Who is Anna? Visual Clues Lead to Wild Speculations

Could purple = faith? It's certainly been associated with an angelic presence recently.

I like your theory but I would be gutted if they did the 'oh it was all a dream/hallucination/limbo' thing for this long. I don't think it is either, but the signs pointing to there being an answer of some form are very intruging.

Why didn’t Dean stitch Sam up in 4.09?
I just took that to be because Dean had disolcated his shoulder and Sam was better able to do it with one hand. Not like it'd be super easy but if it had been in an awkward place I think Dean would have reset his shoulder first and then stitched Sam up. I personally thought it was more of a call back to Sam treating his injuries in Mystrey Spot than anything else.

I thought of the purple bedspreads from the 4x07 motel room post you made when that big purple window showed up at Anna's back. :) 'Faith' works for me along with the traditional association with royalty. Demon King, don't you know? I'd ask for the return of the purple greyhound tee, but I bet Sam has bulked up too much to fit it anymore.

I will come up with at least one more speculation and three revisions before Thursday because I can't make myself stop thinking about it. ;) Today, I'm not thinking of Dean as catatonic necessarily, but I would dearly love for there to be more to the story of Dean's resurrection than we've been told. All last summer I comforted myself with the idea that Sam will bring Dean back to us. Well that, and zazreil's meta posted here last June. (http://zazreil.livejournal.com/11612.html) Now I'm thrilled that it took a heavenly involvement to accomplish what shouldn't have been possible. Still, I want SAM to have prayed the prayers that brought Dean to the angels attention. Or something. You know? (btw, Doesn't it seem like there's too many demons who come and go pretty freely from hell? You'd think it isn't that big of a deal after all.)

Anyway, I do think there's enough hinky stuff going on that there's some explanation to come. I would not be disappointed to find that instead of a single brilliant episode like What Is and What Should Never Be, we'd been taken through a ten episode exploration of what it takes to beat damnation and reunite the boys. (Man, I am so counting on them re-teaming!) As clearly as Sam was analogous by the rougarou from Metamorphosis, I suspect we wouldn't be out of line to draw strong points of reference between Dean's current state and some of the other characters we've met so far this season - in particular Anna.

You know, I remember grumblings about the "suddenness" of Dean having become a believer during his speech to Jamie in Monster Movie. (I thought he was trying on the idea of a "mission from God" without committing to it.) Maybe we're being given a season-so-far illustration of a man coming to true faith - that leap into purple! (with his brother!) the child-like views of Dean we've seen! - and accepting God's grace - remember Castiel's first meeting with Dean? You don't think you deserve to be saved.

Ohh, I've got chills thinking about how great this could be! I've never missed Pastor Jim more than now though. Could the boys go visit the older priest from Houses of the Holy again?

I'll be back to comment properly after the LJ downtime :'( but the thing that bothers me about purple is that going through S2 screencaps there was the hooker in BUABS that was wearing bright purple. It was one of the brightest colour in that episode as I recall (or at least it really struck me that it was odd).

I'm very much interested in more of your thoughts. Hurry back! :) You are closer than I to firming up a Supernatural association for the color. I did google for purple in church symbolism in the comments at my blog in case that helps you.
http://icine.org/blogs/supernatural/2008/11/15/the-angel-window-in-409/#comment-17


I had another little epiphany about Anna today toward the end of an entry about the crosses in 4x09.
http://icine.org/blogs/supernatural/2008/11/18/crosses-in-409-mostly-sams-with-an-anna-speculation/


Sheesh! I may never recover from this episode. For instance, did you notice the painting behind Alastair?

--as the boys decide to make a leap (of faith?)--

Oh, YES! I completely missed that! And it seemed a bit curious to me that they decided to have the angel back-lit. To me, the shot now looks like that angels are watching over our boys as they jump out.

As for Anna... Well, Dean had a Reaper come after him when he was wearing hospital clothes. Now, there are angels wanting to kill Anna. So there indeed are some parallels between Dean and Anna. Or it's possible that it means that the hospitals in SPN aren't places where you'd want to end up in because bad things happen if you do. ;)

In my fascination with the recurring shoulders of S4, I took the "leap of faith" idea a step further.
(http://icine.org/blogs/supernatural/2008/11/16/shoulders-and-wings-pt4/)

... The injuries happened when the boys decided to crash through the church’s second or third story window and try FLYING. That was a leap of faith, certainly. Well, it could have been desperation, I suppose. Maybe what we’ve been seeing in S4 is as yet unsuccessful rescue attempts to get Dean out of hell? (*obligatory wild speculation)...

When I was going through caps, I couldn't believe I'd missed that lit up angel window. I immediately went to my tape and found it wasn't even there to catch or miss.

If you take the two colors purple is made of and use the SPN color wheel you get the interesting combination of red–demonic and blue–purity.

Demonic purity makes me think it could be like a fallen angel? Falling from grace?