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META: Bella, her character, her past and future
Bella Talbot is an irritant. An irritating character is always a risk in a show like Supernatural: if she's too irritating, they'll begin to lose viewers. But Bella is also one of the most intriguing characters to grace SPN since John Winchester. No, I'm not comparing them.
When we first met Bella she reminded me of Highlander's Amanda: a smart, sassy thief with a taste for the good life and not too many morals to hold her back. There are differences: Amanda, for example, wouldn't have shot Sam as Bella did (well, she wouldn't have shot a mortal); Amanda didn't think about the consequences her actions had for other pepole; Bella knows and apparently doesn't care. But the two characters have a lot in common, too, and that's why I like her. Dean could someone playing Amanda to his Duncan MacLeod...
Bella knows all about the Winchesters' world. Until Bella, the characters in SPN who were aware of the supernatural world and its dangers fell into three categories: 1) the supernatural creatures themselves, all of whom were evil or at least harmful in some way; 2) people who needed rescuing, or who had in the past been saved from supernatural nasties; and 3) those who belong to the world of the Hunters. Before Bella, there's really only one character who might stand outside those three categories: Mary Winchester.
Bella is human and, so far as we know, has no psychic ability, but she can command certain supernatural powers via the artefacts she's collected. Bella knows what is out there, but she's not interested in saving the world (or anyone in it): she's interested in making her own life fun while it lasts.
But underneath the sassy wisecracks and the don't-care attitude, Bella seems to be a more complex character. She's a thief, but she has a kind of defiant honesty about her. She tells the truth about herself, unless she's working a con. (Not unlike the Winchesters.) In Red Sky At Morning, when Sam and Dean confront her about why she has seen the ship, why she's been targeted by the ghost, she doesn't deny the charge of having spilled family blood. She merely says, "You wouldn't understand. No one did."
Not "no one does", "no one did". Whatever Bella did in her past, it was known and dealt with at the time. Moreover, her choice of words tells us it was something she did intentionally. It need not have been: at least one of the ghost's victims was targeted because of an accident.
"Family" covers a lot of possibilities but since this is Supernatural, it's probably safe to assume that she killed either a sibling, a parent or her child. The latter is unlikely because the character is relatively young. So she deliberately killed a sibling or parent. I'm stopping short of calling it murder simply because there's no evidence of what happened except Bella's words and "You wouldn't understand" implies that, to her, at least, there is something to understand. There might be a clue in Red Sky At Night. When Sam tells her they intend to save the second brother, she responds, "He's cannon fodder. He can't be saved and you know it." The line is open to a lot of different interpretations, but I think it's a little defensive. I wonder if this is how she lives with what she did: by telling herself that whomever she killed couldn't have been saved anyway.
If so it'll cut her no slack with the Winchesters, for whom no price is too high to save family, but it does with me.
Alongside this is her in-your-face prejudice against hunters. In Bad Day At Black Rock she tells Dean that hunters are "a bunch of obsessed, revenge-driven sociopaths". Later, in Red Sky At Morning she makes that personal, telling Dean, "You do this out of vengeance and obsession. You're a stone's throw away from being a serial killer."
Let's take a step back from that. She's wrong about Sam and Dean, although both men have demonstrated their potential to be what Bella thinks they are. Dean really enjoyed the kill in Bloodlust and in Croatoan he demonstrated a definite lack of care for the collatoral damage. From All Hell Breaks Loose onward we've seen a colder, more ruthless side of Sam: he's stopped drawing the line at supernatural vs human and he, too, is willing to kill innocent humans to get the demons in possession of them. Certainly revenge is a factor for both brothers. But neither of them is a sociopath and they both do this primarily to save people.
But is Bella wrong about hunters in general? Are they all "revenge-driven"? With the single exception of Jo Harvelle, every hunter who has in cannon given a reason why they got started hunting, started it for anger and revenge. Gordon Walker: to avenge his sister. John Winchester: to avenge his
wife (yes, John's motives are more complex than pure revenge but it was definitely a prime motivator for him). Tamara and Isaac in The Magnificent Seven: we aren't told all the details, but we are told that anger and revenge are their primary motivators. And then there's Sam Winchester who left college to start hunting again in order to find and kill the demon only after it killed his girlfriend.
"Obsessed"? It certainly takes dedication to the level of obsession to live the way most of the hunters we've met do. Bobby with his solitary existence, Elkins with his obsessive note-taking, Gordon...well, he takes obsession to a whole new level. John Winchester, too, not exactly the poster-boy for moderation and restraint.
"Sociopaths" and serial killers? Well, the hat certainly fits Gordon Walker and there's no reason to believe he's unique among hunters. "Sociopath" most definitely doesn't describe the Winchesters, but "serial killers"...yes, it might. No, really, bear with me on this. By strict definition, a serial killer is a multiple killer of strangers, with each kill a separate psychological "event" and a "cooling off period" between kills. They have other traits in common with the serial killer: a certain victim profile, a driving need to continue (certainly in Sam's case in S2), a conviction that they are justified in killing and (in Dean's case, if perhaps not Sam's) they get a buzz out of doing it.
From within the narrative, we, the audience, know the Winchesters. We know they are good men with complex motivations. We wouldn't call them serial killers. But from the outside point of view, like Bella, like Henrikson, the label is partly justified.
What all this tells us about Bella is that she does, indeed, know hunters. She's got some foundation for her low opinion of them and it's not surprising she assumes Dean is just like all the rest.
The fact that she's repeated that opinion twice, in almost exactly the same terms, tells me something else about her. We always hate most in others what we unconsciously perceive in ourselves. Bella does display some sociopathic (though not psychopathic) tendencies herself. The way she shot Sam to get leverage over Dean, her willingness to sell the rabbit's foot even though she knew she'd be condemning Sam to death...hell, her willingness to steal it in the first place, since she knew what it did...these are not displays of conscience. Which leaves "obsessed" and "revenge-driven"...do they apply to her?
If we tie this in with the knowledge that she has spilled family blood, then yes, maybe they do. At this point, it's pure speculation, but it seems to me that someone in her close family (father? brother?) was a hunter, and that he either caused her to kill another family member, or was the one she had to kill. Of course "no one" would understand if the supernatural were involved in the death. And after that? I'll bet she swore that she would never become what the hunters are, but she couldn't leave the supernatural alone, either. She's big on contacting the dead...could that have begun through trying to talk with whomever she killed? Her love of luxury and money suggests she started out in poverty...though maybe not as her accent and education suggest the opposite. But that could be a mask.
Bella isn't quite the sociopath she pretends to be, however. Her reaction when she's told spilling family blood is the reason she's about to die is quite telling. That death in her past - it matters to her. It really does. She doesn't come back with a witticism, she lets the boys see her real feelings, just for a moment. Later, in Fresh Blood, she stands up to Gordon. Re-watching the scene, it's clear she has no intention of telling him what he wants to know. Not until she sees he has something she wants. Everyone has their price and Bella's is her own obsession.
I believe she did plan on calling Dean to warn him, as she says, she just didn't care quite enough to make the call quickly. And she certainly didn't have to help them further after Dean's death threat. I don't believe it was fear of Dean that motivated her. I think she knows Dean well enough by now that if she believed he wanted her dead, she would believe nothing she could do to help would change his mind.
I think that as she's getting to know the Winchester boys, she realises they're not what she's always believed hunters are. In Red Sky At Night the brothers' belief that she had spilled family blood made them both willing to leave her to die. I doubt either Sam or Dean could think of a greater sin, by their own lights, and Bella simply must have noticed. In Fresh Blood she knew it was Sam, not both brothers that Gordon wanted to kill, and she certainly believed Dean when he promised to kill her. It doesn't take genius to figure out that he was so angry because she'd put his brother in danger. Together with whatever her own family secret may be, that does, I think lay the foundations for some kind of relationship between the three of them. No, I don't mean romance.
There's one more thing that's striking about Bella from a narrative point of view. Let's look again at what happened in her encounter with Gordon. First, hearing his name most definitely gives Bella pause: she knows who he is, which means she knows he's very capable of killing her. Yet she deals with him confidently, never once showing that she's scared. Why? Because she has something that he needs badly, and she trusts that he will value that enough not to kill her.
This is almost exactly what happened when the Crossroads Demon spoke with Sam at the end of Bedtime Stories. The demon held back the single most important piece of information: the identity of the one who holds Dean's contract. Whether she thought that would keep her alive or whether she was trusting Sam's honour to keep him from killing her human host, I have no idea. But whichever it was, she showed the same confidence to Sam that Bella showed to Gordon. In fact, the two scenes are almost identical in that respect.
In Supernatural, these things are rarely coincidental. It makes me wonder if, in the end, it will be Bella who holds the key to unlocking Dean's contract.
Comments, discussion, disagreement - all welcome. But spoil me and I will beat you to death with a damp lettuce leaf.
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"Family" covers a lot of possibilities but since this is Supernatural, it's probably safe to assume that she killed either a sibling, a parent or her child. The latter is unlikely because the character is relatively young.
Well, she appears to be in her mid-twenties at least, which is plenty old enough to have a child -- though it would have to have been pretty young when she killed it/caused its death.
And the way that scene played out, Dean asks Bella something like "Who did you kill? Parent? Sibling?" He conspicuously never mentions the possibility of a child, which immediately made me think that must be the answer.
I agree with you that she seems to protest too much with her "hunters are all revenge-driven sociopaths" spiel. There's gotta be some personal history there.
It makes me wonder if, in the end, it will be Bella who holds the key to unlocking Dean's contract.
Oooh, I haven't considered that! I think that would be incredibly cool.
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Yes, it's biologically possible. But the fact that it would have had to be a very young child (unless the ghost has issues with abortion), makes me think it's probably not that. I can envision possible scenarios, but this show has censors to get past and that would be a tough sell.
And there's also the not-so-subtle way this show has of parallelling the Winchesters. Neither Sam nor Dean has a child (as far as we know), so the parallel isn't there.
Oooh, I haven't considered that! I think that would be incredibly cool.
Mm, so do I. I have a suspicion that she knows a lot more about the supernatural than our boys do. Or, maybe not *more* exactly, but because she's coming from a totally different perspective she'd see stuff they wouldn't.
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Bella's attitude is "everything has its price". On the one hand, Dean's already made his deal and now he has to pay up. On the other, I think Bella would (if she knew about the deal) take the attitude that there's got to be a way he can buy himself out of it. And I think she's well placed to have a clue what that way might be...if their relationship progresses to the point where she gives a damn.
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I think Ruby's going to dangle the bait just long enough to push Sam significantly into the dark side (or appear to perhaps), and may eventually even only hand over her solution only if Sam has to make a serious deal with her. In fact, I wonder if her solution may not directly tie into Sam becoming this evil leader. After all, I would think that no matter who holds Dean's contract - if Sam can become someone higher up than that demon in Hell, he should be able to call it off.
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I'm not sure I like what that scenario would say about Dean. I mean, I think he meant it when he said he'd kill her, but that's because she, in effect, tried to kill Sam. I can't see him committing murder for anything less than that.
But I never meant to suggest a romantic relationship between them. I just meant she needs to care whether he lives or dies. "Care" can mean a lot of different things.
I think Ruby's going to dangle the bait just long enough to push Sam significantly into the dark side
I think that's her intention. I haven't figured out why, yet.
Of course, if I were writing it, there would be no solution. Dean would go to hell, and the next season would be about getting him back. I doubt that's the way it'll go down - it makes dramatic sense but in terms of TV production it would mean a bunch of episodes with no Dean. They won't do that.
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Still, I'd also like to think that if Dean goes to hell, he would fit from the inside as well -- if Dean drops his act of not caring, and is fighting for himself again by the end of the season, he could still be in Hell but have something to do. They wouldn't necessarily have to be seperated more than a couple of episodes, or less even.
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(Anonymous) 2007-11-20 07:40 am (UTC)(link)I also wish they had just kept her as a cold hearted bitch instead of it looking like they're going to put in the usual redemption arc that always seems to follow these kinds of characters. That doesn't mean she has to be one dimensional but for her to be an actual antagonistic bad guy would've been more interesting to me than what I feel like they're going to end up giving us (no spoilers, just speculation from what we've already seen). I just don't have any desire to see her and the boys ever end up joining sides or for her and them to start caring about each other and I don't think I'd buy it if it happened.
Unfortunately it means that as is often the case for me with these types of characters, she's already done too many bad things to the characters I already care about for any kind of tragic backstory to work for me. She's not the only one to have a hard life on this show, including the boys in this, so I don't see her having had to kill a loved one as something that will make me at all sympathetic or understanding towards her after what she's done to Dean and Sam.
It's also hard for me to even open up to the idea of her because I really dislike the way they write the boys when they're around her though particularly Dean. I feel like they dumb Dean down too much in order to get Bela to say smart-ass comments towards him and to steal from him or have him trust her enough with their location even though I really feel like Dean would have learned to be smarter than that the first couple times she screwed them over.
I wanted to believe in Dean's death threat in the last episode but I figure it would never happen and that's another thing that bugs me about their interaction. I mean I got that he was furious with her and if Sam had been killed by Gordon, I could easily see him killing her without a second thought, but she still seems to come off as more of an annoyance to them than the true threat that she should be after all she's done already. They, especially Dean, have gone off on people for even less than what she's done to them already yet she seems to be getting away with things she shouldn't that he's not taking as seriously as I feel like he would have had someone else done them. Maybe it's because she herself just doesn't come off as threatening enough despite the hugely negative stuff that she actually does. If going just by her actions, I'd find her a menacing character. However, when I actually look at her facial expressions and the way she talks, I just think about how much I wish she'd stop the annoying smirking all the time but I pretty much wonder how she's been able to keep alive this long because I just don't buy her skills. I don't know if it's the acting or the writing but the character is just not working for me.