Castiel: vessel, body, woman, (best) friend.
This title comes from a previous post of mine where I talked about Yockey’s episodes in s12 and how they all deal with the theme of interconnection between motherhood/fatherhood and human vessels vs demons, angels and other humans. Ultimately, the post was about Kelly Kline, the final “doll”, the real one, true vessel used to pour angelic grace in, give birth to a Nephilim and be discarded once her “job” is done.
However, since I’ve been thinking about the mothers of gods and monsters and how they all, in some way or another, end up being associated with Castiel, I’ve found an interesting discovery about “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” (the linked post about mothers and this one seem to be disconnected now but it will all make sense with later posts, I promise).
I’ll quote myself from my initial post in order to explain my theory:
Cas: Benjamin is always very careful. Long ago, he found a powerfully devout vessel in Madrid, and her faith, it… she gave him everything – her trust and her body.
Dean: Wait. So Benjamin’s a woman.
Cas: Benjamin is an angel. His vessel is a woman. But it – it’s – it’s more than that. She’s not just his vessel.
Sam: She’s… She’s his friend.
Cas: Yeah. Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger.
So Lily killed Benjamin, the angel AND the “powerfully devout from Madrid” who’s first described as a vessel, a body, then as a woman, then again as “more than that/not just a vessel” and ultimately as a friend (with a romantic undertone to the word). So we GOTTA ask: when is a human being just a body? And when a vessel? Are there “vessels” and “not just [some angel’s]vessel”?
I’ve always interpreted this dialogue as an interesting lesson on “Angels and Gender Politics”, and it is, but maybe there’s something less intellectual and more mundane about it. Maybe it's just the same-old SPN parallels technique. But more fun.
“Vessel, body, woman, friend” is how the powerfully devout woman in Madrid is described. But in this episode, “vessel, body, woman, friend” is also Castiel. Castiel is the powerfully devout woman in Madrid and Dean’s… her Benjamin. There’s a complete reversal of roles here where Cas is paralleld to a human and Dean’s his angel which I find very interesting.
The comparison between Dean and Benjamin starts even before the Castiel-woman-in-Madrid one:
CAS: It was, um... Look, Benjamin wouldn't call for help lightly. And he wouldn't put himself in harm's way if he could help it.
DEAN: Wow, this Benjamin seems like he's pretty cool, you know. Like he wouldn't make any half-cocked, knee-jerk choices.
CAS: Yeah, you know what I like about him? Is that he's sarcastic, but he's thoughtful and appreciative, too.
DEAN: Now what is that supposed to mean?
What Dean is saying here is that Benjamin is not Cas because Benjamin sounds like a cool type who wouldn’t make reckless decisions (while Cas is not this type of person). But what Cas is saying is that Benjamin’s like Dean because they’re both sarcastic but Benjamin is better than Dean because he’s also thoughtful and appreciative (while Dean’s not).
Let’s see if I’m right about this.
The moment Cas meets Ishim and Mirabel he just has to open his mouth and say it: “Kept your vessels all this time. I'm impressed”. Ishim and Mirabel say that they were not careless with their vessels like Cas was. Which, of course, means that they’ve known Cas in is “old him”, his old vessel.
Whether they like it or not (and Ishim doesn’t like it because he thinks humans are apes, monkeys and primates which, to be fair with Ishim, is not technically not true however he does throw shade at us) angels on earth are incarnated beings, meaning that to live on Earth they need to take… a body. Specifically, a human body (no cat angels for us). Human bodies, however, are, from an angel’s pov, weak. Ishim might have been careful with his vessel but this doesn’t mean he can’t get hurt. Lily doesn’t manage to kill him in the alley but she hurts him a great deal because his wound is deep and healing it will be painful. Bodies suck, huh? But maybe also… not so much after all.
The big reveal of this episode is that Cas’ old vessel was a woman. We don’t know anything else but the fact that she was a woman. We don’t even know if Sam and Dean know about it because we see the backstory through a flashback while obviously they don’t. They must have wondered because they know for sure that Castiel took Jimmy Novak as his vessel after resurrecting Dean. Whatever the case may be, though, what we know is that that was the first time Castiel possessed a person to visit Earth.
Friendship is one of the episode’s themes. It’s not the central one but they do bring up friendship a lot. Benjamin and the devout woman were "friends". Benjamin and Castiel were friends. The angels in Ishim’s garrison were friends. Sam and Dean are friends with Castiel. Dean and Castiel are best friends. Since Benjamin and the devout woman were established as “friends”, meaning that they were a little more than that, then where does it leave us? Well, frankly the usual: Cas and Dean are more than friends. Woah, what a surprise, I absolutely did not see that one coming.
The scene that confirms that my theory is correct is when Ishim dares Dean to finalize the sigil and blast every angel in the room. You see, “Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger”. Neither does Dean with Cas.
The scene also pretty much sums up the whole episode as far as the theme of “vessel, body, woman, friend” is concerned. Cas has healed Ishim who’s now fully recovered and brimming health from every pore. Cas, on the other hand? Not so much.
ISHIM: I used to envy you, Castiel. You believe that?
ISHIM: You survived Hell. You were chosen by God. But now look at you. You're just sad and pathetically weak.
ISHIM: So now... I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna cure you of your human weakness same way I cured my own–
ISHIM: – by cutting it out.
DEAN: Don't move.
ISHIM: Do it. You blast me away, you'll blast away every angel in the room. I'll survive. Castiel, on the other hand, he's hurt. He might live or he might just end up a bloody smear on the wall. Roll the dice.
Castiel’s “bodiness” is exposed in this scene, but there is a… ahem… “positive” side? Unlike the poor guy that Ishim is wearing as his meatsuit (ugh), Cas doesn’t have to worry about his vessel’s safety but his own. He is his own vessel now (well, he kinda still stole the looks from Jimmy Novak, nevertheless his vessel has become his body. An angel with his own body, crazy, I know. Maybe this is really why Ishim is jealous of him). Which, to be honest, is still concerning because Cas is reckless as fuck. Thank God Dean is not.
Dean doesn’t roll the dice, he doesn’t endanger his powerfully devout friend, he doesn’t bet on the odds of having to scoop up Cas’ remains from the wall.
So cool, right? Do you think that Cas has learnt the value of life, the value of his own life and will be less reckless with it? Of course not!
By the end of the episode Cas still says (re Billie’s murder)that he doesn’t regret his actions even if they cost him his life. He also says, after all he’s been through with Lily Sunder, that he doesn’t know if he’s capable of killing an innocent baby or not.
SAM: But, Cas, at the end of the day, it's a mom and her kid. I mean, do you – do you think you'll be able to...
CAS: There was a time when I wouldn't have hesitated. But now, I don't know.
I don’t know if the show ever answers this question. He does bring Kelly to the “sandbox” but then Dagon shows up and then Joshua gets killed and then Kelly takes his hand and then Jack shows him “the future”… And then, and then, and then. Stuff happened, life happened, you know? I mean, it’s complicated but this is what makes it more interesting!
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