Meta on Reapers: What we Know

[fannishliss]

Reapers: What we know about them and why they are not necessarily being "Retconned"
Huge thanks of course to to supernatural wiki which allows one to easily gather up this information.

We first met Reapers the ep with Layla, when they looked like creepy old undertakers.  (1.12 Faith)  In Faith we learn that Reapers can be harnessed and controlled.

Then we meet Tessa, who first appears as a bodiless wraith hovering over the dying  -- but she took on a human appearance and pretexted to Dean that she was a dying or dead woman. (2.1 IMTOD) In IMTOD we learn that Azazel, as a demon, can possess a Reaper, even though it is against the rules.

Tessa reappears in 4.15 Death Takes a Holiday and 6.11 Appointment in Samarra.  4.15 shows that it's possible to capture Reapers in a trap and slay them.  6.11  shows that Dean, even though he is still fully human, can voluntarily go out of body and work with Tessa as a Reaper, under Death's watch.

In 5.10, Abandon all Hope,  we see the creepy town full of old men reapers just standing around waiting for folks to die, and Lucifer summons Death.   In 5.15 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Death raises the dead at Lucifer's behest.   Crowley reports a similar situation in 5.21 Two Minutes til Midnight, when Death comes to Chicago to destroy it, again under Lucifer's orders.    In 5.21 is when we first meet Death in person. Death himself is not a reaper, but rather, one of the Four Horsemen. He believes that he is eternal and that he will eventually reap God. Death created reapers, and he sees himself as part of a Natural Order.  In 6.11 Death is able to retrieve Sam's soul from the Cage in Hell and restore it to Sam.

I think 7.01 Meet the New Boss, is very important, because Crowley is shown to know how to bind Death.  So not just Lucifer, with huge ceremonies and special implements, but anyone can bind Death.

Bobby's reaper appears to him in 7.10 Death's Door. Like Tessa, he appears as a regular guy instead of creepy old man, but he is only in Bobby's head.

8.19 Taxi Driver first introduces the idea of rogue reapers.  I think that their going rogue may be due to two factors:  a, Sam and Dean have upset the natural order, so that the reapers that Death created are going off to do whatever they want; and b, Crowley is making offers to them, which is what he does, so that is giving them ideas and causing them to go rogue.  Why not? They have agency and volition.  I don't know why Ajay has a mortal vessel -- unlike Tessa or Bobby's reaper who have only appeared on the other side of the veil -- but probably due to the influence of Crowley.  We find out in this ep that Crowley bribed a reaper to bring Bobby's soul to hell -- so -- Crowley is giving the reapers big ideas, and with the Natural Order gone askew, nothing is to stop them.  Death seems to be annoyed but has a more hands-off approach than to micromanage all his reapers.

In 9.01 I'm not convinced that Death is real.  There is no evidence that he is any more real in Sam's head than Dean or Bobby.

By the time of 9.03, it seems like reapers see the advantage of taking human bodies like Angels or Demons do, and they are attempting to profit from doing the bidding of Angels as well as Demons.

Comments

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

This is a great post, and although I was really put off by Taxi Driver for many reasons, I did start to think about ways in which rogue reapers in particular make a certain amount of sense. I think rogue reapers, angels going into business for themselves, demons going into business for themselves, demons vying for control of Hell, Death making Dean a temporary reaper by giving him the ring, supernatural beings in general acting out of character and outside the boundaries of laws that previously guided them—it's all part of a supernatural landscape where chaos reigns because of God going AWOL, Lucifer and Michael being locked in the cage, and Sam and Dean taking the escape clause on the Apocalypse.

In reference to your comment about Death being real in 9.01, I agree that we have no proof either way, but I tend to think he was really there. My reasoning: the doctor said Sam was in a coma and near death. If that was true, Sam should have had a reaper. The fact that he didn't means to me that either Death was real, or Sam's reaper took the likeness of Death, which would be... I don't know, disrespectful in the extreme? I kind of think if it were a real reaper who was doing his or her job, Death would not approve those kind of shenanigans.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your great comment. All those ways that monsters are acting out of character -- it is good to step back and look at the list. At the same time, as a contrarian it makes me wonder if monsters ever really did act in character, or if Hunters were just making generalities and assumptions?

I think your point that a reaper would come for Sam, and that Death was his reaper, seems like a good one. We have seen that when Bobby was near death, and when Dean was near death, that reapers came to convince them to move along. If Sam was putting up more of a denial, I would say that the reaper was absolutely sent for him. On the other hand, Death said some things that were a little out of character as someone else pointed out, primarily that it was up to Sam to choose -- usually reapers do not offer a choice, but rather urge the person to move on and not hang about to become a ghost. I think the scene works well either way and I think it's fascinating that there's no real way to get proof, until the next time we meet Death walking about.

[borgmama1of5.livejournal.com]

I can see this as a possibility.

Just, they make the fans works awfully hard to make the shifts in canon make sense...

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I kind of like how hard they make us work.

For example -- get a google map of the USA with no state boundaries and eyeball the center point of the country -- then click in three times. LAWRENCE. Awesome huh? You just found the bunker. :D

Tell me if it works! :)

ETA: My husband consistently gets Manhattan, Kansas, where his best friend was born -- So it doesn't always work. But the bunker still could be there!!

[kisahawklin]

If you go to Lebanon, KS (where I think the bunker is, right?) on google maps, get as tight in as you can on it and still see the whole city, then go out three clicks or so, you'll see "Geographic Center of the Conteminous United States" in text to the Northwest a little ways. Pretty cool,

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I love how they include zingers like this without hammering it in overtly. It's all the in the details -- it's a really clever and meticulous show! :)

[tabaqui]

In my mind, anything with agency and power can and will start to think for itself. Reaper have been doing nothing *but* reaping for time out of mind.

Suddenly, people are dead and alive and dead and alive, the Apocalypse is on/off/on/off. The Devil's offering deals, and the angel's are, too....

What *shouldn't* Reaper's go rogue and try to take advantage like every other being is?

In the Layla ep, Sam said that binding the Reaper was like 'putting a leash on a great white' - so it seems more than likely to me that they'd break out, here and there, and do their own thing.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

That's what I think too. Especially since they're looking around and everything else has also gone off the leash. :)

[antrazi.livejournal.com]

I don't actually have a problem with the rogue Reaper. Angels, demons, why not reapers as well. They have a monotone job and it won't change for eternity, why not enjoy their existence a bit. I can also see Death being absolutely aware of it and either allowing it for one reason or another or planing something there. It's not as if he didn't have all the time he wanted.
I'm taken back by this sudden move of a Reaper taking a vessel. What reason would they have in using them? Just to be seen by other non-reapers? Angels can see them without a body so other than being visible and corporal for humans and supernatural beings that can't see them I don't get the motivation

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

It's a very good question. Why does anything take a vessel?

With demons, they seem to have a desire for earthly sensation because they used to be human.

With Angels, and also with Vengeful Spirits, it's because they want to affect things here in material existence. So maybe the reapers are trying to have more of an effect on the material world. Maybe they want to be seen by humans, who unless they're near death, otherwise can't see them. As bounty hunters, maybe they can't track the living in their incorporeal forms. It is a good question. :)

[morganlucas41.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you posted this because I've been wanting to discuss the aspect of the episode that bothered me the most: reapers being harmed by angel blades. We see not one but two reapers harmed, and in fact killed, by angel blades, just like angels. We saw that with Ajay in Taxi Driver, too.

I was surprised by reapers taking vessels, but I understand your reasoning of how that might be possible. However, what I don't get is how an angel blade would hurt them. The boys have often said "you can't kill death" referring not to the entity Death, but to reapers. I believe it's said both in Faith and in Death's Door. I thought only something like Death's scythe could kill a reaper. Now, we see them being killed by run-of-the-mill angel swords? That was the one part of the ep that didn't make sense to me at all.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

That's a very good question, and thanks for bringing it up.
My instinct would be that reapers cannot be killed in their true, wraith-like form. Once they take vessels, they are more vulnerable. So that raises the question again, what would they get out of taking vessels? To me it seems like a perilous trade.

The Angel blade is not just a shaft of metal, but it is damaging to an Angel's grace... have we seen it short out demons as well? I always imagine that the Kurdish blade they got from Ruby somehow shorts out the crackling energy of a demon, and that the Angel blade has a similar effect on the grace of an Angel-- and apparently on Reapers. It's pure speculation, but when Death created the Reapers, he might've been thinking of the Angels as models -- since he seems to have a bit of a rivalry going with "God".

[karadin.livejournal.com]

I also wonder why April was so angry that Cas had broken Heaven, which is why so many reviews I've read of ep.3 think that April was a vengeful Angel, and did't get that she was a Reaper (or that she took Aprils body before she brought Cas to her apartment) I would have liked, for logic's sake at least, to show when the Reaper took April's body (before or after peanut butter sandwhich)

As Reapers ferry souls as their mission, and they can still get souls to Heaven, again, why would they care that Angels were gone? Tessa had no allegiance to Angels, she warned Dean about them.

Also, if Cas can tattoo a sigil to keep Reapers and Angels from tracking him ...

(another bit of confusion here, Reaper Man that Dean stabbed said he couldn't track Cas, so the Reaper that took April just 'happened' on Cas? And once more into the breech, if Cas can't be tracked by Reapers why kick him out of the bunker?)

... then could anyone put the sigil on their body and keep their Reaper from claiming them and maybe escape Death?

PS, rather than being challenging, I think the ep failed in it's logic, because so many fans are still confused about wtf happened and why.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

As arbiters created by Death to keep the Natural Order, Reapers are creatures of Order, and so are aligned with the Angels in that way. So it makes sense that they would be annoyed at Castiel for helping wreck the afterlife they deliver souls.

As for April, I understood that she was torturing Cas to find out more about Metatron's plan -- because she is trying to get the "bounty" (whatever it is) from Bartholomew. Her goals are in line with the Angels because she is working for them, to earn the bounty on Cas that they are offering.

You can keep a Reaper away -- but then you don't live on, you become a vengeful spirit, like Bobby.

How did April find Cas? Good question. I could make a wild leap: pure speculation, probably the reaper who possessed April is the reaper of her death. right? the reaper for each human MIGHT know what kills them. It's pretty circular (I do watch Dr. Who after all), but if April's reaper knows that April will be killed by an Angel blade, it follows that the owner of that blade might be Castiel -- and bingo, April's reaper lucked out! until the reaper hirself was also killed with the blade. A very bad gamble that the reaper would get the information from Cas and get away before April gets iced by the blade. .... ooh yay, much fodder for my April and the Reaper story. :D

I love all these questions. Instead of bothering me, they are stimulating to think about and ponder my way through. I like to think I can work most things around to where they make sense. Whereas I am usually throwing bricks at Moffat's Who because, wow, that guy can really break the rules of storytelling.

[karadin.livejournal.com]

As a writer, when I watch a show or film and something bugs me, I think of how I would have solved certain problems.

So, what if April met Cas and gave him the sandwich, and that was that, but she died as a result of an accident soon after? Then the Reaper who took her could read her last memories (or all of her memories) and discovered she had met Cas, so she animates the dead body and then goes to ambush him. Cos we don't know when Reapers take the bodies, they aren't already dead, sort of like those discarded meatsuits on the Abbadon bus that had scores of wounds, or going further back, when Meg 1 died as a result of wounds sustained being thrown out a window - after the demon left her.

I can't watch Who or even bear much of Sherlock season two with Moff writing.

[bowtrunckle.livejournal.com]

Well, when you lay it out like that, it just doesn't seem like such an issue. :) Honestly, I didn't get up in arms about the rogue reapers this episode. I was more bhuz with reapers taking "vessels" (which strangely didn't bother me in "Taxi Driver" but probably bec. I was distracted by other issues I had with that episode) and the fate of the human soul that was in the body or was once in the body. I'd like to know how reaper possession works and if it's similar or different from angel and demon possession.

[karadin.livejournal.com]

It would seem that Reapers don't need consent. And despite boys learning how to 'cure' demons, no one seems concerned about vessels these days - note the exploding one from the angel.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

Vessels are out of luck. Demonic possession hardly ever merits the Exorcism any more. sigh. Boys have been in the wars too damn long.


Reapers may or may not need consent. We haven't seen what the possession looks like, so we don't know. Wouldn't it be creepy if the person has to be near death, and then the Reaper just moves in? Maybe April choked on whatever she ate instead of that pbj.

In my icon, Agent Cooper is not down with these unwilling possessions, about which he knows a thing or two.

[karadin.livejournal.com]

Adam still in the Cage, Agent Cooper still in the room with the zigzag floor.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be a vexing question why a Reaper would want to take a vessel -- what it would gain by doing so. The only thing I can see that they gain, is the ability to converse with the living, who otherwise, couldn't see them. As a rogue reaper, Ajay for example was dealing with the living, connecting them to the dead. This has always been big business amongst humans. Previously, reapers didn't seem to care where souls went, as long as they didn't stick around on earth as spirits. Now, as the routes to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory are susceptible to highway robbery, Reapers seem to feel they have a stake among the living. Not sure yet what that is. Maybe they are being lured in by "the power of souls."

[desertport]

Interesting stuff! I still need to see this week's ep, but I had forgotten some of the reapers' appearances in the later seasons (is it weird I have perfect recall of most of S1-3 but only spotty memories of the rest, including last season?).

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

yes, I find it all very interesting!! I'm not sure we'll ever learn for sure What Reapers Want, but it would be good to know at least what a bountyhunter is paid. Knowing Crowley and the Angels, it's probably something like "you get to keep on existing"

[kalliel]

I'm not a huge fan of 8x19, but I think my opinions of its "retcon" qualities vs. the fact that SPN's world is a dynamic system is much more charitable than others. And I felt like the return of the rogue reapers in 9x03 was actually recuperative for that particular addition to the mythology, rather than further retcon. So thanks so much for this post, and putting it all out there with the info to back it up!

Because I love the idea that everyone is adapting and co-opting new modes of existence--demons have discovered Kevlar and assault rifles, angels have hopped on the social media bandwagon, and reapers are experimenting with human vessels. In that sense, even with Hell kingless/queenless, and Heaven empty, it's Earth that's been overrun by imperial invasions. And when the supernatural does "takeover" they mean take over in every sense of the word, all at once. O_o;;

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I've felt like the past three seasons were a bit more reactive, whereas this season I feel like Sam and Dean are building up their arsenal again, making allies and absorbing new knowledge. It seems like they were on the run for so long.

And I love Abbaddon and her new evil.

So the ways that Angels, Demons, Reapers etc continue to adapt works for me, too. It seems like Sam and Dean are finally going to be able to get their heads above water.

I hope that Dean finds a way to help Cas too.

[kisahawklin]

Fascinating post. I don't think Death was there, myself. Why would he bother with a bacterium, even a Sam Winchester-type bacterium? I also have thought that maybe Bobby was actually a reaper (a reaper that took on Bobby's form, not Bobby himself being a reaper, though that's a possibility too, I suppose).

I saw someone or other from the show or the network on twitter saying that reapers ARE angels, and that they always were (ha!). It makes no sense according to what we know of reapers so far. I'm still annoyed with the whole taking vessels thing - if a reaper can warp reality to their whim there is no reason for them to take a vessel. But then again, Tessa was taken over by a demon, so who knows, man. It's all mixed up in there.

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

I think of Reapers as the Angels of Death, so I'll go so far as to allow it metaphorically. But no, Show doesn't support that they are angels and always were. :P

Can a reaper warp reality to their whim? I think of them as intrinsically part of the Natural Order.