Since when would Dean ever threaten an innocent person and force them to do shit against their will. This was so un-Dean-like and I need to vent.
Kelly Kline comes to mind.
It’s not the same though. With Kelly, Dean was trying to save the entire multiverse, and also trying to save Kelly herself. Here it’s just totally personal–he’s just trying to save his mom, not serve some greater good or protect the person from themselves.
I saw a theory that maybe Jack had inadvertently controlled Dean like he’d done with Cas to get what he wants, and I hope that’s the case, but if it is, it seems weirdly placed in terms of narrative timing because when exactly would they get a chance to bring that up in the near future?
Kaia wasn’t just an “innocent.” I mean… she had the ONE THING Dean desperately needed, and without her help it would continue to be HIS PERSONAL FAULT that Mary was suffering horrifying torture in the world HE FELT PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for her languishing in… so… yeah, not ooc
This wraps up into all the guilt he has left over from Purgatory, for how he treated Sam for not looking for him in Purgatory, for how he’d been in complete denial that Mary was even still POSSIBLY REMOTELY alive… (and remember Dean has no idea that Lucifer is back now, because he was prevented from exchanging info with Cas). And suddenly he’s been delivered a literal vision proving that she’s not only alive, but suffering horribly in something highly reminiscent of the torture he experienced in Hell (which he’d been freshly reminded about just a few days earlier…). And he’s suddenly willing to do practically anything to save her from that (because again, Dean blames himself for all of this, because he once blamed Sam for not looking for him, and that blame drove them to really horrifying places…)
So yeah, Dean’s got a LOT of emotional trauma, guilt, and self-blame over all of this, and Kaia being potentially the one and only person capable of helping them get Mary back? To redeem HIMSELF? Yeah, he snapped. I can’t really blame him.
As horrible as it was to do to Kaia, heck I get it.
I’m going to do a proper post in the morning, but if you go back and listen to things right after Jack’s visions, Dean’s head is ringing. They put deliberate audio cues into the shot to tell us that either A) Dean was having a panic attack, B) Dean was having a shock reaction to either the vision or the subject material, or C) Dean was having a flashback to Hell.
Given the framing of everything, with Mary directly mirroring Dean’s own screams and the camera shots in the vision, my money is on C.
And yeah, it was horrible to Kaia, but this one….. That’s still Dean.
The thing is, we don’t often see Dean like this, where he’s got a family member to rescue, but when we do? He’s said it himself, “for you or Dad, the things I’m willing to do or kill, it’s just, uh …. it scares me sometimes.” (1×22)
This is… this is the same internal thread and struggle that’s been there since s1, but it’s rarely pointed at humans or innocents. And it’s almost never framed as being as blatantly WRONG as this was.
This ^^^
You have to see it from DEAN’s pov and no I don’t believe he would ever of actually really hurt her but threatening her a bit to find mom, who he thought was dead and didn’t search for when he just saw her get stabbed inside a horrific torture cage in an AU only Kaia can get to??
He literally has a panic like attack right there on screen first to show how overwhelmed he is!
Yeah he’s gonna do everything he can to get there and save her and that is not OOC at all.
He doesn’t and never will act perfectly all the time especially when under intense stress in moments like this, it’s a huge part of being human and so important to the overall morality and themes of the show. I’m not surprised at all.
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