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In the television series Supernatural, episode S04E18, at the end when Dean comes to the prophet's house to take him to the motel, the prophet of the Lord cries out, "Hey, I never wrote this."

How can something that the prophet never saw or wrote ever happen?

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    Not having watched it, is this prophet said to be omniscient? Historically, prophets have been able to see/foretell bits of the future, but none have been able to know EVERYTHING that will happen.
    – phantom42
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 16:34

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There are two answers to this question, depending on how you interpret the 5th season finale.

If you assume that Chuck Shurley is exactly what Castiel says he is, than the most likely explanation is that Dean was going outside the "plan" in trying to stop Sam's confrontation. We know that the "plan" from both Hell and Heaven is to release Lucifer and ultimately bring about the Apocalypse, while Dean is trying to stop it. There are a number of hints dropped during those two seasons that Sam and Dean (likely due to their unique nature and the intervention of other angels) are managing to do things to disrupt that plan that the angels couldn't foresee. Depending on the precise source of Chuck's visions, it's possible that he can only foresee how things are supposed to happen, and when Dean goes off-script he cannot see that.

It's also possible that Chuck's visions are simply not always complete. There's no reason to believe that Chuck knows everything about the future, merely that he knows a lot. Otherwise he wouldn't have, for example, gone to the Supernatural convention at an actually-haunted house.

The alternative explanation, which follows most people's interpretation of the 5th season finale, is that

Chuck is actually God Himself, escaped to Earth to avoid the bickering in Heaven

in which case it's true that he "never wrote it" but clearly knew exactly what was going to happen all along.

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  • +1 for having both, but I'm inclined to go with the first one - Seasons 6+ are off-script anyway (both in and (kinda) out of universe), so that in particular makes even more sense
    – Izkata
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 22:30
  • There's a lot of out-of-universe evidence (e.g.: youtube.com/watch?v=Ni7uidj9Rx8) that the second interpretation is the one Kripke meant, but he choose to leave it ambiguous within the show
    – KutuluMike
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 22:33

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