Diminishing Returns

[trinityvixen]

As this season of Supernatural has gone along, I've not missed the anvil-laden clues that, well, the apocalypse is coming. For real and for true. All the Winchesters have died at this point, so since we have no other heroes on this show, it's time to literally F up the planet in order to generate suspense/anticipation. So, okay, bring on biblical armageddon.

Except, what do you do for an encore? It's already been established that the show will be on for at least another year. As it became clearer that they were heading to a literal Heaven vs Hell showdown and dropping the Winchesters in the middle, straddling the divide (huh, huh, straddling / pervert), I kept coming back to this question of how one tops the apocalypse. Buffy managed to keep creating apocalypses (skewered in a blase and awesome fashion in song from "Once More With Feeling"), but it's the sort of thing that definitely puts you in a position of diminishing returns. To continue the Buffy analogy, surviving graduation = amazing! Dealing with Adam and the army guys = meh. And it was "meh" only corrected by having Buffy herself die in the next season--the ultimate end to a series being the death of its protagonist. The exploration beyond the death of the protagonist was okay, but not great. It could be interesting, but it frequently isn't, and you're right back to "well, why should I be worried? Buffy came back before..."

So, Supernatural. The apocalypse to end all apocalypses is coming. You don't really get much bigger. What to do, then, to justify another year? While we can accept that the Winchesters, when they win (and they will, for a given value of "winning"), will go back to doing what they've always done, it's not really narratively satisfying. That would be a season of aimless wanderings leading to a face-off with that season's Big Bad, regular as clockwork. It still pales in comparison with armageddon.

I didn't have answer to the question of "What now?" until last night. Uriel's betrayal of heaven was not unexpected. If you've seen one angel-gone-bad plot, you've seen 'em all. The second an angel starts calling humans "monkeys," it's a foregone conclusion that he/she/it is not on the side of the...well, angels. However, this was the first time that I've seen an angel break ranks with Heaven in favor of Lucifer. Whatever their issues with God's preference for humanity, most renegade angels in fiction never really want Lucifer back in power or on their side; they're in it for themselves (no matter how they pretend to cloak themselves in righteousness). Uriel is making a very sympathetic, almost human sort of stand against the "natural" order here by defying Heaven to rescue his brother--not unlike what Sam attempted to do for Dean. (And that Dean successfully did for Sam.)

What does this have to do with narrative structure (apart from the lovely symmetry)? Well, maybe I'm just slow, but it dawned on me last night that the show isn't going to stop the apocalypse. I defend my slowness with the evidence that, despite numerous mini-disasters climaxing at the end of the season, the Winchesters always avoid the worst sort of disaster. The Yellow-Eyed Demon does not get the sons to kill their father in season one. The Yellow-Eyed Demon is killed at the end of season two. Lilith is not able to kill Sam at the end of season three. There are consequences to all the victories, of course (S1's car crash leading to the exchange of John for Dean; S2's exchange of Dean for Sam; S3's killing Dean and sending him to Hell), but the major disaster doesn't happen. The heroes, for lack of a better word, "win." (Again, for a given value of "winning.")

So there are three ways this season can play out. One: Lilith fails to open all the seals, is defeated, the world is saved. (Thanks to the Powerpuff...er, Winchester Boys.) I would feel a little cheated there, but it wouldn't be all that bad. (Because the apocalypse didn't happen, it could always happen later when the show does want to end.) Two: Lilith opens all the seals, but Lucifer and she are defeated. That's fine; what the fuck do you do for season five?

Or Three: end with Lucifer escaping and have it be the sort of Rapture-long apocalypse that the Left Behind sort are always assuming will happen. Apocalypses don't have to happen overnight! Lucifer can be the Big Bad to come of season five, when, hopefully, the brother-on-brother violence will have been over and dealt with. (As should, rightfully, be the continued focus of this season.)

Comments

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

What makes you think they're going to stop the apocalypse this season? There are a whole lot of seals to break. I could see them taking another season for their endgame, as long as they have some satisfying cliffhanger to end this one on. Maybe Sam will become the Big Bad and Dean will have to stop him. You don't get more Biblical than brother vs. brother...

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Oh, crap. What if they're making Sam a vessel for Lucifer? And that's why only Dean can end this.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

My only thought is that Azazel and Lilith aren't related. Lilith was never privy to what Azazel set in motion with Sam and the other kids. She was as surprised as anyone that Sam could withstand her power at the end of season three. I don't think their projects are inter-related that way.

That's not to say that Dean isn't, ultimately, there to stop Sam. Castiel has said that Dean needs to restrain Sam from embracing his demon-derived abilities. Dean has, as a result of being messed up about his own issues, pretty much failed spectacularly at that. What Castiel and Alistair pointed out last night about Dean having started this process for Lilith and him being the one who has to stop it suggests to me that he's going to have to throw himself on the grenade in the end, and I bet Sam will be the one who's charged to explode (and somehow bust Lucifer out as a result). I just don't think that Sam will be literally possessed by Lucifer.

I think we're definitely headed for a Sam vs. Dean showdown. I think, as currently stands, such a showdown should be employed to the supra-narrative of Lucifer. As in, the showdown will happen this season to set up Lucifer's reign next season, and it's not that Sam won't be a baddie but that his rise is the false climax and Lucifer's is the authentic one.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

What makes you think they're going to stop the apocalypse this season?

Same reason they can't out-do the apocalypse: diminishing returns. Drag out the seal-breaking for too long, you lose people. They've already lost the thread of the seal-breaking with having every other episode be more or less just a write-off comedic episode. By the time we catch up with the serious episodes, umpteen more seals have been broken zomg! I think they're going to let Lucifer out but not let him run amok just yet.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Most of the fandom -- at least the parts that aren't busy writing slash 24/7 -- seems to think that they're setting it up for Dean vs. Sam next season. I tend to agree.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That could be cool, too--as if this Lucifer rising thing was the smokescreen, not the other way around? I'd really like that. Especially if Dean and Sam were physically separated because they oppose each other and then they have to rally allies around them. Alas, they neither have so many friends that they can really effectively do that unless Castiel goes bringing back the dead a million times for Dean...

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

They have no friends cause their friends keep dying!

I would not be happy with them having entirely separate storylines next season. The show's a lot less interesting when they don't share screen time. I don't want another Farscape with two separate ships and clones of the main character. :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I just don't want it to become another Smallville problem. Part of Smallville's problem was putting its villain and hero in such close conjunction and, as a result, Lex could never really go evil and still co-exist with Clark. I don't think Sam could completely turn with Dean babysitting him. We've seen that much--Sam can't slip away with Dean around like he used to. So separating them is the only way to really set Sam and Dean fully against each other. They don't have to be entirely separate, but they can't travel together.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I'm with ecmyers--What makes you think they're going to stop the apocalypse this season?

I'm sort of assuming that we won't get the end of that arc this year, since they know they've got another season to play with. Kripke has always said he had a five-year plan for the show. I don't think we should assume that either the brother vs. brother dynamic will be resolved or that the apocalypse will be averted this year.

The only reason, I think, we got such a neat ending to season 2, tying up the YED storyline, was because the show wasn't renewed until after that episode aired. And Kripke, unlike so many showrunners, decided that if this was the end, he was going to let it go out with some resolution for the fans.

I also worry about diminishing returns, but so far SPN has avoided it. I thought there was no way they could top last season's ending, but this season they've really brought it on. Heck, I thought the same at the end of seasons one and two (though I don't think they quite pulled off season three, for a lot of reasons). It is a completely different show now than it was when it started, but I'm still loving it.

I've always kind of assumed that these guys won't get a happy ending. Even in season one, it didn't look that way. At this point, I think the best way it could end is with both of them going out in a blaze of glory.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I assumed they'd stop the apocalypse because they do stop the worst of the worst from happening most of the time--they stop the YED in seasons one and two, stop Lilith in three. Yes, bad things happen, but the Bigger Bad of the Bads doesn't happen. So I got used to these sorts of trends, and I was like, "Well, if you have or if you stop the apocalypse, what can you do after that?" It just didn't occur to me that they might not actually stop it as a result of relying on past precedent.

Season three's ending is what really got me worried about diminishing returns. Because I really had a hard time imagining how that would be topped. (Not only was it tragic and dramatic, but it was plain devastating in how brutal it was.) The apocalypse would do it, but I don't see how you can drag it out for two seasons or solve it and then move onto something new. I'm still not sure.

I'm reasonably certain that they'll get there okay, if that's any consolation.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

But they didn't stop Lilith last season... So I'm a little confused on your argument about precedent. As I said, them stopping the YED in season two was more to do with expected cancellation than anything else. And in the other two season finales, they failed. I don't think them not stopping the apocalypse would break from the show's history.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

What I meant is that bad stuff happens, but the worst never does. For me "stopping" Lilith was enough that Sam was able to take her in a battle of power--she wasn't able to kill him. Dean was always doomed, but someone always is. The thing with the apocalypse is that EVERYONE is doomed, so you can't really have any victories on par with even that.

[dotfic.livejournal.com]

What ecmyers and ivy03 said. I don't think they're going to wrap it up this season. Part of season 5 will be resolving this season's conflicts.

Minus the part where ivy03 said about Sam and Dean going out in a blaze of glory. Not because that wouldn't be true to them and very likely, but the part where I am really, really unhappy with the idea of the Butch and Sundance end for them--unless there's definitely a possibility they COULD survive somehow. Because I want them alive and okay and together at the end of this. Nothing else will do for me.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Given their history, I think that there isn't a way for them to be together at the end. I honestly think that there isn't a way to have Dean survive this. Because Sam is too spiteful about Dean trying to rein him in, I don't think Dean will be successful at doing so. As a result, the only way for Sam to be stopped from going fully dark is to have Dean fall on that grenade and use the guilt to contain Sam somehow. I have a reeeeeally hard time imagining that both will survive the ultimate finale.