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justanotheridijitonBecause of the extensive link rot, below the cut is the full text with updated links:
Vampires serve as one of the most important monsters in the Supernatural world, and tend to bring with them the question of monster morality, and what exactly that is. The first time we really see Dean and Sam grapple with what makes a monster a monster - and if a monster can ever be saved - is in 2.3 Bloodlust, and in 8.18 Freaks and Geeks it cements the answer given then. However, it’s an answer that is generous to its white characters.
*spoilers to 8.19 Taxi Driver. tw: racism and other usual show fuckery, and also I’m white and a woman.* FYI I use the word redemption for small potatoes stuff too. Also this is super long.
Krissy is The Leader (8.18 Freaks and Geeks)
I’ll be expanding on this later, but the episode makes clear parallels between Dean and Krissy, a continuation from her first episode, 7.11 Adventures in Babysitting, and their similar background stories. Dean’s main motive when it came to Krissy was for her not to have his life; in this episode, his aim is to help her not make the same mistake he (and other hunters) tend to make when it comes to (monster) morality and revenge. [1]
Like the first time the show finally asked about what makes a monster a monster - intent or nature - it uses vampires. Krissy serves as a direct parallel to not just Dean but Gordon, who was his own parallel for Dean in 2.3, as well as one for John/hunters (I’ll be getting into this later too.) All three of them - Gordon, Dean, and Krissy - are faced with someone who is telling them the vampire is not a monster to be killed, which goes against their training (all three are hunters) and experience (vampires turned Gordon’s sister, they killed Daniel Elkins and tried to kill John in 1.20, and they did kill Krissy’s dad Lee.) And while all three refuse to initially listen to the explanation, only Gordon continues on to the task of actually killing them. Instead, Dean puts himself between Gordon and the vampires (“If you want those vampires, you’ve gotta go through me” 2.3) and we can assume Krissy made the cure (considering she hands off the glass to Josephine) and then presided over the process (Josephine is the one to help her drink the cure, even though seriously they were all right there.) When offered the chance, they were willing to believe a monster had a choice, and was not just Pure Evil.
To clarify, the definition for redemption I’m using is the action of saving or being saved from error. In this episode, Krissy gets to redeem herself. She, Josephine, and Aidan were killing vampires, and each was allowed to hack off the vampire’s head who took out their family members. Only it turns out those weren’t actually the vampires that killed their family members.
Which brings us back to the question - what makes a monster a monster? Do they have a chance to prove they can be good.
Krissy: So let’s say this isn’t the vamp who killed my dad. She’s still a monster and deserves to die.
Dean: Not if we can save her…She hasn’t feed yet. We can reverse this if we can find her maker and get his blood.
Aidan: And why should we care about her?
Dean: Like I said, hunting isn’t always about killing.
Aidan: Oh please, preach to some other choir, we’re not buying it.
Dean: You want to kill an innocent girl.
Krissy: I want the bloodsucker who killed my dad to pay.
Dean: And we’re going to find out who that is. But let’s not be so bloodthirsty that just anyone will do.
The argument Sam makes in 2.3 is that Lenore and her nest aren’t killing people. The argument Dean makes in 8.18 is that she hasn’t hurt anyone and is, in fact, a victim in this. And Krissy listens, and saves herself from making an error, because this is not in fact the vampire who killed her dad. Instead, she goes after the real person who killed Lee, and punishes him. The narrative makes it clear Krissy’s punishment is worse for Victor than death would be, hence why he commits suicide. [2]
In this episode the boys’ story is told through the interactions between Krissy and Dean. In the above dialogue, Dean answers questions from Josephine and Aidan, but his focus always comes back to Krissy. Dean is trying to convince Krissy; Dean wants to save Krissy, and Krissy just happens to bring Josephine and Aidan along with her, except out of the three of them, only Krissy gets redemption, only Krissy is saved from making an error.
The dialogue above actually gets this part right before it:
Dean: That vamp that we killed last night? Why was he swearing that he didn’t do it?
Aidan: Because he was a liar.
Dean: Vampires don’t beg for their lives, they attack.
In 3.7, Dean and Sam have to explain to a newly turned woman (Lucy) that actually, she was killing people. The implication is newly turned vampires don’t make the conscious decision to kill or not kill humans. So was boy vampire, who was set up to walk into a room with tasty food all tied up, going to kill the innocent woman on the bed? Probably. (And seriously, the woman on the bed probably cares less about whether the vampire was going to kill her on purpose or not and more that he was going to kill her.) But if the girl vampire Krissy doesn’t kill is innocent because she hasn’t feed yet, then so, by that rationale, is the boy vampire.
Sam and Dean know something is wrong in that moment. The vampire denies the kills and the camera cuts to Sam’s face looking confused, and cuts back again during Josephine’s speech to show Sam glancing at Dean as if to say “does this make sense to you?” and Dean also frowning because it doesn’t. But neither says anything at the moment. Josephine isn’t asked to question her choices, not until Dean tells Krissy sheneeds to later on in the episode.
Aidan’s vampire was attacking them in the moment. The vampire may have been innocent, but Aidan’s kill was in self-defense/defense of Krissy. Josephine’s was on the ground, poisoned with dead man’s blood, and unable to move. Not only was he not attacking, but he wasn’t running either. He was on the ground and conversing, confused because what the fuck are these people talking about? Like the woman in 3.7, he probably would have needed to feel his fangs to even believe he was a vampire.
Along with that, Josephine is laying specific blame on her vampire for killing her family. Aidan gives no such speeches; it’s assumed he killed the vampire for his family, but revenge didn’t have to be a motive in that scene. Again, while the situation may have been a trap, the vampire was attacking and would have killed them if they hadn’t killed him first. Aidan needs a redemption arc because he’s walking rape culture, but he doesn’t necessarily need it for killing the vampire.
To talk about camera angles for a moment, Aidan’s kill had the camera facing the vampire and Aidan coming up behind him and slicing his head off. While Aidan is shorter than the vampire, the camera is at eye level (also called point of view shot) and treats them as equals, until the next shot which is a lower angle shot (where the camera is looking up) as the vampire’s body falls down and off the screen. Every time after that kill, Aidan is framed from that lower angle, whereas Krissy and Josephine are shot at eye level until they get into the frame with Aidan. For Josephine’s kill, she is continuously shot from the low angle, from when she arrives on the scene to when she chops his head off. This is interrupted with reaction shots to Sam (twice) and Dean, all of which are eye level shots, and one to Aidan, which is somewhere between eye level and a lower angle shot. [3] Right before she kills him, we get a group shot of Josephine, the boys, and Krissy from the lower angle, and her whole kill has the camera either looking up at her or down at the vampire. Then for Krissy’s scene, you have Dean either being shot from the lower angle or eye level, while Krissy is shot eye level or from a high-angle (looking down), and the other two are shot eye level. What’s interesting is that when he’s focusing on Krissy it’s from the lower angle, and when he’s focusing on the other two the shots are at eye level. (Also interesting is how her vampire is barely on the screen with them. The vampire is merely incidental to the real purpose of the scene, which is teaching Krissy monster morality.)
Now camera angles can tell us just as much as lighting or costumes. When Krissy is placed with Josephine and Aidan for their kills, the camera is giving her some of the blame for their actions. She shares the threatening/powerful angle, the one usually given to characters right before/after they kill someone. I mentioned Krissy saves herself from making an error and killing an innocent, but she shares some of the blame for the other two dead vampires too. However, not only is she kept from making the same mistake, but she is redeeming herself for having helped the other two make it too. Yes, she helped kill two vampires (acting as bait for Aidan’s and holding off Dean so Josephine could have it), but when she learns the truth she refrains from killing her vampire. And not only does she not kill her vampire, but she saves her. Josephine got to help rescue Aidan from vampire Seth and give the vampire her cure, but Krissy is the one to kill Seth, she is the one to destroy Victor (who was equally behind turning the vampires), and she is the one who makes the cure. (She is also the decision-maker behind all three of these actions.) She may have helped kill two innocents, but she also saved two (Aidan and her vampire.) Josephine’s choices aren’t given nearly the same narrative weight, nor are they completely necessary. (It could be argued while the distraction was helpful - because it was - Krissy could have killed Seth without it. And Krissy definitely could have just handed the glass to the vampire directly because like I said, she was right fucking there too.)
Let’s also talk about the vampires themselves, because those three say something too. Aidan’s vampire is a man of color. He is killed from behind. He is what we picture the bread and butter monsters [4] as; there’s no dialogue and not even a pretense of reason. Josephine’s vampire is a white dude; he talks, he serves as the catalyst for Dean and Sam to realize something fucked up is going on, he gets to disavow all knowledge of Josephine’s family’s deaths. Krissy’s vampire is a white woman who doesn’t really speak; Dean speaks (up) for her. She is to be protected, and has no real agency to her.
So Let’s Talk about Gordon Walker
This whole thing actually stems from a misreading of a sentence in someone’s reaction post to 8.18, which said something along the lines of Victor making him miss Gordon, I’m assuming because Gordon was a complex character on the “bad” side of hunting, and Victor had the complexity and thought process of a Lex Luther plan. (Though in Victor’s defense, he was no Seth. That dude was basically helping to create the next generation of people whose goal is to kill him.) [5] But originally I read the sentence as he was comparing Victor and Gordon, which I didn’t really see beyond they were both Frankenstein metaphors [6] in vampire episodes.
Before I begin this section though, in case you haven’t seen the two metas I linked to above, I want to pause to highlight morejoyful's words: “The problem arises, though, because framing the discussion this way allows you to make the implicit claim that your difference of opinion with a racist fandom represents a successful resistance against racism (where others in the fandom have failed by buying into it). Whether or not you intend this claim or even agree with it, the possibility of it underlies your discussion. This possibility solidifies when you speak as if your fannish interest gives you authority to talk about fandom racism or when you argue that racism is the only possible explanation for an individual having or lacking certain opinions or emotional investments.” I want to make it clear that just because I like Gordon Walker and/or ship Gordon/Dean doesn’t mean I’ve successfully navigated myself or my fandom interests away from racist influences. (I’m white; I will always be racist, because even if I successfully banish all racist thoughts and deeds, I am still taking place in a world that has institutionalized racism, so I get the benefit of white privilege.) Just because I like Gordon and/or ship Gordon/Dean doesn’t mean my fandom interactions taken as a whole don’t favor white male ships. Just because I’m talking about Gordon doesn’t mean a lot more people more qualified than I haven’t also, and just because I’m talking about Gordon doesn’t mean you are wrong for not having done so.
Mirror Mirror (is this the face of Dean?)
As mentioned earlier, Krissy serves as a direct parallel for Dean in 2.3, but she also draws a direct parallel to Gordon in 2.3, which makes sense as Gordon and Dean were parallels for each other in 2.3 too.
pearsoned points out she’s cocky and reckless and stubborn in 7.11 like Dean, and of course there is the whole dead mom/raised in the life backstory, and I’ll also add that so far the way she finishes cases has been like Dean too. In 7.11 she used pretense to get close to the vetala [7] just like Dean used pretense to get close to Zachariah in 5.18 to kill him. In 8.18 she used Josephine distracting the monster to shoot Seth and then make a motion to kill Victor, explaining that this was for her family; in 2.22 Dean used John grabbing onto Azazel to distract him so he could shoot him and say this was for their mother. Both have used distraction and a reckless idea to kill (an idea no one else realizes they’re acting on until they’re acting on it), and both have trusted their own speed in shooting against something faster to kill.
Krissy and Gordon are similar too; both had the supernatural kill a family member and break their family apart (as Gordon says, “Then… try explaining that one to your family. So I left home” 2.3; Krissy lost her mom and then her Apple Pie Life; another Dean connection), both with their personal vendettas against vampires and their monsters are monsters mentality they are forced to face…the main difference being that Krissy redeemed herself (like Dean), and Gordon’s head was cut off.
And then there’s Gordon and Dean. Gordon, who was introduced with enough surface similarities (which can then be peeled back to reveal deeper ones) to remind the audience of Dean. Gordon’s first introduction is to give a pop culture reference and display that same cocky attitude Dean does when faced with someone with a knife to his throat. [8] But Gordon is also a very specific reflection of Dean - his father’s influence. Gordon lived through Dean’s nightmare scenario (dead sibling, and later we find out, having to kill said sibling because they were a “monster”), but he took John’s route with it - he became adrift from the rest of his family and went searching for her killers like a man obsessed (like John, and who John forced/tried to force Dean to be), that he has a very black and white philosophy towards hunting, that he needs hunting, that he can’t separate who he is from hunting. Sam and Dean see Gordon as who Dean can become without Sam’s influence, just like Dean could never be quite who his father wanted him to be because of Sam’s role in his life.
The first episode ends with Dean and Gordon (Sam already believes it, which is explained when we find out about Amy in 7.3) - and therefore the audience - being asked to really consider for the first time what exactly makes a monster a monster. Dean asks, “What if we killed things that didn’t deserve killing? You know? I mean, the way Dad raised us…” The show is saying not all monsters deserve it (a lesson the boys remember and forget frequently throughout the show), because yes Lenore is a vampire but she’s not killing humans, and in fact actively resisted when Gordon was trying to force her to. The show makes it clear Sam and Dean are doing the correct thing in letting Lenore live, because as Sam points out Lenore and her nest aren’t killing people.
Well actually, the real argument Sam is making is that Lenore and her nest aren’t killing people right now.
Lenore: It’s not ideal, in fact it’s disgusting. But it allows us to get by.
Sam: Okay, uh, why?
Lenore: Survival. No deaths, no missing locals, no reason for people like you to come looking for people like us. We blend in. Our kind is practically extinct. Turns out we weren’t quite as high up the food chain as we imagined. - 2.3
As phantomas points out, “She makes a choice not to kill because at that moment in time it’s the best choice she can do to survive. She states that in clear words. The implication is that in another situation, where their survival weren’t at risk, they might make a different choice.”
So the question really becomes, how far back do you go when asking if a monster is a monster? And according to the boys, it depends what day it is. We have Madison (2.17), who is told she killed people and needs to die, no chance or suggestion of seeing if she could figure out a way to keep herself from harming people. It’s not like she wouldn’t know in advance what days she needs to disappear for; but Sam needs some more angst-issues (the first dead girlfriend and his whole life weren’t enough apparently), so instead the audience’s heart strings are tugged while the boys are devastated. [9] [10]
Or to stick with vampires, we have 3.7 Fresh Blood, which opens with Sam & Dean killing a vampire (Lucy) who they have to explain is a vampire. (As I pointed out for Josephine’s vampire, newly turned vampires don’t seem to realize what they are or what they are doing immediately after they turn; dead man’s blood was also used in both cases to knock the vampire down first.) Sam may flinch (which is to contrast with how he doesn’t when he decapitates Gordon at the end of the episode, because this episode is about the grey morality of Sam, not Dean), but it’s done. Just like with Madison, there’s no discussion about how the person may live with it. There’s no discussion about Lenore, and how she and hers are living with it. [11]
So the episode ends with the first real step into the grey morality of monsters. The episode also ends with Gordon being humiliated. Dean says, “How you doin’, Gordy? Gotta tinkle yet? All right. Well, get comfy. We’ll call someone in two or three days, have them come out, untie you.” Most likely Gordon, an experienced hunter, will be able to get out of the ropes on his own in a few hours, but the point is that it wasn’t enough to restrain him, Dean had to humiliate him. [12]
The next time we see him, Gordon has heard some things from a demon and does some digging (“I’m not some reckless yahoo, okay? I did my homework. Made damn sure it was true” 2.10) and he finds out about Sam and the other special children.
Gordon: Yeah. I was definitely planning on whuppin’ your ass for that.
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Gordon: But that’s not what this is. This isn’t personal. I’m not a killer, Dean. I’m a hunter. And your brother’s fair game. - 2.10
Gordon, when it comes to humans, is pretty damn polite. Dean tries antagonizing him, but Gordon never takes the bait (making him a very good hunter.) He understands this is hard, and he promises to make it quick. He’s not doing it as revenge, and he wants to make it very clear. He’s a hunter, and Sam is a hunt.
There’s a disconnect between Gordon and Dean, because both believe the other can be reasoned with, and both don’t understand how the other one isn’t getting it. To Gordon, this is a hunt, just like any other, the same hunt others - Walter & Roy (5.16), Kubrick & Creedy (3.3, 3.7), Tim & Reggie (5.3), John Winchester and his “if you can’t save him, kill him” - try to do. Dean himself even says to Sam later on, “If I didn’t know you, I would want to hunt you, and so would other hunters” (4.4). But for Dean, this is Sam, and he will always be the exception to his every rule.
The difference, however, between Gordon and the other humans who go after Sam, is that out of all of them, Gordon is the only one who is dead because the Winchesters killed him. He is the only one who has to be humiliated during his arc before he died. [13] He is the only one they involved cops - civilians - to help them deal with. [14] Dean, before he knew about the cops, wanted to kill him. Gordon is the only human they go to that extreme with, even though there’s nothing to stop, say, Kubrick from 3.3 from coming back to finish the job…which, oh yeah, he tried to do in 3.7.
Even Sam - who is considered in these first three seasons the moral compass of the show - thinks Gordon should die.
Sam: Yeah, I know. We’ve got to kill him.
Dean: Really? Just like that? I thought you would have been like, “No, we can’t, he’s human, it’s wrong.” - 3.7
Gordon turns into a vampire and so saves the boys - and the audience - from really having to examine what it means to kill a human (if they were going to), but it’s important to note they were originally planning to. [15]
To be clear, it’s not that the show in-canon did not provide the reasoning behind Gordon’s arc and the need for his death. It’s that they made the in-canon reasoning. (Scripts do not just appear out of the sky delivered by writer storks.) It’s that there is a dangerous pattern for black men that may not have been consciously planned, but that exists all the same. Alaya Dawn Johnson points out all the black men on this show who are given an arc (appear in more than one episode), “every single time they are tragically evil, and they are killed off to add to the emotional angst of your white leads.” She wrote this before S5 started, and with the exception of Rufus (who was only in one episode at the time she wrote it) being good (though he was still killed off), it holds true. [16] [17]
Redemption is only gotten by some
Gordon was used as both a cautionary tale for Dean (this is who he could become) and an access point for Sam’s morality. Everything he does in his arc is something the boys struggle with over the series; but where the boys are given either the narrative’s agreement with their actions or a chance to redeem themselves, Gordon has no chance for redemption inside the story and he has no chance of redemption inside his own point of view.
Look, Gordon was not all puppies and sunshine. He tortured and believed killing the supernatural was more important than saving the human (Dean: “And what happened to the girl it was possessing?”/ Gordon: “She didn’t make it” - 2.10); and he believed nature and not choice was the only important factor in deciding if you’re evil, and since nature will always win out terminating the problem before it becomes one is ok.
However, the show is asking us to make those same exceptions for Sam and Dean. The morality of monsters being monsters is brought up again and again, except the answer seems to be ever changing. Amy in 7.3 deserves to die because she killed bad guys to save her son, like Dean and Sam haven’t started an apocalypse doing the same; but Don and Maggie in 7.5 - who basically killed people because of marriage issues - get away. Don may have saved them (from Chet and Maggie, though Chet’s was incidental to saving them from Maggie), but Amy also saved Sam, and she did it at the expense of her mother. (And if the argument is “Amy’s easier to kill” well one, they are hunters and their point is to go up against creatures more powerful than they are; and two, again, the writer’s wrote it that way.) [18]
Gordon’s problem is not only that he’s not the main character, but that he’s the main characters’ antagonist. He ends up vilified, and the boys don’t. Inside the story, he rejects acknowledging not all monsters are monsters, and therefore can’t be redeemed for killing monsters who don’t deserve it.
And unlike the boys, he stays consistent with this philosophy. Gordon makes no exceptions to the rules. He doesn’t give himself a pass when he becomes a vampire. Instead, after being turned, he tries to redeem himself from being a monster by using his superior strength and skills to kill the biggest threat he believes exists. He explains what he views is his own redemption arc: “It means you have to kill me. But not yet…You have to let me do one last thing first…Listen to me. There is nothing more important [than killing Sam]. Please. I can do one last good thing for the world” (3.7). (And in his defense, Sam did free Lucifer and cause millions of deaths, so it turns out he wasn’t exactly incorrect in his assessment of Sam and the future damage he would do.)
Gordon never denies that he’s a monster or that he needs to die; he calmly states it to Kubrick, and he actually argues that he does with Sam. His redemption was never going to happen though, because for him to redeem himself in his own eyes, it would have involved killing Sam, a major character. (Ah, remember the good old days when death meant something?) And for him to be redeemed on the show, he would have had to realize monsters weren’t just monsters (and depending when it started, make up for turning the girl and killing Kubrick). Instead, Gordon is killed by Sam. [19] Instead, once again, a person of color is not redeemed.
Your skin is so sparkly allergic to the sun cold white
I’m not really expanding into how the genre of vampires have added (or never removed) whiteness to their mythos across media formats, and this is only a small part of the larger problem Supernatural has of offering white, usually male characters the chance for redemption it doesn’t offer it’s other characters, but I do want to briefly touch on two specific re-occurring vampires not mentioned yet: Benny and the Alpha Vampire.
(Benny)
Benny is given an honor only two other characters have been given by Dean, and it’s the highest honor he can bestow: brother. He’s shown up in seven episodes so far this season, two of which centered on him and one in which he “dies” saving Sam. There’s also something we definitely do not know about him, as he’s another actor re-use (the “friendly vampire” Eli from 2.3) and I’m impatiently waiting for an explanation why Benny and Cas never mention each other once they’re topside, and also why Dean doesn't mention either one of them to the other one, even in places it would make perfect sense.
Benny, interestingly, was presented not just as not needing to make a redemption arc (which is different from other characters who never got the story space to have one), but offering them too. In 8.5, it turns out Benny had already left behind killing humans before he went to Purgatory. He then lets Dean kill the woman he loved because instead of taking the redemption he offered her (living as a “good” monster), Andrea wanted to continue being one. (To reiterate, white man offers woman of color her chance for redemption, woman of color cannot - or doesn’t want to - fight her “nature,” and she ends up dying.) Like Gordon (Sam: “Don’t talk about it like you don’t have a choice.”//Gordon: “I don’t” 3.7) she accepts what she is turned into, and doesn’t see any reasons to fight it.
In 8.9, we get to see Benny continue to make himself into a man rather than a monster. It’s suggested while he’s not at fault, Benny himself feels responsible for the two dead innocents who were being used to lure/blackmail him into joining Desmond’s nest (“He said he’s not gonna stop the killing till I join his little nest. Two bodies is enough” 8.9.) He also serves as a chance for both Sam and Martin to realize all monsters are not monsters (which neither do.) [20]
In his last appearance, 8.19, he let’s himself die and saves Sam/Bobby/the 2nd Trial rather than do something he regrets that he would later have to redeem himself for. (Or, if Benny needs to make up for Martin’s death, which is arguable [21], this was a way to redeem himself for it. He could assume killing Martin caused problems between Dean and Sam, and this was his way of a. making a gesture - to either one of them - as an apology, and b. removing himself as someone who could cause problems between them. He also ends with granting Dean absolution for not being there for him when he needed it.)
(Alpha Vampire)
There are seven Alphas mentioned in season 6: Alpha Shapeshifter (who takes the form of four white male established characters), Alpha Werewolf (mentioned but never seen), Alpha Skinwalker (mentioned but never seen), Alpha Djinn (mentioned but never seen), Alpha Khan Worm (who takes the form of three white male established characters [22]), Alpha Jefferson Starship (young white boy), and the Alpha Vampire (Black man).
So out of the Alphas actually presented on screen, two of them took the form of already established characters (so they could hide among them), one took the form of a young white boy (to purposefully hide as an “innocent” so he would be able to go out and infect others [23]), and the only one we see continuously as a straight-up monster is a Black man.
And out of those Alphas, two are re-occurring characters and both are tortured on screen. However, there’s a visual difference between how the Alpha Vampire and the Alpha Shapeshifter were tortured. The Alpha Vampire is presented visually as a group of white (established) characters standing around to torture a (new) Black character. Camera wise, the Alpha shots are constantly switching between eye-level and low-angle (looking up) shots, which matches that he’s on a raised platform in the cage and usually holds the upper hand during the conversations. However, his low-angle shots are not matched to the hunters with high-angle (looking down) shots; rather, the hunters are consistently shot at eye-level, so while they may not have much power in the scenes (and despite being the torturers, they don’t), they also aren’t shot as being “weaker.”
In comparison, the Alpha Shapeshifter is tortured by Crowley while wearing Crowley’s face. There’s a disconnect for the viewer because the torture is, in a way, self-delivered. It’s also not a group of people doing the torture, and it has none of the historical and societal context the Alpha Vampire torture scene has.
To speak of the importance of vampires in the show, the Vampire Alpha plays an important role to the Purgatory story-lines. In 6.7, he’s the one to tell the boys about Purgatory and to warn them that Samuel was working with Crowley. This is the episode that begins the arc (though we don’t know it yet) about Crowley and Cas and their deal. (To clarify, not when the arc began, but when we found out about it.) It’s also the episode that establishes Crowley as a powerful game piece on the board, as he’s now King of Hell. And in 7.22, he’s the one to provide the “monster blood” needed to close Purgatory. [24]
Wrap-Up
Vampires (after demons and angels) tend to serve in critical episode changers on this show. Besides the mentions above, vampires are also seen in 1.20 Dead Man’s Blood, an episode which a. brings John back into the boys lives which leads to the start of the final battle with Azazel; b. introduces the Colt, the weapon that can kill anything (well, besides Lucifer and four others); c. introduces the idea of the hunting community (that there are hunters out there AND that John kept them away from his sons which will later be contradicted willy-nilly); d. how they interact as a family; e. Dean standing up to his father; f. one of the few times Sam drives; and g. it can be argued this is really the first episode to clarify that the show’s monsters and the monsters in other shows/books aren’t the same (“Direct sunlight hurts them like a nasty sunburn. The only way to kill ‘em is by beheading. And yeah, they sleep during the day, doesn’t mean they won’t wake up” 1-20). And in 6.5 Live Free or Twihard, a. Dean realized his instinct was right and there was now proof Sam wasn’t Sam; b. led into the break-up with Lisa in the next episode; c. we find out Samuel knew a cure (which we are reminded of by Crowley in 6.7 as why he was brought back, and leads into a possible connection between him and the Men of Letters); d. explores more about vampires [25]; and e. that the Alphas have plans. [26]
Vampires, as stated in the beginning of this, serve to explore the monster morality first brought up in 2.3 and mirror imaged in 8.18. They are an example of how some characters are evil and some are good and most are somewhere in-between, trying to do the best they can. The point of this was just to be an example of one of the many ways this show tends to favor white people, especially men.
(And seriously, congrats on getting to the end. This thing was not short.)
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Footnotes
[1] For interesting meta on Dean’s role in Krissy’s story, and why Krissy is bad-ass, check out flutie’s meta posts here, here and here. fansofcollisions points out how rare Krissy/the trio is on TV here and superwholockthecomic points out why it’s bad to view her through a destiel light here. Also andythanfiction pointed out, which I didn’t notice, that Victor is played by the same actor who played Dr. Hydecker/the Shtriga from 1.18 Something Wicked, adding another repeating cast member to S8 and drawing parallels again to childhood and hunting (and how it fucks you up.)
[2] Meta for another day: the treatment of human monsters on this show. Because stuffing a demon back into a woman so you can kill her with Ruby’s knife, like in 8.2? No problem. But heaven forbid you kill a human who doesn’t have just a touch of supernatural in them. Seriously though, I know I’ve asked this before, but do they just work on the honor system for humans? Ok Victor, don’t go trying to create any more hunters by getting supernatural creatures to kill their family, because in-between shutting the gates of hell we’ll definitely be checking up on you.
[3] Actually, I’m debatable about Dean’s; his seems to be at a slightly lower angle too but I’m not sure if that’s just because of my screen angle or if it’s the actual camera angle.
[4] Bread and butter monsters, as in monsters who aren’t even given dialogue because their whole purpose is to be a monster, not to make us question what monsters are or even necessarily serve as a parallel for whatever else is going on. Sometimes they’re a metaphor in terms of the larger episode story, but not always.
[5] Example of one of Lex Luthor’s crack ideas (which take heart in the phrase “cut off your noise to spite your face”): letting terrorists on board his yacht just to he could offer Superman a job. Who the fuck does that? Seriously, only Lex would think that was a good plan.
[6] Frankenstein, the doctor who created the monster, but who turned into/was always the real monster (and didn’t realize it), except the monster turned out to also be the monster. Victor (he even shares the name), who used to be a hunter (“saving people, hunting things”) instead created (well, took on) a monster, which in turn turned him into a monster (a hunter who thought evoking trauma in kids would make them better hunters), except the monster was also still the monster (he may not have killed anyone that we saw, but he sure did turn a couple and set them up to be killed.) Gordon became what he hunted, and though he realized he needed to be stopped, he still killed Kubrick and turned the woman because he thought he could still do something good with it, because Frankenstein had untold powers of denial.
[7] I forgot about this until now, but she frees Sam so he can kill the other vetala, giving him a chance to redeem himself of being caught. And yes I realize redemption is considered this huge thing and I’m using it to refer to a much smaller scale.
[8] Actually, the only time Dean does not throw snark a villain/antagonist’s way is with Naomi. (Even Death, though with the utmost respect, gets Dean attitude; “Don’t roll your eyes, Dean. It’s impolite” 6.11); instead, we have Naomi, who the first time they meet Dean backs away from. The only time I really remember Dean, in full control of his facilities, backing away from someone is Sam in 4.20 when he just finished drinking the demon blood and Dean jerks away from him, and sometimes when Cas leans too close into his space Dean leans away. But even those weren’t a whole step back.
[9] There’s no argument that the show centers around the boys and so therefore their reactions to things, but the show has also done plenty of work from someone else’s perspective, like the Ghostbusters, and it’s pretty fucked up that a woman’s death scene gets hi-jacked for men angst, because this is not a new thing (in media or the show.)
[10] The show does try to give a nice bookend to this, with Kate from 8.4, except a. she’s shown to have some control over her form immediately; b. she’s only killed another werewolf at this point, and no humans; c. the person she killed was in self-defense/revenge; and d. she ran, as opposed to Madison, who didn’t really argue or rail against them, just accepted it.
[11] It could be argued it’s a matter of a monster knowingly stopping what they are doing. Lenore, Kate, both have proven to have control over themselves and their forms, but Madison and Lucy didn’t even know what they were doing. But it still means they weren’t given a chance. Both were victims (just like Kate was) of someone who was or wanted to pursue them sexually, not to mention how both vampire and werewolf lore have close ties to rape metaphors. And we have seen the boys are willing to give the chance, such as for Molly in 2.16 Roadkill, but who they give it to depends on the day.
[12] There’s a pattern on this show of a white man getting to humiliate a black man. For example, look at how angels in holy fire differ: Castiel ends his conversation with “Now you’re my little bitch” to Raphael in 5.3 while Dean has “Don’t say I never did anything for you” to Gabriel in 5.8. Both of these are archangels who have killed one of them (Gabriel over a hundred times, in fact) and both, at this point, are unsympathetic to the idea of Team Free Will. Both want the apocalypse to happen, though only Gabriel is doing whatever he can in his power to keep it on track. And out of the two of them, only Gabriel gets to redeem himself.
[13] I want to clarify because some people may say Kubrick & Creedy were humiliated when they were taken out, because a remote and a pen is an embarrassing way to go down. The difference is while both scenes - the Kubrick & Creedy take down, the Gordon “Gotta tinkle yet?” - are played for laughs, the audience’s laughter is being directed at/against Gordon, while the situation and it’s ridiculousness (emphasized with Dean’s “I’m Batman”) is what is being laughed at for Kubrick & Creedy.
[14] I didn’t notice this until I read a post (or a comment on a post) that pointed out what it means to see a black character - the first reoccurring one - arrested by the (white) cops in a country with a long history of racism and police brutality. I unfortunately lost the link to the original piece when my computer crashed, and I can’t remember where I got it from or find it through google searching.
[15] Which is interesting because just a few episodes later we get scenes like Nancy and the station in 3.12, who Sam wants to kill to save the group of possessed people - and themselves- and Dean doesn’t. And you have Bela, who in the beginning of that episode they broke into her room to kill threaten her (guns blazing).
[16] For those who don’t read the link, to clarify Agent Henrickson: he is a good character, but he is an adversary, and once he learns the truth and will therefore be on the “good side” (the Winchester side), he is killed off. It’s not that the others, if the POV didn’t favor the narrative of the Winchesters, didn’t also have good reasons for what they did too, but they are painted as “evil” too. (Jake, Gordon, Uriel, Raphael…they all have reasons that have matched the Winchesters at one point or another, but they are labeled evil by the show when they do it.)
[17] Kristen brings up “‘There’s like a checklist for this shit! He was phyisically intimidating” — I should interject that we mark characters as such when they manage to dwarf or at least crowd into Sam’s space — “morally fucked, some edgy ‘reverse’ racist bullshit, then he betrayed everyone and died at the hands of pretty white people!’” Catherine Tosenberger explains “the show deliberately invokes racist rhetoric — and then places it the mouths of *black* characters. Gordon’s hatred of the supernatural, Uriel’s of humans…It’s like the show can only *really* deal with racism (in ways that don’t involve evil trucks) if their white male heroes are the suffering victims.” Lisa adds “Also, while all the demons may have been white (except the one who possessed Isaac, I guess), all the white people haven’t necessarily been demons. I think it’s a crucial distinction. I’m not negating the effect of historical context, but we get multifarious white characters and everyone else, not so much. Chris does a breakdown of each character as the “angry black man” trope. And because I know this will be brought up re the actors availability (like Ray): Alaya and softestbullet and Roga.
[18] Because I feel this important to note, Dean says, “I went with my gut. And that felt right. I didn’t trust her, Sam. Of course, ever since Cas, I’m having a hard time trusting anybody. And as far as how I been acting… I don’t know. Maybe it’s ‘cause I don’t like lying to you. You know, it doesn’t feel right. So, yeah, you got me there. I been climbing the walls.” (7.7) To make it clear, he a. admitted his gut/ability to trust may be compromised because of Cas; and b. the only thing Dean had a problem with was lying, not the killing. And Sam - after about two weeks of thinking on it - is okay with this, killing someone who once killed her own mother to save him, killing someone who was just doing what was necessary to save her son. Look, I love the boys, but part of me is hoping the series ends with Jacob (and maybe Wendall’s daughter from S2 and Claire Novak and seriously, there’s a list) killing them; esp. Jacob in a replication of Dean and Azazel’s scene - “that was for my mother” indeed. (And this of course brings up the ghouls and Adam, and the djinn and 6.1. I want Jacob painted as okay for doing what he did. Winchesters are monster’s monsters, after all. Take 8.4 to the next step.)
[19] Technosage points out “When you look at the screen in that scene, there’s no vampire. There’s a hot young white stud and an older, animalized black man…Yes, Gordon was a vampire. Yes, the scene called for him to die. Yes, there were good reasons for the way Sam killed him. Does that make the visual of a white man lynching a black man with barbed wire less disturbing to me? No.”
[20] There’s actually a number of similarities between how Gordon acts and Martin acts in 2.3 and 8.9. However, to reiterate, it is not like I - or anyone who talks about this stuff - is saying white people are not evil (helllloooo Alastair) or miss their chance of redemption (Samuel) on this show, just that a. as said in footnote [17], that’s not all they are (the major allies of the Winchesters boys with re-occurring episodes, besides Rufus and the Trans, have all been white, and the largest story arcs that tie into the Winchester boys have all been male) and b. doesn’t divorce the historical and social context of those visuals and patterns. TV shows are not made in a vacuum, and they aren’t watched in one either.
[21] Considering a. Martin was warned away, several times; b. Martin was using an innocent (family) to get to Benny and purposefully taunting him with blood; c. Benny would have been killed so it was technically self-defense; and d. Dean makes it clear he’s okay with it, this may not be necessary.
[22] For the purposes of this, I’m kind of ignoring that the Alpha Khan Worm was originally planted in the ear of a trucker named Rick in 6.16. Originally I thought the worm was only seen planted in his ear and then the murder of his family while under its influence happened off-screen, but the episode’s cut to its title card happens after he killed her. The reason I’m not bringing it up in the main section is because the point of this monster is that it takes the form of the established characters. They could have easily cut out Rick’s kill scene and not changed the episode except why get rid of an unnecessary scene of violence against a woman, and without the kill scene we only see the Alpha being implanted, and not Rick as the Alpha. To clarify, it seems as if people tend not to associate the Alpha with Rick except for the first time they’re watching Rick, but they do associate the Khan Worm with the three established characters. Including Rick though, doesn’t actually change the reading of the monster, as the boys aren’t introduced to him as such.
[23] On the one hand, it’s Supernatural and monsters take human form all the time. On the other hand, the younger kids (I’m not including older teens) they’ve had on this show - Lucas, Michael, Ben for instance- have been white males, and the rest have merely served as someone to be rescued and didn’t have much agency, or were knowingly evil. Depending what kind of viewer you are, you may have been suspicious of the young brothers, so the “shocking twist” wasn’t so shocking, but the point inside the story was that the Winchesters didn’t see them as suspicious. No one did, actually, since Cas’s complaint wasn’t that they could have been monsters but that it was a waste of time to bring them to their relative’s.
[24] He also promises to see the boys next season, and while I’m not expecting him to show up this season (though who knows), I can see him showing back up before the series is over.
[25] And contradicts things I mentioned above, like how Lucy (3.7) and Josephine’s vampire (8.18) didn’t even realize immediately they’d been turned and how mindless they were to feed until they were given dead man’s blood that made them pause.
[26] Also, while I have issues with the character, Garth is introduced for the first time (in person, at least) because Bobby is hunting a nest of vampires (7.8), and Garth ends up becoming the new Bobby for the hunter community and the person watching over Kevin the Prophet in S8. So he is, technically, if not important to the actual narrative, at least important to the gaps of the story we’re not told.