fannishliss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fannishliss) wrote2013-10-23 12:38 pm
fannishliss) wrote2013-10-23 12:38 pm
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Meta on Reapers: What we Know
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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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".
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.