I thought Claire was a Dean parallel, TBH. Specifically, Dean is trying to give Claire the chance that no one gave him (except maybe Sam) and he certainly never gave himself: "You can be more than this. Take advantage of your family while you're here. Go to school." All the things Dean gave up for hunting.

Despite Dean's plotline connection to the Darkness and the whole Amara thing, I'm actually beginning to think this whole season is actually about Sam:

• Sam confronts a whole city scarily resembling the Croatoan scenario, except this time a) he's not immune and b) he saves what's left of the town, the inverse of Croatoan.


• Sam confronts sex and gets laid for the first time in a long while, even thinking about what it would be like to settle down - but with a hunter, staying in the lifestyle.


• Sam confronts what being soulless meant.


• Sam goes back to trying to save the hosts of demons, which he stopped after the whole demon blood thing.


• Sam confronts his fear of clowns.


• Sam confronts abandoning his imaginary friend


• Sam confronts his greatest fear, Lucifer and the cage. And his greatest sorrow, that no matter how much he believes in God, being tapped to be a servant of heaven is just not happening.


• Sam confronts letting Dean down. (not well, but eh, at least it's no longer a rhino in the room)


• Sam confronts not returning to college, in the form of Eileen. Sees all the parallels to his own upbringing, revenge and resolution as a hunter. They're legacies; this is what they've inherited. He's still a man of knowledge.


• Sam confronts that he can't run away from hunting and never could, in the form of Alex. "I can't be around the things that you are around" sounds just like Sam's Stanford flight, but now we see it from way-down-the-road Sam's perspective of how pointless that will be. Alex, who will constantly be drawn back into the world because of the Bad Things in her past and what they did to her. And Sam knows that, now. He can see what his dad saw then, that it isn't something that can be run away from.

Whereas Dean's plotline seems to be:

• Dean has creepy connection to Amara.


• Dean shouldn't have punched the hell out of Cas, but it's okay because Cas returned the favor. Bros? Bros.


• Dean and Sam! We're brothers! Fuck yeah.


• Dean has creepy connection to Amara. But will still try to kick her ass if she hurts Sam.


• Dean has creepy but romantic connection to Amara. She'd rather swallow his lips than his soul.


• Jensen Ackles does a lot of non-verbal acting to show how uncomfortable Dean is to be going down to hell, but he'll do it to save Sam. SAAAAAYAAM!


• Dean has creepy but romantic connection to Amara.


• Dean is told to follow his heart. By Satan-in-disguise, and then by hot grandma. We're all pretty damn sure by now that it leads to Amara.


• Dean follows his heart to a truly horrifying heart attack of a sandwich, and later tells young DeanClaire to follow her heart to non-hunting stuff.

If I'm right, I'm not really sure where they're going with it, or what it means. Just my observations.

But back to this episode, one last thing: Let us not forget the sheer gloriosity of Sam subduing a vampire by just punching the fuck out of it.