One of the subjects that genre shows like to play around with is the idea of ‘fixing’ people – also known as brainwashing or upgrading. There’s lots of words for it. When Naomi yelled at Castiel that she’d 'fixed’ him, that made me go “of course”. We know this story. This is what Castiel’s story has always been.
Because what a story about 'fixing’ people is always about at its core is the fight between free will and the people who think they have the right to control you. Castiel is, was, and always will be a traitor because he chooses freedom. He chooses free will. He’s what Lucifer could have been*, if Lucifer had been choosing free will rather than choosing power.
This is why Cas always comes back – he’s the wild card. He’s free will. You can’t destroy free will, only cage it for a time. It will always break free and it will always be seen as a traitor because it respects no rules for the sake of being rules and no traditions for the sake of being traditions.
To free will, every act must be justified. There is no 'because I say so’.
Lots of people try to control Cas. At the beginning, when we first meet him, he’s under the thumb of the archangels. But – and this is very important – Cas believes that he’s doing what’s right. That is key. That is why he rescues Dean and why he fights Uriel and is unwilling to trust Anna. But there’s Dean, who opens Castiel’s eyes to reality.
So, why choose free will? Why would Cas choose free will? What makes him different than the other angels who’ve fallen (in any sense of the word)?
Cas confesses to Dean in 4x07 that he has doubts. This is something that he’s not willing to admit several episodes later to Anna, another fallen angel, but he admits it here to Dean. Why? Why does he trust Dean?
What does Hester tell us? “The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost.”
What does Samandriel tell us? “I think too much heart was always Castiel’s problem.”
Castiel went down to Hell and touched the soul of a man he was told would save everything, a man that Heaven wanted and needed to protect so that he could serve. He laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder and, in saving Dean, Castiel was lost to Heaven.
Because he saw how Dean suffered and he saw how Dean loved his brother.
And because he could see, he was moved. Because he was moved, he acted. He was given the choice, back in season 4 – Heaven’s path or Dean’s. Heaven promised peace. They promised eternity.
Dean promised nothing. Instead, he laid out the choice for Cas to make – there is a right and a wrong here and you know it. And when Cas hesitated, Dean went for something he already knew would hurt, after only a year (ish) of knowing each other. “We’re done.”
Both of these are direct appeals to Castiel’s heart – that if he searches his heart, he will see that Dean is right about free will mattering and, more simply, that he cares about whether or not Dean is happy.
This, then, is Castiel’s first big test – peace or freedom? Tradition or emotion? Being Stepford in Heaven or messy and broken on Earth?
And so Castiel breaks the rules – not for himself, but for freedom.
Not for his own vision of paradise, but for Dean’s vision of love – messy and broken as it may be.
How the fixers in Heaven must have wailed at seeing their work undone so easily. It took less than a handful of conversations with Dean to undo all of that effort. No wonder Dean Winchester’s influence on Castiel is seen to loom so large.
They don’t know that Castiel has had doubts for many years, they only see what happened after Castiel lit the spark that created a revolution. A revolution that led to a civil war. A civil war that turned into an uprising. An uprising that laid waste to countless angels and devastated Heaven.
How terrifying Dean Winchester must be to them. The man who can make an angel fall, make an angel rebel, make an angel declare himself God. And what a relief it must have been to Naomi to see those hundreds of dead Deans, killed by Castiel’s hand. She fixed Castiel, she believes. She removed the corruption that turned an angel who had always appeared loyal into the biggest and most dangerous traitor since the Morning Star himself (more so; Castiel succeeded where Lucifer failed).
This is the test. Of course killing Dean had to be the test.
But when it comes down to it, Castiel knows what the right choice is, just as Dean knew he would. And Castiel knows that of all the things he might be able to destroy – rules, traditions, demons, angels, Heaven itself – he can’t destroy Dean. He doesn’t have it in him.
“He has this weakness, you see. He likes you.”
Weak. Broken. Lost. Corrupt.
The angels see Dean’s effect on Castiel as the problem. It’s not.
Because the problem is that Dean is only the catalyst. The flaw in Castiel remains. He has too much heart. Because he has heart, he still has will, because it has always been his compassion that has moved him to action. It was his compassion for Dean that first made him reach out and be more than the fearsome angel who threatened to throw a tormented man back into Hell. It was compassion for the weight on Dean’s shoulders that led him to confess his doubts to Dean.
When everything else is stripped away from Cas, his compassion remains. He heals the sick as Emmanuel, he heals the blind as God, he heals children even while under Naomi’s control. In this episode, he tends to Meg’s wounds, even when he’s barely himself.
No matter what you take from Castiel, this remains. This is his core: the angel with too much heart.
Tags:i still feel like yesterday's episode was wall-to-wall 'oops we were queerbaiting all along' but yeah getting back on that horse and none of this is about subtext just text
Original Post: the angel with too much heart
| <input ... > | <select ... ><option ... >Detect language</option><option ... >Afrikaans</option><option ... >Albanian</option><option ... >Amharic</option><option ... >Arabic</option><option ... >Armenian</option><option ... >Azerbaijani</option><option ... >Basque</option><option ... >Belarusian</option><option ... >Bengali</option><option ... >Bosnian</option><option ... >Bulgarian</option><option ... >Catalan</option><option ... >Cebuano</option><option ... >Chichewa</option><option ... >Chinese (Simplified)</option><option ... >Chinese (Traditional)</option><option ... >Corsican</option><option ... >Croatian</option><option ... >Czech</option><option ... >Danish</option><option ... >Dutch</option><option ... >English</option><option ... >Esperanto</option><option ... >Estonian</option><option ... >Filipino</option><option ... >Finnish</option><option ... >French</option><option ... >Frisian</option><option ... >Galician</option><option ... >Georgian</option><option ... >German</option><option ... >Greek</option><option ... >Gujarati</option><option ... >Haitian Creole</option><option ... >Hausa</option><option ... >Hawaiian</option><option ... >Hebrew</option><option ... >Hindi</option><option ... >Hmong</option><option ... >Hungarian</option><option ... >Icelandic</option><option ... >Igbo</option><option ... >Indonesian</option><option ... >Irish</option><option ... >Italian</option><option ... >Japanese</option><option ... >Javanese</option><option ... >Kannada</option><option ... >Kazakh</option><option ... >Khmer</option><option ... >Korean</option><option ... >Kurdish</option><option ... >Kyrgyz</option><option ... >Lao</option><option ... >Latin</option><option ... >Latvian</option><option ... >Lithuanian</option><option ... >Luxembourgish</option><option ... >Macedonian</option><option ... >Malagasy</option><option ... >Malay</option><option ... >Malayalam</option><option ... >Maltese</option><option ... >Maori</option><option ... >Marathi</option><option ... >Mongolian</option><option ... >Myanmar (Burmese)</option><option ... >Nepali</option><option ... >Norwegian</option><option ... >Pashto</option><option ... >Persian</option><option ... >Polish</option><option ... >Portuguese</option><option ... >Punjabi</option><option ... >Romanian</option><option ... >Russian</option><option ... >Samoan</option><option ... >Scots Gaelic</option><option ... >Serbian</option><option ... >Sesotho</option><option ... >Shona</option><option ... >Sindhi</option><option ... >Sinhala</option><option ... >Slovak</option><option ... >Slovenian</option><option ... >Somali</option><option ... >Spanish</option><option ... >Sundanese</option><option ... >Swahili</option><option ... >Swedish</option><option ... >Tajik</option><option ... >Tamil</option><option ... >Telugu</option><option ... >Thai</option><option ... >Turkish</option><option ... >Ukrainian</option><option ... >Urdu</option><option ... >Uzbek</option><option ... >Vietnamese</option><option ... >Welsh</option><option ... >Xhosa</option><option ... >Yiddish</option><option ... >Yoruba</option><option ... >Zulu</option></select> | | <select ... ><option ... >Afrikaans</option><option ... >Albanian</option><option ... >Amharic</option><option ... >Arabic</option><option ... >Armenian</option><option ... >Azerbaijani</option><option ... >Basque</option><option ... >Belarusian</option><option ... >Bengali</option><option ... >Bosnian</option><option ... >Bulgarian</option><option ... >Catalan</option><option ... >Cebuano</option><option ... >Chichewa</option><option ... >Chinese (Simplified)</option><option ... >Chinese (Traditional)</option><option ... >Corsican</option><option ... >Croatian</option><option ... >Czech</option><option ... >Danish</option><option ... >Dutch</option><option ... >English</option><option ... >Esperanto</option><option ... >Estonian</option><option ... >Filipino</option><option ... >Finnish</option><option ... >French</option><option ... >Frisian</option><option ... >Galician</option><option ... >Georgian</option><option ... >German</option><option ... >Greek</option><option ... >Gujarati</option><option ... >Haitian Creole</option><option ... >Hausa</option><option ... >Hawaiian</option><option ... >Hebrew</option><option ... >Hindi</option><option ... >Hmong</option><option ... >Hungarian</option><option ... >Icelandic</option><option ... >Igbo</option><option ... >Indonesian</option><option ... >Irish</option><option ... >Italian</option><option ... >Japanese</option><option ... >Javanese</option><option ... >Kannada</option><option ... >Kazakh</option><option ... >Khmer</option><option ... >Korean</option><option ... >Kurdish</option><option ... >Kyrgyz</option><option ... >Lao</option><option ... >Latin</option><option ... >Latvian</option><option ... >Lithuanian</option><option ... >Luxembourgish</option><option ... >Macedonian</option><option ... >Malagasy</option><option ... >Malay</option><option ... >Malayalam</option><option ... >Maltese</option><option ... >Maori</option><option ... >Marathi</option><option ... >Mongolian</option><option ... >Myanmar (Burmese)</option><option ... >Nepali</option><option ... >Norwegian</option><option ... >Pashto</option><option ... >Persian</option><option ... >Polish</option><option ... >Portuguese</option><option ... >Punjabi</option><option ... >Romanian</option><option ... >Russian</option><option ... >Samoan</option><option ... >Scots Gaelic</option><option ... >Serbian</option><option ... >Sesotho</option><option ... >Shona</option><option ... >Sindhi</option><option ... >Sinhala</option><option ... >Slovak</option><option ... >Slovenian</option><option ... >Somali</option><option ... >Spanish</option><option ... >Sundanese</option><option ... >Swahili</option><option ... >Swedish</option><option ... >Tajik</option><option ... >Tamil</option><option ... >Telugu</option><option ... >Thai</option><option ... >Turkish</option><option ... >Ukrainian</option><option ... >Urdu</option><option ... >Uzbek</option><option ... >Vietnamese</option><option ... >Welsh</option><option ... >Xhosa</option><option ... >Yiddish</option><option ... >Yoruba</option><option ... >Zulu</option></select> | | | | | |
Text-to-speech function is limited to 200 characters
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterfly