Blame-shifting on SPN

hunenka:

It’s interesting to see how the show keeps covering
up the fact that it was Sam (with the help of Cas etc.) who let the Darkness
out, not Sam and Dean.

The most obvious way is having various
characters, including Dean himself, shifting part (or all of) the blame for
releasing the Darkness to Dean.

Already in 11×01, Dean accepts part of the
blame:
DEAN: [Amara] thanked me.
SAM: For what?
DEAN: Setting her free.
SAM: You didn’t set her free. I set her
free.
DEAN: Does it matter? I mean, yeah, you
said the spell, but I had the Mark, so lock and key.

In 11×03 (and more importantly, also heard
in the trailer for season 11), Rowena says: What new hell has Dean Winchester
unleashed upon the world?

In 11×09, Sam tells Dean that “Lucifer was
the biggest monster ever hatched, until you
and I hatched one that’s even worse.”

But in all these instances, we, the audience,
are free to put two and two together and see that this isn’t true. That what a
character says isn’t necessarily always true, it’s just something that the
character believes to be true.

However, in 11×18, we hear Sam’s quote from
11×09 in a far worse context – in the THEN segment of the episode. Those are
used to remind the audience what’s happened, or to let those who didn’t see all
episodes catch up. It should be an objective, matter-of-fact recap of past
events, presenting things as they happened, not as one character perceived them
to happen.

By putting the “until you and I hatched one
that’s even worse” as a voiceover in this segment, the show actively
manipulates the audience, solidifying the false notion that Dean was also at
fault here.

I should probably rewatch the THEN segments
in season 10, but I believe the same thing was happening there, too. The recaps
were full of Sam and Cas being concerned how “Dean’s getting worse” and “Dean
snapped” (although, in fact, that was arguable at best) to support the notion
that what Sam and Cas are doing behind Dean’s back with the Book of the Damned
is justifiable and necessary.