Are Reapers Actually Angels in Supernatural?

[DroughtGod]

I always thought of them as Angels of Death as opposed to the Angels of the Lord

[araonthedrake]

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.

[gunbeardpete]

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.

[eddthehead]

"in his true form he has six wings and four faces, one of which is a lion"

Zack dropping some Angel True Form lore.

[nathant]

What if reapers are just Deaths version of the angels

[craigfin]

It appears at least that the Reaper inherits Death's knowledge and role, BUT not his power. The OG Death broke into the cage with no rings, essentially negating God's power and 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.

[jilliansummers]

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. : /

[infamousof]

I think a video discussing the various retcons in supernatural would be interesting

[Loreweavver]

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.

[Ozzy_Helix_]

if you think about it the only supernatural species to be largely untouched by all the events in the show was reapers and death so if anyone won it was them I think

[ZIsHere]

Could've been like a backhanded compliment to "compared to these things I almost universally hate, your alright"

[peblezQ]

Dean refers to Tessa as an Angel because that plotline in Season 9 involved a bunch of Angels exploding themselves around large crowds of people "in Castiel's name" - it was a thing Metatron started to get Castiel's Angel army to turn on him.

Tessa was going to be another one of those "terrorist" Angels before Dean caught her. I think whoever wrote that episode genuinely fucked up on the lore a bit and they tried to fix it by just never mentioning it again 😅

[danielskrivan]

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.

[MrSwaggnifcent]

Your videos are always awesome and interesting. Thanks for making them!

[funkyreapercat]

Also: in Season 6 Castiel gets invisible to watch the Winchesters, which he and other angels don't do again after the fall, indicating that this is a power related to their wings. While in Season 14, the Reaper Violet is invisible watching Sam, and only appears to him after he asks. Violet also says that by Billie's orders, the Reapers take turns watching the Winchesters.

[ManicPandaz]

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)

[nvp]

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.

[hershy]

I think Dean was just calling her an angel cause he thought she was hot

[diabolicallink]

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?

[BlankspaceWaste]

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