have to keep fighting his destiny quite so hard because no matter how bad things got on Earth, even if millions of people died, they’d be coming to “a better place.”

DEAN: We’re all gonna die, Sam. In like a month—maybe two. I mean it. This is the end of the world, but these people aren’t freaking out. In fact they’re running to the exit in an orderly fashion. I don’t know that that’s such a bad thing. SAM: Who says they’re all gonna die? What ever happened to us saving them?

It’s gotten to Dean in a big way. He’s struggling with doubts about himself and his ability to fight off this huge destiny by himself, now knowing that even God doesn’t care and won’t help them, and by the end of this episode seeing even Cas give up and give in to the Bukowski fatalism... It’s almost like he’s getting to the point where he just wants it to end, where he’s being worn down by circumstances until he doesn’t even have the will to keep fighting anymore.

LEAH: Well, Dean…you’re chosen. DEAN Yeah, more like cursed. LEAH Must be hard. Being the Vessel of Heaven and having no hope.

(boy drinks red label Schultz beer and immediately is killed by a demon)

But all of this is being orchestrated by the Whore, to manipulate the people of the town into doing her bidding. She plays exactly into their desperation until they’re willing to do ANYTHING in her name, including murdering innocent children.

SAM: No drinking, no gambling, no premarital sex. Dean, they basically just outlawed ninety percent of your personality. DEAN: Yeah, well, whatever. When in Rome. SAM: So, uh…you’re cool with it? DEAN: I’m not cool. I’m not, not cool. I’m just, look man, I’m not a prophet. We’re not locals. It’s not my call.

Sam has a nice chat with the bartender who’s just been put out of business:

PAUL: Look, there’s sure as hell demons. And maybe there is a God. I don’t know. Fine. But I’m not a hypocrite. I never prayed before and I ain’t starting now. If I go to hell, I’m going honest. How ‘bout you? SAM: What about me? PAUL: Not a true believer, I take it. SAM : I believe, yeah. I do. I’m just. Pretty sure God stopped caring a long time ago. 

Yeah, Sam’s got it on pretty good authority. But Sam refuses to quit fighting for it, even though Dean’s rapidly giving up here... Sam tells him the town’s shut off all communications with the outside world, isolating themselves in self-defense...

And all Dean can say is that he doesn’t care, that he and Sam were supposed to have been the ones to roll into town and save these people, but they just couldn’t do it. That maybe he’s lost the will to keep fighting.

SAM: No you can’t. You can’t do this to me. I got one thing, one thing, keeping me going. You think you’re the only one white-knuckling it here, Dean? I can’t count on anyone else. I can’t do this alone.

*Dean walks out in defiance of the town’s “curfew” and heads to the bar, where even Sam believes he’s going to get drunk, because that was what SAM had been doing, and said he would’ve stayed and KEPT drinking if it hadn’t been for the curfew in town. But like in 12.14 when Dean went out ostensibly to get a drink and returned to the bunker ENTIRELY SOBER, Dean has such a long history of this. Of telling Sam (or whoever’s nearby) that he’s going to drink... and then never drinks. Major Performing Dean here.*

While Dean’s out, Cas shows up. Poor drunk Cas...

CASTIEL : I got your message. It was long, your message. And I find the sound of your voice grating.

(pffft “long,” it’s 25 words and like half of them are filler words like “um” and “so.” really long. >.>)

But the Whore’s goal is corruption:

DEAN: So the demons smoking out—that’s just a con? Why? What’s the endgame? CASTIEL: What you just saw—innocent blood spilled in God’s name.

(sort of like the Righteous Man had to be corrupted to spill blood in Hell to break the first seal...)

CASTIEL: The whore can only be killed by a true Servant of Heaven. DEAN : Servant, like… CASTIEL: Not you. Or me. Sam, of course, is an abomination. We’ll have to find someone else. 

But in the end, it was Dean who was able to kill her, because he was already losing his will to resist what was beginning to look like an inevitability. He’s been on a slow slide into resignation all season, going right back to 5.02 immediately after he learned about his “destiny” to be Michael’s vessel, where he gave Bobby his first “keep fighting until we go down swinging” sort of speech, and then turned around and told SAM it was a bunch of BS and that they probably didn’t have a chance to stop it all from happening anyway.

Michael insisting on that fact to his face in 5.13, learning how heaven had been arranging their lives since LONG before they were born in 5.14, rightly or wrongly believing Death himself was trying to take out Bobby and therefore one of Dean’s last remaining emotional supports in order to nudge Sam and Dean into saying yes, and then finally Cas being told by God himself that he just didn’t care one way or the other. I mean, when God himself tells you to give up, it’s kinda disheartening...

Dean gets to have his emotional bonding moment with Cas over their respective deadbeat dads, which is one of the things that will eventually save Dean... again.

And the townspeople, even after seeing the proof that their “prophet” had been the Whore, they’re lost, wondering how they’re supposed to get to the “paradise” she’d promised them now that she’s dead. They still don’t get that they’d damned themselves by trusting her in the first place...

SAM : Are you gonna do something stupid? DEAN Like what? SAM Like Michael stupid. DEAN Come on, Sam. Give me a break.

*Dean immediately leaves to go do something “Michael stupid”*

*after making a pit stop at Lisa’s*

DEAN: Look, I have no illusions, okay? I know the life that I live, I know how that’s gonna end for me. Whatever. I’m okay with that. But I wanted you to know…that when I do picture myself happy…it’s with you. And the kid.

Riiiiight... maybe “happy” isn’t the right word here? Maybe “peaceful,” but happy? A woman he’s spent a grand total of five days of his life with? She’s the anchor of normality in his otherwise horrifying and completely out-of-his-control life. But along with Sam (who Dean would do anything for to protect him from the crap), and Cas (who defied heaven over and over again for Dean and despite his own feelings of loss and abandonment by God will drag Dean bodily back into the fight yet again), and Bobby (who has only kept on fighting himself because of Dean’s will pushing him along), Lisa’s role here is not insignificant in turning the Apocalypse bus around. She’s one of the linchpins holding Dean together in a critical way.

She represents everything worth fighting for in humanity, the “civilians” all tucked up safe behind their white picket fences who just want to live their lives and never have to face down the devil...

DEAN : Whatever happens, you’re gonna be okay. LISA: What do you mean? What are you talking about? DEAN: The people that I’m gonna see next, they’re not gonna get anything from me without agreeing to a few conditions.

Lisa’s safety is one of those conditions, and it’s one of the details that gives Dean just enough time to kill Zachariah before Michael can come down and take possession of him.

But that’s the foundation of 5.18. Which is just about Dean’s lowest moment on the show to this point. He obviously reaches a few lower moments later (you don’t take on the Mark of Cain when you’re in a Happy Place...), but as far as his belief and trust in himself, this is possibly his most significant Moment Of Doubt ever.

SAM: No? So Michael’s not about to make you his Muppet? What the hell, man? This is how it ends? You just…walk out? DEAN: Yeah, I guess. SAM: How could you do that? DEAN: How could I? All you’ve ever done is run away. SAM: And I was wrong. Every single time I did.

Yet Dean still rejects the three people he’s closest to in the world. Sam, right there ^^, but he “brought help” in the form of Cas, who boops Dean back to Bobby’s and stops him from haring off after Michael. Next up is Bobby:

DEAN: Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say. But if Lucifer burns this mother down, and I coulda done something about it, guess what? That’s on me. BOBBY: You can’t give up, son. DEAN: You’re not my father. And you ain’t in my shoes.

I can’t help but think back to 5.04 here, and Dean’s vision of the future-- what he was warned would be left of the world if he refused to say yes... and he’s starting to get more than a little scared that it’s coming true...

Lisa tried and failed convince Dean not to do whatever he’d had planned.

Bobby shakes him up a little more, pulling out the gun and bullet he intends to kill himself with and shouting Dean down:

BOBBY: Every morning, I look at it. I think, “Maybe today’s the day I flip the lights out.” But I don’t do it. I never do it. You know why? Because I promised you I wouldn’t give up!

Enter Adam, who Cas intercepts from the angels, talking about the deal he made with Zachariah to be Michael’s vessel and kill the devil... in exchange for getting to see his mom again...

CASTIEL: Maybe they're desperate. Maybe they wrongly assumed Dean would be brave enough to withstand them. DEAN: Alright, you know what? Blow me, Cas.

Meanwhile Adam has no reason to trust them at all, and it comes down to Sam to stand up for “Another Way.”

SAM: Now, Adam…the angels are lying to you. They're full of crap. ADAM: Yeah, I don't think so. SAM: Really. Why not? ADAM: Um, 'cause they're angels.

and...

BOBBY: You're still John's boy. ADAM: No, John Winchester was some guy who took me to a baseball game once a year. I don't have a dad. So we may be blood, but we are not family. My mom is my family. And if I do my job, I get to see her again. So no offense, but she's the one I give a rat's ass about, not you.

So much for all those happy family feelings that Ghoul Adam had talked about... that was never Adam at all, it was the GHOUL talking about his family feelings... for his ghoul family...

Adam asks about this big plan they’re working on to save the world:

heh.

First “blow me, Cas” and now, “Well, Cas, not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that…I got laid.”

This episode is a wild ride.

DEAN: I’m serious. I mean, think about how many people we've gotten killed, Sam. Mom, Dad, Jess, Jo, Ellen. Should I keep going? SAM: It’s not like we pulled the trigger. DEAN: We might as well have. I’m tired, man. I’m tired of fighting who I'm supposed to be.

But really, Dean... it’s not self-doubt... It’s the ghost of John Winchester and a lifetime of being told to watch out for Sammy, keep an eye on Sammy, if you can’t save Sammy you have to kill him...

DEAN: I just…I—I don’t believe. SAM: In what? DEAN: In you. I mean, I don’t. I don’t know whether it’s gonna be demon blood or some other demon chick or what, but…I do know they're gonna find a way to turn you. SAM: So you’re saying I’m not strong enough. DEAN: You’re angry, you’re self-righteous. Lucifer's gonna wear you to the prom, man. It's just a matter of time. SAM: Don't say that to me. Not you...of all people. DEAN: I don’t want to. But it’s the truth. And when Satan takes you over, there's got to be somebody there to fight him, and it ain't gonna be that kid. So, it's got to be me.

So Dean lures the ONE person he knows would do anything for him to the panic room where they’ve locked him up, and “blows him to Oz” so he can escape and give in to Michael...

So Cas shows up to the dude praying to Michael on Dean’s behalf, and boops him to the ground under a Heaven-coded Schultz sign as the camera pans left to reveal a great big El Sol sign (Deception! HAHA!) and in this episode specifically as the Deception of Heaven, that Heaven itself has deceived both Adam and Dean...

And honestly this is as close as Zachariah ever got to tricking Dean into saying yes... but Castiel hasn’t stopped believing in Dean:

CASTIEL: I rebelled for this?! So that you could surrender to them? DEAN: Cas! Please! CASTIEL: I gave everything for you. And this is what you give to me.

And here we have the key to everything Zachariah ever was:

ADAM: No…but what about the stuff that you said? I’m supposed to fight the devil. ZACHARIAH: Mmm, not so much. Hey, if it’s any consolation, you happen to be the illegitimate half-brother of the guy we do care about. That’s not bad, is it? ADAM: So you lied…about everything. ZACHARIAH: We didn’t lie. We just avoided certain truths to manipulate you.

And why Cas is so unconvinced by Ketch in 12.08. He knows how this tactic works ^^. But despite Dean’s utter lack of trust in Sam’s ability to keep saying no to the devil, Sam shows ABSOLUTE AND UNSHAKEABLE TRUST in Dean, even knowing how hopeless Dean’s feeling right now. And this? This is what saves the world.

SAM: And the place is crawling with mooks…Pretty much a no-shot-in-hell, hail-Mary kind of thing. DEAN: Ah, so the usual. What are you going to do? SAM: For starters…I’m bringing you with.

This is Sam’s moment of “redemption” for s4. For Ruby. For the demon blood. For trusting the demon over his own brother. He’s showing a sign of faith here, and atoning for every time he left and knows it was “the wrong thing to do.”

Heaven and Hell wanted to divide Sam and Dean, because this whole apocalypse thing falls apart if they don’t give in to their respective “sides.”

Combined with the challenge Cas issues Dean-- to do the Right Thing and choose to save the planet rather than letting it burn-- which is exactly how Dean got through to Cas in 4.22-- with the whole “if there was ever anything worth dying for, this is it” line. In 4.22 Dean had made it about saving the Earth, but Cas, right here, makes it about saving one man, about stopping Dean from saying yes.

DEAN: Whoa, wait. You’re gonna take on five angels? CASTIEL: Yes. DEAN: Isn’t that suicide? CASTIEL: Maybe it is. But then I won’t have to watch you fail. I’m sorry, Dean. I don’t have the same faith in you that Sam does.

“Failure” here isn’t the end of the world, isn’t the fulfillment of the apocalypse. FAILURE TO CAS IN THIS MOMENT IS DEAN BREAKING AND SAYING YES. PERIOD. FULL STOP. END OF STORY.

That Dean “Humanity” Winchester would surrender his free will.

That would be failure.

Because This is what Cas has given up everything he’s ever known, everything he ever was, in service to. He defied GOD for Dean. And he’s willing to sacrifice everything he has left to give Dean a chance to prove he’d done the right thing, that he’d made the right choice...

(I’ll hold them off, I’ll hold them all off...)

(Cas has made a habit out of this... 4.22, 5.18, 5.22, 6.20, 7.01, 7.23, s10, 12.12... and don’t even get me STARTED on all the crypt scene stuff... need I refer y’all to lizbob’s incredible diagram?)

DEAN: Do you hear me? Call Michael down, you bastard! ZACHARIAH: How do I know you’re not lying? DEAN: Do I look like I’m lying?

(I love Dean’s belief that everyone can sense lies the same way he can)

ZACHARIAH: Michael’s not gonna kill me. DEAN: Maybe not. But I am.

(I know, I know... I just love everything about that... that’s the moment Dean reclaims his Free Will once and for all, and damn it makes me so damn happy okay)

So Dean managed to escape with Sam, but Adam wasn’t so lucky. Who knows, Michael probably offered him that peace he’d been seeking, that trip to heaven to see his mom, and he said yes. Because if Adam hadn’t consented in that moment, Michael wouldn’t have been able to take him, you know? That was it. That was Adam’s last moment on Earth.

DEAN: Just...let me say this. I don't know if it's being a big brother or what, but to me, you've always been this snot-nosed kid that I've had to keep on the straight and narrow. I think we both know that that's not you anymore. I mean, hell, if you're grown-up enough to find faith in me…the least I can do is return the favor. So screw destiny, right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.

And that’s what they do...