11x06 “Our Little World”
“Jenny, he’s not ready to be a dad!”
@babymisha15 said: Hi dear! I’ve watched again the episodes of season 11 and I stopped into a detail which I haven’t noticed before.When Cas is watching trash tv in the bunker and he’s talking to dean about a father that is not ready to be father. I thought about all the fathers on the show. Was God ready to be father? Or is he hiding because he realised he really was not? What about John? And Lucifer the father of demons? I think that in this sentence there’s so much more than trash tv. What do you think? Hugs.
Good catch. You mentioning this moment actually reminds of something I meant to write down - unrelated to what you are pointing out - at the time, but somehow had completely forgotten about. So I’ll just add those to this post now, hope you don’t mind.
I decided to gif the scene, because I find Castiel’s reaction so very wonderful and telling here and also kind of fitting to the questions you pose, because in my opinion Cas’ facial expressions and headmotion may well be a sort of slight “curse up to Heaven” and with that mabe subconsciously even addressing God and saying “What the hell were you thinking when thinking this one was ready to have children?” His head motion towards the sky is in so far also interesting as it is re-visited in the ending of the episode when Amara is walking through the streets and looks up to the sky, which I personally felt was her simultaneously letting her brother creation wash over her, but also “think of” him and therefore looking upwards.
Keeping that in mind I find your thought about this being a nod to God as a father of the universe, who wasn’t ready rather appicable, because the very least he did not think his creation and children were his responsibility when things started going sideways. He left notes threwn across the earth, but still decided to up and leave. Given Amara’s words in the mid season finale about her brother feeling so threatened by her that she would make a more perfect creation than him, his behaviour begs the question if maybe he thought so too. But instead of owning up to his shortcomings and making things right he disappeared, so I guess one could definitely wonder if God was ready to be a father.
With John and Lucifer I see this a little differently. I think John was ready to be a father while he had Mary as a partner and strong shoulder. It was only after her death that he was too traumatized by the events and too obsessed with revege that he was unable to provide what Sam and Dean would have needed the most: safety and a father, who’d make them feel that way. And of course in the end just like God he abandoned his kids and placed responsibility in the hands of his oldest kid while not taking any of that up on himself, which is comparable to God deciding to turn Lucifer into the keeper of the Darkness so to speak by giving him the mark.
Lucifer as the father of demons is even more different than John and God to me in this way, because while I truly believe despite all his fuck ups and wrong doings that John loved his children and that God loved his creation, Lucifer creating demons as far as we know was never framed as an act of “love”. He created them but felt repulsed by them and betrayed them in a way that I feel is somewhat different to John and God.
In general though I absolutely think this line was meant to have the audience ask exactly the questions you asked too.
What I had been meaning to write about back then in relation to this moment also circles around father figures, but goes into a completely different direction, because I have been wondering if the fact that this all is paralleled by a talk show in which someone actually does not know if this kid his kid, it poses the question if God was truly the creator/father ot if it was someone/something else. Even more than that though I personally have wondered before, especially since time and again it’s been emphasized that Dean is much more like his mother and little like his father, if John is truly Dean’s “only” father.
To clarify right now here, I don’t mean with this that Mary (sharing without a doubt not accidental the name with Jesus’ very human mother) was disloyal and betrayed John, but I am thinking more along the lines of how Joseph was also only by extension Jesus’ father - or how one could think of Azazel in some way as Sam’s “father”. Even though I know this is way too crazy to end up being the case, it would fit nicely with all the christ imagery surrounding Dean throughout the seasons and particularly heavy in the past three and all the moments that Dean was called things like “a physical manifestation of the divine” for example. I mean with the focus and narrative we are having on the show right now, I personally think it could be worked in rather well. As I said though: It’s crazy and unlikely to be the case, but I think if they wanted to they could play with this assumption further and if they wanted to take it all the way and make it work. ;)
