'Supernatural' Season 15 Episode 15: All hail Dean for mastering emotional manipulation, getting Amara onboard
Spoilers ahead for Season 15 Episode 15 'Gimme Shelter'
After 15 years, it is official. Ain't no one who can emotionally manipulate as well as Dean. In Episode 15, we have Team Free Will splitting into two. Sam and Dean head out to Atlantic City to find Amara aka The Darkness, while Castiel and Jack go off to have their 'monster of the week' adventure.
Amara quickly makes the boys realize that you don't go to find the Darkness but rather The Darkness finds you -- in Pennsylvania. Amara can smell Dean's musk from two states away it seems -- which Dean takes as a compliment though we wonder if Amara is just telling him to take a shower. But the connection Dean and Amara had is still there. This is something Dean was depending on -- he told Castiel before leaving the bunker that Amara has a 'thing' for him.
As they sit down for some perogies, Sam and Dean try every trick in the handbook; from reminding her about what God aka Chuck had done to her, to what he was doing right now -- extinguishing entire worlds -- to even playing on Amara's conscience about letting Chuck run amuck without taking any responsibility.
Sam even reminds her that she had refused to help Chuck herself as he destroyed Creation. But Amara counters him saying that refusing to help was different from outright betrayal.
However, does Amara even have a conscience in the conventional sense? She reminds the brothers that she and Chuck are cosmic entities whose existence created all of Creation. In the larger scheme of things, it didn't matter if Earth remained or not -- she and her brother would keep existing.
Sam and Dean get into their car but Dean has one last epiphany about how to get to Amara. He storms back and asks why Amara had brought back their mother only so he could see her die again. Amara's only weakness has been Dean's vulnerability -- and Dean pretty much opens himself up to her, eyes swimming with tears as he claims he is "not angry", rather he is "furious". He is furious about being a hamster on the wheel with no real agency while their lives are treated as stories by Chuck and Amara.
But while for them it is an elaborate game, the pain of losing loved ones is real and traumatic -- something Dean reminds Amara about. By the time he is done working on Amara, she succumbs to his emotional manipulation and says she'll think about it. She asks Dean softly if he will betray her and Dean looks at her without blinking and says he will never harm her. It is a big bald-faced lie of course. The balance of the universe depends on blowing up Chuck with Amara, using Jack, so that their world can continue to exist without cosmic entities interfering in human matters. Lying to Amara is just another 'ends justify means decision'.
'Supernatural' aired on Thursday, October 15, at 8:00 pm ET.