Dean very much did become his Endverse self in a lot of ways, but instead of feeding Cas to the meat grinder to accomplish the desperate mission, he fed it Amara and Jack. (With, honestly, a bit of Cas’s blessing, especially about Amara, and though Cas looked for a different way about Jack, it felt a bit weak in the face of his struggle with Jack’s Big Destiny.)
Even if both regretted it, (“You consumed your sister?” / “Come on, a spell, anything! We’re not giving up on you!”)
It was done.
And it was done so late in the season and without much care, that honestly the series never fully recovered from it.
i understand hael's feelings about being trapped in a body that can't hold her, but it's fucking Crazy that the moment cas stops being an angel the other angels see him… basically as prey? like hael does her damnedest to try and manipulate/force castiel to become her vessel, and even threatens him (and honestly i wonder if she was trying to goad him into killing her bc her vessel's legs were so badly damaged) to try and coerce a yes out of him. also it doesnt seem like angels Require vessels on earth (several angels were absent a vessel which is why they started manipulating religious people into saying yes even if it exploded them) to survive, she just felt Entitled to one (to the point where she was burning some poor girl's body out) and entitled to one from castiel bc metatron used his grace to banish them from heaven, so it's only fair that she get his body right? she doesn't deserve to be a wandering cosmic being, she deserves to have a voice!! (not even aware of how hypocritically she treats humans, not even acknowledging that she is slowly killing the body and forcing the vessel to die bc she needed a placeholder until she could find a better one that could actually hold her)
I feel like this post sums up a lot of my feelings about this.
But I'm glad you brought up Hael's perspective because, reading this again, it strikes me that she might be gauging how much blame Cas bears for the Fall. Even more interestingly, Cas's words at times almost... unintentionally suggest that he may have been ideologically aligned with wanting it to happen, even going sofar as to present it as an opportunity.
CAS: Well, believe it or not, there may be something even better down here.
HAEL: I don't understand.
CAS: There's opportunity for you, the others who have fallen, to do finally do what you would like to do – not just what you've been told.
HAEL: And what would I like to do?
CAS: You tell me. If you could do anything, what would it be?
HAEL: There's a place. I built it when I was last here – many years ago. A grand canyon.
CAS: The Grand Canyon, yes.
HAEL: I - I would like to see that.
CASTIEL: Let's go see the Grand Canyon, then.
It’s complicated because, while we know Cas feels guilty and torn up about the angels falling, the way he frames the painful experience of drying-falling as a good thing almost comes off... naively callous? I think this could have emboldened Hael or even made her feel entitled to prey on him.
CAS: It's complicated. There could be trouble. It's – it's best if I go alone. My – my friend – he... needs my help.
HAEL: I need help.
CAS: You can do this, Hael. This is your chance to help people, to help yourself. I'm sorry.
In this exchange, Cas sometimes sounds like a bad salesman.
That said, I agree that her words are undeniably predatory. After Cas starts praising the human world as an opportunity, I think Hael starts to see Cas as human-like, as just a vessel. She’s twisting her extreme fear into justification, rationalizing her actions. In her mind, it’s his fault. He’s the bad guy, so she might as well prey on him because he’s going to die anyway.
HAEL: It's the least I could ask of you, considering, well... This is all your fault, isn't it? Making the angels fall? So, we'll drive to the Grand Canyon, you'll tell me more about humans, and I'll show you what I'm capable of. We're going to become more than just friends, Castiel. We're going to become one.
Cas now finds himself in the position of Jimmy Novak, and of all the human vessels he’s dominated over the years. Angels seem to, by nature and angelic warfare, bring danger and destruction, creating vulnerabilities in the human population.
HAEL: Do you know how ridiculous you sound? Help angels? After what you did? They don't want your help, Castiel. They want your head.
CAS: You're wrong. I'm one of you. I will never stop being one of you.
HAEL: Don't you get it? Together, I can protect you, Castiel.
CAS: I don't need your – I don't want your protection. [CASTIEL turns and walks away.]
That very chaos allows them to swoop in, insisting they’ll protect their human charges and their families:
JIMMY: So, I wanna to help you. I'm about to lose my family here if you don't tell me how . . . Please, Castiel, just talk to me. What do you want from me? [A soft light appears and illuminates JIMMY from above. Faint whispers can be heard. JIMMY looks up and appears to be listening.]
JIMMY: Yes, I understand. Promise my family will be okay and I'll do it . . . Then, yes.
[...]
JIMMY: Castiel, you son of a bitch! You promised me my family would be okay. You promised you were gonna take care of them. I gave you everything you asked me to give. I gave you more. This is the thanks I get? This is what you do? This is your heaven? Help me, please. You promised, Cas. Just help me.
///
Last thought on Hael:
"We're going to become one." & "Together, I can protect you, Castiel."
It’s interesting that Hael's words echo Amara’s view of Dean and human souls—something to sustain herself. (Or, in Amara’s case, to entertain herself and stoke the fires of “sensations” within.) The idea of being subsumed is framed as a privilege, or, in Amara’s case, “the bliss” or “purest night.”
The loss of individuality is presented as an elevation or a form of protection, rather than an erasure.
Sometimes I chat with folks and we're surprised to revisit the fact that Cas killed Balthazar in a fit of cruel paranoia before he ever gulped in the soul juice.
Cas is incredibly paranoid when he kills Balthazar, and it was quite possibly one of his worst moments. It seems irrational and mad at the time, but Cas's psyche is actually very understandable. Cas was betrayed by Heaven numerous times from seasons 4-6. That set him up to be backed into a corner.
In early season 4, Heaven drags him in for torture for daring to even consider warning Dean about their corrupt plans.
Uriel tries to kill him and join Lucifer.
At the end of season 4, Cas gets brutally murdered for standing up for what he feels is right. Bazillions of years of military service and loyalty mean nothing to his superiors, and he's vaporized in an instant. He seems particularly betrayed by Raphael.
When Cas returns to Heaven post-Apocalypse #1, he's ashamed that they want to start up Apocalypse #2. He even stands against Raphael at first! Interestingly, Raphael doesn't kill him again but "knocks him into next week." I think this hints that Raphael was at one time fond of Castiel, or else he'd have simply killed him again.
So, angelic civil war.
Cas doesn't go to Dean or Sam or Bobby because he's ashamed of Heaven, and above all, he wants to protect them. Not to mention, he didn't want to make them a target because to angels, they're a relatively soft target. While he's in battle, he can't be there to protect them.
So away, Cas and Crowley go for a SuperMario power-up by tapping Purgatory's battery. Meanwhile, Cas convinces a team of angels to stand with him against Raphael.
Even with his "show of power" via the souls Crowley loaned to him (and I'm guessing Cas can wield soul power in a way Crowley cannot?), that's still a big risk those rebel angels are taking.
And Cas doesn't tell them critical parts of his plan. Because he knows his plan is wrong. He doesn't even tell Balthazar everything. But more importantly, he doesn't trust Heaven. Thanks to what Heaven has wrought, Cas doesn't even trust his rebel angels--the ones brave enough to take on friggin' Raphael with him.
I mean, sure. He was always going to double-cross Crowley, but it didn't even cross his mind to divvy up the soul power with Balthazar or his rebel angels. That's because he's paranoid of them turning on him.
And with what Heaven has thus far shown itself to be...why wouldn't he be?
Balthazar was a pretty brave dude. I mean, he followed Cas's lead--tore up the pages! He went hard into what he thought free will should look like (basically, hedonism and doing whatever-the-fuck he wanted).
But his REAL shining moment of free will?
Was in disagreeing with Cas.
He thought Cas's plan was a bad one, and he told him that! He didn't just balk at being kept in the dark. No... It was that Cas might blow up himself in a holy suicide mission and take "half the planet with him."
War is always a no-win, but you can't risk "blowing up the village just to save it."
Thinkin about Dean's complicated desires to protect and be protected; the competing desire to be trusted with and shielded from
////
One of the first scenes that epitomized Dean's warring needs re: Cas was in 5x18.
CASTIEL: Because there are at least five angels in there.
DEAN: So? You’re fast.
CASTIEL: They’re faster.
CASTIEL takes off his tie and wraps it around his palm.
CASTIEL: I’ll clear them out. You two grab the boy. This is our only chance.
DEAN: Whoa, wait. You’re gonna take on five angels?
///
There are many ways to deal with this deranged, contradictory emotion. To (A) goad him into being faster, harder, stronger or (B) call him a baby and a whiner and hope that he steps up or (C) take him out of the fight all together "Just stay here and get better!"
///
SNIPPET from this conversation:
(In season 14)
...there's the irrational desire of Dean's that Cas would just fix it all and shield Dean from all of it. This is something that Dean's scripted irrationality in Game 14x18 Absence accomplishes so, so well:
CAS: "Are you mad because I didn't tell you-- or that I'm telling you at all?" DEAN: "BOTH!"
It's both!!!!!
He craves Cas's protection. But he resents it, too. It's what he loves about him. It's what he hates about him. It's the power dynamic that brings him simultaneous comfort and pain.
The sad thing is, if Cas had solved Jack's soul problem on his own, Dean would have probably been elated and relieved. Just like how he was in total awe when Cas got the Leviathan blossom on his own. Dean was weak in the knees for it-- ready to tell Cas something big for it. It's so messy and dualistic and complicated.
///
Anyway, that protectorship of it all is complicated. That's what this spooky line is about in 15x02. Everyone everywhere is reminding Cas of his failed familial obligations. Here are the civilians in the gym, getting frustrated with Cas:
ANDY: First Nan went missing. Now Dave and Sheri. CASTIEL: We are looking for them everywhere. ANDY:You said you'd keep us safe. [Cas has no better answers for him. He pauses, closes his eyes for a moment, and then walks away]
Cas is the failed protector, the absent soldier who's trying his best to be on ALL impossible fronts: battlefield, home, marriage, work.
It's the same raw frustration we see out of a distraught Dean in 3x10:
DEAN: He's the one who couldn't protect his family. He- (DEAN steps back and swings the weapon again, hitting DREAM DEAN twice.) He's the one who let Mom die.
Cas was supposed to succeed where John failed! But it's too much weight. No one can be that strong. Not even Cas.
I'm very uncomfortable with your trying to make John and Cas parallels. I wish you'd tag them.
Despite what a very verbal part of the fandom will tell you, parallels and mirrors aren't one-to-one, and they're not meant to be.
John was The Soldier, naive to the world of hunting. And so was Cas.
But being in a parallel does not implicate someone nor erase their individuality.
///
For example, if you see a young girl aching to go to college (like Stacy in Lebanon), it doesn't make her "The" Sam, it makes her a motif of ambition and betterment, a theme which Sam also carries. But all characters have things in common; that's what makes us empathetic. Despite what we tell ourselves, we're all remarkably similar.
When you see a romantic couple dealing with something similar to a pair of siblings or parent-child, as was the case in The Tears of a Clown in The Winchesters, that doesn't mean that the writer is trying to tell you the relationships are clandestine code for being secretly spicy.
It just means that all types of relationships have similar stressors and themes.
(Anyway, I suspect the John-Cas parallel only bothers you because you view John in 2D caricature and you ignore Cas's complexities.
And I think if it's bothering you enough to leave me multiple messages about it, maybe my blog is stressing you more than it's entertaining you and you should curate. Which is fine! You can always come back later if you wanna try again!
If you wanna stick around, like I told you before, I'm doing my best to tag with #complex john but no promises that I'll get every single mention of parallels you don't like.)
TFW are fascinating, messy disaster parents, and I dig it.
Sometimes, they lapse into treating Jack as extensions of themselves, a well-known struggle in parenting. And TFW dynamics re: power and protecting and being in the war together? Ugh!
What got me thinking about this was Dean and Cas, and their lapse of judgment in 15x12:
In 15x12, Dean is leaning into using Jack to get revenge, because he wants revenge. Cas is leaning into "Jack fulfilling his destiny," which is also troubling, because it hints that Cas wants to change the world and bring on paradise, but to do that, you sort of have to take over, and Cas has certainly been entangled before with revolution to do it. Jack is thematically fulfilling what Godstiel could not.
[DEAN and CAS sit in the chairs, each with a glass of whiskey in their hands. Celebratory.]
CAS: I knew it, Dean. When I was with Jack’s mother, she… You know, Kelly just had faith that Jack would be good for the world, and I felt it, too. I knew it. And then, when everything went wrong, and God took him from us… I was lost in a way I’ve never been before. Because I knew the story wasn’t over. I knew Jack wasn’t done. And I was right.
DEAN: Well, here’s to being right.
[DEAN holds up his glass and CAS clinks his glass against DEAN’s.]
DEAN: And here’s to payback. Hmm? Come on. What, revenge doesn’t sound good to you?
CAS: What sounds good to me is Jack fulfilling his destiny.
They are both tragically wrong, of course, and they'll both realize it when it's too late.
Cas will snap out of trying to slot Jack into this giant "story" and destiny. He'll even get to tell Jack that once before he dies. Nevertheless, Cas doesn't get to really repair their father-son relationship, scarred by big expectations.
Dean will snap out of his need to get revenge at all costs, and to be free, even at the cost of family. He'll return to his time-honored thematic motif of killing/injuring Billie!Death to protect his family. But he will not get the chance to repair his father-son relationship, scarred by using your son as a soldier of war. He's tragically out of time.
///
Jack and mimicry
One interesting thing about Jack is that although he deeply loves Sam as surrogate dad, he chooses Dean and Cas to match and mimic more often.
I can’t think of an instance where Jack mimics Sam or Mary directly to the same extent. (Maybe there's that one moment where Jack uses flattery and puppy eyes to adorably manipulate Rowena?)
But I find it fascinating that Jack instinctually, tragically mimics Dean and Cas in manners of obvious behaviors and dress. From beer to catch phrases to borrowed cars to matching ties, Jack models himself on Dean and Cas in a distinctly different way than he does for Sam.
Even though Jack has obvious motifs of being a "Special Child" and "Being Responsible for the Death of his Mother," his interior life resembles Dean and Mary more. Yes, we see it when he's soulless, but we also see his need to stew in 13x23 Let the Good Times Roll, when he rushes off after nearly choking a gas station worker to death.
///
What about Sam?
Sam and honesty:
If I'm being charitable, Jack's lack of mimicry of Sam could simply be because Sam feels like a better parent, with better boundaries between parent and child. (Thanks largely in part to Dean, Sam’s upbringing is slightly more secure.)
Jack isn’t looking up to Sam and trying to live up to the idea of Sam in the same way that he's trying to live up to Dean and Cas.
However, that Jack tries to mimic Dean immediately out of the gate somewhat undercuts this theory. Jack instinctually likes Dean.
With Sam, Jack grows frustrated with his perfectionistic training, and it comes to a head when Dean reveals Sam's hidden motivations to save their mom. ("Interdimensional can opener.”)
Now, Jack takes that in stride, but it accidentally results in Jack viewing Sam's niceness with some suspicion, since Sam was dishonest. And although he's terrified of Dean, in a twisted way, in viewing Dean's turbulent emotions, he winds up appreciating his honesty about the true magnitude of his own powers.
///
Sam and independence:
I honestly don't think Sam starts to get a handle on being a parent until the very end of season 13.
The fact that Sam values independence (at least in the abstract) is one of my favorite things about Sam. He tries to be logical and analytical about it, too. (“The heart choice vs the smart choice," from season 11, re: Lucifer and Cas.)
Historically, Sam struggles with the fact that people need independence to a degree but also protection and authority and boundaries.
This is what brings him into conflict with Claire Novak. She’s so used to him being “the cool one” that she doesn’t respond to him flipping a switch to try and wield authority over her.
On the other hand, Dean and Cas have been stern and honest with her from the get-go. (Pretty quickly, she instinctually responded to Cas’s grouchy authority and later Dean’s, as he began to follow Cas's lead.)
So, when Sam does assert that authority outta the blue in 12x16, she’s super betrayed about it:
SAM: We do care.
CLAIRE (raising her voice): Then stop treating me like a stupid kid.
SAM: Then stop acting like one.
(CLAIRE reels back as if slapped. As she walks away, Sam shakes his head, regretting his words)
SAM: Claire...
He lets her go. Later, we see her walking down the school path, headphones on her head. Claire is spun out, not paying attention to her surroundings.
Sam never had to be that for anyone before, and it was incredible to see him have to prioritize safety and reckon with his core value of independence. He even lets her go when he shouldn’t.
This sets him up to learn to balance safety and training for Jack as well as the Apocalypse Hunters.
In season 15, Sam will backslide. He'll begin to overvalue independence once more and make his concerns known only with weak words.
He does not protect Jack, because he begins to see Jack as extension of himself; that is, like he wanted to die with Gadreel and the Hell trials, he is trying to value Jack’s choice. In reality, he really doesn’t do much in the face of Jack's fatalism besides say, “I think it’s wrong.” He tried to physically stop Dean and Cas in 15x17, but it’s also too late.
Hopefully this is a journey Sam will be forced to go on offscreen, with Dean II. Completing Sam's journey of independence versus protection would be one way to get me behind a SPN sequel.
///
Jack and the burden of living up to an idealized Cas
One of the things that sticks out to me is that after Jack is born, Dean compares him to Cas in matters of strength and control.
It’s really unfair, but Jack is expected to step up and (ultimately) become the angelic protector in the house and have absolute control of objectively terrifying superpowers.
We don't always appreciate how terrifying and shitty the burden of Jack's powers are for everyone, and it sucked for all of them. I mean, immediately, Heaven and Hell started coming for the kid, and a prince of Hell almost used him to rip out a portal to nasties worse than demons, the Shedim.
Kelly and Cas decided to bring Jack into the world with full power, under the expectation and hope of Jack wielding that power for "good" on their behalf, but in reality, they left us with a total mess. Without Cas, the only one with actual experience with anything close to that kind of power, it must’ve felt thousands of times more hopeless. That Sam decided to try and soldier on is admirable.
Nonetheless, Jack got the message early:
Be as good as Cas.
Live up to Cas.
You’re not Cas.
It’s your fault Cas is dead and you’re not him, and you’ll never be him. (This comes later.)
Ouch. Already primed to mimic Cas because he literally idolized him from the womb, Dean's ire primes him to mimic Cas even more later on. Cas is someone to live up to.
This in turn primes him to become obsessed with protecting everyone from Michael.
DEAN: Who cares if he didn't do it on purpose? He did it. I mean, you didn't see Cas smiting someone every time he got his teeth cleaned.
JACK: I'm right here, you know.
///
DONATELLO: Oh. Speaking not as a prophet but as a scientist, I don't think teaching him is in the cards. It's like asking a lion not to be a lion.
SAM (angrily): But this is not a lion! This is a human!
DONATELLO: With a strong dose of God juice.
DEAN: Okay, that's it. I'm done, all right? 'Cause he's not God, he's not Cas, he's not Simba. He's the friggin' Devil!
Interesting to note that Donatello is on the side of Jack being hopeless. We will later learn that sometimes God speaks through his prophets (15x08). Makes you wonder if he's been trying to kill Jack much longer than appears.
///
Dean, the power struggle, and the irrational position?
There's big push-pull within Dean concerning his lions cosmic family members. Dean's instincts are consistently sounding the alarm, and it's not completely irrational to be aware of the immense power angels hold.
With Cas, there’s this irrational position of, “Protect me-us!” And “No, don’t protect us!”
With Jack there’s that and the whole added component of, “Protect others from yourself!”
(SAM sits next to JACK.)
SAM: We just need to make sure we get a grip on 'em, so...so you don't hurt anybody.
JACK: Is that why Dean hates me?
SAM: Dean doesn't hate you. It... Look, sometimes the wires in Dean's head get crossed and--and he gets frustrated, and then he mixes frustration with anger, and--and fear.
JACK: Why would he be afraid?
SAM: Because Dean feels like it's his job to protect everyone. And right now, we need to protect you. But we also need to protect people from you.
This is a nice conversation at first glance. Sam acknowledges the danger of Jack's powers. (It's interesting to me that Donatello holds the same view as Dean, but no one's holding his feet to the fire.) But also, Sam is SO deep into psycho-analyzing Dean that he's not talking frankly about the reality of the situation.
That is, that it was Lucifer that killed Cas, and Lucifer who pulled Mary into another world. That Dean's grieving! These important details might've helped Jack to understand his situation with a lot more clarity and grace.
Charitably, Sam is sparing Jack that knowledge to protect his volatile(?) emotions. Uncharitably, he's not wanting to rock the boat in order to use Jack's powers to get to the AU earth.
///
So, Dean is not exactly “irrational,” despite how Sam (and sometimes Cas) tend to characterize him when he's not responding immediately to a crisis in a way they would prefer (unwavering support and caretaking; Dean is the heart of the team).
///
Dean is certainly conflicted
This push-pull dynamic with his cosmic family members is why I looooved this scripted line so much from Game Night and wished they’d kept it in. It perfectly encapsulates the Dean-Cas spousal dynamic:
CAS: Are you mad I didn't tell you-- or that I'm telling you at all?
DEAN: Both!
An irrational position, but he's angry (and scared). Cas can feel it.
What Dean REALLY wants is for all the pain and terrible things to go away; he wants Cas to fix it.
Dean is mad at Cas for protecting him…and for not protecting him.
He wants to be shielded…and not to be shielded.
His needs are in conflict. He wants to be an equal partner with Cas, and yet he doesn't want to hear bad news. He wants Cas to be safe and out of danger...and he likes feeling safe when protected by Cas.
So, for someone like Cas? That’s gotta be baffling as shit but it's also very real and very…uhm…you know. Spousal. He's very aware that Dean speaks in code quite literally and sometimes even tries to have conversations about their lives under the guise of talking about other things. They've been speaking in metaphor since even their early days, and although many of them are lost to Cas, oftentimes, they get their meaning across just fine.
Here's an example of them talking fluently to each other about their fight, under the guise of talking about Michael, from 15x08:
(CAS sitting at the table as Dean enters and grabs beer from the fridge.)
DEAN: Maybe you went too far. ("Maybe I went too far.")
CAS: Maybe.
DEAN: I mean, he's been in lockdown for quite a while, you know? Maybe you just, uh, went too fast. What's he doing now? ("I was a prisoner of Michael and recovering, and then so much happened, and I needed more time and space before talking about it.")
CAS: No idea. He was very distraught. ("I don't know what's going on in your head. You were distraught.")
DEAN: Yeah, but what exactly did he say? ("What did you hear ME say?" Dean doesn't even recall his exact words during the turmoil of losing Mary and Jack, perhaps?)
CAS: "Leave. Get out. I want you dead." We didn't bond. Where's Sam? ("You shut me down and shut me out. We did not SHARE our burdens. I'm going to rely on other family members now. I'm here because I'm helping Sam.")
///
Dean craves safety and being protected, but that's incompatible with protecting everyone
Dean never got to be valued and protected growing up, so he secretly craves that. But Sam is correct in his psycho-analysis. Dean's neurosis is wanting to protect everyone, and this is often fundamentally, violently incompatible with letting your family fight alongside you.
All things considered, Dean rarely resorts to going lone wolf, like with the Mark of Cain. Despite his discomfort, he tries to marshal everyone under one roof, and that often results in a degree of my-way-or-the-highway type rigidity as a means of neurotically trying to keep everyone safe.
Both Cas and Jack, and to a lesser degree Sam (Hell trials), get caught in that specific internal war. In fact, Cas often avoids this dilemma altogether by going lone wolf. Jack has the same issue in AU earth when he tries to run away to confront Michael on his own.
///
When the fights get too big (as they often do in Supernatural), Dean freaks the fuck out and cannot control the safety of his loved ones. So you get these coping mechanisms:
Benching the player: "Wait, you might get hurt, so I'm gonna communicate that I don’t trust you to be in that fight at all." Sometimes, this need to kick people to the bench comes out as a barb: "You’re an incompetent baby who does stupid things. You’re an idiot. You're 98 pounds soaking wet." etc etc.
Denial: Sometimes, this is the time-honored, "I'm powerless / this whole fight is meaningless / there's nothing we can do / we have no choice." Other times, it's downplaying the danger, resulting in neglect.
When Dean can neither protect nor stop family/comrades from going into danger, these options are his best hope for safety. There are so many deliciously terrible options. With regards to Cas, we see an even more colorful option deployed: goading him into being stronger. "You can do it."
SAM: Tell me again why you don't just grab Adam and shazam the Hell out of there.
CAS: Because there are at least five angels in there.
DEAN: So? You're fast.
CAS: They're faster.
(CAS takes off his tie and wraps it around his palm. Dean looks on worriedly.)
In early days, Dean is incredibly spun out and confused by Cas, who he wants to be protected by and protect. In the beginning, in season 4, he's still thinking of Cas as invincible.
Post-Cas's first death, Dean tries to pin him down as brother, and at times he even infantilizes Cas as he evolves into needing to protect him. But bottom line, he just can't make Cas FIT. He's a comrade, but there's extra layers to their relationship that get confusing real fast. We get these Dean coping mechanisms in seasons 5-6 alone!
(A) Goad him into being more powerful and better so he's safe
(B) insult him to underscore that he's in danger and maybe shouldn't be fighting at all
(C) go full denial and pretend the situation isn’t that serious
I think in season 8, Dean figures out what those extra layers are, and in season 9, they deal with rejecting each other by accident, and in season 10, they’re respectively dealing with their past traumas and baggage. Then, in seasons 11-12, they're grappling with the whole embarrassing and terrifying fiasco of wanting to commit to each other.
But to my point about cosmic family members, there’s this simmering tension concerning the danger of celestial power running throughout.
"Dude you’re kinda scary and I instinctually know this because I’m a seasoned hunter. But I’m gonna keep ignoring that gut instinct because reasons."
And confusingly, there's also this feeling:
"I can’t really protect myself from you, since you’re stronger than me. And I'm not strong enough to protect you from your enemies...or stop you from leaving.
See this, from season 8:
CAS: See, it wasn't that I was weak. I was stronger than you. I pulled away. Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn't want to be saved.
DEAN (distraught): What the Hell are you talking about?
Dean was SO upset that Cas let go. That he didn't even try. (Dean and Cas often give up, but they become unhinged if the other partner gives up.) For someone like Dean, whose instinct is to squirrel away his family in a protective underground bunker? That’s a tension that feels devastating.
///
As a main character/battle commander, Dean knows that tactically, Jack and Cas will take on big, scary responsibilities by virtue of being, as season 15's Belphegor so eloquently puts it, “the muscle."
...and this is in direct conflict with Dean's baseline need to protect everyone.
He doesn’t want to gamble with them at all. He wants to say, “you’re more than a weapon,” (13x14 Good Intentions script) and Cas wants to tell him, “in times of peace, I can be.”
DEAN: Cas, you're more than a weapon--
CAS: In times of peace I can be, but if (war) is coming...
///
TFW and the burden of leading
This, at times, makes Dean a rigid, unhinged leader. That's because he’s too often sending his own fam into battle. And who wouldn’t be unhinged about that? There’s a reason we don’t operate on our own family members in a medical setting, for example. When Dean is a leader, he can be like a dog with rabies foaming at the mouth, backed into a corner. It’s the worst.
Sam, on the other hand, fares pretty well as a leader, because he values independence so highly, and that kinda works for him. (He's pragmatic and he dissociates very effectively.)
Mary is interesting. She defaults to leader a lot. In Stuck in the Middle (with You), Mary becomes the go-to leader of the group. Mary was part of an extensive hunting family, so being that kind of family-commander comes more naturally to her. When she fails to protect Cas in 12x12 though… Dean wonders why he yielded to her authority at all, and the vicious cycle begins anew.
And Cas as a leader? Cas is an extraordinarily capable leader, but when paired with his human family, he'd rather skulk around trying to protect them or keep them out of harm's way. He will sidestep the whole fucking issue and just…not involve his family at all.
I’m not sure which coping mechanism is worse.
Dean has saved Cas’s life and can hold his own in a fight, and yet Cas accidentally infantilizes him by wanting to bring home a win for you and myself instead of trying to win together. Cas got super spooked by season 10-11 Dean's Mark of Cain and Amara soul-bomb, so he digs his heels in on keeping them out of it. You can see that in this conversation in 12x19 The Future:
CAS: I know. I wanted to keep you out of this. I-I was trying to keep you safe.
DEAN: You're not our babysitter, Cas, okay? That is not your job. And when in our whole lives have we been safe?
And Jack as a leader on AU Earth? Although brand new, we see that he is prone to impatience, and hubris. After his arrogance bites him in the ass, he too turns to lone wolf desperation as he tries to sneak off in 13x22 to battle AU Michael on his own.
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Dean & Cas and protectorship
As they tackle their relationship power struggles, at some point Dean actually accepts Cas as protector and that it’s actually a kindness to let Cas protect him. Despite Cas dying against Lucifer, Dean is really trying to navigate this dynamic of their relationship with grace (13x19 Funeralia):
Dean: Cas, you wanna try this angel thing, then go for it. Just don’t get dead again.
You can see again that he’s aware of this protectorship dynamic with this line in 15x18 Despair, too: “She's gonna kill you, and then she's gonna kill me.”
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As the series progresses, despite some serious hardships, Deam resolves to tolerate their structural dynamic, knowing it comes from a place of love, not distrust. (I’m not saying it solved their issues, but Dean does appear to grudgingly accept Cas’s relationship role with respect to him, at least on some level.)
But!
As Dean sort of unwittingly accepts this dynamic between himself and Cas, he accidentally assigns that same weight to Jack as extension of Cas.
Over time, Jack also becomes extension of Dean--a hero. And heroes do heroic sacrifice. This is what underlies Dean's ability to sunder Jack as family. Dean, after all, sunders the importance of his own hopes and dreams in order to protect the dreams of others.
Stripping the family label from Jack solves the warring, “you’re stronger than me and therefore MY protector and savior,” but “you’re my kid and it’s MY job to protect you” problem.
Dean realizes his mistake when it’s too late. Dean never got to reckon with Jack being dehumanized holy son and the archetypal child soldier, and so SPN as a series remains unresolved.
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A closer look at Jack as extension of Dean
So anyway, we see Dean put himself in a Ma'lak box, so naturally he puts Jack in a Ma'lak box, too.
Dean is often willing to kill himself, because he’s inherently worthless and leans toward self-annihilation, ergo Jack is also worthless and can be used as a battering ram-slash-blunt instrument.
It’s no accident we see Jack burst through a door with Dean in Last Holiday AND again with Cas in Gimme Shelter. It’s about that narrative extension of self to child. (They both fall prey to that way of thinking, as we saw in the 15x12 conversation re:Jack fulfilling Revenge and some Big Cosmic Destiny.)
Dean combats his self-worthlessness by doing important tasks. If he's "the guy who saves the world," and "the guy who killed Hitler," then how he's lived and what he's done matters.
It's not quite the same as Cas's tendency towards another cosmic grandiosity, but it IS similar.
Dean is attracted to performing great deeds, big and small, and Cas is attracted to serving great causes. We see Dean put the great deeds part of his Burden on Jack in the back end of season 15. To combat Jack's crime of killing Mary and to resolve the tension of getting to have Jack back, he now convinces himself that it's all okay and allowed, because Jack is going to save the world.
Also there's this pesky "my child will do what I could not" undercurrent: Dean was ineffectual and powerless against God, but Jack is strong enough to realize that dream of defeating him and gaining freedom for everyone. The ultimate hero.
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Jack as Love, as holy cause, and as extension of Cas
Cas, on the other hand, at his worst leans towards a different kind of authoritarian idealism, so he puts Jack on a pedestal and overestimates his importance from the very beginning.
“I thought I was more important than I actually was,” is a thing Cas said on the actual show. I think it’s relevant, because he also overestimates Jack's (cosmic) importance. To resolve the tension of getting to have Jack and stay on Earth with his human family, he assigns Jack a Greater Purpose. That way, Cas can pretend he's solely motivated by the Great Cause, instead of facing up to being motivated by love and selfishness.
Aside// Cas even treats his love this way. His love becomes another tactic to be used in the fight, because love is more comfortable to him as a Tool in his Arsenal than it is as something to cherish. He's not allowed to have it, because he's committed too many crimes in his military career to even deserve it.
(It’s no accident he gets that flower for Dean in purgatory and proceeds to brutally crush it for a spell.) At worst, Cas approaches his love in a dehumanizing way. It’s a thing he’s not allowed to have unless he’s serving a grand cause to counterbalance his unworthiness of having it.
I imagine his thought process is tumultuous. "You want free will, Cas? Hypocrite, you stole the Novaks’ life, so you’re not allowed that. You want to live on earth? Hypocrite! You helped Heaven collect angels and killed their Nephilim."
This shame is always on his mind, especially after he starts raising Jack. He tells Jody in season 15: “I took Claire’s parent.” Seeing Belphegor possess Jack really hammered that shame home for him, I'd expect, once he had a moment to meditate on the matter.
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Cas loves Jack, but Jack is a good excuse
When Jack was born, and when his powers seemed to be hurtling them towards Paradise, Cas suddenly had the Perfect Cause. (However, we see in the 12x19 script that he was actually thinking of his own human family's happiness.) Nevertheless, with a cause like that, Cas definitely had a good excuse to stay on earth and see it through.
And since he needed to be on Earth to raise Jack, he had a great excuse to bed down with his human family. Suddenly, there was a smokescreen for his desires. Suddenly, he had another holy cause to hide behind.
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He allowed himself to partake, but he didn't wanna take too much. "Be frugal, Cas. Only take the bare minimum."
IMHO, the shame surrounding Dean and Cas with respect to their relationship is about way more than being afraid of each other's feelings. There's this big, “you don't deserve to get what you want” built into the very fiber of their beings.
I posit that Cas knows Dean feels something; it's why they stay together. They're being as "together" as what they think the universe will allow. There’s a tragic Asceticism to the whole dynamic of Cas existing on earth within a human family, and that's WAY more fascinating to me than the simple business of requited/unrequited “love confessions.”
So yes, I'm sure Cas loves Jack, but Jack was at first a wonderful excuse for Cas to be part of the family and counterbalance his cosmic guilt for wanting to be part of the family in the first place.
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Jack as the antidote for "Godstiel's" failed Destiny
Finally, we come to Castiel's tragic war with Destiny versus the Hope for the Future.
Back in season 6, Cas slowly became a corrupt and petty God, despite his best intentions and starting out on neutral footing. Furthermore, he was incapable of containing all that power.
But Jack is fundamentally Good in Cas's eyes, and he can surely wield that great destiny successfully on account of his Goodness.
Fandom forgets that it’s Cas who set the family tone and expectation for preparing Jack for battle in season 15, by letting him eat hearts to strengthen his body.
But like Chuck believed Lucifer so beautiful and good as to be resistant to the mark from Amara, so Cas too assumes that Jack is uncorruptable, perpetuating the God-like burdens of his own family.
