Crowley: Canon vs Fanon (P3)
Moving on from what is quotable and gif-able in Crowley’s characterization, we’ll find strong and obvious themes that make it insanely easy to wrap one’s head around who this demon is, where he’s coming from, and where he might be headed. We should all get Crowley without thinking about it, but apparently the window-dressing is a bit… distracting.
“All my long life, I wondered what I’d done to deserve a mother who refused to show love. I pained over it. I built my bloody kingdom on top of it.”
– Crowley, “Brother’s Keeper”
Most Crowley stans prefer to buy their fanon handcrafted from Crowley himself but his real backstory is still out there haunting him and us. He has the honor of being the first demon on SPN whose past life as a human was revealed verifiably, and it became a huge part of his personality as early as his fourth episode. He’s very much at odds with the specter of his mortal self, a low-brow nobody who he thinks couldn’t even hold his own mother’s interest.
Fergus was already a violent beast in life and it got him nowhere, so it’s only natural that when the time came to make himself over in death, he chose something more sophisticated. Thoughtful, elegant, and every bit as evil as the Halloween isle at Rite Aid. The Crowley we’re seeing now is, in a way, an eight-year-old’s idea of what would make his mother happy. But unfortunately for the universe at large, little Fergus’ mother was a wrathfully wicked witch.
This is a bit more central to reading him than we might think. Yes, he’s a scary badass, but it comes from a strange, nerdy place. Crowley’s living up to the expectations that were set for him as a human child. When demons at large call him weak and foolish, he may feel bad, but he still ignores their judgment in favor of doing and being what would make his mother happy.
Does that make him less scary than the other demons, or more?
So Fergus styled himself as an old school villain, from the spooky name to the black-on-black suits, the fascination with historically evil characters and on down to his favorite meatsuit (a posh, sexy Englishman one can easily imagine feeding James Bond to a shark with a laser on it’s head).
He’s very committed to appearances, which says more about who he is than his image ever could. He needs people to see him this way. The truth he fears you’ll find – that he’s not worth sticking around for – is far too painful.
“When I got the corner office, I thought it was all going to be rainbows and two-headed puppies. But if I’m being honest? It’s been hell.”
– Crowley, “Weekend at Bobby’s”
The fact that Crowley was the King of Hell is (for some fans) his most attractive feature. Power, wealth, fancy digs, handcuffs – he’s a few dozen tentacles away from being an amateur romance novel. But the masterful lord of evil things and death metal is a fanon creation. He wasn’t a happy guy before, but being the king of everything he hates hasn’t done him any favors. Making it over for efficiency has only made it a more effective torment for him.
Sure, the title rocks, and for a species who are basically a boot stamping on a face forever, it’s better to be the boot than the face. But in the end, it’s much more a grind than an adventure. At best, he’s the Richard Belding of Hell.
So why is the job so romanticized? Why do so many fans misunderstand Crowley’s plight? Well, there’s the fact that even he doesn’t seem to understand it. Yes, it makes him miserable, but beyond it’s perks, he really doesn’t know who he is without it. Then there’s Lucifer. His might, loyal followers, and complete lack of fucks to give make the job look easy and fun. But I suspect there’s another, less obvious factor:
Psychologically speaking, Crowley has less in common with his fans than he does with their fathers.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to put forth some icky Electra complex theory. The gist is that I think there’s an understandable lack of empathy among younger Crowley fans, due to them using their own frame of reference to understand him. Not only is it hard to see the CEO of Damnation as bored, mopey, and frequently tame, it’s also hard to see a guy who’s over three-hundred and fifty as metaphor for a middle-aged man, even while he’s possessing one.
And I get the feeling a lot of fans don’t wanna try to see their faves that way.
Crowley has a few emotional leitmotifs, most of all “looking back with regret” – not for the immoral things he’s done, but for life choices that are a bit more relatable. He becomes the New Devil and tries to build himself a New God. We see him reconnect with his estranged son and try to make up for past mistakes in the crowliest way possible. He skulks from the throne and tries to make friends. He moves his mother into his palace and tries to trust her, and we see him try to become “Uncle Crowley” to Amara.
His story, when stripped of it’s superficial supernaturality*, is a classic midlife crisis tale. He’s worked tirelessly over the centuries to build an empire, only to look back and wonder what it was all for. Only this epiphany wasn’t brought on by realizing how close he is to death. So it must be the Demon Trials, right?
I kinda doubt that, since we saw evidence of this confusion the minute he took the throne. In my opinion, it was breaking through that bone and blood ceiling and becoming Hell’s Grand Poobah that caused Crowley to rethink his life. Nothing he’s accomplished in his career seems to have made him truly happy, and once he finally reached the top, there was no excuse for it anymore.
So he’s never really been happy? Maybe. Or maybe he has, but it wasn’t because he was the boss of anything. The smiliest we’ve ever seen Crowley over the years was when he was apart of and serving the interests of a group he wasn’t even close to the boss of. Despite his sketchy, selfish ways, it’s obvious he likes being useful and he loves being appreciated. Chalk it up to egotism, but he seems to have way more fun as a helper than a king.
In fact, if Crowley had a solo in that Supernatural musical, I have a weird feeling it would’ve been about this scene:
* It’s a real word, fight me.
