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I have been having Feelings about Supernatural again, and I am finally ready to drop my most controversial and yet correct take.
Caveat all the below with the facts that 1. I am still on season 8 of a 15 season show and 2. I have largely avoided finding out what was going on around the show itself while it aired. I don’t really know what actors and writers were saying at the time, and I don’t know how it felt to be a fan in (eg) 2013.
Okay, but I am eight seasons in at this point, and here’s the thing: I was not expecting to see the show I’m currently watching. I expected to see manly men shooting werewolves and demons in the face a lot, then going to bars and banging chicks about it. I assumed that Dean and Cas were both just white and symmetrical and near each other, which is why they got shipped together.
But god, was I wrong. I was so wrong. I am so sorry.
Now, my (incorrect) assumptions weren’t totally wrong for the first three seasons. There’s something strange that you can feel, something simmering beneath the surface, lots of funny little moments but … nothing you can put your finger on. I quit watching originally during season 3 way back in 2007 because I just started finding it unsatisfying.
But then. If I’d only stuck around! Then season 4 happens, and then season 5 happens and then season 6 and season 7 just keep HAPPENING and now I’m on season 8 and … listen to me. Please listen to me. I am ready to say it: at least up until season 8, Supernatural is not queerbait.
This show is not queerbaiting anyone. It has been slandered! This is an intensely queercoded text specifically about queer men who have queer relationships with each other (and Sam is also there).
Prevailing fandom wisdom will say at this point that I need to have a lie down in a dark room until I come to my senses. I keep thinking that I’m completely out to lunch and high on fanfic. But then I watch another episode and it is goddamn UNDENIABLE. What I am seeing is text! Supernatural is a fundamentally queer show, just one written at a time where it was still impossible for a mainstream normie tv property to be a queer text.
There is something astonishing about tracking the way queerness is presented in the show, season by season, and linking that to the accepted bounds of how queerness was able to be presented in media in general. It’s the best reflection I’ve ever seen of how queerness shifted as an American pop cultural object during those years - it’s damn near perfect, and what it depicts is always right on the edge of what was possible at the time.
It’s true that in those first three seasons, gayness is largely played as a joke. Sam and Dean are always being mistaken for ‘antiquers’ (blech), and there are lots of nasty little microagressions. It’s all quite uncomfortable, I’m not going to deny that. But I think that there is something interesting in even that ham-fisted, vaguely homophobic representation. Because queerness is there. It keeps coming back! It’s hovering around the boys (around Dean), and it’s never really allowed to go away.
In season 4, though, there’s a real turn. Cas obviously turns up and gets right in Dean’s FACE and sits on his BED and looks at him with his EYES and … you know. Queerness is suddenly in the room in a much more real way. But it’s not just coming from Cas. Suddenly Dean is having charged moments with other male characters too (the chief? hello? THE SIREN??). Queerness is happening, we can finally see it clearly, even though the show still absolutely cannot talk directly about what’s going on.
By seasons 5 and 6 queerness is becoming both even more real (we get more and more queer background characters) and more dangerous. It’s often a site of genuine peril for Dean, something that he can’t lock down and shut away, something that he’s forced to be more honest about in a way that can literally come back to bite him (Live Free or Twihard, a bi Dean thesis episode of all time). And it’s not just Dean and Cas, now! More and more of the main male characters are having more and more queer moments, too - I think Season 5 is the moment when the show’s first gay kiss happens (which, if you think about it, is bananas! 2010?!) and in season 6 we have Cas and Crowley LITERALLY CONFIRMING THAT THEY HAVE HAD A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP.
What goes canon in Supernatural is a constant source of shock to me. I can’t think of another show from that era that would have made the sexual relationship between Cas and Crowley a main plot driver for a season arc - and by definition, the break-up of Cas and Dean is part of that arc too. The end of season 6 into season 7 doesn’t work if Dean doesn’t experience a romantic betrayal. Dean then mourns through season 7 like he’s lost a partner, and the show gives him the space to do that. And in season 8, Benny’s relationship with Dean (and the missing Cas) is explicitly, repeatedly paralleled with Amelia’s relationship with Sam (and her missing husband). Dean even gets a moment with Charlie where he confirms-by-denial that they were a couple. IN 2013?! In TWENTY THIRTEEN. When it was still not legal for Dean and Benny or Dean and Cas to get married in most states. (I mean, putting aside the human/vampire/angel thing).
Dean’s queerness is not just situated in his relationships, though. It’s text all the way to his tiniest character choices. It is impossible to seriously read him as straight. For example: though he is repeatedly referred to as a hero, he is never referred to as a king. He only gets the title of queen, and he’s called a queen by multiple characters, across multiple seasons. Charlie puts her queen’s crown on his head in season 8. In season 5 someone asks Dean who died and made him queen. and on and on and on. Purgatory is a gay club in Miami to him! One of the things he knows for sure is that Bert and Ernie are gay! He is a queer character, and both the writers and the actors clearly understand this.
I think it’s really instructive to compare Supernatural to other shows airing at the time. Sherlock also has a main m/m pairing that is and was hugely shipped, and it’s also accused (correctly, I think, this time) of queerbaiting. In Sherlock, just like in Supernatural, characters are always confusing John and Sherlock for sexual partners. But in Sherlock, each moment of confusion is always immediately denied and forms the punchline of the joke. Geddit?! it’s funny!! the men aren’t GAY! They just live together and are obsessed with each other.
This isn’t, ever, what happens when other characters describe Dean and Cas as being in love in Supernatural, though. It happens repeatedly, several times a season, but when it does there is never a comeback. There’s no denial. There’s just silence. Awkward silence, maybe, but silence. The show is saying, we all know this is true. They know this is true. Maybe they can’t say it to each other, but it is a fundamental truth about them. It’s a joke, but the joke’s on Dean and Cas, two dumbasses who can’t admit what everyone else understands.
I’ve said before that I sometimes feel like I’m watching two Supernaturals, the gay show and the show the team are pretending to make. And I also think that there are two fandom versions of Supernatural: the keyboard monkey Supernatural and the Supernatural that takes into account the historic context of the show. Because it is history, at this point. It is so easy, even with the constant attacks on the queer community going on in 2023, to forget what it was like to exist as queer in 2008, or 2010, or 2013. It’s incredibly hard to convey, if you weren’t there. It sounds so made up. You mean you couldn’t marry whoever you wanted? You mean people didn’t casually use labels like bisexual? You mean there were so few publicly queer role models that most queer people literally did not know they were queer? Supernatural is from a time when there were so many fewer words, and so many fewer options, for queer lives. What I’m seeing when I watch it are people who couldn’t articulate queer experiences in the way we can in 2023 - partly because they weren’t allowed to, and partly because they weren’t able to - but who did what they could anyway, to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
And hey, maybe I’m being hopelessly starry eyed! Maybe I’ve just inhaled Jackles’s brain worms! But I do think it’s relevant to point out that in June 2023, three years after spn concluded, we are still waiting for a mainstream m/m pairing between two leads on a show not originally conceived of as a romance plot to go canon. We’re very likely about to get it in the next year or so, but as of this moment I am typing this I cannot think of a single show not initially imagined as a gay romance where networks/execs allowed the male leads to kiss romantically. The Destiel ending we want is still not possible.
And look, as I’ve said above, I am missing part of the live spn fan experience! I vaguely know that Jackles said some weird stuff, and the writers said some weird stuff, and I’m sure it hurt deeply when fan expectations weren’t met. But what I see when I watch the show on its own is a piece of media that is deeply and intrinsically queer, and made so by the work of actors and writers and producers together. And I wish that was a more common fan understanding of the show! It is pretty delightful to discover in real time, though …
the cw pr department might be the only people in the world who are good at their job. look at how effectively they utilized girlpower to make the enduring image of destiel shippers as fucking crazy fujoshis making stuff up in their head. they put two DIFFERENT love confessions in there they put he's in love dot dot dot with humanity in there they put love overcoming brainwashing in there . you guys remember castiel heaven plastered with shirtless dean? and still the overall reaction to november 5th twenty twenty was "THEM TWO STRAIGHT BOYS FROM SUPERNATURAL?" and other some such that agreed it was the most heterosexual sexless television show that never even alluded to them having feelings for each other. genuinely truly cia level propaganda and effectiveness. what if the singleminded determination, foul souls, and budget behind the public campaign on war on drugs instead turned to shows that they play on the treadmill at the gym. if they used their powers for good we could well and truly make republicans cringe in this country for good. i would never have to see a reagan '84 shirt again. but instead they will continue to use them for evil. not sure what they will turn to now that long form television is dead but i'm sure it will increase the net amount of evil in the world
being a small town usamerican must be crazy you turn on supernatural and this week sam and dean are where you live
Of course, I love this for the Destiel moment. Something occurred to me upon viewing it this time-- Cas refers to his vessel as his body. If I had more time and energy, it would be interesting to see when he started thinking of Jimmy's body/the vessel as HIS body. In this story line, we already had the scene where Dean and Sam argue about trying to get Lucifer out of Cas. The way Sam spoke it implies he sees Castiel the Angel and Cas' vessel as two separate things. He talks about Cas' vessel, calling it "it" and saying it's a strong vessel like someone might say a particular model makes a good car. Dean, on the other hand, thinks of Cas as angel and vessel in one. He's offended that Sam calls Cas' vessel an "it" and not "he" or just "Cas". That sentiment is echoed here in Cas claiming the Jimmy Novak meatsuit as His Body. I just find that an interesting point.
11.23 Alpha and Omega
the thing is that if you take each individual queer!dean moment in isolation you can look at them and go 'wow straight people are fucking oblivious huh' but if you zoom out a little and start looking at the whole picture there is very clearly a purposeful pattern happening there from the writing to the acting to the directing to the editing and i know these days it's a crime worthy of being dragged through the public square to say hey actually maybe the people working on the show supernatural knew what they were doing but um maybe the people working on the show supernatural knew what they were doing
Castiel IS the plot device for Supernatural seasons 4-15
Ok ok I know, This show is about two brothers fighting demons and angels in their muscle car while blaring the "greatest hits of mullet rock" up and down the back roads of America. How is the angel of Thursday who shows up 4 seasons in the reason the plot keeps moving? Well, dear reader, Supernatural has this uncanny ability to have life imitate art and the writers are no exception. In the season 14 finale, it is revealed that not only has Chuck (God) fixated on the Winchester brothers, but has fabricated almost every aspect of their life to get the perfect story. In this moment the writers of Supernatarual not only changed the context of 14 years worth of television. They made themselves the ultimate bad guys for their protagonists. So, how does Castiel fit into all of this? What is his role? His role is what it always was, the being who is able to move the plot along in a way the big bads and the writers alike never expected. An example of Castiel being an unexpected plot device starts with his introduction. In the season 4 premiere "Lazurus Rising", Castiel infamously got Dean out of hell and said, "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition". Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural explains that the writer strike in 2008 was the reason Dean was left in hell at the end of season 3 and Castiel was a fast way to bring him back. So, in the name of moving the story along, Kripke made the choice to introduce angels and changed the plot forever. The actor for Castiel, Misha Collins talked about how he originally signed on for 3 episodes but after the first episode aired, the character was such a big hit they asked him to stay. Outside of the writing, Castiel is also constantly moving the plot along within the realm of the show. He helps Dean prevent Chuck's prophecies from coming to fruition (We later find out they were God's prophecies). He always comes back from the dead (in seasons 4,5,6,9, and 12) when nobody expects it to the point where the angel Naomi says he can't even die right. Naomi also states Castiel "came off the line with a crack in his chassis", a reference to the fact that Heaven has never been able to keep him in line. This sentiment is echoed later in season 15 when the Winchesters and Castiel face God. God expresses his frustration with the brothers for not playing the roles he assigned them. He then goes after Castiel for not being able to control him. He tells Castiel that he is the only version of himself that stayed on Earth and rebelled against Heaven for the Winchesters. He tells Castiel that he was the obstacle that always stood in the way of his story. This confirms that in everything Castiel did, the good and the bad, not only defied god. But, in writing his own story, he helped break the Winchesters out of theirs.
I’ve been thinking recently about the way your plot should ideally be driven by your characters, rather than making your characters fit into the plot you have planned for them. The best characters are the ones who jump into the story and fuck it up in ways you were not expecting
which just makes me realise all over again that Cas is the character of all time.
In Supernatural, Sam is a great example of a character who can pretty much run with whatever plot you want him to. At a meta level he’s fairly obedient. You want him soulless? he’s soulless. he will drink the drug blood he will hit the dog he will do whatever the story needs. his plots tend to shape him, and it’s easy to make an equal case for why he would or wouldn’t do any particular thing. Fanon Sam is so different to canon Sam, and I think that’s partly because of how textually malleable he is.
Then there’s Dean. Dean is a character who both is and isn’t the person he’s supposed to be at a meta level. He was always supposed to be a main hero character, but somewhere along the way all his surface attributes turned out to just be careful camouflage for the real Dean underneath. the mean homophobic jokes became true, in this weird way that felt initially like a mistake but by the season 10 episodes I’m watching right now feels like the most intentional, fascinating revelations about his true self. I really do get the sense that in early seasons the writers thought they were using his queerness as a fakeout butt of the joke (ha ha! the he-man’s overcompensating!), but then Dean’s character turned around and was just like … and so what? i am a little fruit. i love rainbows and ballet and the asses of soldiers i see on the street. i will fight god about it. I’m Dean Winchester, bitch. I lied to you before. That’s what I do. The things I want are exactly the things I said I didn’t want.
And then there’s Cas. Cas was supposed to be in the show for FOUR EPISODES, until his character turned around, said fuck you to the writers and walked backwards into hell while kissing Dean on the mouth. I am completely besotted by the story of how Cas happened. Like, he was not supposed to do this! He was not supposed to do any of this! he is teflon! he is unstoppable! he is stronger than god! You kill that man and the space he leaves is so narratively powerful that it drowns out whatever else is supposed to happen. You kill him and Dean kicks a hole in the story, sticks his head out the side of it and screams unceasingly until he gets his boyfriend back. You make up any reason why Cas and Dean can’t share the same space and he just looks at you flatly and then keeps punching through doors until he finds Dean again.
Cas is both a writer’s nightmare and a writer’s greatest gift. You always know how he’s going to behave in any given situation, even if it’s not how you need him to behave for the plot. And I think it’s so cool to see the writers finally giving in to his gravitational pull from season 9 onwards and making that a feature, not a bug. The whole Metatron plotline is just the writers projecting themselves into the story, being like “hey Cas how about you do this?” and Cas turning to them and going “hey how about you go FUCK yourselves. respectfully.”
I just adore him. I adore him and Dean, and the way they’re making their own stories! Cas sat down on Dean’s bed one day back in 2008 and blew up the whole carefully constructed Brotherhood of Salmondean Show in one scene! He’s alive in this undefinable, chaotic, brilliant way, and he brings the other characters and the story they exist in to life too. I honestly don’t think that there would be 15 seasons of Supernatural without Cas specifically. I don’t know if we’d have the fully fleshed-out, queer as hell version of Dean we have without him. Cas’s existence is the thing that turns all of Dean’s fascinating negative space into something positive and interesting. When Cas is in the picture we finally know what Dean wants, and it’s not just Cas. It’s connection and love and life, and Cas is the conduit to all that. Dean made Cas care about the world, sure, but Cas made Dean real enough to be able to do that.
Hi, I hope you don't mind my quick question. I mostly absorbed Supernatural via osmosis and there is one thing that bugs me. There are lots of fics where Cas angsts over Dean not knowing his true form, but why can't he simply draw it? Does he canonicaly suck at it? Thank you for your time.
I’ve been thinking about this ask for 2 days now and “Cas sucks at drawing” is the best take I’ve seen in ages he’ll try to be romantic and gift Dean an artistic rendition of his true face only for it to turn out like this:
Dean looks at it, goes “dude you’ve got so many boobs”, and then has to sleep on the couch for a week
That moment when one character realizes too late that they've been in a love story this whole time.
Oh. OH.
November 5, 2023 - If you know, you know. If you don't, log off now and save yourself.
It's been 16 years [x] since the WGA strike of 2007 set a chain of events that led to Castiel the angel saying he loved Dean Winchester and promptly dying exactly 13 years later on the night of November 5, 2020, nowadays known as the destielputinelection night.
It's been three years. For some, the night of November 5, 2020 has become no more than a blur of chaos, whilst for others, the memories of that day remain as vivid and raw as back then, even three years later.
It's time to make peace with the fact that there will be no peace. The ghost of destiel has not left and has contaminated the internet, going so far as to causing Supernatural to trend solely because of the use of the Destiel meme to convey the news [x] [x] [x].
Just this morning, it contributed to Putin trending on the hellsite alongside BBC Sherlock.
At this point we might as well just accept our fate.
i think the real reason november 5th has been so much more “intense” (for lack of a better word) is because this year has been so incredibly GAY. like. think about it. how many massive projects in media this year (that are mostly very popular on tumblr) have been queer. just to name a few in the last couple months, good omens season 2, OFMD2, loki season 2, heartstopper season 2, red white and royal blue movie, the list goes on.
2023 has just been the year of the gays, so of course destiel shippers on tumblr dot com are thriving.
any continuation hinges on whether they're taking the "cas helped" at face value as "he's out of the empty and alive". the winchesters not showing cas with bobby and jack was pretty glaring and imo the right choice as it left room for chuck won theories to prevail and suggest that cas really ISN'T in heaven. plus jack dressed in a chuck-coded white blazer and acting a little off gives me hope that they'll lean into the chuck won theory or at the very least that the "god-power" is messing with jack and slowly corrupting him. like a lot of people always bring up "how will they undo the finale? they're dead. sam grew old and lived his whole life, if they bust out of heaven and go back to earth so many yrs will have passed" and well, first of all, this is supernatural. crazy shit happens. they could bust out of heaven and then time-travel, who knows! but, the simplest solution imo is, fake-heaven isn't real. it's a container for chuck!jack to keep his toys so they don't go messing with anything anymore (except, well, that didn't work out so well, dean already busted out once to save the multiverse. likely will happen again). and then sam on earth? another illusion. a pocket universe or a djinn dream-like state. not much time has passed at all, that's why sam looks young when he meets dean in heaven. like, sam presumably cuts ties with everyone he ever knew. marries some blurry wife. his whole life passes in montage, it would be so easy to say none of that was real. just something to keep sam occupied and placated so he doesn't go poking into things and realizing Something's Not Right.
People who have watched all fifteen seasons of Supernatural, reblog and put in the tags why.
can’t put into words but when ppl assume cas is “just” a personality and not his body i feel weird about it…
like
it becomes his body the same way an organ donation becomes your organ. and i think dean gets that. “it’s not an it, it’s cas!”
in that season, cas is certainly feeling connected to his body, and dean actually knew that better than sam. cas said, “amara ripped lucifer from my body.”
i don’t think it’s as simple as disembodied personality inside a body.
if cas is “just” a personality inhabiting a vessel, you could argue we all are too, esp in SPN world…a soul can inhabit different bodies. how we interact with and relate to others is greatly affected by what kind of body we inhabit and when we happen to meet.
tldr; personhood is messy. and not totally sundered from the body you inhabit.
hi, i come bearing links to impala 101 facts<3
since recently some people only just found out abt the impala being an automatic (and the silly idea that therefore, somehow, that means dean can't drive stick, which is demonstrably false started circulating) i thought we should bring back this post of impala facts.
it's an especially useful resource for fic writers to get things right abt the impala.
like for instance: the impala does not have a center console! it has a bench seat not individual seats that go up and down! there's no storage space under the back seats! they only have lap seat belts! the gas cap is located under the license plate! the seats are vinyl not leather! and so much more.
please check out the post it's a goldmine for fic writers who love accuracy.
also this post which links to a 3D model of the impala, great ref for artists.
I do love you. Don't you see? Don't you understand?
ever ask yourself how many times do sam & dean actually apologize in supernatural? who's more conscious of money and getting food? how sam & dean's feelings about john change over the course of the show? is sam actually more scrutinized for gender expression than dean? who most often disposes of corpses? WELL! I've finally finished my incredibly, long, in depth rewatch notes document! And it has the answers to all those questions and more!
I read your post about Supernatural being queer somehow from season 1 and I have two questions.
1. Don't you think it straight-appropriates the word "queer" to say it just means "not normal"? That argument seems disingenuous to me, and a lot of us want representation, and to see that word applied to explicit depiction of queer sexuality, and it's a cheat that they don't. Queer studies did start as the study of queer sexualities and the experience of queer people.
2. Are you saying that the makers of Supernatural intended for it to be "flesh on queer bones"? Do you think they intentionally sat down to tell a queer story?
Those are good questions my anonymous friend. Thank you for asking. Here are my thoughts:
To answer your first question: no, I don't think it appropriates anything. Here's why: firstly, if we're talking about sexuality and gender, it's queer 101 that no one owes anyone a justification of their queerness, and not everyone who is queer is interested in labeling it or making it legible to you, and they have no obligation to do so, and not doing so doesn't make them any less queer. Furthermore, some people who are queer are not interested in sex, so what about them?
All of that together is why, for me, the entire queer project is much more deeply about non-compliance with hegemony, and specifically with hegemony around gender roles, sexuality and to put it under a big umbrella, patriarchy, than it is about who you fuck. Those things extend into so many other aspects of life that I think you can easily talk about "queering" a very wide range of topics, and possibly? ANY TOPIC.
You are responding to this post, I think, and in it, I made a choice to talk about family and hunting, and our heroes roles and characterizations in that, and did not talk about gender shenanigans or sexuality, because my point was that even before we get to anything to do with it, Sam and Dean are immersed in a queered world in a fundamental, structural way. That said, I assure you that if you go back into season 1 of Supernatural, you will find LOADS that could be said about gender and sexuality, too. As well as other things, and a particularly important area, as @ironworked pointed out in the tags, is blue collar/white collar class issues.
As I said, the depth of queerness in Supernatural is actually dizzying just in terms of the story's BONES to say nothing of how they flesh it out. Queerness is about deviation from the norm. It's about rebellion and disobedience against hegemonic systems for the sake of personal authenticity and love.
Think about Cas for a minute. Cas's whole story is that he rejects his role in a hegemonic heaven. He rebels for love, and that is pretty explicit as early as season 4 when he tells Dean "We're making it up as we go". Fellas, that is THE QUEEREST SHIT EVER even if he didn't do it for Dean, and like... HE DID IT FOR DEAN. Cas did not have to tell Dean he loved him for me to know it, and for Cas to be a deeply queered character. When he DID say it, I wasn't the least bit surprised he was in love with Dean, because seriously, we been knew. I was only surprised I got to have the immense pleasure of hearing him say it and looking at Dean's face while he took it in. Jesus. I will NEVER RECOVER.
This is my perspective on representation in Supernatural: It's excellent, and I relate to, and feel seen by it as a queer person. Nobody needs to get fucked on the maps table for me to do the math that this is a queer story. It is very, very, very thoroughgoingly canonically queer in so many ways, and not all of them are to do with sex. I think some fans will only allow it to be called queer if dudes make out in it. I am not one of those fans.
As to your second question, I think there is a wealth of evidence in the filmic oeuvre of Eric Kripke to suggest that as an artist and a writer, he is concerned or maybe even preoccupied with masculinity issues and issues around family, and around the way patriarchy fucks men up. So, yes. I think he knew what he was doing and he knew that queerness was part of the mix. For fucks sake, it's a family of men who hunt monsters. That is very fucking on the nose. Do I think he kicked off Supernatural in 2005 planning a 15 year operatic queer romance between Cas and Dean? No. I don't think anyone planned for it to go as long as it did, and it's a matter of record that some things were influenced by fan response, actors' chemistry, different writers and showrunners' preferences and etc. What I will say is that when they had a choice to "straighten shit out" or lean into the queerness, they fucking leaned in, nearly EVERY TIME. Like, it's pretty amazing how consistently they lean the fuck in.
I'll admit -- I wasn't watching it with those eyes the first time, and I didn't give it much real estate in my mind when I watched it as it aired from 2006 to the end, but the last three episodes reshaped it for me and made me angry, and also made me need to watch it all again, this time with an explicitly queer lens, and BOY HOWDY let me tell you this: the Supernatch rewatch journey is a wild and wonderful trip to Queertown. It is legit more difficult to argue that Dean is straight than it is to argue that he is queer. There is a full on CORNUCOPIA of story evidence to support that read and relatively little that convincingly counters it on the straight side, and that starts right at the beginning, when they bend pretty baby Dean over a police car in episode one, and he smirks insouciantly in his lip gloss. Do I think everyone involved knew how that looked? Sexy, submissive and a bit gay?
YES I DO.
All of this meta is love brain food and gives my fannish heart hope for a revival/sequel. Also.... it gives my Destiel-loving heart hope. Because if Dean becomes a new kind of angel, one sculpted from a human soul.... that could make The Empty less powerful against him. Enough to mount a rescue maybe???
Well, now. How about that. Ben Edlund tweeting about metaphysical concepts he used while brainstorming spn. Ideas that have been part of the show a long time, there's been plenty of meta posted about these concepts btw. Something some fans were mocked for pointing out and analyzing those concepts in relationship to story, characters, relationships, and themes.
It's all about the souls. It has been for a long time on spn.
Screaming crying laughing. Dean's soul becoming angel 2.0.
This is what I meant when I've talked about how recontextualizing can repair a story (we don't know if Ben is going to be involved in the revival or not, but these are canonical concepts already in use in spn since Kripke era, which got more obvious in late seasons, and Ben's takes are making me tingly).
Even if no hard retcon, adding to the story, expanding, movement forward can help repair shortfalls in execution and ease for some fans the disappointments and hurt of the aired ending.
It’s true that, originally, Cas only rebelled in one universe. But it’s not true anymore.
The second that story was shown to us, countless amounts of Fanfiction, Fanart, and literally just thoughts, created new realities. The love Cas expressed was so powerful and beautiful that it inspired us to bring more universes into being.
Every time a fanfiction is written, Cas rebels again. Every time fanart is drawn, Cas loves again. Every time an idea is thought up, Cas feels again.
And maybe one day, those will outnumber the ones where he obeys, if it doesn’t already.