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llywelaDean: "Come here, come here. Let me look at you. Look at me. It's not even that bad. It's not even that bad, all right? Sammy? Sam! Listen to me – we're going to patch you up, okay? You'll be good as new. Huh? I'm gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of you. I've got you. It's my job, right? Watch out for my pain-in-the-ass little brother. Sam? Sam? Sam! Sammy! No. Nonononono. Oh God. SAM!"
Okay, so this episode really has killed me stone dead. Like I said earlier: spoiler free is the only way to fly! I knew absolutely nothing going into the episode, and it was a herculean effort to achieve that, but so totally worth it.
Man, I'm not even coherent yet. I have so many thoughts - there were so many tiny floating details that got pulled together in this episode. I'd been starting to wonder if some of those details might get retconned or discarded, but no - all totally pulled together, whether they were red herrings or not. So many questions answered - and so many new questions posed.
Damn.
Oh, Sammy. I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I'll just start at the beginning and make bullet points.
1. I loved the domesticity of the opening scene. This, for the dysfunctional Winchesters, is Normal. Also, it is a very, very good thing that Dean waited in the car. I have no doubt whatsoever that Dean will blame himself for not protecting Sam better, but the fact is that if they had gone into that cafe together, Dean would be dead right now. There was absolutely nothing he could have done to prevent the Demon snatching Sam like that. Also, this is the third time this season that Sam has disappeared on Dean like this, and he went missing once last season, as well. I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again: Dean really should keep a leash on him, or something. It clearly isn't safe for him to let Sam out of his sight for even two minutes at a time!
2. This is the second week in a row that one of the brothers has been abruptly snatched out of his normal routine and dropped alone into bewildering circumstances. It provides fantastic opportunities to see them coping alone, see how they rise to the occasion – this is the first time that we've seen Sam have to work by himself when he hasn't actively chosen to do so. But I miss seeing them interact with one another!
3. "I can't calm down! I just woke up in friggin' frontierland!" I love Andy. I'd forgotten how much fun he is to have around. I'm gutted that he is dead now, but happy that he was never evil in any way.
4. I loved Ava, too. And then she was evil, but in a very human way.
5. I really like that Andy and Ava both automatically defer to Sam as someone they know has experience in the field of weird and freaky, and that, as freaked out and scared as he also is, he rises to the challenge, automatically assuming the leadership role. Sam is a leader by nature, which is one of the reasons he always clashed so badly with John, but has very little experience of bearing this kind of responsibility alone.
6. Sam has apparently not noticed that he turned 24 already. So, it seems that in the show timeline it is still April and he hasn't had his birthday yet.
7. I love Bobby for his readiness to support those boys. He has come through for them every single time they've asked for his help. Must've been an interesting conversation, though:
'Bobby, Sam's disappeared!'
'What, again? You boys been fightin' again?'
'No, it was different this time!'
Or, y'know, words to that effect *G*
8. I'm very impressed with Sam's ability to recognise the ghost town just by sight of one landmark. Sam is a reader. He likes to store knowledge away in case of future need, in contrast to his brother, who prefers to just research each specific case as and when it arises. Sam will be just like Bobby one day, if only he gets to live that long... Also, he is so very much John's son. He could, after all, sit the others all down to explain everything he knows in great detail, but that would take time they may not have. So he just gives them the barest snippets of what they need to know and uses his assumed authority to hold their trust, his own knowledge and expertise to get them all through – makeshift chain of command rather than full disclosure and democratic process.
9. Damn, but the destruction of the Roadhouse hurts more than I'd have expected, given that it hasn't been quite such a safe refuge for the boys as initially advertised. The stakes are being raised awfully high. And this, of course, is the value of peripheral characters such as Ash: the shock value of killing them off! Have we ever had an episode where so many people died? I can't think of one. I also can't think of any other episode where no one was saved at all, so this one holds that very dubious honour.
We don't know yet what happened to Ellen, if she is dead or alive. I haven't been able to decide all season whether I completely trusted her or not, and I'm still not sure.
10. All through the episode, Sam does not know whether Dean is dead or alive, and spends a lot of the time wavering between fearing the worst, that he may be dead already, and trusting like hell that he isn't. He's handling this remarkably well, holding the others together and keeping them going, but he isn't used to having to bear this kind of responsibility alone, and he really needs his big brother to come and take over for him.
11. "That was about as fun as getting kicked in the jewels." I wonder which is worst – having a vision powered by your own brain, or having one forcibly thrust into your mind from the outside? I'm not sure I like the idea of Andy doing that to people for fun, if this is the effect it has. I'm guessing, though, that the long-distance thing comes into play – his techniques are probably more refined up close, but from this distance, and not really knowing where Dean is, it works out a lot more crudely. Dean's reaction to the suggestion that he might have had a vision is telling - he just rejects the idea out of hand at first. He might be totally accepting of Sam's abilities for Sam's sake, but that doesn't mean he likes the idea of anyone having psychic powers, least of all himself. He can't deny it for long, though. And since all the witnesses are now dead, he remains ignorant of how it happened.
12. Bobby is the most perfect deus ex machina. He's another like Sam who reads copiously, gathering and retaining information for its own sake, rather than for whatever currently situational use it might have. Bobby and Sam both look to the future; Dean lives very much in the here and now and lets tomorrow take care of itself. And having established him in this way, the show can use him to get the characters where they need them to be, in this instance, recognising the bell Andy showed Dean and instantly knowing where Sam is. Much as Sam himself did earlier. And I'm impressed with Andy, because he has to have used that as a landmark very deliberately, knowing that it was how Sam recognised their location.
13. I liked the way Sam and Jake interacted, right up till the end when I didn't like Jake any more. Jake is a soldier and Sam technically a civilian, but they interacted as equals - Jake recognised Sam very much as a fellow soldier, his training and experience shining through.
14. Sam's YED dream is awesome, if exposition-heavy. I've been waiting since Simon Said for the YED to visit Sam in his dreams. The bitchfaces Sam gives his sworn enemy are fabulous. He's been so frightened for such a long time of what the YED has got planned for him, has assumed so many bad things to be in store. Now, at last, he's being given answers. Although how much of what the Demon tells him can be trusted implicitly is another matter entirely – demons lie, demons twist the truth, and this one has been known to visit psychics in their dreams in the past, never with good results.
15. "I'm looking for the best and brightest of your generation." Interesting, interesting – to know why the Demon has cared so little if its tactics drove the psychics to destruction. Sam was right, way back in Simon Said, when he guessed that it was pushing them, finding ways to break them. As for the generational thing, we saw the Demon putting moves on baby Rosie last season, know that it went into hibernation for 22 years after visiting Sam, so the cyclical nature of its activity has already been hinted at, here given a little more substance.
16. "The cost of doing business, I'm afraid. I mean, sweet little Jessica. She just had to die – you were all set to marry that little blonde thing, become a tax lawyer with two kids, a beer gut, a little McMansion in the suburbs. I needed you sharp, on the road, honing your skills, your gifts." Interesting, interesting again. Just how random was the timing of the attack on Jessica? Was the date chosen for a reason, it being the anniversary of Mary's death, six months to the day after Sam's birthday? Or was it more random opportunism on the part of the Demon? Did it take advantage of Dean showing up out of the blue like that, being nearby and therefore available to take Sam back on the road? Or would Jessica have been killed regardless of Sam's level of contact with his family? There was no guarantee that it would drive him back out onto the road, but he's enough like John that it was no doubt worth a shot. There was no guarantee, either, that the fire wouldn't kill him, as well. It seems this Demon is nothing if not opportunistic, and has admitted that it doesn't mind experimenting with the psychic children, in search of the right one, is not the slightest bit concerned about those that fall by the wayside.
Is Sam really its favourite? Or is that just more mind-messing hype? Does it tell them all the same thing? Or is Sam truly singled out for special attention? After all, it seems safe to say that Sam was the only one tested for immunity to the demon virus in Croatoan – the boys would have noticed if the same thing had happened to any other towns. And others of the psychic children have been in established and loving relationships, much like Sam and Jessica, without the YED intervening. I'd say that the way John raised Sam, training him as a warrior, inadvertently played into the YED's hands by making Sam all the more desirable to it.
17. "It wasn't about her – it was about you. It's always been about you." Whoa. Explanation of why only a handful of the psychics had nursery fires, although presumably they were all visited on their six-month birthdays. It really was a matter sheer bad luck if the mother happened to walk in at the exact wrong moment and paid for that with her life. That is exactly what Sam has always been afraid of.
18. "It's you." Whoa! Mary recognised the demon when she saw it standing over Sam's crib. Now that one comes from left field, for Sam more than anyone, and viewers remember that Mary apologised to him, way back in Home, for reasons that remain unknown.
19. "I'm the undefeated heavyweight champ." Ava has become the embodiment of what the YED has been trying to achieve with these psychic children. Not that any of them are exactly children any more, but still. "Right circumstances, everyone's capable of murder. Everyone." Sam said that back in Simon Said. The first killing might be hard, but if the same circumstances persist, survival of the fittest, sooner or later the survivor – the killer – becomes desensitised to the slaughter, gets good at it. It's what the YED wants. It isn't enough for them just to kill in the heat of the moment or self defence; the conscience has to go as well for them to be of any real use to it.
Ava has been here for five months, fighting for her life against people no more guilty and no more innocent than herself, probably with the Demon whispering sweet nothings in her dreams, as well. It's a tactic it has used before. Enough to drive anyone over the edge, even sweet, normal little Ava. You've got to wonder what she's done for food, water and clean clothes all those months, mind. Has the Demon been providing for her physical needs, as the reigning champion? Also, is the Demon really trapping them here, or can any of them walk away at any time, if only they realised they could? You've got to assume that it is paying close attention to the goings on here, given how important the results are to it, and it has a vested interest in making sure that they all play the game according to the rules it has set.
20. Dean is in exactly five scenes in this episode. Must've been a nice break for JA. This episode is all about Sam, all about the mytharc exposition, and all about setting up the second part of the finale next week.
21. "I like you, man, I do, but do the math here. What good's it do for both of us to die?" Such warped logic. See how anyone can be corrupted by the conditions the Demon has created, by the mind games it plays out in their dreams. If the psychics all honed their powers and worked together, they might even be a potential threat to the Demon – after all, Ava learned how to control demons – but instead its policy of divide and rule is slowly but surely turning them into what it wants them to be: his.
22. Sam can't kill Jake, even when Jake tried so hard to kill him: fails the test from the Demon's perspective, but passes it from his own. I like that this moment is so underplayed, because it is really significant. Turning into what the Demon wants him to be has been Sam's greatest fear all along. It's why he forced that fateful promise out of Dean. He was afraid that the Demon would flip some kind of switch in his head and transform him into something else. But here it turns out that isn't the case at all. There's no secret evil switch inside his head, nothing but those latent psychic powers and his own conscience, what he knows to be right and wrong. All the Demon wants is for him to take that first step across a crucial dividing line, and keep walking in that direction. Just as Dean has always insisted, Sam retains full control and responsibility for his own actions.
So many red herrings this show has thrown out along the way, and yet they have all worked perfectly as narrative tools, because the audience is never allowed to know any more than the boys know at any given time. We are on this journey with them, drawing as they do whatever flawed suppositions we can from the evidence available along the way. And the fact that they know so very little about all of this has been pretty much the whole point, all along.
It's another reason to be cross with John, in fact. Because we know that John knew a lot more than he ever let on, but he chose not to share that information with his sons, instead leaving them to stumble around blindly in the dark. Leaving them vulnerable in all kinds of ways – after all, forewarned is forearmed. Their ignorance and fear have hurt them far more than the truth could have. John always tried to do what he thought was best, but the choices he made were sometimes deeply, deeply flawed.
23. That fateful final scene. The CW have nominated Jensen Ackles for an Emmy on the strength of his performance in this two-part season finale, and this scene is part of the reason why. Dean's raw anguish is painful to watch. I'm impressed with Jared Padalecki, too, because it can't be easy to completely relinquish all muscle control like that. But this scene belongs to JA and to Dean. Trying to keep his family safe has been Dean's strongest motivation ever since we first met him, way back at the start of season one, fighting against overwhelming odds a lot of the time, and his greatest fear has always been that he wouldn't be good enough, that he would fail them. It's the reason he's such a control freak, and so obsessed with looking out for Sam, struggles to delegate responsibility, although he's a lot better with that these days. John's death almost destroyed him, but he still had Sam to watch out for and protect, a reason to keep going, no matter how hard it was.
Dean will blame himself for this, no doubt about that. He considers looking after Sam to be the most important job that he has, and he will feel that he has failed completely, even though there was absolutely nothing he could have done. If he'd been with Sam when he was taken, he'd be dead like everyone else in that café, end of story. He had no way to predict what would happen, and could not have stopped the Demon taking Sam. He got here as fast as he could. He couldn't have stopped it happening. But none of that will matter to him – there can be absolutely no doubt that he will hold himself responsible. He'll be out of control, and he'll be beyond desperate.
Dean now has nothing left at all, nothing left to lose whatsoever. The Demon is still out there, its plans approaching fruition, and there's another episode of the season finale still to come in which the big question, given that we know Sam isn't leaving the show, is this: what the hell will Dean do now?
Okay, so this episode really has killed me stone dead. Like I said earlier: spoiler free is the only way to fly! I knew absolutely nothing going into the episode, and it was a herculean effort to achieve that, but so totally worth it.
Man, I'm not even coherent yet. I have so many thoughts - there were so many tiny floating details that got pulled together in this episode. I'd been starting to wonder if some of those details might get retconned or discarded, but no - all totally pulled together, whether they were red herrings or not. So many questions answered - and so many new questions posed.
Damn.
Oh, Sammy. I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I'll just start at the beginning and make bullet points.
1. I loved the domesticity of the opening scene. This, for the dysfunctional Winchesters, is Normal. Also, it is a very, very good thing that Dean waited in the car. I have no doubt whatsoever that Dean will blame himself for not protecting Sam better, but the fact is that if they had gone into that cafe together, Dean would be dead right now. There was absolutely nothing he could have done to prevent the Demon snatching Sam like that. Also, this is the third time this season that Sam has disappeared on Dean like this, and he went missing once last season, as well. I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again: Dean really should keep a leash on him, or something. It clearly isn't safe for him to let Sam out of his sight for even two minutes at a time!
2. This is the second week in a row that one of the brothers has been abruptly snatched out of his normal routine and dropped alone into bewildering circumstances. It provides fantastic opportunities to see them coping alone, see how they rise to the occasion – this is the first time that we've seen Sam have to work by himself when he hasn't actively chosen to do so. But I miss seeing them interact with one another!
3. "I can't calm down! I just woke up in friggin' frontierland!" I love Andy. I'd forgotten how much fun he is to have around. I'm gutted that he is dead now, but happy that he was never evil in any way.
4. I loved Ava, too. And then she was evil, but in a very human way.
5. I really like that Andy and Ava both automatically defer to Sam as someone they know has experience in the field of weird and freaky, and that, as freaked out and scared as he also is, he rises to the challenge, automatically assuming the leadership role. Sam is a leader by nature, which is one of the reasons he always clashed so badly with John, but has very little experience of bearing this kind of responsibility alone.
6. Sam has apparently not noticed that he turned 24 already. So, it seems that in the show timeline it is still April and he hasn't had his birthday yet.
7. I love Bobby for his readiness to support those boys. He has come through for them every single time they've asked for his help. Must've been an interesting conversation, though:
'Bobby, Sam's disappeared!'
'What, again? You boys been fightin' again?'
'No, it was different this time!'
Or, y'know, words to that effect *G*
8. I'm very impressed with Sam's ability to recognise the ghost town just by sight of one landmark. Sam is a reader. He likes to store knowledge away in case of future need, in contrast to his brother, who prefers to just research each specific case as and when it arises. Sam will be just like Bobby one day, if only he gets to live that long... Also, he is so very much John's son. He could, after all, sit the others all down to explain everything he knows in great detail, but that would take time they may not have. So he just gives them the barest snippets of what they need to know and uses his assumed authority to hold their trust, his own knowledge and expertise to get them all through – makeshift chain of command rather than full disclosure and democratic process.
9. Damn, but the destruction of the Roadhouse hurts more than I'd have expected, given that it hasn't been quite such a safe refuge for the boys as initially advertised. The stakes are being raised awfully high. And this, of course, is the value of peripheral characters such as Ash: the shock value of killing them off! Have we ever had an episode where so many people died? I can't think of one. I also can't think of any other episode where no one was saved at all, so this one holds that very dubious honour.
We don't know yet what happened to Ellen, if she is dead or alive. I haven't been able to decide all season whether I completely trusted her or not, and I'm still not sure.
10. All through the episode, Sam does not know whether Dean is dead or alive, and spends a lot of the time wavering between fearing the worst, that he may be dead already, and trusting like hell that he isn't. He's handling this remarkably well, holding the others together and keeping them going, but he isn't used to having to bear this kind of responsibility alone, and he really needs his big brother to come and take over for him.
11. "That was about as fun as getting kicked in the jewels." I wonder which is worst – having a vision powered by your own brain, or having one forcibly thrust into your mind from the outside? I'm not sure I like the idea of Andy doing that to people for fun, if this is the effect it has. I'm guessing, though, that the long-distance thing comes into play – his techniques are probably more refined up close, but from this distance, and not really knowing where Dean is, it works out a lot more crudely. Dean's reaction to the suggestion that he might have had a vision is telling - he just rejects the idea out of hand at first. He might be totally accepting of Sam's abilities for Sam's sake, but that doesn't mean he likes the idea of anyone having psychic powers, least of all himself. He can't deny it for long, though. And since all the witnesses are now dead, he remains ignorant of how it happened.
12. Bobby is the most perfect deus ex machina. He's another like Sam who reads copiously, gathering and retaining information for its own sake, rather than for whatever currently situational use it might have. Bobby and Sam both look to the future; Dean lives very much in the here and now and lets tomorrow take care of itself. And having established him in this way, the show can use him to get the characters where they need them to be, in this instance, recognising the bell Andy showed Dean and instantly knowing where Sam is. Much as Sam himself did earlier. And I'm impressed with Andy, because he has to have used that as a landmark very deliberately, knowing that it was how Sam recognised their location.
13. I liked the way Sam and Jake interacted, right up till the end when I didn't like Jake any more. Jake is a soldier and Sam technically a civilian, but they interacted as equals - Jake recognised Sam very much as a fellow soldier, his training and experience shining through.
14. Sam's YED dream is awesome, if exposition-heavy. I've been waiting since Simon Said for the YED to visit Sam in his dreams. The bitchfaces Sam gives his sworn enemy are fabulous. He's been so frightened for such a long time of what the YED has got planned for him, has assumed so many bad things to be in store. Now, at last, he's being given answers. Although how much of what the Demon tells him can be trusted implicitly is another matter entirely – demons lie, demons twist the truth, and this one has been known to visit psychics in their dreams in the past, never with good results.
15. "I'm looking for the best and brightest of your generation." Interesting, interesting – to know why the Demon has cared so little if its tactics drove the psychics to destruction. Sam was right, way back in Simon Said, when he guessed that it was pushing them, finding ways to break them. As for the generational thing, we saw the Demon putting moves on baby Rosie last season, know that it went into hibernation for 22 years after visiting Sam, so the cyclical nature of its activity has already been hinted at, here given a little more substance.
16. "The cost of doing business, I'm afraid. I mean, sweet little Jessica. She just had to die – you were all set to marry that little blonde thing, become a tax lawyer with two kids, a beer gut, a little McMansion in the suburbs. I needed you sharp, on the road, honing your skills, your gifts." Interesting, interesting again. Just how random was the timing of the attack on Jessica? Was the date chosen for a reason, it being the anniversary of Mary's death, six months to the day after Sam's birthday? Or was it more random opportunism on the part of the Demon? Did it take advantage of Dean showing up out of the blue like that, being nearby and therefore available to take Sam back on the road? Or would Jessica have been killed regardless of Sam's level of contact with his family? There was no guarantee that it would drive him back out onto the road, but he's enough like John that it was no doubt worth a shot. There was no guarantee, either, that the fire wouldn't kill him, as well. It seems this Demon is nothing if not opportunistic, and has admitted that it doesn't mind experimenting with the psychic children, in search of the right one, is not the slightest bit concerned about those that fall by the wayside.
Is Sam really its favourite? Or is that just more mind-messing hype? Does it tell them all the same thing? Or is Sam truly singled out for special attention? After all, it seems safe to say that Sam was the only one tested for immunity to the demon virus in Croatoan – the boys would have noticed if the same thing had happened to any other towns. And others of the psychic children have been in established and loving relationships, much like Sam and Jessica, without the YED intervening. I'd say that the way John raised Sam, training him as a warrior, inadvertently played into the YED's hands by making Sam all the more desirable to it.
17. "It wasn't about her – it was about you. It's always been about you." Whoa. Explanation of why only a handful of the psychics had nursery fires, although presumably they were all visited on their six-month birthdays. It really was a matter sheer bad luck if the mother happened to walk in at the exact wrong moment and paid for that with her life. That is exactly what Sam has always been afraid of.
18. "It's you." Whoa! Mary recognised the demon when she saw it standing over Sam's crib. Now that one comes from left field, for Sam more than anyone, and viewers remember that Mary apologised to him, way back in Home, for reasons that remain unknown.
19. "I'm the undefeated heavyweight champ." Ava has become the embodiment of what the YED has been trying to achieve with these psychic children. Not that any of them are exactly children any more, but still. "Right circumstances, everyone's capable of murder. Everyone." Sam said that back in Simon Said. The first killing might be hard, but if the same circumstances persist, survival of the fittest, sooner or later the survivor – the killer – becomes desensitised to the slaughter, gets good at it. It's what the YED wants. It isn't enough for them just to kill in the heat of the moment or self defence; the conscience has to go as well for them to be of any real use to it.
Ava has been here for five months, fighting for her life against people no more guilty and no more innocent than herself, probably with the Demon whispering sweet nothings in her dreams, as well. It's a tactic it has used before. Enough to drive anyone over the edge, even sweet, normal little Ava. You've got to wonder what she's done for food, water and clean clothes all those months, mind. Has the Demon been providing for her physical needs, as the reigning champion? Also, is the Demon really trapping them here, or can any of them walk away at any time, if only they realised they could? You've got to assume that it is paying close attention to the goings on here, given how important the results are to it, and it has a vested interest in making sure that they all play the game according to the rules it has set.
20. Dean is in exactly five scenes in this episode. Must've been a nice break for JA. This episode is all about Sam, all about the mytharc exposition, and all about setting up the second part of the finale next week.
21. "I like you, man, I do, but do the math here. What good's it do for both of us to die?" Such warped logic. See how anyone can be corrupted by the conditions the Demon has created, by the mind games it plays out in their dreams. If the psychics all honed their powers and worked together, they might even be a potential threat to the Demon – after all, Ava learned how to control demons – but instead its policy of divide and rule is slowly but surely turning them into what it wants them to be: his.
22. Sam can't kill Jake, even when Jake tried so hard to kill him: fails the test from the Demon's perspective, but passes it from his own. I like that this moment is so underplayed, because it is really significant. Turning into what the Demon wants him to be has been Sam's greatest fear all along. It's why he forced that fateful promise out of Dean. He was afraid that the Demon would flip some kind of switch in his head and transform him into something else. But here it turns out that isn't the case at all. There's no secret evil switch inside his head, nothing but those latent psychic powers and his own conscience, what he knows to be right and wrong. All the Demon wants is for him to take that first step across a crucial dividing line, and keep walking in that direction. Just as Dean has always insisted, Sam retains full control and responsibility for his own actions.
So many red herrings this show has thrown out along the way, and yet they have all worked perfectly as narrative tools, because the audience is never allowed to know any more than the boys know at any given time. We are on this journey with them, drawing as they do whatever flawed suppositions we can from the evidence available along the way. And the fact that they know so very little about all of this has been pretty much the whole point, all along.
It's another reason to be cross with John, in fact. Because we know that John knew a lot more than he ever let on, but he chose not to share that information with his sons, instead leaving them to stumble around blindly in the dark. Leaving them vulnerable in all kinds of ways – after all, forewarned is forearmed. Their ignorance and fear have hurt them far more than the truth could have. John always tried to do what he thought was best, but the choices he made were sometimes deeply, deeply flawed.
23. That fateful final scene. The CW have nominated Jensen Ackles for an Emmy on the strength of his performance in this two-part season finale, and this scene is part of the reason why. Dean's raw anguish is painful to watch. I'm impressed with Jared Padalecki, too, because it can't be easy to completely relinquish all muscle control like that. But this scene belongs to JA and to Dean. Trying to keep his family safe has been Dean's strongest motivation ever since we first met him, way back at the start of season one, fighting against overwhelming odds a lot of the time, and his greatest fear has always been that he wouldn't be good enough, that he would fail them. It's the reason he's such a control freak, and so obsessed with looking out for Sam, struggles to delegate responsibility, although he's a lot better with that these days. John's death almost destroyed him, but he still had Sam to watch out for and protect, a reason to keep going, no matter how hard it was.
Dean will blame himself for this, no doubt about that. He considers looking after Sam to be the most important job that he has, and he will feel that he has failed completely, even though there was absolutely nothing he could have done. If he'd been with Sam when he was taken, he'd be dead like everyone else in that café, end of story. He had no way to predict what would happen, and could not have stopped the Demon taking Sam. He got here as fast as he could. He couldn't have stopped it happening. But none of that will matter to him – there can be absolutely no doubt that he will hold himself responsible. He'll be out of control, and he'll be beyond desperate.
Dean now has nothing left at all, nothing left to lose whatsoever. The Demon is still out there, its plans approaching fruition, and there's another episode of the season finale still to come in which the big question, given that we know Sam isn't leaving the show, is this: what the hell will Dean do now?
