Meta: The Nature of Death on Supernatural

[hells_half_acre]

The Nature of Death on Supernatural
(AKA: How my former love of the anime Bleach affects my Supernatural world-view)

Yesterday, I was talking to someone in comments on "To Being Half a Person" about S6. They expressed disappointment that God brought Cas back at the end of S5, but (so far) did not bring Gabriel back.

This got me thinking that I should post how *I* understand the way death works on Supernatural. To do so, I'm going to be using screen caps from this anime I used to watch called Bleach. You don't need to know anything about Bleach to understand though....

Basically, in my mind the Supernatural-universe looks like this:

Blue is the living/human souls. 

Brown is the dead/creatures/demons/etc. 

The space within the hourglass is made up of those places over which God has dominion. 

The space outside the hourglass is OUTSIDE God's dominion - It doesn't exist. It is outside the known universe. It is nothing.

When someone is killed by natural means, they are still WITHIN the hourglass. When Sam and Dean were in hell/heaven, they were still in the hourglass. Creatures in purgatory are still in the hourglass. Both times Cas was killed, he was exploded - they've never said where angels go when they are exploded, but it's my opinion that they are STILL IN THE HOURGLASS. 

 

Here, let me write all over this thing for you:

 

It's MY opinion that when something is killed by the Colt, the Knife, or Sam's Mind - they are taken OUT of the hourglass. They are cast into nothingness - they are immediately and irreversibly doomed to confirm the atheist's world-view, because they quite simply cease to be.

 

I believe that angels that are killed with the angel killing swords are also thrown out of the hourglass - they cease to be. God CANNOT bring them back.

 

So, basically you have this:

 

The brown liquid outside of the glass represents those beings that have been destroyed by the Colt, Knife, Angel Killing Sword, or Sam's Mind. God cannot bring those beings back to life. There is now a pocket of air where they once existed inside the hourglass.
 

Only, unlike in Bleach (whence this screencap comes) this does not destroy the world....or at least, not that we've been told so far.

 

But that, my friends, is why I don't believe Gabriel will ever come back....or Ruby, or Azazel, or Zachariah, or Alistair, or Lilith....they are simply gone. 

 

Mind you, the show could still prove me wrong - Supernatural has never liked following it's own rules after all - but I think personally, even though I dearly love Gabriel, I'd be disappointed if they did prove me wrong. In order for death to be a threat SOME death has to still be permanent and irreversible.

 

On a related note: Bleach is a pretty good anime for the first 38 episodes or so...then it falls into the common ongoing-anime trap and gets too convoluted and causes me to lose interest. Uryu Ishida is my favorite character. He is the one that can remove things from the hourglass and thus destroy the world....and he does it with the power of ARCHERY! What's not to love?!

 

But that's just my opinion...

 

Comments

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I was about to say "I do not understand your reference" but then I reread and put it together :P Slow hells_half_acre is slow. You are talking about racing - which probably recently had some sort of important race...

See, I don't think that the show goes back and forth as much as other people seem to think it does. Mind you, it still could prove me wrong and go back on all of this. (And I must admit that when the angels brought back Adam after he had been salted and burned, I was a little like: Really? Well, alright, I guess.)

As of right now, I DON'T think Purgatory contains anything killed by the Colt, Knife, Sam's Mind, or Angel-Killing Sword. So far, all we know is that Purgatory contains the souls of MONSTERS. That is - souls that were never human (or at the very least, were only human until they were turned into Vampires/Werewolves/SkinWalkers/Wendigos...) The show didn't "bring back Purgatory" they INTRODUCED it...before Purgatory, we didn't know where the monsters went once Sam and Dean killed them - we assumed they went to hell - the show has so far just said "Nope! They went to Purgatory!" So, nothing's been changed in terms of world-view - they've actually just informed us of more.

But, like I said, I could still be proven wrong with all this, and they COULD decide to have Azazel and Gabriel hanging out in Purgatory wondering why their gods have forsaken them.

[mymuseandi.livejournal.com]

My apologies for confusing you. Yup, it's racing, there was a race yesterday and i was reading the news about it.. :)

Aaahh, okay, i get it. I always interpreted when they say monsters as those that include everything non-human. Which includes angels and demons and fairies and what have you. which means that soulless!Sam is considered non-human by the monsters' standards, right? Because the alpha vamp includes him when talking about where they all will go when they died.

The main story arc for season 6 is a bit confusing for me, i need to shake out the cobwebs of my brain to keep up sometimes LOL

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, demons don't count as monsters, because they are humans who have been twisted by hell - not humans that became 'monsters' on earth. Does that make sense?

Angels, I honestly don't know where they go when they are exploded - maybe there's a subset of heaven? or maybe they go to purgatory?...as far as we know, angels were never human (unlike demons and some monsters).

I guess it is kind of confusing. Basically, you have 4 categories of "creature" on Supernatural. Angels, Demons, humans who became monsters (vampires, werewolves, skinwalkers...), and monsters that were born monsters (faerie, pagan gods, etc). Both monster categories go to purgatory when they die. Demons go to hell. Angels go ???.

And yeah, I guess soulless!Sam was technically a monster, because he was not in procession of a human soul. As far as we know, only human souls can go to heaven when they die. So, if soulless!Sam died, I guess he would either cease to exist, or he'd go to purgatory?

Anyway....we're needlessly complicating this...my main point of the post was that I don't believe that people killed by the Colt, Knife, Sam's Mind, or the Angel-Killing sword, can come back...they're outside the realm of God's control.