"Oh, Cas. I believe in you." Why I believe Michael ripped this line from Dean's mind:
I think I finally have an uplifting headcanon surrounding the last episodes and why Michael was so amused in 14x10 with these believing-oriented lines:
From 14x10, pink collateral (Nihilism):
Televised, it sounds even more like he's getting private, perverse delight in quoting a deep part of Dean:
"Oh, Cas. I believe in you."
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What gives? Why is this line so remarkable? Because it is the unspoken answer to a very deep, very private question Dean was asked in the previous season, by the therapist Mia Vallens, when Cas was dead:
13x04, Yellow Draft (The Big Empty)
Mia: "Dean...what do you believe in?
"So, what do you believe in, Dean?"
He answers this question at the end of the same episode, scripted and televised in 13x04, Yellow Draft (The Big Empty):
Dean: Right now, I don't believe in a damn thing.
Cas comes alive lying asleep in a field, wild blackberries framing the shot, and he is full of gratitude and life.
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Cas was asked by the Shadow why he would return, when "there is nothing for you here."
Supernatural asked that question often enough: How DO you keep on living when the worst has happened to you? It could be the loss of a parent, a brother, a child, a spouse. How do you find meaning and keep on living when the hope and future is dashed to pieces? When your faith is gone because you've lost almost everything? When the thing that made you matter is gone?
Lamentation and fatalism can blind us to the gratitude and life still available to us. We see this when John lost Mary, when Sam lost Jess, how John could not lose Dean even when Sam still needed him, how Ellen could not lose Jo when Bobby still needed her, how Dean could not lose Sam, and how TFW could not lose Jack.
For Cas, his fatalism and Heaven-as-corrupt-war trauma often prevent him from embracing what he already has. He sometimes cannot even recognize his own love or the love that others have for him (i.e. he tends to rework happiness as Big Destiny, and family as Holy Cause). Like a broken tapedeck (14x09 The Spear), Cas cannot "hear" the music, or freely enjoy the love that is available to him. In Meredith Glynn's script (13x14 Good Intentions) it is more obvious that Cas returns to "angel instincts," embracing war and his Self as weapon. ("You're more than a weapon, Cas.")
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When Dean lost Cas, he was afraid (13x05 Advanced Thanatology) that he was shattered beyond repair, that there is "nothing for you here." He did not look for Mary; he felt powerless to bring Cas back. Dean wanted to die.
Like John, Dean struggles to be there for Sam (who becomes all parents to Jack) and for Jack (the scapegoat for the loss of Dean's future).
13x05 Production Draft, Advanced Thanatology
Billie: You tell people you'll work through it. But you know you won't. You can't.
Dean: I don't matter.
As audience, we want to tell Dean (and John): you can. You still matter to us, to your family, even without your ideal future. We can build a different future.
Why does Dean feel this way? Like in season 7, he can't shake Cas, and he doesn't know why. It's because when Cas is alive, Dean matters. In the beginning of season 4, despite himself, Dean was in awe to matter to God and to holy cause. But post-Heaven-disillusionment and post-Heaven-moving-on-to-Adam, Dean still mattered to Cas. And Cas mattered to him. And that deepened something between them.
Consciously or not, Cas is a vital part of Dean's Faith, and he is the cornerstone for Dean's *honest* conceptualization of his own non-romanticized Future.
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This is why Sam is spooked in 15x09 The Trap during Chuck's vision.
Still conceptualizing Dean as "the brother who raised me," and "the invincible parent that never gives up," Sam finally grasps that his brother is fallible. He might even finally grasp how and WHY Dean always gives up (when Cas dies), if the end of the episode is any indication.
Juxtaposed with Dean frantically running around Purgatory, it's perhaps a visual tiein between the oblivious Sam and the oblivious audience, who just, up until this point, don't get the Whole Dean-Cas Thing. (There is even perhaps giving an aborted love confession hidden here, "Cas, I need to say something" / "You don't have to say it.")
In a way, the story of SPN is about Sam learning to understand his brother as person rather than as (sometimes admittedly-unhinged) caretaker, and a big part of that is showcased when Sam says, "Cas," in this vision, with no small amount of dread.
By the end of this episode, even if purely on a gut level, Sam finally understands that The Hope for his brother's Future is intimately tied to Cas, and Sam will not vanish that future.
This causes him to doubt their plan for locking up Chuck.
This is why he doesn't roll the trap.
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In season 14, Dean learns his "life's work is a hoax."
This is a parallel moral injury to early-seasons-soldier-Castiel, who spent season upon season grappling with the sometimes paralyzing horror of Heaven's disillusionment. Now, it's Dean's turn. (Indeed, in season 15, Cas is better positioned to withstand some aspects of Chuck, because he painstakingly built a phenomenal resilience to soldier-disillusionment already.)
All suffering soldiers grapple with depersonalization/derealization/"what is real?" It is NOT a romantic question so much as the mark of soul-shattering existential crisis.
When Dean lapses into pure, blood-and-bone nihilism in late season 14, it's not just that nothing matters...Dean no longer matters. "His life's work, a hoax." Son, gone--sucked dry by an enemy Dean let overpower him. Mother, gone--obliterated by the dehumanized "shell" of the son. Michael won. His nihilism suddenly rings true. Life IS meaningless.
Based on my own conjecture, in this time frame; that is, post-resurrected-Jack and The Empty deal, Cas had to have been pulling away in terms of emotional intimacy. This, combined with depressed!Sam and soulless!Jack, further stoked a loss of Resilience in Dean, post-Dean's second Michael injury.
Indeed, Cas goes lone wolf with Anael and looks to God instead of hashing out these difficulties with his human family. And poor Cas--as usual, he does it too late, when shit has already hit the proverbial fan. Because when Cas really wants to do something, like torture Donatello for example, he rushes in unilaterally and bypasses discussion. (They all do this, of course. They take turns at the wheel of desperation and attempting to solve it on their own.)
It's not about Fault so much as it is family dynamics that contribute to a loss of Resiliency.
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Revisiting 14x09 The Spear and 14x10 Nihilism:
Dean was undoubtedly psychologically injured by AU Michael. We see this in the following bit about how utterly devastating the second Michael possession is:
Off their shocked faces-- Michael!Dean drops the sarcasm.
MICHAEL! DEAN: Dean-- he was resisting me. He was too attached to you-- to all of you. He wouldn't stop squirming. To get out-- to get back. (then) So I left-- but I left a back door open-- just a crack.
CASTIEL: Why wait?
MICHAEL ! DEAN: To break him. Crush and disappoint him so completely that, this time? He'II stay nice and quiet for a change-- buried. (then, feeling himself) And he is. Beyond subdued-- he's GONE.
On Sam, Cass, and Jack-- absolutely GUTTED. Then--
And how horrible we should expect Dean's condition to be on Michael's departure? According to this, "Nothing but blood and bone."
Strange then, how Dean's post-Michael possession is mostly spent taking care of others. We see him continuing to parent Jack, and we also see Dean and Cas JOINING FORCES to parent Sam out of his grief with the AU hunters. (Sam is running them ragged!)
But there are no plotlines for Dean's post-Michael recovery. Not really. Some viewers even sofaras to paint everything that follows as a fundamental evil, and NOT a reaction to these devastating events.
I suggest that housing Michael levied a grievous psychological injury, one that went forgotten as we focused on Jack's soul and Sam's loss of the AU hunters. Cas tried to lend support the best way he knew how, in a distanced manner, while being somewhat emotionally handcuffed by The Empty deal.
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So, it goes. It all came crashing down.
When Mary is dead, and when symbolically the-Jack-Dean-knew is dead, Cas is also "dead" to Dean, and so is hope and faith for the future. Dean will not touch his failure to contain Michael, but make no mistake, it is the Core Hidden Wound here. It's why Dean so easily submits to suicidal and familicidal ideation. He doesn't matter. Nothing does. He gave up, and then he marched off to kill what was left of Jack and himself.
Season 15 would feel more complete if it more expressly spelled out The Michael Wound and the perils of the moral injury and disillusionment with Cause and Self, as Dark Kaia says in 14x03:
Dean matches her gaze.
DEAN: Not him. Not Michael. Not anymore.
But that's what Dark Kaia meant. She already realized that.
DARK KAIA: I know. (then) You're much weaker.
That lands on Dean, rattling him.
Dean is paralyzed by his own weakness, by botching his big hero moment with The Spear.
DARK KAIA: You're no different than him. (then) Threats, violence, whatever it takes-- to get what you want.
DEAN: I'm nothing like him.
DARK KAIA: You are. (then) And you always were. I saw what you did to her. When you got angry. When you shoved your gun in her face.
And we POPFLASH to episode 1309, "The Bad Place"- -Dean threatening Kaia with a gun.
That's war. REMEMBER: Dark Kaia, a soldier in her own right, recklessly resorted to flinging her own violence and anger at Claire Novak. She wields violence intimately, and she knows how being bound to protect people gets twisted up with violence.
When what you want is your family's safety, your fear turns to anger turns to morally bankrupt action. Heroism and pride is just a balm to cover this. That's moral injury in the face of desperation, and War..."war is what Michael does," so the two are hopelessly intertwined.
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So, then we come to the backend of season 15: Against all odds, the family tries to rebuild, even without Mary. The Dean-Cas future is reignited in Purgatory, in the land of metaphorical suicide, because traditionally they choose each over (family) and grow new things (the future)--all against the backdrop of the gray, colorless, Nihilism-Unthinking war-Suicide spectre that Purgatory represents.
Even before they get Jack back, Dean wanted Cas to stay. It's another example of choosing to try to heal together, despite the hardships of life (and being faced with holy-narrative-nihilism). These are embers.
However, after Jack returns, the allure of Jack's birthright and power strikes again, and through Billie (Death), the plan tragically sways to thoughts of revenge (Dean) and destiny (Cas). They respectively think these paths will grant them the futures they want: to finally be free.
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Later, after 15x18, when Dean loses Cas for the final time, something remarkable happens. Dean decides not to give up,
...which is why I don't hate everything about 15x19 Inherit the Earth and 15x20 Carry On. This is a man living a nightmare:
"To see if maybe all this was just a dream..."
And trying to be strong for everyone else. Because this time, Sam has given in to Chuck's nihilism, and Jack is lost without his dad.
Despite everything that went down before, Dean decides to try, "because you have to believe that you can start trying to be good any time."
Dean is trying to find new meaning outside of the future he wanted for himself! Like when Cas awoke from The Empty, Dean is trying to find gratitude and the warmth of life against this backdrop of apocalyptic bleakness. That's what Miracle is about.
It's the anti-thesis to John losing himself after Mary's death.
Although initially offering himself as a sacrifice to Chuck, there are bones to it that hint Dean may be trying to honor Cas's memory rather than become a dead man walking. ❤️ And that was beautiful.
But it was too late to fix things with Jack, a realization that rendered him mute...but not hopeless.
Dean can't speak.
(How terrible, then, that the writers did him the way Jack did Felix the snake. Dissolved him because "he missed his friend," robbing him of the chance to even try to live.)
