#spn 6.17

[heller-meta-of-the-day]

January 2nd

My Heart Will Go On (6.17)

Hellers scream Balthazar SHIPS destiel.

Just shows how they DON'T pay attention to the show.

Appointment in Samarra (6.11)

He also ships Sastiel.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (6.22)

AND wincest.

[spngeorg]

Episode 121 - 6.17 My Heart Will Go On

For an episode that feels very much like a throwaway MotW romp of silliness on a first watch of the series, this one sure does have some much stronger implications buried in it when you know what's coming three episodes down the road...

By the time we learn Crowley loaned 50k souls to smack down Raphael before the events of s6 that we've witnessed to this point, I think we forget that this whole wild plan in THIS episode was specifically engineered to manufacture... 50k new souls. It almost feels as if this was a last-ditch attempt for Cas to try and "fix" things, to get out of that deal, to pay Crowley back and walk away. But it failed. It only puts Sam and Dean in more direct danger, and he abandons it as quickly and messily as he began.

IT'S A TRAGEDY. And on a first watch, you can't possibly understand it. Which is why we do this! For the pain! :D

LINKS!

The Superwiki Page

My Tag

Filming locations map

Lizbob’s Dean and Cas are In Love series (part 1) (part 2) (part 3)

My rewatch notes from April 2017

The CW Promo video

Listen now on Spotify, or wherever you enjoy podcasts!

[foxthefanboi]

6x17 - My Heart Will Go On

[tonyglowheart]

Cas: You're the ones who taught me that you can make your own destiny. You don't have to be ruled by fate. You can choose freedom. I still believe that that's something worth fighting for.

me: 🥺

[mittensmorgul]

Do you think Balthazar was serious when he said that Cas is in love with Dean? Did he really believe that, or was it a sarcastic comment?

a little from column a, a little from column b…

No, really.

I mean, think about how much Balthazar actually knew about what Cas was up to for most of s6, and also WHEN he learned each of these things. Think also about what Cas asked him to do for him… specifically ensuring Sam and Dean’s safety. How must that have looked to Balthazar?

I mean, we know from Rachel in 6.18 that her impression of what Cas was up to when he disappeared from Heaven was that Cas was helping the Winchesters, or just spending time with them. Hence her outrage when she replied to Dean’s prayer to Cas for help. The other angels did not know that Cas was actually working closely with Crowley all season long. They didn’t actually learn that until it was pretty much too late… 6.20, to be exact…

I’d always heard that line in 6.17 with a tinge of bitterness, because in Balthazar’s understanding, Cas was doing everything in his power to protect Dean. I mean, really he was, and that will also become clear in 6.20, but the heartbreaking reality of it wasn’t what any of the angels had believed– that Cas was somehow shirking his responsibilities in Heaven to hang out with his human.

So I think the sarcasm there was the embodiment of that essential misunderstanding, the bitterness that Balthazar felt from too often being set the task of “babysitting the Winchesters,” or taking them to safety while Cas had to deal with other issues that Balthazar didn’t even know about at that point.

I mean, simple math:

Crowley, we will learn in 6.20, had made an initial “loan” of 50,000 souls to Cas to seal their bargain. That gave Cas enough power to “slap” Raphael, to create the divide in Heaven that would stop Apocalypse 2.0 from going forward.

The entire alternate reality created by Balthazar unsinking the Titanic in 6.17 (on Cas’s orders) created 50,000 new souls.

Almost as if Cas were attempting to generate enough new souls to “pay back Crowley’s loan,” as if he were desperately trying to buy his way out of the bargain he’d struck to crack Purgatory. And because of Fate, essentially using Sam and Dean as hostages, Cas’s plan failed. He had to put everything back. And he used Balthazar as his scapegoat in ALL of this. And Balthazar KNEW this. That Cas’s entire goal was to ensure the safety of Dean Winchester (and Sam, but really… He knew from the start of s6 that ALL of this began because Cas insisted that Dean alone be kept out of the entire mess. All the while Sam had been hunting with the Campbells. Cas hadn’t done anything to prevent that, and only began getting involved with the Winchesters directly again when Dean returned to hunting, too… >.>).

So, yes, Balthazar actually did believe it, too. He would’ve been an idiot not to.

[jennsens]

Dean | SPN 6.17

[mittensmorgul]

So everyone around here should know by now that I find s6 really narratively shaky, and it clearly has its ups and downs. That murky middle section I cringe my way through every time, some dubious-at-best standalone eps. But it also has some of my absolute favorite episodes in the entire series. 6.11 is right there. 6.09 is the most delightful soulless!Sam episode and just delightful in general. 6.15 tops most people’s lists. And then the run I watched today-- 6.17 through 6.21.

I went back to the Hellatus Rewatch Notes I did over the summer, and wasn’t surprised to find just this one post with three short paragraphs:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186154895705/619-mommy-dearest-ouch-this-marks-the

and this tag: #i just couldn't face writing long wailing meta about the manipulation revealed in 6.20 today sorry

I’m not sure I’m in any better place to write that long wailing meta today, but I’m going to at least try. The narrative we’re seeing spin out over the first half of s15 deserves it. I think it’ll be easier if I talk about this whole chunk of episodes at once, though. S6 might be pretty slapdash as a whole, but this run of episodes in particular seems to all be working together to tell a coherent story, and to be setting up massive narrative paths that Dabb Era has chosen to walk back down from a different perspective. So rather than talk about each of these episodes, I’m gonna talk about what they mean, for the cosmology of the universe, Chuck’s role in all of this and how the parallels have been drawn back to this by his actions in s15, and Castiel’s position in all of it. Dean’s, too, but I’m even going to talk about that in relation to Castiel, because for better or worse, s6 had played the long con on Cas, and as far as we knew at the time, the Storyteller had won...

We’ve all discussed the disconnect between Dean and Cas in s15, but so much of that has fallen into debates over which one of them was right or wrong in their disagreement. I don’t think EITHER of them was right, OR wrong. They’ve just been coming at this fundamental question of Free Will from opposite sides, for the entire series.

For billions of years-- or according to 6.20 at least 400 million years or so if Cas was standing at a shoreline watching the first fish flop itself up on land-- Cas has been. S4 established his character, showed us his doubts in Heaven’s plans that led him from loyalty to rebellion, through torture and brainwashing to fighting free of that in the end. That established his journey into understanding free will and humanity, truly, in ways that he expressed in 6.20 that he desperately tried to share with other angels. Most of those other angels... never understood, never had a reason to understand. Like teaching poetry to fish. Even the angels loyal to Cas, or who didn’t want to follow Raphael in the wake of the failed apocalypse, never seemed to understand this.

S8 gave us some additional insight into Cas, through Naomi’s description of him as an angel that never followed orders, at least not completely. That he’d always had a rebellious streak, or perhaps just a spark of curiosity and interest in creation, and humanity specifically. He refused to participate in horrors inflicted on humanity in the name of Heaven and had been punished by it and programmed back into angelic compliance every time.  But until Dean Winchester, he’d never truly rebelled. He’d never rejected Heaven entirely. And even then, that rejection didn’t happen until season twelve. He’d still been trying to maintain a loyalty to the other angels even through s9 when Metatron told him he may drape himself in the flag of Heaven, but he still did everything for one man. I don’t think that was a lie at that point, but I do believe it’s something Cas hadn’t actually admitted to himself until that point. And he wouldn’t admit it to another angel until 12.19, when he told Kelvin in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t acting on Heaven’s behalf, but to spare the Winchesters.

(yep, even then, after the mixtape, after all of that, Cas was still on about Sam and Dean... and even in 13.04 as he argues with the Empty for his freedom, he still frames it in terms of Sam and Dean... ironically the same thing that Dean has taken heat for when talking to Cas, always making it “you, me, and Sam” in 11.23 and the beer run scene and in 12.19... Cas is just as guilty of not being specific as Dean is, for different reasons, but to the same effect)

Back to s6 though. Cas did make his choices. He was adamant (on flashbacks from 6.20) that Dean was “retired,” that he wasn’t to be dragged back into their fight, even as he was desperate to ask Dean for his help. (again, I still blame Sam and his terrible promise he extracted from Dean in 5.22 for that one) Regardless, that choice led Cas down a cascading spiral of worse and worse choices in a desperate attempt to shield Sam and Dean from what I’ll call The Story. Except in doing so, he’d only kept digging the hole for himself deeper and deeper, not realizing that he hadn’t been set up to be the hero, but the villain.

This is the position Chuck seems to desperately want Sam and/or Dean to finally accept in s15:

Chuck: No, this is more, this is….. hope. That’s what’s stopping me. You, you still think that Dean and Cas are gonna fly through those doors just in the nick of time. You still think that you’re the hero of this story. You still think you can win.

And that’s exactly the taunt Metatron used on Cas in 9.18. And it’s exactly the taunt Crowley used on Cas in 6.20:

CROWLEY You kill my hunters. Why can't I kill yours? CASTIEL They're my friends. CROWLEY You can't have friends, not anymore. I mean, my God. You're losing it! CASTIEL I'm fine. CROWLEY Yeah. You're the very picture of mental health. Come on. You don't think I know what this is all about? CASTIEL Enlighten me. CROWLEY The big lie -- the Winchesters still buy it. The good Cas, the righteous Cas. And long as they still believe it, you get to believe it. Well, I got news for you, kitten. A whore is a whore is a whore.

and this is part of a much larger passage-- their entire conversation in Hell-- but the point boils down to this:

CROWLEY Granted. Yes. But just to show you how serious I am about this scheme...How about I float you a little loan? Say, 50 large? 50,000 souls from the pit. You can take them up to heaven. Make quite a showing. It's either this or the Apocalypse all over again. Everything you've worked for -- everything that Sam and Dean have worked for -- gone. You can save us, Castiel. God chose you to save us. And I think...Deep down...You know that.

YOU CAN SAVE EVERYONE, CASTIEL. Dean, Sam, Humanity, Earth-- even Heaven and, grudgingly, Hell too. And in doing so, prove God resurrected you for a PURPOSE. This was what Cas needed, what motivated him the entire year he resisted bowing to Raphael and obediently falling in line while the apocalypse started up again. He could have a purpose, a mission.

Cas had still been struggling with this in Dabb Era. His desperation to “get a win” in 12.19 stemmed directly from this absolute fall into hubris from s6, ending in the release of the Leviathan and Cas’s apparent death again in 7.02. He’s been trying to atone for that guilt ever since.

But in all of this, Cas has never really forgotten what it was to be an angel, what it meant to serve God and to serve Heaven. There was no free will. The few times he questioned his orders, he was punished, tortured, and reprogrammed back into line. He’s fully aware of all of this. For him, learning the extent of Chuck’s manipulation of the story is more a confirmation of his entire experience over billions of years, while that revelation absolutely shattered Dean. For Dean’s entire life-- the blink of an eye for an angel-- he’s believed in very little other than his own personal choices.

Essays have been written about Dean’s underclass upbringing, his life on the fringes of society as a drifter and a con artist, going from town to town under false identities and living a life in the shadows. And yet Dean has always believed that was of his own choice. That he wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else, that he would’ve been bored in a “normal life,” and proved that in season six when he leaves his last chance at a normal life behind with Lisa and Ben and throws himself entirely back into hunting. Because that’s the tragedy. That’s Chuck’s story for both Sam and Dean... they don’t get to be happy.

(this is why I don’t trust Eileen’s story with Sam, fwiw, because that was literally exactly the story Chuck intended her for, exactly the same as Lisa)

This was Sam’s story with Jess from the pilot episode. This was Dean’s story with Cassie, Sam’s story with Amelia... with Rowena... Every time they have a chance at a relationship, Chuck turned it into a tragedy.

But back to the point here...

Dean prized his free will above all else. He’s doubled down on that sentiment even in s15 talking to the girl he didn’t yet know was actually Lilith, confirming that he’d never want to live in a world where all his choices were made for him, or where the whole game he was playing was engineered specifically for him to lose. He’d always stood firm on the point that-- for better or worse-- all of his choices had truly been his own.

(again, why “I didn’t have another choice” is the worst thing any character can say on this show)

For Dean, Chuck’s revelation shattered him, possibly even more than Cas’s betrayal in 6.20 did. And for all he cares for Dean, for all he’s studied Dean and learned about humanity and free will from Dean over the last decade, Cas still can’t understand why, because it’s not the same identity-destroying revelation for him, as an angel who’d had to fight for every choice he’s ever made, as it was for Dean who based his entire worldview on the choices that made him who he is as a person.

And s15 is taking all of these themes from the run up to the end of s6, and turning them inside out.

What makes a hero?

What power do we have against “destiny?”

What power do we have against a seemingly unassailable enemy?

What morally or objectively wrong paths will we be led down before we discover it’s all a trap?

What chance do we have at real happiness, and what would that even look like?

What sacrifices are we willing to make to ensure that humanity overall will prevail against impossible odds?

What ~actually~ needs to be done to stop the eternal cycle of apocalyptic tragedy that Chuck has put them through from the start? (Raphael just wanted to reboot s5, Chuck has shown his hand that horrific tragedy is always his intended endgame, regardless of what form it takes)

Can we achieve a real victory without unleashing an even greater horror on the world for once? (s6 ended with Godstiel eating purgatory, s7 started with the Leviathans escaping into the world, and now Chuck is obsessed with Leviathans and monsters again in s15, while Jack is literally consuming angel hearts and supposedly attempting to gain enough power to kill God... but what will consuming that power make Jack into? He’s already “eaten” Michael, Cas has already stopped Belphegor from “eating Hell” and becoming a new evil god, but Rowena ended up becoming the vessel of Death that brought all those souls back to Hell, effectively neutralizing that particular threat at least for the time being... but this is definitely something I’m still mindful of as the season progresses)

All of these questions were crucial in s6, and throughout the entire series, but this was Cas’s character turning point, and it’s what he’s been fighting his way back from ever since. I can’t help but think that-- like with Belphegor in 15.03, like his choice to return to the Winchesters in 15.06, like his journey to Purgatory with Dean in 15.09-- he’ll be confronted with these specific choices again.

A few other points from these episodes that I think are interesting to keep in mind:

6.17 and the confrontation with Fate herself. If Chuck doesn’t get you, Fate will, or so it would seem. A lot of the themes of this one hit again in 13.19 Funeralia, with why we shouldn’t mess too much with the natural order. I just watched it a couple nights ago, so it’s incredibly fresh in my mind. I still think that episode is incredibly important to what Billie is meddling with in s15, in ways that haven’t entirely been revealed yet.

6.18, and more time travel done right. But also, the Major Sign we all should’ve been more focused on in what Rachel revealed, and what the Winchesters accidentally tipped her off to about Cas. She implied that the Winchesters were becoming a massive drain on Cas’s attention and time in Heaven, when we know the Winchesters had hardly seen Cas all season. When Rachel investigated what Cas was actually up to, she discovered the truth of what he was up to with Crowley, and he was forced to kill her for it. What he wouldn’t do to protect his tenuous shield around the Winchesters? It’s taken them until s15 for them all to finally get on the same page.

6.19, and the pure pain. 

6.20, oh right, THIS is the pure pain.

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want! CASTIEL I know what I'm doing, Dean. DEAN I'm not gonna logic you, okay? I'm saying don't...Just 'cause. I'm asking you not to. That's it. CASTIEL I don't understand.

I think he understands now. Or at least he’s miles closer to understanding.

6.21, okay let’s just take everything from Dean and complete Cas’s fall into the role of Big Bad.

I know I had a point in mind when I started writing this, but I’ve written myself out again :’D

[mittensmorgul]

Sorry if someone has already mentioned this, and if I’m reading into this incorrectly, but with Sam now being connected to God is it paralleling Dean’s connection to Amara? I feel stupid for asking, but I was just curious. Thank you!

Yep, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention it that explicitly yet, but yep.

I mean, we got a visual reminder of the Mark of Cain visibly on Amara in 15.02. That the physical mark that connected Amara and Dean. And in the same scene we got a visual reminder that it’s approximately in the same location as the wound now connecting Chuck and Sam. In the scene where Amara pointed out that Chuck has been weakened, that he’s no longer “whole,” and pointed out that fact was specifically due to this injury.

She even paralleled Chuck’s situation to the majority of her existence where he’d kept her locked away behind that Mark, and compared it directly to what Chuck’s experiencing now as a result of that wound-- literally a thing of his own making. He made that gun that Sam used to injure him.

Oddly enough, because I just wrote this thing about Chuck’s GoT comment about narrative structure and storytelling in Supernatural, this just makes me feel even MORE strongly that the story itself is reminding us over and over again just what a terrible author Chuck is.

And on every possible meta level, and every past incident where a Heaven-Aligned being attempted to force Dean into compliance, to present Fate and Destiny as something he had zero power to change-- every single time these characters have been proven wrong. And yet... Chuck has continued writing the stories that attempt to force TFW into compliance with his desired ending. It’s like he doesn’t know these characters at all, you know? And yet he keeps trying to force them to do His Will instead of their own. And the events of 14.20 were him SNAPPING because he couldn’t take yet another round of his desired tragic ending being foiled by his favorite characters.

Because Dean is clearly wrong in his assessment of what their lives have been and meant. Cas is right in that THEY are real. But Dean’s just feeling SO tragically cut adrift by the revelation that Chuck has literally been FORCING them into these situations over and over again, burying them in the burden of solving increasingly implausible situations only to have an even larger cosmic burden dropped on them. He’s questioning the fundamental foundation he’s built his self-identity on-- the notion that people, families, that HUMANITY ITSELF means something, and that his own choices have meant something in the grand scheme of things.

Their conversation in 15.02 is an interesting reversal of the conversation in 4.22 where Dean first convinced Cas to rebel:

CASTIEL: Try to understand -- this is long foretold. This is your...DEAN: Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn?CASTIEL: What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam.DEAN: You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it. (CASTIEL turns away) Look at me! (DEAN grabs CASTIEL’s shoulder and turns CASTIEL back to face him)You know it! You were gonna help me once, weren't you? You were gonna warn me about all this, before they dragged you back to Bible camp. Help me -- now. Please.CASTIEL: What would you have me do?DEAN: Get me to Sam. We can stop this before it's too late.CASTIEL: I do that, we will all be hunted. We'll all be killed.DEAN: If there is anything worth dying for... this is it.

And right now, I’ve got 6.17 on the TNT loop, and this also feels like another iteration of these big themes that the show has been pounding out for... ever... (reminder that this is after Sam and Dean wake up with reality restored, and Sam asks Cas if he actually killed 50,000 people to keep them safe, and Cas replies that they were never born, which is different than killing them all, so this is a pretty heavy convo and not something flippant):

DEAN Hold on. Uh...So, if you guys went a-and changed everything back, then that whole timeline or whatever, it just got erased?CASTIEL Yeah. More or less.DEAN Well, then, how come he and I remember it?CASTIEL Because I wanted you to remember it.SAM Why?CASTIEL I wanted you to know who Fate really is. She's cruel and capricious.DEAN I'd go so far as "bitch."CASTIEL Well, yeah. You're the ones who taught me that you can make your own destiny. You don't have to be ruled by fate. You can choose freedom. I still believe that that's something worth fighting for. I just wanted you to understand that.

Cas has been fighting Fate and Destiny for a long time, too. He’s been trying to choose Freedom for himself at least this long. THIS is as fundamental to his story going forward as it is to Sam and Dean’s.

And this Freedom is symbolized through Amara having earned her way free of confinement by Chuck, and now Chuck’s confinement represented in the Mark binding him to Sam.

We know that gun was designed to shoot “intent” rather than physical bullets, and that it affects the shooter and shoot-ee identically. So... it begs the question... what was Sam’s intent when he shot Chuck, and how is that manifesting in Chuck’s current state? And Sam’s?

I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT HOW SAM IS LITERALLY AFFECTING CHUCK FOR ONCE, INSTEAD OF THE OTHER WAY AROUND!