@@JamesThomas-y1uyeah that's how I always viewed it. Kind of like how Lucifer turns human souls into demons, death turned human souls into reapers. Many people would argue that because none of them have the memories of it then it didn't happen but, not all demons remember their human past. So it's safe to say that maybe reapers won't remember their human nature either.
Still think that Death being able to be killed/destroyed, even temporarily borderline ruined the character. Him being just an comprehensible force of nature coming to earth for what he saw as a menial task was an amazing setup for a truly mysterious and mystifying character. It mean that every interaction with him felt tense as this entity beyond anyone's understanding felt unpredictable and it made it feel like anything could happen. But then giving him a vulnerability to the point of not just keeping him away but destroying him, and swapping them out for a recently killed reaper took away so much of the character's fascinating traits. I couldn't ever see them as this unknowable force of the universe after that, Billie felt just like a juiced up reaper to me for the rest of the show, because so much of the mystique of original Death was that we didn't and could know anything about where he comes from or what he was.
I agree, I half expected him to laugh at the idea that Death can die, pull the scythe out of himself and give them some sort of chance to convince him not to destroy them.
for me its a little of the opposite. to me it showed him to be even bigger than we thought. After all it shows that death is is above everything else, that the only thing even remotely capable of "killing" him...is him.
Yeah. God ended up being, effectively, a juiced up Archangel too and Amara was just stronger for some reason. They kind of just made it generic power levels with them and it kind of sucked. "I can snap you dead!" "I can snap harder!" "Oh yeah? Well with this plot device I can snap EVEN HARDER THAN BEFORE" "Oh shit, there's a new entity that can snap even harder than that!"
Yeah, I agree, I think he should have "died", then when Dean dies, he shows up and says "you didn't really think my own scythe would work on me, you silly boy. You probably want to know where I've been, let's catch up", then it goes into the end credits, in season 16 we just find out he was doing a road trip, following all the different food festivals and iconic restaurants and just not paying attention to anything
Sorry I'm late to the party, but for me death is always a fraud and over hyped for a cosmic being. He lied about being older than God, but Amara don't even know him “I don't know this death”, and yet she knows all the archangels. Perhaps there were multiple incarnation of death before him. Making Billie as death was smart since the Winchesters never really had any respect for cosmic being, it's nice seeing the Winchesters speaking to death/Billie on equal ground without fear and respect. We've seen the Winchesters talking to God and Amara on equal ground, even calling them out on their BS. Plus without the embodiment of Death, the world still goes on. But without Amara and Chuck everything falls apart.
As god never created death. And Death himself mentions, that he knew God before the times of creation. It's safe to say - that god did not create reapers. Death simply created his own agents. They are angels, but angels of death. Since it's from death that they come to exist, they exist on HIS rules. Not on Gods rules. So, they can teleport freely without wings.
Death say's that it doesn't mean it was real. God could have made death and made him think he was also a primordial force. (Which is my theory about all the so called primordial entity. I think god made them all.)
@@SirZeu why would God give them power that he cant control with how much of a ego he has in the show i cant imagine him accepting that sort of dynamic.
@@thatsnotgonewellatall5517 my theory is that literally everything god did was an act. This was proven to me when he said he couldn't kill jack then just did it in an instant. I think there was never an amara until he made her. They say that the reason Lucifer turned bad was because he had the mark of he was still bad in the apocalypse universe and amara was sealed in the prime universe. Lucy would have never turned bad. It is said constantly that god is a writer. I think every single thing was planned by him. Maybe not all at once and maybe he gave power to some people that could impact him in some capacity but not completely get rid of him only when those people (death, the empty and an arch-nephilim) worked together that they were able to "defeat" him.
@@AhmedBalahim An actual Cherub is a warrior. One was placed at the entrance of the Garden of Eden & given a flaming sword. That does *NOT* sound like a loving little winged baby, that sounds like a "You're not authorized to be here, turn back now" type dude, except no amount of ID cards and excuses will save me.
It appears at least that the Reaper inherits Death's knowledge and role, BUT not his power. The OG Death basically basically overpowered 2 Archangels to get Sam's soul back and he did it with no hesitation/no fear. Also I felt like they did not need a "Shadow", OG Death could had played that role.
No I don’t think death could have been the shadow because he works in creation and the shadow is more of a manifestation of the empty itself atleast that’s my head cannon
My head cannon is that reapers are angels that died during the war between God and Lucifer. They were offered the position of Reaper instead of going to the empty
My theory is that each Primordial being creates their own subjects. God crated Angels (and man?), Death created Reapers. Amara didn't really create, but her agent (Lucifer with the mark) did create(or mutate) demons. Was Eve a Primordial? She was able to create Monsters. Also possibly each realm has a Primordial host. God=heaven. Death=the Empty, Amara=Hell, Eve=Purgatory.
thats what i think so as well, he was dying and she was suppose to take him. Just seeing her again in that form he still see a "angel" or someone he would love to be with at his end
For what it's worth, I think Chuck made the angels based off of how he saw Death make the reapers. Or maybe vice versa, because it doesn't make sense that there would be reapers before anything in creation, but at the same time copy pasting totally seems like something Chuck would do. : /
Death and reapers are one of the bigger inconsistencies in Supernatural. They and the old gods all got retconned as the series went on longer than planned.
Maybe Reapers are like the alpha form of angels because alphas in the supernatural universe have a different set of rules from the rest of their kind. Like the alpha shapeshifter who can shape-shift without shedding his skin or could not be killed by silver.
There are no Alpha Angels in the sense monsters have Alpha, for monsters Alpha means first of their kind, and that’s clearly not the case here, because ArchAngels were the first celestial beings created by God well before any other angels.
The difference between a reaper and an angel to be in a similar fashion add demigods to monster. Where monsters and demigods are very similar yet there is a giant power difference between the two.
@ there is zero evidence that the term Alpha is used for reapers, not only that but an Alpha monster is a one of a kind, there are hundreds if not thousands of Reapers.
Maybe this was just Dean's way of being a gentleman and complimenting her as an angel, and that "for an angel" is because his general opionion of angels is not the best.
I always thought Reapers were Deaths “angels”. Death said himself he is as old as God, so maybe after god made angels death got the idea to make reapers.
Billie thought she was the one to reap god himself. So can lower being just reap Chuck, Aramara, archangels, pagans, leviathan , ect like they are nothing?!
i mean, the original death made it pretty clear that he was as old, if not older, than god. since billie inherited his power, i feel like calling her a “lower being” and that she would be able to reap god “like he was nothing” is just wildly inaccurate, not to mention it misses the fact that billie spends the entirety of the last season trying to find a way to kill god. if she could kill him “like it was nothing,” wouldn’t she have just… done that?
@ my point was, if reapers are angels, than can they influence beings above all angels?! Like what stops Chuck,s heart from beating if not death himself?!
@@randomsmashplays3564 Nah, Billie definitely did not inherits OG Death's power. Billie was scared of Archangels, got manhandled by the Shadow and fell quickly to Dean with no deception. Original Death had to be at least tricked by Dean. She did get juiced up, but OG Death basically manhandled 2 Archangels to get Sam's soul back.
@@craigfin3222 Billie was scared of archangels. Remember when God!Cas turned Raphael into strawberry jam? Yet the OG death was not impressed by the guy who just slaughtered an archangel.
I think they completely retconned reapers in the later seasons. Between the one who was working as a cab driver, and the attributes Tessa had during this episode, they were completely different from what we saw in seasons 1-5.
Clearly the writers treated them as angels during season 9(?), if you look at the way the plot is written. They wouldn't have come up during those events at all if they weren't supposed to be. Thankfully, the writers later realized it was a stupid-ass decision and went back on it. And it wasn't stated explicitly enough to technically be a retcon. Just a bunch of weird episodes where Reapers are treated as if they were angels. I do think they're simply "death's angels", creatures Death made to help him because he couldn't or didn't want to be everywhere at once (guy's gotta have time for fast food). And he was smart enough to set up contingencies, unlike Chuck who was convinced no one would ever beat him.
Azazel did possess a reaper in one episode. I don't think we ever see any other type of angel get possessed. So that's a pretty big strike against them being angels.
They are a different type of Angle "Angles of Death" likely created by him but with a few designs points from Chuck on the basics which Grim Reaper choose to keep and change was his decision........at best cousins
Angel of death is the names. And they are Death's angels not God's. Which is clearly shown. Death is not a creature of heaven or hell he is a creature of the empty he was there when God was one with darkness and took its first conscious thought. However it shown a number of times chuck did something to offset the balance meaning make it so he couldn't be reaped. Even moreso he wasn't supposed to be able to mess with the empty at all. But he did something to Castlie which gave him a foothold to disrupt everything. The writers were sloppy but they did enough to show and tell. God messing with the empty setup his downfall. Jack wouldn't have been as dangerous or even able to do anything to him had he left the empty alone. Also. God is a liar. He lies to everyone he talks to including his sister. Because before death had that weapon he was looking at them and she never noticed because he was part of the empty.
They are Different because Angels and Reapers have very different Jobs in Supernatural. Angels are Warriors/Guardians and need Power and Weapons while Reapers just carry Souls to the Afterlife so why should they need Weapons or more Power. Also God is the Power of Creation and has more experience and skill so his Serveants are more Complex and Powerful Death is no Creator, when he needed Serveants he just made simple Copies because he doesn´t have the Skill or the Reason to make his Servants on the same Level of Angels That is also the Reason why there are different Typs of Angel and just one Typ of Reaper I think its best to see the two like Ships they can be very different but Gods needs Battleships and Death runs a Cargo Buisness
I think Death did create them, by borrowing some of God's grace. Each is imbued with a spark of grace, but Death put his own spin on them to better serve his objectives, hence them being different in some ways to regular angels, but definitely close enough to be considered a sub species at the least. However they don't view him as a father because he never acts as that way, God acts as a father figure to basically everything (albeit a fairly absent one) however Death didn't want to be worshipped, just obeyed. So his reapers respect him, but don't show any love to him beyond him being their boss. Death is definitely far more powerful than the other 3 horsemen, and arguably older too. This signifies to me that he is able to do things the others can't, and therefore has enough juice to create his own species. Look at how he was able to go to the most heavily guarded part of hell, withstand two archangels (the two strongest ones too) and retrieve Sam's soul and it was barely an inconvenience for him to do it. We never saw the other 3 at their most powerful but I doubt they could pull that feat off.
I like your videos and always looking forward to the next one BUT the relationship you've established between god and death should not even be a thing. I mean god/Chuck has never even acknowledged death, mentioned death, or even seem to have noticed him roaming around.... Just like god/Chuck seems to have not been aware of the empty. I mean if he knew, he'd either seen them as competition to his might and immortality and try to control or bind them like he did his sister (the darkness). The reapers seemed to have been extension of death itself similar to a parasite "tentacles", whatever. I don't have an opinion as to why Dean called a reaper an angel other than the fact that early Dean was an idiot or may have had a crush on the physical appearance of that reaper.
What if reapers are the reverse of a demon? Like a human soul turned into a angel in order to deal with souls after death like god didn’t think about death until Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and had to deal with non immortals
Death was locked up for a while (Lucifer had to do a whole ritual to bring him out). Maybe Chuck imprisoned Death at one point, seeing Death as just another destroyer, and he had to create reapers to keep the cosmic scale balanced.
I think in biblical lore reapers would be a power or principality, not specifically a normal angel. They are angel that control the fictions of how the world works. They are the gears that make the world turn to use a metaphor. The unseen movers. I think that describe reapers fairly well. (I’m an atheist but I love fictional lore)
@radagast7200 doesn't apply to cass since he got teleported down in s9( I don't remember sorry) and got his grace removed without losing any of it. So in short he would gotten his wings back after getting his grace back...
@@EverythingGuy15 I think that was slightly different. Think of grace like gas for your car and wings like the tires. Cas never lost his tires, he was just out of gas. When Metatron used the Angel Tablet, he took all the tires off the cars.
I always thought they retconned this during some of the sloppier episodes of the show (tho I actually really liked 9.22 now that I think about it)... then un-retconned it lol like I think the Tessa thing is just a mistake by the writers tbh. it happens!
I would also have to say that it doesn’t really make sense for them to be the same species because like they were needed specifically and not angels for specific rituals so Deamons could break schedules in the series so I don’t see how reapers can be angels
I think you are right about them being an extension of Death but they all Death the literal angel of death. So they could be like feather of Wings he used to have
6:00 i like to think that this whole "plot hole" is very easily explained away as: this takes place AFTER "the fall of the angels". and in that whole ordeal, most if not all of the angels found a host one way or another. if YOU were an angel; that is: loyal to your duty to a fault; would you not keep a hold of this meatsuit, even while in heaven? as to make your job in the future easier would you be required to head down to earth for some reason. it saves on the future potential hassle of getting a new (willing!!) meatsuit. at no cost. i'd also like to bring up the unrelated FUN fact that any meatsuit that passes through "the gates" loses it's soul. so any human that said yes to that angel, automatically entered their heaven once that angel passed the gates. (as per season 12 when Castiel is taking Kelly to the gates for her unaliving)
Im almost positive there is one time previous time to the throwaway line you mentioned where the reapers are reveled to be angels. Im pretty sure its in the episode with Fate. Where Cass and his friend are trying to get souls from historical tragedies. But yes, this reveal is silly to me. They seem distinct from angels. Honestly everything around Death lore got out of hand towards the end
I feel like another point of evidence against reapers being angels is that in the end of the series heaven is falling apart because there aren’t enough angels left. It’s not that they can’t run it, it’s that heaven itself is struggling to stay together without them. If reapers counted, wouldn’t the angels just keep the reapers in heaven as much as possible to keep it going?
Just because they are different from standard angels doesn’t mean they aren’t angels, they could be a different class of angels like how Cupids are Cherubs and Castiel or Zachariah are Seraphim.
There's different varieties of angels, there's seraphim like cas and Zacharia, there's "experts" mentioned by cas about that megalomaniac in the samhain episode, there's cherubs, depending on your view on them in the grand scheme, that imaginary friend species may be some kind of super low tier angel, where angels might not even remember their Angels, there's the watchers and there's the arch angels. I don't if I've missed any but I probably have, there's so many different kinds and the fact that god in supernatural created everything, those imaginary friend things seem like a social order thing he would impose to make sure people grow up well rounded.
You're talking about Zannah, in regards to the imaginary friends. Those are an entirely unique species not related to angels at all, as it requires a special dagger to kill them. And also the fact that Sparkles' blood was all over the room where he/she? was killed, which is pretty much never the case when an angel is killed with a bladed weapon. And last but not least, Sully and Zannah in general are such pure creatures, that Sully would have told Sam if he was a type of angel because he's honest to a fault.
@Da1337Man that's why I said "depending on how you view them in the "grand scheme", they may not be "angels" per se, but chuck may have made them as a "behind the scenes assistant", but since they really never have any reason for interacting with anyone besides other Zannah and their charges, they may have forgotten where they came from specifically, they just remember their purpose.
Chuck didn't make Death, just like Amara or the Empty. Death and Chuck being buddies and making their followers at the same time and making them a little similar makes more sense.
Is also the fact we know a reaper can get possessed by a demon, at the very least one on the level of a Prince of hell. We've seen prince's and angels squaring power wise but don't think we've ever seen a demon get possessed by an angelic vessel apart from crowley to an alive Sam possessed by a weakened angel
I may be misrembering something, and please excuse me if i am, i haven't rewatched the show in years. But i seem to recall a scene where tessa, and a whole bunch of suited people behind her (possibly reapers) asked castiel for his orders? Or like, sided with him for him to be the leading angel in heaven? I really cant even remeber if this happened during cass and crowelys team up for purgatory, or around when metatron was introduced? But i do recall the scene throwing me for a loop, cause it doesnt make sense to me for reapers to get into the middle of that spat without being angels themselves. To make it clear: I would rather have reapers not be angels and be their own class of being
I always thought of reapers are like an extension of death himself and that’s why they can take deaths place I defo don’t think there angles more like mini deaths
The entire season after angels lost their wings, don't reapers team up with angels and fight eith and for them? I feel like I also recall Cas calling reapers angels.
I think Reapers existed before God/Amara existed, so God simply copied the design of what are now known as Angels (and added a few things) from Death's Reapers. And to avoid confusing people further, Reapers may say they're Angels (or related) because Death may not want everyone to know he predates their God etc (given Chuck's fragile ego).
I kinda of disagree, I think that reapers were created by Death to make his job easier and also to do his job in the event he couldn’t. As we saw in season 5 Death can be bound and even imprisoned. Not to mention Death is the only character in the show who actually seemed omniscient and he likely saw his death or imprisonment as a potential outcome and created reapers to take his place.
I think Reapers are angels but just dipped in Death energy that strips away/masks their traditional angelic qualities as a side effect. Or they are definitely fragments of Death that have his power and since death was made by god and so were the angels they could be considered angels based off how similarly they were created since they both have the power of their progenitors within them.
But if Death is a Horseman, would that imply the other horsemen could make their own 'angels'... like War Angels or Famine Angels? Aren't the other Horsemen attended to by demons?
What if reapers are angels but they chose to stop serving god and rather chose to serve death (them being on the same level as cosmic beings) It would make sense to me that an angel would get tired of the constant battle of good and evil and would chose to serve something as simple as, something dies time to reap
In my opinion a Reaper is an Angels that dies and instead of going to the empty Death took them under his employ. In my head cannon reapers are angels that died during the war against God and Lucifer. Which would explain why they lessen in numbers as the seasons go on
I like your theory of reapers being able to become death because they're made of his essence, but God doesn't have any power over death "in the end I'll reap him too", so I see it more as death splitting off more and more pieces of himself to make reapers who would be able to help keep the balance as there were more and more souls to reap inhabiting earth, we already have evidence of eve creating sentient life without being god so why couldn't death?
I bet the real reason they ditched the OG reaper form, and likely left the true appearances to imagination on a lot of beings is very likely due to budget constraints, CW produces, or did produce, still does? A LOT of shows, and they are well known for skimping on budgets, and the special effects of their shows suffering in various degrees later down the line due to that. Its easier, and cheaper, to give a new actor, or less expensive actor a reoccuring role than to pay for extravagant special effects every season, especially if its contractual and not episode by episode.
Or it may simply be that Dean uses the word Angel as a shortening of the term Angel of death, not that they are really angels but that is a k own term and they basicly follows that functions. So no the fact Dean say angels dont make reapers angels, all angels are made by God and Death make its clear that he is not subserviant to god so who would he have Gods minion working for him?
If I remember my biblical lore, not 100% sure. Death is an angle, just like the four horsemen were. All angles have different forms but were never human or given free will like humans have as angels were to be different but to process looking at an angel they have to speak or be a burning light/bush. If I'm also remembering it right the reason demons are humanoid are because they are twisted souls by true devils which were fallen angels which are not humanoid
Wasnt there a shortage of angels and heaven was gonna fall? If reapers were angels, there would barely be any reapers left so not enough to carry all the dead ppl to heaven/hell
I would say reapers are not angels they are by their definition reapers and a creation of the horseman and embodiment of death, probably as a result of him observing god creating angels and him recreating a similar being to do his work for him, thats why angel blades work on them cuz reminder angel blades work on not exclusively angels they kill demons as well, but you know how when death dies the next reaper becomes death but not the next angel that died, as we see angels die after deaths well death but its only until billy dies that she fills the empty spot We literally see reapers in their true form once, so reapers are to me angel like or cousins to the angels Plus reapers are capable of creating their own body as tesa in S9 has the same body she created in S2 even in the real world despite the fact thats the body of a human soul she took so she couldn’t have taken her consent, so reapers can in fact create their own bodies Not to mention that reapers couldn’t access heaven they could teleport but were also locked out of heaven as its heaven that got locked down as well
I always thought of them as Angels of Death as opposed to the Angels of the Lord
I mean technically angel means messenger. Reapers are kinda like messengers for Death.
I imagined Death just elevated humans into something like Angels as Jack did that one time.
thats what they are, i like to think of them as a different species of angel, sent to earth to serve death and the natural order
@@JamesThomas-y1uyeah that's how I always viewed it. Kind of like how Lucifer turns human souls into demons, death turned human souls into reapers. Many people would argue that because none of them have the memories of it then it didn't happen but, not all demons remember their human past. So it's safe to say that maybe reapers won't remember their human nature either.
@@RealLifeIronMan Angel doesnt only mean messenger- it means messenger of Elohim.
Still think that Death being able to be killed/destroyed, even temporarily borderline ruined the character. Him being just an comprehensible force of nature coming to earth for what he saw as a menial task was an amazing setup for a truly mysterious and mystifying character. It mean that every interaction with him felt tense as this entity beyond anyone's understanding felt unpredictable and it made it feel like anything could happen.
But then giving him a vulnerability to the point of not just keeping him away but destroying him, and swapping them out for a recently killed reaper took away so much of the character's fascinating traits. I couldn't ever see them as this unknowable force of the universe after that, Billie felt just like a juiced up reaper to me for the rest of the show, because so much of the mystique of original Death was that we didn't and could know anything about where he comes from or what he was.
I agree, I half expected him to laugh at the idea that Death can die, pull the scythe out of himself and give them some sort of chance to convince him not to destroy them.
for me its a little of the opposite. to me it showed him to be even bigger than we thought. After all it shows that death is is above everything else, that the only thing even remotely capable of "killing" him...is him.
Yeah. God ended up being, effectively, a juiced up Archangel too and Amara was just stronger for some reason. They kind of just made it generic power levels with them and it kind of sucked. "I can snap you dead!" "I can snap harder!" "Oh yeah? Well with this plot device I can snap EVEN HARDER THAN BEFORE" "Oh shit, there's a new entity that can snap even harder than that!"
Yeah, I agree, I think he should have "died", then when Dean dies, he shows up and says "you didn't really think my own scythe would work on me, you silly boy. You probably want to know where I've been, let's catch up", then it goes into the end credits, in season 16 we just find out he was doing a road trip, following all the different food festivals and iconic restaurants and just not paying attention to anything
Sorry I'm late to the party, but for me death is always a fraud and over hyped for a cosmic being. He lied about being older than God, but Amara don't even know him “I don't know this death”, and yet she knows all the archangels. Perhaps there were multiple incarnation of death before him. Making Billie as death was smart since the Winchesters never really had any respect for cosmic being, it's nice seeing the Winchesters speaking to death/Billie on equal ground without fear and respect. We've seen the Winchesters talking to God and Amara on equal ground, even calling them out on their BS. Plus without the embodiment of Death, the world still goes on. But without Amara and Chuck everything falls apart.
As god never created death. And Death himself mentions, that he knew God before the times of creation. It's safe to say - that god did not create reapers. Death simply created his own agents. They are angels, but angels of death. Since it's from death that they come to exist, they exist on HIS rules. Not on Gods rules. So, they can teleport freely without wings.
So dead is Entropy Incarnate? Or something?
Death say's that it doesn't mean it was real. God could have made death and made him think he was also a primordial force. (Which is my theory about all the so called primordial entity. I think god made them all.)
@@SirZeu the ol' creator without a creator paradox.
@@SirZeu why would God give them power that he cant control with how much of a ego he has in the show i cant imagine him accepting that sort of dynamic.
@@thatsnotgonewellatall5517 my theory is that literally everything god did was an act. This was proven to me when he said he couldn't kill jack then just did it in an instant. I think there was never an amara until he made her. They say that the reason Lucifer turned bad was because he had the mark of he was still bad in the apocalypse universe and amara was sealed in the prime universe. Lucy would have never turned bad.
It is said constantly that god is a writer. I think every single thing was planned by him. Maybe not all at once and maybe he gave power to some people that could impact him in some capacity but not completely get rid of him only when those people (death, the empty and an arch-nephilim) worked together that they were able to "defeat" him.
"in his true form he has six wings and four faces, one of which is a lion"
Zack dropping some Angel True Form lore.
But that's the true form of a Cherubs/Cupid, Zachariah doesn't seem to be spreader of love type
@@AhmedBalahimcherubs (fat babies) and cherubim (guardian soldiers) are different classes of angel. cf Dan McClellan video on it.
@@AhmedBalahim An actual Cherub is a warrior. One was placed at the entrance of the Garden of Eden & given a flaming sword. That does *NOT* sound like a loving little winged baby, that sounds like a "You're not authorized to be here, turn back now" type dude, except no amount of ID cards and excuses will save me.
It appears at least that the Reaper inherits Death's knowledge and role, BUT not his power. The OG Death basically basically overpowered 2 Archangels to get Sam's soul back and he did it with no hesitation/no fear. Also I felt like they did not need a "Shadow", OG Death could had played that role.
No I don’t think death could have been the shadow because he works in creation and the shadow is more of a manifestation of the empty itself atleast that’s my head cannon
Could be possible that when Angels die Death can choose to make them reapers instead of letting them go to the Empty at least for a while
What if reapers are just Deaths version of the angels
Yessss
My head cannon is that reapers are angels that died during the war between God and Lucifer. They were offered the position of Reaper instead of going to the empty
I think a video discussing the various retcons in supernatural would be interesting
My theory is that each Primordial being creates their own subjects. God crated Angels (and man?), Death created Reapers. Amara didn't really create, but her agent (Lucifer with the mark) did create(or mutate) demons. Was Eve a Primordial? She was able to create Monsters. Also possibly each realm has a Primordial host. God=heaven. Death=the Empty, Amara=Hell, Eve=Purgatory.
I think Dean was just calling her an angel cause he thought she was hot
thats what i think so as well, he was dying and she was suppose to take him. Just seeing her again in that form he still see a "angel" or someone he would love to be with at his end
For what it's worth, I think Chuck made the angels based off of how he saw Death make the reapers. Or maybe vice versa, because it doesn't make sense that there would be reapers before anything in creation, but at the same time copy pasting totally seems like something Chuck would do. : /
Could've been like a backhanded compliment to "compared to these things I almost universally hate, your alright"
Death and reapers are one of the bigger inconsistencies in Supernatural.
They and the old gods all got retconned as the series went on longer than planned.
Your videos are always awesome and interesting. Thanks for making them!
Maybe Reapers are like the alpha form of angels because alphas in the supernatural universe have a different set of rules from the rest of their kind. Like the alpha shapeshifter who can shape-shift without shedding his skin or could not be killed by silver.
Alpha being the key word. Singular.
There are no Alpha Angels in the sense monsters have Alpha, for monsters Alpha means first of their kind, and that’s clearly not the case here, because ArchAngels were the first celestial beings created by God well before any other angels.
The difference between a reaper and an angel to be in a similar fashion add demigods to monster. Where monsters and demigods are very similar yet there is a giant power difference between the two.
@ there is zero evidence that the term Alpha is used for reapers, not only that but an Alpha monster is a one of a kind, there are hundreds if not thousands of Reapers.
Death would be the alpha here, with reapers being the subspecies.
Maybe this was just Dean's way of being a gentleman and complimenting her as an angel, and that "for an angel" is because his general opionion of angels is not the best.
Your videos are some of my favorite on RUclips I look for them all the time
I always thought Reapers were Deaths “angels”. Death said himself he is as old as God, so maybe after god made angels death got the idea to make reapers.
Billie thought she was the one to reap god himself.
So can lower being just reap Chuck, Aramara, archangels, pagans, leviathan , ect like they are nothing?!
i mean, the original death made it pretty clear that he was as old, if not older, than god. since billie inherited his power, i feel like calling her a “lower being” and that she would be able to reap god “like he was nothing” is just wildly inaccurate, not to mention it misses the fact that billie spends the entirety of the last season trying to find a way to kill god. if she could kill him “like it was nothing,” wouldn’t she have just… done that?
@ my point was, if reapers are angels, than can they influence beings above all angels?!
Like what stops Chuck,s heart from beating if not death himself?!
@@randomsmashplays3564 Nah, Billie definitely did not inherits OG Death's power. Billie was scared of Archangels, got manhandled by the Shadow and fell quickly to Dean with no deception. Original Death had to be at least tricked by Dean. She did get juiced up, but OG Death basically manhandled 2 Archangels to get Sam's soul back.
@@craigfin3222 Billie was scared of archangels. Remember when God!Cas turned Raphael into strawberry jam? Yet the OG death was not impressed by the guy who just slaughtered an archangel.
I think they completely retconned reapers in the later seasons. Between the one who was working as a cab driver, and the attributes Tessa had during this episode, they were completely different from what we saw in seasons 1-5.
what if dean is the jonkler.
No way at all, just cause Dean said so one time out of 15 seasons doesnt mean much.
Clearly the writers treated them as angels during season 9(?), if you look at the way the plot is written. They wouldn't have come up during those events at all if they weren't supposed to be. Thankfully, the writers later realized it was a stupid-ass decision and went back on it. And it wasn't stated explicitly enough to technically be a retcon. Just a bunch of weird episodes where Reapers are treated as if they were angels.
I do think they're simply "death's angels", creatures Death made to help him because he couldn't or didn't want to be everywhere at once (guy's gotta have time for fast food). And he was smart enough to set up contingencies, unlike Chuck who was convinced no one would ever beat him.
Azazel did possess a reaper in one episode. I don't think we ever see any other type of angel get possessed. So that's a pretty big strike against them being angels.
Where do deities go when they die?
Probably non-existence
They are a different type of Angle "Angles of Death" likely created by him but with a few designs points from Chuck on the basics which Grim Reaper choose to keep and change was his decision........at best cousins
Angel of death is the names. And they are Death's angels not God's. Which is clearly shown. Death is not a creature of heaven or hell he is a creature of the empty he was there when God was one with darkness and took its first conscious thought. However it shown a number of times chuck did something to offset the balance meaning make it so he couldn't be reaped. Even moreso he wasn't supposed to be able to mess with the empty at all. But he did something to Castlie which gave him a foothold to disrupt everything. The writers were sloppy but they did enough to show and tell. God messing with the empty setup his downfall. Jack wouldn't have been as dangerous or even able to do anything to him had he left the empty alone. Also. God is a liar. He lies to everyone he talks to including his sister. Because before death had that weapon he was looking at them and she never noticed because he was part of the empty.
My theory is that god is the god of life and light and Death is the god of death decay.
God has his own angels and death as well..
They are Different because Angels and Reapers have very different Jobs in Supernatural. Angels are Warriors/Guardians and need Power and Weapons while Reapers just carry Souls to the Afterlife so why should they need Weapons or more Power.
Also God is the Power of Creation and has more experience and skill so his Serveants are more Complex and Powerful
Death is no Creator, when he needed Serveants he just made simple Copies because he doesn´t have the Skill or the Reason to make his Servants on the same Level of Angels
That is also the Reason why there are different Typs of Angel and just one Typ of Reaper
I think its best to see the two like Ships they can be very different but Gods needs Battleships and Death runs a Cargo Buisness
I think Death did create them, by borrowing some of God's grace.
Each is imbued with a spark of grace, but Death put his own spin on them to better serve his objectives, hence them being different in some ways to regular angels, but definitely close enough to be considered a sub species at the least.
However they don't view him as a father because he never acts as that way, God acts as a father figure to basically everything (albeit a fairly absent one) however Death didn't want to be worshipped, just obeyed. So his reapers respect him, but don't show any love to him beyond him being their boss.
Death is definitely far more powerful than the other 3 horsemen, and arguably older too. This signifies to me that he is able to do things the others can't, and therefore has enough juice to create his own species. Look at how he was able to go to the most heavily guarded part of hell, withstand two archangels (the two strongest ones too) and retrieve Sam's soul and it was barely an inconvenience for him to do it. We never saw the other 3 at their most powerful but I doubt they could pull that feat off.
I like your videos and always looking forward to the next one BUT the relationship you've established between god and death should not even be a thing. I mean god/Chuck has never even acknowledged death, mentioned death, or even seem to have noticed him roaming around....
Just like god/Chuck seems to have not been aware of the empty. I mean if he knew, he'd either seen them as competition to his might and immortality and try to control or bind them like he did his sister (the darkness). The reapers seemed to have been extension of death itself similar to a parasite "tentacles", whatever. I don't have an opinion as to why Dean called a reaper an angel other than the fact that early Dean was an idiot or may have had a crush on the physical appearance of that reaper.
Great work on another amazing video!
Bobby does also refer to Death as “the angel of Death” in the season 5 episode where Lucifer summons him for the apocalypse
"Unearthly grip" dean would chuckle
Are you going to continue your primordial entities series? The Empty is my favorite concept in the show but has only been mentioned in your theories.
In supernatrual there are camps so angles are on god camp, demons are on hell camp, monsters are on Eve's camp and reapers are on death camp.
What if reapers are the reverse of a demon? Like a human soul turned into a angel in order to deal with souls after death like god didn’t think about death until Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden and had to deal with non immortals
Like you said, I think Dean was playfully flirting with Tessa.
But there are a lot of interesting similarities between the species too.
Death was locked up for a while (Lucifer had to do a whole ritual to bring him out). Maybe Chuck imprisoned Death at one point, seeing Death as just another destroyer, and he had to create reapers to keep the cosmic scale balanced.
I think in biblical lore reapers would be a power or principality, not specifically a normal angel. They are angel that control the fictions of how the world works. They are the gears that make the world turn to use a metaphor. The unseen movers. I think that describe reapers fairly well. (I’m an atheist but I love fictional lore)
Could u make a theory on why the angels didnt get their wings/teleportation powers, even after the explanation that angel grace can replenish?
Metatron's tablet spell did that, no? It made all of the angels fall, meaning losing their wings.
@radagast7200 doesn't apply to cass since he got teleported down in s9( I don't remember sorry) and got his grace removed without losing any of it. So in short he would gotten his wings back after getting his grace back...
@@EverythingGuy15 I think that was slightly different. Think of grace like gas for your car and wings like the tires. Cas never lost his tires, he was just out of gas. When Metatron used the Angel Tablet, he took all the tires off the cars.
@@radagast7200 I ain't buying it
@@EverythingGuy15 thats fair.
I always thought they retconned this during some of the sloppier episodes of the show (tho I actually really liked 9.22 now that I think about it)... then un-retconned it lol
like I think the Tessa thing is just a mistake by the writers tbh. it happens!
Have you done a video on the Muscas or the SPN anime?
I would also have to say that it doesn’t really make sense for them to be the same species because like they were needed specifically and not angels for specific rituals so Deamons could break schedules in the series so I don’t see how reapers can be angels
I think you are right about them being an extension of Death but they all Death the literal angel of death. So they could be like feather of Wings he used to have
6:00 i like to think that this whole "plot hole" is very easily explained away as:
this takes place AFTER "the fall of the angels".
and in that whole ordeal, most if not all of the angels found a host one way or another.
if YOU were an angel; that is: loyal to your duty to a fault;
would you not keep a hold of this meatsuit, even while in heaven?
as to make your job in the future easier would you be required to head down to earth for some reason.
it saves on the future potential hassle of getting a new (willing!!) meatsuit.
at no cost.
i'd also like to bring up the unrelated FUN fact that any meatsuit that passes through "the gates" loses it's soul.
so any human that said yes to that angel, automatically entered their heaven once that angel passed the gates.
(as per season 12 when Castiel is taking Kelly to the gates for her unaliving)
How do demons teleport?
The episode where the reapers can't get in because of the warding around the building makes me think it was angel warding
The fact that Tess didn't react to being called an Angel at all is weird. Like, if someone called me an Aardvark, I'd raise an eyebrow.
Im almost positive there is one time previous time to the throwaway line you mentioned where the reapers are reveled to be angels. Im pretty sure its in the episode with Fate. Where Cass and his friend are trying to get souls from historical tragedies. But yes, this reveal is silly to me. They seem distinct from angels. Honestly everything around Death lore got out of hand towards the end
I feel like another point of evidence against reapers being angels is that in the end of the series heaven is falling apart because there aren’t enough angels left. It’s not that they can’t run it, it’s that heaven itself is struggling to stay together without them. If reapers counted, wouldn’t the angels just keep the reapers in heaven as much as possible to keep it going?
Tesla reapers form looks like the very first grand reaper shows on the first or second season don’t remember. It’s just more ghostly
Maybe Dean didn't mean it literally? She fits the idiom of 'angel of death' more than just figuratively, but perhaps not _technically._
Love the vids
Just because they are different from standard angels doesn’t mean they aren’t angels, they could be a different class of angels like how Cupids are Cherubs and Castiel or Zachariah are Seraphim.
There's different varieties of angels, there's seraphim like cas and Zacharia, there's "experts" mentioned by cas about that megalomaniac in the samhain episode, there's cherubs, depending on your view on them in the grand scheme, that imaginary friend species may be some kind of super low tier angel, where angels might not even remember their Angels, there's the watchers and there's the arch angels. I don't if I've missed any but I probably have, there's so many different kinds and the fact that god in supernatural created everything, those imaginary friend things seem like a social order thing he would impose to make sure people grow up well rounded.
You're talking about Zannah, in regards to the imaginary friends. Those are an entirely unique species not related to angels at all, as it requires a special dagger to kill them. And also the fact that Sparkles' blood was all over the room where he/she? was killed, which is pretty much never the case when an angel is killed with a bladed weapon. And last but not least, Sully and Zannah in general are such pure creatures, that Sully would have told Sam if he was a type of angel because he's honest to a fault.
@Da1337Man that's why I said "depending on how you view them in the "grand scheme", they may not be "angels" per se, but chuck may have made them as a "behind the scenes assistant", but since they really never have any reason for interacting with anyone besides other Zannah and their charges, they may have forgotten where they came from specifically, they just remember their purpose.
My head cannon says the original Death never died, he just faked his death like Gabriel did multiple times and loaned out his power to Billy.
Chuck didn't make Death, just like Amara or the Empty.
Death and Chuck being buddies and making their followers at the same time and making them a little similar makes more sense.
Is also the fact we know a reaper can get possessed by a demon, at the very least one on the level of a Prince of hell. We've seen prince's and angels squaring power wise but don't think we've ever seen a demon get possessed by an angelic vessel apart from crowley to an alive Sam possessed by a weakened angel
I may be misrembering something, and please excuse me if i am, i haven't rewatched the show in years. But i seem to recall a scene where tessa, and a whole bunch of suited people behind her (possibly reapers) asked castiel for his orders? Or like, sided with him for him to be the leading angel in heaven? I really cant even remeber if this happened during cass and crowelys team up for purgatory, or around when metatron was introduced? But i do recall the scene throwing me for a loop, cause it doesnt make sense to me for reapers to get into the middle of that spat without being angels themselves.
To make it clear: I would rather have reapers not be angels and be their own class of being
I think people take random shit like that one-off line wayyyyyyy too seriously.
Yes! Hasnt it been explained before? Like when Tessa sacrificed herself in Cas' name?
I always thought of Reapers as Angel adjacent. Not technically speaking an Angel, but not not an Angel either....
I always thought of reapers are like an extension of death himself and that’s why they can take deaths place I defo don’t think there angles more like mini deaths
I think reapers are definitely a different rank or breed of angels, billie also died to the angel blade.
nay
he was most likely using it reference to the angel of death which isn't a real thing, in a euphemistic manner
Like most have said im fairly certain that reapers are angels for death. Basically death saw angel and was like i can also make this.
The entire season after angels lost their wings, don't reapers team up with angels and fight eith and for them? I feel like I also recall Cas calling reapers angels.
I think Reapers existed before God/Amara existed, so God simply copied the design of what are now known as Angels (and added a few things) from Death's Reapers. And to avoid confusing people further, Reapers may say they're Angels (or related) because Death may not want everyone to know he predates their God etc (given Chuck's fragile ego).
I think death and the reapers get their powers from Amara just like the archangels and angels get it from Chuck before they become 1
I like this kind of video
I kinda of disagree, I think that reapers were created by Death to make his job easier and also to do his job in the event he couldn’t. As we saw in season 5 Death can be bound and even imprisoned. Not to mention Death is the only character in the show who actually seemed omniscient and he likely saw his death or imprisonment as a potential outcome and created reapers to take his place.
I think Reapers are angels but just dipped in Death energy that strips away/masks their traditional angelic qualities as a side effect.
Or they are definitely fragments of Death that have his power and since death was made by god and so were the angels they could be considered angels based off how similarly they were created since they both have the power of their progenitors within them.
But if Death is a Horseman, would that imply the other horsemen could make their own 'angels'... like War Angels or Famine Angels?
Aren't the other Horsemen attended to by demons?
I have no idea why but I had always assumed reapers were angels, not sure where I got it from, maybe the same place Dean did?
What if reapers are angels but they chose to stop serving god and rather chose to serve death (them being on the same level as cosmic beings) It would make sense to me that an angel would get tired of the constant battle of good and evil and would chose to serve something as simple as, something dies time to reap
Angels can't just stop Serving God they would Fall and become Fallen Angels They were probally Created by Chuck to Assist Death in his Job
In my opinion a Reaper is an Angels that dies and instead of going to the empty Death took them under his employ. In my head cannon reapers are angels that died during the war against God and Lucifer. Which would explain why they lessen in numbers as the seasons go on
It’s the angel in there spirit form without there grace. That’s why Tessa looked like a ghastly ghost.
In a sense, yes. Reapers are a certain level of angel in Supernatural.
... my wayward son 🎶
God isn't an Angel...so they messed up on that part 😂😂😂
I don’t think so, Azazel possessed one in one of the early seasons
I like your theory of reapers being able to become death because they're made of his essence, but God doesn't have any power over death "in the end I'll reap him too", so I see it more as death splitting off more and more pieces of himself to make reapers who would be able to help keep the balance as there were more and more souls to reap inhabiting earth, we already have evidence of eve creating sentient life without being god so why couldn't death?
This reminded me that billie became death which PMO
I bet the real reason they ditched the OG reaper form, and likely left the true appearances to imagination on a lot of beings is very likely due to budget constraints, CW produces, or did produce, still does? A LOT of shows, and they are well known for skimping on budgets, and the special effects of their shows suffering in various degrees later down the line due to that. Its easier, and cheaper, to give a new actor, or less expensive actor a reoccuring role than to pay for extravagant special effects every season, especially if its contractual and not episode by episode.
I think Walker was the CWs last real show and that got canceled.
Or it may simply be that Dean uses the word Angel as a shortening of the term Angel of death, not that they are really angels but that is a k own term and they basicly follows that functions.
So no the fact Dean say angels dont make reapers angels, all angels are made by God and Death make its clear that he is not subserviant to god so who would he have Gods minion working for him?
I thought they were a subspecies of angels made from the unified power between god and death
If death was one of the 4 horse man. And the horse man are Angels then the reapers would be angels too
If I remember my biblical lore, not 100% sure. Death is an angle, just like the four horsemen were. All angles have different forms but were never human or given free will like humans have as angels were to be different but to process looking at an angel they have to speak or be a burning light/bush. If I'm also remembering it right the reason demons are humanoid are because they are twisted souls by true devils which were fallen angels which are not humanoid
Could it be like demons are a type of ghost but you dont use devil traps on ghosts
You sure as sh*t thought about this more than the writers did.
I mean if they were angels why wouldn’t Naomi bring them to heaven when it was shutting down bc there’s thousands of reapers as we’ve seen
I think death is another part of god/creation amara/destruction then u got him death/life & his horsemen
Wasnt there a shortage of angels and heaven was gonna fall? If reapers were angels, there would barely be any reapers left so not enough to carry all the dead ppl to heaven/hell
Doesn't Tessa tell Dean she was human once? Or I'm I not remembering that correctly?
I would say reapers are not angels they are by their definition reapers and a creation of the horseman and embodiment of death, probably as a result of him observing god creating angels and him recreating a similar being to do his work for him, thats why angel blades work on them cuz reminder angel blades work on not exclusively angels they kill demons as well, but you know how when death dies the next reaper becomes death but not the next angel that died, as we see angels die after deaths well death but its only until billy dies that she fills the empty spot
We literally see reapers in their true form once, so reapers are to me angel like or cousins to the angels
Plus reapers are capable of creating their own body as tesa in S9 has the same body she created in S2 even in the real world despite the fact thats the body of a human soul she took so she couldn’t have taken her consent, so reapers can in fact create their own bodies
Not to mention that reapers couldn’t access heaven they could teleport but were also locked out of heaven as its heaven that got locked down as well
Cheapens the lore pretty bad to say every supernatural being is actually an angel
I think dean meant it as angel of death…?
Fine ill finally subscribe should have awhile ago
Everything after season 5 is fanfic
doesn’t god have an evil sister in this? why is it that the reapers are not just her angles? her being the embodiment of death, destruction and all
If Tess is an angel how did Azazel possess her body?