Summary

Sam Winchester is often criticized for whining and playing the victim card throughout the Supernatural series.
Sam’s inconsistent morals and questionable decisions have divided fans when compared to his brother Dean.
Dean’s unwavering devotion to Sam is not always reciprocated, as Sam’s priorities sometimes seem to lie elsewhere.

When it comes to sibling duos in television series, there is no pair quite like the Winchester brothers from Supernatural. Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) were raised to be tough and fight supernatural and monstrous beings. However, with John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as their rugged widowed dad with a one-track mind — find, capture, and kill the yellow-eyed monster that murdered his one true love — the young boys were not exactly surrounded by a lot of patience and understanding.

As fans have followed Dean and Sam on their adventures for 15 years, people have naturally compared the two. Dean, being the older brother, is very much like his father; he is tough and truly believes that there is no life for him outside the “family business.” He has always been the one to look out for his younger brother Sammy, even when the latter wanted nothing to do with him or monster-hunting anymore.

Sam, on the other hand, has received a lot of hate from fans over the years for many different reasons. In comparison to his brother, Sam is more book-smart and almost always does the morally right thing rather than act first and ask questions later. This, unfortunately, has earned him quite a bit of negative attention from plenty of viewers. Find out exactly why Jared Padalecki’s Supernatural character, Sam Winchester, is so divisive among fans of the series.

Sam Winchester Playing the Victim Card Gets Old
Fans Feel Like Sam Whines About His Troubles Too Much

All Supernatural fans know that the life Sam and Dean choose to live is not an easy one by any standards. However, Sam is quicker to complain about all the downfalls that naturally come with their “family business,” and over time, many fans simply have gotten fed up with his whining. Within the very first episode, Dean asks Sam to join him on a hunt as they look for their father. Sam goes, and after all is said and done, Dean drops his little brother back off at college without much criticism about Sam wanting to return to normalcy.

Unfortunately, his mundane lifestyle is cut short when his girlfriend bursts into flames and is killed the same way Sam and Dean’s mother was when they were kids. Sam then chooses to go with Dean, knowing they will put their lives on the line nearly every moment of every day. This conscious decision was made by Sam, yet, he complains about and questions their lifestyle choices throughout the entire series.

Of course, Sam has had his fair share of trauma between finding out he has his own supernatural abilities, drinking demon blood and being manipulated by the demon who happily supplies it, and being tortured by Lucifer to seemingly no end. However, everyone else also experiences their own life-altering issues and situations, and they do not harp about it.

Some fans believe that, because Sam is a lot more sensitive than Dean and many others in the hunting business, he tends to overthink what has gone wrong, whether it was in his control or not. Sadly, this has come across as Sam complaining and not letting things go due to emotional ties.

Sam’s Morals Are Inconsistent
Sometimes Sam Knowingly Picks the Wrong Way of Doing Things

Between the two brothers, Dean tends to see things in black and white or right and wrong, while Sam has his own moral compass that he follows, which tends to create a gray area in a few different scenarios. Unfortunately, over time (paired with the amount of trauma Sam cannot seem to let go of), his decision-making skills based on his own morals waver, and that seems to really irritate and divide fans.

When Sam was a teenager, and his father and brother were out hunting a pair of Kitsune, Sam actually managed to unknowingly befriend one. After the young girl kills her mother for trying to attack and kill Sam, he lets her go rather than allow his family to find her. Fans could get on board with his thinking here: don’t kill someone who literally saved your life, even if they are a supernatural monster.

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Unfortunately, later down the line, Sam learns that his former friend grew up to be a horrible individual who gave in to her monstrous tendencies. On this same principle, Sam is made out to be a hypocrite when he cannot stand the fact that Dean befriends a supernatural monster (a vampire named Benny, to be exact) after his own life-or-death experience.

There are plenty of other instances where Sam’s morals are not exactly consistent, such as when he actively chooses to drink Ruby’s blood though he knows she was a horrible and sadistic manipulator. This act eventually led to Sam starting the Apocalypse because he was so blinded by rage and did not see the consequences of killing Lilith.

Dean Is Often Not One of Sam’s Priorities
The Brotherly Love is Not Balanced

There is no doubt in any Supernatural fan’s mind that Dean would move Heaven and Earth to find or fight for his younger brother. From a very young age, Dean was tasked with taking care of Sam, and even after everything they had been through, he would stop at nothing to help Sam. Unfortunately, many viewers have found that this die-hard love is not fully reciprocated by the younger Winchester. Sure, it is clear that Sam loves his older brother and would do just about anything for him. However, too many signs point to the fact that Dean is not exactly Sam’s priority at all times.

Firstly, Sam left his brother and father behind to continue hunting monsters while he pursued a “normal” life. During all that time, Dean still thought about his baby brother, and John constantly brought him up in conversation, naturally upsetting Dean, who actually stuck around to conduct “family matters” every day. Then, when talking about their favorite childhood memories, Sam thinks back to a time when he ran away and befriended a dog. Dean is instantly hurt by this because that same situation was one of his worst memories, because he thought he had lost Sam, and their father was furious at him for not watching his little brother more closely.

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The big issue that viewers have with Sam’s dedication towards his brother comes in the first episode of Season 8 when Dean returns to Earth after spending a year running for his life in Purgatory. When he and Sam reunite, Sam admits that he did not go looking for Dean at all. Dean probes, and Sam has no good excuse other than wanting to live a normal life.

This brings us back to the very first point where Sam always played the victim. Dean also learns that Sam did not go looking for Kevin Tran (Osric Chau) when Crowley took him just after Dean disappeared. Fans cannot get over Sam’s selfishness in this instance, and many have marked this single decision as Sam’s biggest downfall.