User blog comment:Rafe Adler/"Devil's Bargain" Discussion/@comment-79.115.74.75-20180209181214/@comment-11331875-20180210054025

It's possible Chuck got to work fixing his archangels off-screen after leaving again in S11 - at least resurrecting Gabriel, since it's unclear if he would've restored Raphael and Michael since they might've tried to stage another Apocalypse without him around (which he might not be interested in being). With Amara's help, it might be easier. If true, the "why" would be the bigger question - he doesn't seem incredibly sentimental about them since he's willing to leave them be or let them be dead unless they serve his purpose in some way - maybe to try to stop Lucifer from destroying everything, but you'd think given Gabe's track record against Lucifer vs. the Winchesters's track record against Lucifer that he'd feel more confident in the Winchesters stopping Lucifer himself. Not to mention it's weird he'd let Gabriel be captured and held prisoner by a demon if he needed him to do something.

I mean, it could also be Gabriel either faked his death in S5 or was resurrected by the time Metatron used the illusion of him in S9. But that's assuming God was wrong about Gabriel being dead and I don't remember off the top of my head an example of God being factually wrong before (IIRC he seemed surprised by Billie bringing souls to use for a bomb against Amara, but surprised =/= wrong) and the situation was dire enough at the time that he had no reason to lie. I do like Dtol's explanation that Cass waking up triggered a chain-reaction of other beings waking up in the Empty and getting tossed out, resulting in Gabriel coming back. I would be interested to see how a demon character who died comparatively early on (like Kripke Era) to come back and get reconciled to the current canon (the Dabb'n'Singer Era) and react to the events that transpired in Hell since their death. It'd be like having Mary come back out of nowhere but with a more established character steeped in a more established lore, so it'd just be interesting. Or infuriating. Maybe that'd be a good way to introduce new demon or angel characters who were killed off pre-series, like the slaughtered Knights. They can't really keep pulling "and then there's been ANOTHER secret ancient powerful demon loose this WHOLE TIME and you didn't even know because they weren't involved until JUST NOW" forever.

Asmodeus would certainly have to have some form of control over Gabriel. I feel the writers are just going to pull some spell out of their ass that allows him to incapacitate Gabriel, but for the sake of continuity I would really like whatever power he has over Gabriel to be somehow connected to that blood spell Kali used to bind Gabriel to her before his death. Even without that, it's not as though we haven't seen lesser beings trap more powerful beings before - Lucifer and then a group of humans binding Death to their will, Crowley completely depowering Lucifer and trapping him in his vessel, even humans using devil's traps to depower and immobilize everyday demons who are objectively much more powerful than a regular human. If Asmodeus was smart enough, he could have prepared with something. There's lots of fan theories floating around that Asmodeus is drawing on Gabriel's power to give himself powers (which I like because Asmodeus, like Dagon, had powers even a high-rank demon canonically shouldn't have), one of which is that Asmodeus is sapping Gabriel's grace; if so, he could be planning to leave Gabriel completely depowered and helpless before/if he kills him. A degraced (disgraced?) Gabriel or at least somewhat depowered Gabriel would also nicely set him up to be a recurring ally to the WInchesters who's not too overpowered, if the writers want to keep him. (Though they had the same opportunity in S9 with human!Cass and we all know how soon that got reversed.)

I like the idea of "our" Michael having been Asmodeus's prisoner instead - if Michael was really as psychologically messed up as both Lucifer and God implied he was, then it would make more sense as to how a demon could be able to capture and incapacitate an archangel, and they might be able to handwave an explanation for how Asmodeus got him out of the Cage since now he rules Hell (though since they haven't explained how Gabriel is alive again, I'll reserve judgement on whether that'd make more sense than whatever they come up with). Not to mention it'd be interesting to see AU!victorious!Michael come face to face with broken!defeated!Michael - that'd be a nasty surprise for AU Michael.