Thoughts on SPN 6.20
Sweet god help us all, the summer's only getting worse. And while I'm on the subject, yes, there will be much whining about the weather on this journal over the next couple of months. If there's something that a Chennaiite enjoys, it's getting a platform to gripe about the weather (four seasons: hot, hotter, hottest, rainy.)
Also, I got my exam results today. Passed in first-class in all 4 subjects, which, yay. \o/
And, right! Show? Right, Show.
SPOILERS after the cut.
6.20: The Man Who Would Be King
Because I still fail at pop culture, I was forced to google the title again. This is what I came up with:
The Man Who Would Be King is a 1975 film adapted from the Rudyard Kiplingshort story of the same title. It was adapted and directed by John Huston and starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling (giving a name to the short story's anonymous narrator).
The film follows two rogue ex-non-commissioned officers of the British Raj who set off from 19th century British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan. Kipling is believed to have been inspired by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan during the period of the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire and James Brooke, an Englishman who became the "white Raja" of Sarawak in Borneo.
The plot of the story is given below, and it is both fascinating and terrifying. I love how it applies to this episode. Are we seeing Castiel-Danny parallels here?
There was much about this episode that surprised me - most pleasantly, I must say. The structuring of the whole thing, for one - with Castiel narrating, the snapping back and forth between the what he did immediately after Sam jumped into the Pit and the present, and finally getting that insight into Castiel's head that we'd all been waiting for this season.
And Castiel's head? A mighty interesting place.
Shall I just say I loved the pre-title-card sequence? Shall I? Because, by god it was awesome. "Don't step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish."
... "But come on. Dried dung can only be stacked so high."
... "It was averted by two boys, an old drunk, and a fallen angel. The grand story, and we ripped out the ending. And the rules, and destiny, leaving only freedom, and choice."
And then, looking right at the screen, "let me tell you everything."
And wham! The breaking glass and the title-card! Simply fab. ♥ ♥ ♥
(also, Castiel's sense of humour has improved drastically. Hee. I enjoyed this sequence so much.)
Castiel drops in on Dean in the Impala, spins some spiel about how he's so surprised that Crowley managed to escape, that he's looking for him, and asks Dean what he's up to. Dean does his moment-of-hesitation-where-he-works-his-jaw which is a red-light-indicator that he's about to lie his ass off, and says that Sam's tracking a djinn in Omaha, and that he's going to meet up with him. After all the lying and the awkwardness, however, Dean asks if Cas would call if he got into "real trouble". Cas doesn't answer; he just Flapparates away.
If you were invested in the Dean-Cas dynamic, I suppose there's already hints of tragedy here: both of them are lying through their teeth to each other, and they both hate it, but at the core of it is genuine affection and concern. I am still not invested in Castiel as a character, but this was a really well-done little scene. Well, shit. This whole episode was well-done.
Aaaand then we have... CROWLEY!! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ I am so glad you got him back, Show, you can't even imagine. I hope he sticks around for s7, although that looks unlikely.
Anyhow! We're in Crowley's torture room, which Castiel enters to the sound of lounge music - a disturbing contrast to the eviscerated corpses, blood spatters and implements of torture strewn around. There's one of them - an eviscerated corpse, I mean - that Crowley's working on. Much disgustingness and weird torture follow. I don't know, Show. I'm kinda divided on the torture scenes these days. What Crowley did to that vampire/monster/thing was awful and vastly cringe-inducing.
So okay. Castiel and Crowley are partners - a scenario I genuinely did not see coming. Which is weird, because I'm not that attached to Castiel, and I wrote pages and pages of fic featuring my pet theory: that Balthazar and Crowley were working together, and their dealings had to do something with Souls And Their Mysterious Mechanics. Hell, I have even written misguided!slightly-evil!Cas. I will admit I was blindsided by the very fact that Crowley was alive, leave alone in cahoots with Dean's friggin' pet angel. Well done, Show!
Well, their plans have gone just a wee bit awry. Apparently, Eve was supposed to have opened Purgatory for them - or something like that - but oh yeah: the boys just killed her last week (in a moment of epic badassery). Cas screwed up, Crowley insists. He screwed up and now "the hounds mangled the pheasant, and [Crowley] is upto [his] elbows in it." (Hee. ♥) There's a conflict of interest here, because quite clearly, while Castiel "still consider[s] [himself] the boys' guardian", the Winchesters are also hunting down Crowley. "The stench of the Impala is all over your overcoat," says Crowley in the first of a tiring succession of Dean/Cas injokes. Castiel continues to do what we call around here, "mazhuppify". Which is basically a combination of extraordinarily bad lying and clumsy backtracking. He does a lot of mazhuppifying this episode.
So! We get a flashback as Castiel explains this conflict of interest to us. The Winchesters have taught him to "stand up, and what to stand for", and the awesome "Assbutt!" scene is replayed, along with Cas's explosively gory death in slow-mo. We transition to Castiel being put back together in the next scene, where he finds a bloody and beaten Dean kneeling over where Sam sacrificed himself. He talks about knowing why he'd been put together again, and what he knows he must do.
Meaning, he pulled Sam out of the Cage.
I'll... um. I'll just quote what he has to say about it, and then comment later: "Once again, I went to harrow Hell, to free Sam from Lucifer's Cage. It was... nearly impossible; but I was so full of confidence, of mission -- I see now, that was arrogance. Hubris. Because of course I hadn't truly raised Sam. Not all of him."
There are several things that puzzle me about this, but nothing more than this question: how did you do it, Castiel? I'm fairly sure that it's mentioned in s4 that it took a lot of angels to rescue Dean, and that was supposed to be the easy rescue. This is before Castiel made the deal with Crowley, so it's not like the King asked his subjects to back off and make things easier for the angel. Plus, I'm pretttty sure that Lucifer and Michael are not going to give up their favourite past-time that easily.
Are you really that powerful, Cas? We see later that Raphael can knock Cas around pretty easily, so - how? "It was... nearly impossible" -- ah, don't try to handwave it, Cas. You're not telling everything.
I'm thinking - and this is seriously wild speculation - who else did Cas make a deal with? What did he have to do to get Sam out? Was he forced to leave Sam's soul Down There? Possibly in arrangement with Michael/the devil himself? What?
All this exposition is done over a rehash of the closing scene of s5 - soulless!Sam staring through Lisa's window at Dean trying to live the apple-pie life. Castiel is standing there, invisible to Sam. He looks like he's genuinely expecting Sam to go inside and join his brother. He's disappointed when Sam just turns and stalks away; like it's only then that he realised, "oh man. Maybe I screwed this up."
IDEK. /o\
(also: Sam's expression in the rehash is much colder than in the original scene, where it was more neutral and maybe vaguely speculative. I guess Padalecki realised that he was supposed to have been soulless in that scene and hence deliberately made his expression more sinister. IDK.)
So we get back to Crowley, who asks Castiel to kill the Winchesters. Naturally, Cas refuses. Crowley refuses to underestimate the boys, calls them "those denim-wrapped nightmares", which just made me laugh. Castiel's all, just get on with it and find Purgatory, 'kay? (I have to mention here the cool contrast between Crowley's histrionics and Cas's, um, stoicism, for lack of a vocabulary better word. They make a good pair.) Then he says something I found interesting: "If you don't, we will both die; again and again until the end of time."
I... am afraid I don't understand what he meant by that.
Cut to Bobby and Sam! ... doing some torturing of their own. Hm, Show.
They've tied a demon posing as a hunter to a chair, interrogating him on the whereabouts of Crowley. Apart from the standard snark, Sam is giving off some Robo!Sam vibes this scene. Maybe it's the smirk, maybe it's his pose, maybe it's just that he's torturing, I don't know. I could go on a meta-tangent here, but I'd be a) out of my depth b) sucking out the fun from the whole thing and c) stretching this recap too friggin' long - I still have about 30 minutes of episode to cover.
Oh god. All this for ten minutes of actual Show. *smacks self* Brevity, emmram, brevity!
So it turns out that since the Campbells aren't around anymore, the demons are bringing in the monsters for Crowley to torture info out of (or just conduct weird experiments on). So I guess that's about the importance the Campbells are getting this season. I guess they served their purpose in Cas and Crowley's Grand Plan - not just in terms of experience and expertise, but also as a cover. If demons were to do this, they would surely be caught, like what happened to Random Demon right here. But the Campbells? One of the most respected hunting families out there, and the perfect smokescreen for Crowley's real purpose.
Anyway. The torture continues - there's holy water strewn around, and Sam finally pulls out the ~knife~. Bobby sticks it in the demon's thigh and twists, demanding to know Crowley's location. While this is happening, Dean arrives, motions for Sam to come talk to him in private.
Bobby joins them, and both he and Sam are anxious if Dean told Castiel the truth about their suspicions that he's working with Crowley. Dean assures them that he hasn't, but is clearly upset about the whole thing. He wants to give Castiel the benefit of the doubt. He insists that Castiel could've just made a mistake, maybe burned the wrong bones. How can you suspect a friend, he asks. This instantly gets my hackles up, because I haven't forgotten him and Sam and s4, but-- okay, yeah. I'll move on.
Both Bobby and Sam go on about how they don't want to believe it, but that they just don't know anything for sure, and that they need to be prepared. Sam goes even so far as to say that he'd "die for [Castiel]", which, woah. Okay, then. (i am secretly delighted at that.) Bobby hopes it's not the case, but if there's even a slim chance that Castiel's become a "Superman gone darkside", they'd better "stock up on some Kryptonite."
Castiel is standing right behind them, by the way. He's listening in, invisible to everybody. It's... rather frightening.
(dean tells sam at the end of the superman comment, "this makes you lois lane." make your mind up, show! which part of fandom do you want to tease this episode?)
They go back to their efforts to find Crowley, and Castiel is Officially Worried. "The worst part was Dean," Castiel tells us, "trying so hard to be loyal, even with every instinct telling him otherwise." There's something about the way he looks at Dean at this point that really pulled on my heartstrings. Oh, Cas.
More torture before the demon finally gives: they don't report to Crowley directly, but go through a 'Dispatcher' called Ellsworth. This Ellsworth... well. Let's just let Castiel say it. "If there was ever a demon counterpart to Bobby Singer, Ellsworth would be it."
... Right down to the jacket and the hat! And dealing with and organising several hunter-demons! Except, he has bowls of blood to communicate, not phones, and I was laughing so hard. Even the same mannerisms! Given Crowley set this up, I can only imagine how much respect Crowley must have for Bobby Singer. After all, Bobby did manage to wiggle out of a deal with the King of the Crossroads.
So off Castiel goes to clean up his dirty trail. He kills Ellsworth and the other demons present, removes all traces of evidence. So when Dean, Sam and Bobby do burst into Ellsworth's hideout, they find nothing. Castiel is there, invisible of course, monologuing away.
Time for another flashback! So after Castiel rescued Sam, he went back to Heaven. Apparently, Castiel prefers "the eternal Tuesday afternoon of an autistic man who drowned in his bathtub in 1953." There, he meets up with 'ten-minute-wonder' Rachel and a whole bunch of angels, all dressed formally. Quite the corporate machine, Heaven. So they're surprised and happy to see him back in Heaven, convinced that God brought him back to lead them.
Cas disagrees; so what does God want, asks Rachel. For you to have freedom, replies Castiel. And what do we do with this freedom, Rachel asks, looking at her compatriots like it's the most alien concept she's heard. It's a pretty good question, actually. I lingered on this briefly while talking about 6.03: The Third Man - freedom is good and everything, but it is also incredibly scary. Castiel, as we can see, doesn't deal with it very well.
In fact, what's Castiel's current opinion on freedom? "Freedom is a length of rope; God wants you to hang yourself with it."
Ouch.
Right. So he talks about how his first few weeks back in Heaven were difficult, and--
Wait. Weeks? WHAT. Show, you are really fucking up your timeline this year, which is rather uncharacteristic of you. I'll expand on this later, but for now? FAIL, Show.
He goes to visit Raphael, who is apparently in Ken Lay's Heaven. Uh huh. Okay, then. "I still question his admittance here." Hee.
Also, hi there, old!Raphael! I like you much better than lady!Raphael. So Raphael's all about taking over Heaven and getting the Apocalypse rolling again by freeing Michael and Lucifer. He tells Castiel to pledge allegiance to him, to atone for rebelling against him and all of Heaven. Castiel, naturally, refuses. For all that Raphael says that angels were "built to follow" and not for freedom, Castiel still wants to stop him.
Raphael just goes, "Really," in this low, disdainful voice and opens his hand to Grace-Blast Castiel into his heaven, leaving him coughing blood into the grass. I love this guy. He's friggin' brilliant as Raphael. That casual dismissal of Castiel, like brushing away an insect off his shoulder, was perfectly done. ♥
We get back to Bobby and the boys in Ellsworth's cabin (oh man, I now kinda want to see how Bobby'd react to seeing Ellsworth...) and find it clean - too clean. Dean wants to call Cas, and when Sam and Bobby pull their Dubious!Faces out, he pleads Castiel's case - he talks about all that Castiel has done for them, sacrificed for them, and that the least they can do is give him the benefit of the doubt. Um, okay, Dean. Whatever. You've not been terribly sympathetic to Cas this whole season, so this impassioned speech kinda hit me as... weird. Out of the blue. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
Sam decides to give his brother's plea a chance (oh, Sam. ♥) and prays for Castiel to arrive. Nothing happens. Then Dean prays. Again, nothing. Castiel is right there, of course, being a creepy shit (I'm sorry, but the fact that he eavesdrops on them while invisible is just freaking me out), but doesn't appear to them. Obviously, they would "have questions that [he could] not answer."
Dean's disappointed, but they assume he's just busy with the Civil war and everything, and talk about their next move. That's when they're ambushed by Crowley's demons. Sam and Bobby are slammed through walls and against tables, while a demon pins Dean and starts pummeling his face. Castiel is caught just as much by surprise, and has an interesting choice to make: to appear and smite the demons and antagonise Crowley, or... just let it be. As always, the boys trump everything else, so he appears and goes all Smitey McSmiterton on the demons. "For a brief moment," he says, "I was me again."
Dean takes the opportunity to point out to Bobby and Sam that, look, there Castiel was, saving their asses again. They apologise to Castiel; admit that they'd been hunting for Crowley and actually suspected Cas of working with him. Castiel grabs on to the lifeline wholeheartedly ("will wonders never cease. They were actually trusting me again.") and goes all Quietly Affronted. The Winchesters and Bobby are even more apologetic, admitting that the idea of Castiel siding with Crowley was absurd. Castiel smoothly slides from Affronted to Magnanimous, saying all is forgotten.
And then, because he is a mazhuppifying idiot, overdoes it by saying, "It is a little absurd though. Superman going to the darkside." I swear I smacked my forehead at that point. Dean's smile fades, Sam's just about cottoning on, and Bobby doesn't realise it right away. "I guess we can put away the Kryptonite," Dean says, giving Cas one last test. Castiel fails spectacularly by smiling and going, "Exactly."
Castiel, you're a shitty liar. If Robo!Sam were here, he'd've seen through you in two minutes.
Castiel confronts Crowley - how dare he send demons to kill the Winchesters? Crowley's all, you killed my men, why can't I yours? Crowley says Castiel is this insistent on protecting the Winchesters, because, well, they still think he's good and righteous, and their belief makes Cas believe a little in it, too. As Crowley continues to taunt him, Castiel just says, screw this and slams Crowley into a wall, warning that if the demon so much as touched a hair on the Winchesters' heads, their deal was off. Aaand he Flapparates, leaving a very disgruntled Crowley ("this is not how synergy works!").
Flashback time! So okay, Raphael's clearly much stronger than Castiel; he's definitely not going to win fighting fair. So he goes to an "old friend" for advice - meaning, he goes to Dean (he's an old friend already?). However, watching Dean live his Normal Life, he doesn't have the heart to burden the hunter with his problems. That's when Crowley drops in, and offers a deal that would "help [Castiel] help him help [themselves]." Yeah.
"I'm an angel, you ass," Castiel says, "I don't have a soul to sell."
Yes, that deserved its own paragraph because I found it awesome. So Crowley's all, hear me out, I've got a plan that will guarantee happy endings all 'round. Castiel first refuses, then casts a sort of wistful look at Dean before following Crowley. So they go to Crowley-modified Hell, which apparently consists of waiting forever in endless queues. Hee. Hellish, indeed.
So Crowley asks what Castiel plans to do about the Raphael situation. "Submit or die," says Cas, but Crowley insists that he resist. After all, he's got his own legion of admirers who think he's God's Chosen; he could gather his own army to go against Raphael's. In other words, kickstart a Heavenly Civil War. Ooooh.
Crowley keeps going - maybe God brought Castiel back so that he could lead Heaven? Maybe this was just his destiny; maybe he really was His favourite? And Castiel is considering it, oh yes he is, he's clearly been thinking along the same lines somewhere in the back of his mind. But it would require a lot of power, Castiel argues, much more than he already has.
That's where Purgatory comes in, Crowley says, an untapped well of millions of monster souls, just waiting to be used as angel-fuel. So how do they find it, when nobody else has? Why, gather up some monster experts, round up the Alphas, and get the info from them, of course. Crowley wonders if he can get the Winchesters to do it for them; Castiel flat out refuses to allow Dean, now peacefully retired, back into the fray. So, okay, Samuel Campbell it is, then, to be brought back from the dead.
Noooooooooooow. Robo!Sam mentioned that one of the first things he did after being resurrected was join Samuel Campbell in hunting. If at all there was an interval, it was likely a small one. Except - this whole Purgatory plan comes after Castiel restores Sam, spends weeks in Heaven, and then meets Crowley! So what's Robo!Sam been doing all this while? Either this is Timeline Fail (I wouldn't put it past Show; I'm still boggling over the '2011' gaffe from 6.18: Frontierland) or Crowley'd already resurrected Samuel, fully confident that he could get Castiel on board with his plan. But no. Even for that, he ought to have already known that the Castiel v Raphael conflict had escalated, and that didn't really come to a head until, like Castiel said, weeks after he'd returned to Heaven!
Anyway. Moving on. Castiel's all, okay, but this is going to take a long time and I need the power now. So Crowley says he'd loan the angel 50,000 souls from the Pit, let Castiel show that he's ready to take on Raphael. "God chose you to save us all," Crowley says, and Castiel buys it, swallows it all down.
So when he next meets Raphael, he gives him a taste of his souped-up Grace-Blast, and declares that the angels are either on Raphael's side, or his side. And soooo it all starts.
We cut to the present, where the Winchesters and Bobby are still hanging around Ellsworth's cabin. Dean prays for Castiel to arrive, and when he does, they trap him in a ring of holy fire. Castiel is shocked - shocked, I tell you! "We gotta talk," Dean says, "about Superman. And Kryptonite." Oops, thinks Castiel. Or the Enochian version of it, anyway.
So they've figured out that Castiel's been watching them ("you know who spies on people, Cas? Spies!" Profound, Dean.), while Castiel still - very unsuccessfully - tries to cover his butt. How did this place get so clean of evidence. How come Castiel managed to burn the wrong bones. Castiel blusters on before Dean goes, look me in the eye, and tell me you're not working with Crowley. Castiel doesn't answer, and that's as good as a straight-up confession.
How can you do this, asks Sam. How can you open Purgatory and not expect to cause vast damage? To get to souls to defeat Raphael, says Castiel, they need to trust him on this. Sam asks just how they're supposed to trust him now, and, uh, I'm getting uncomfortably strong s4-vibes here. Particularly the end of 4.21. That scene was awesome, but friggin' painful.
Then Castiel reveals: he was the one who pulled Sam out. Dean and Bobby are surprised, but Sam's... well. His reaction looks to me like Cas's confession just confirmed what he'd already been wondering, and this combined with his little moment toward the end of 6.19 where he looked like he was remembering something, makes me wonder if he has vague memories of Castiel resurrecting him.
Then Sam asks: did you leave my soul down there on purpose? How could you think that, asks Cas, distressed, but yeah. Sam's not letting it go. I would love to have that question answered.
Castiel continues to try and justify, but Dean tells him he's made the wrong choice. Castiel ought to have come to him first. They could've dealt with it - Castiel didn't need to go behind everybody's backs and "make a deal with the devil."
They hear the sound of hundreds of demons beginning to swoop down on the cabin, and Castiel says it's too late to turn back now. Dean insists they can still fix this, but Castiel says, "it's not broken!" He yells at them to escape, and just as Dean is leaving, he turns back, and he and Cas share a ~lingering and meaningful~ gaze. Okay, then.
Crowley arrives at the cabin and frees Castiel from the holy fire. And they have... a conversation, at the end of which Crowley has effectively tried to accuse the Winchesters of holding Cas back, and tried to feed Castiel's pride. Cas dismisses him from his sight. Crowley leaves with this parting shot: "You know the difference between you and me? I know what I am. What are you, Castiel? What exactly are you willing to do?"
In the final (thank god) scene, we are in Bobby's house, where Dean is sleeping on the couch with angel-repelling sigils painted over the windows. That doesn't stop Castiel from Flapparating there, however, as apparently they "got a few of [the sigils] wrong." So why're you here, Dean asks.
Castiel wants Dean to understand that he's doing this for Dean, because of Dean. Because Dean taught him freedom, and free will--
"You're a friggin' child, you know that?" Dean interrupts. "Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want!"
Castiel assures him that he knows what he's doing, thank you very much, but Dean tells him: just stop it. All of it. Just 'cause. He confesses that next to Sam, Castiel and Bobby are the closest things he has to family. He goes so far as to consider Castiel like a brother, which as we know is about the highest estimation that Dean can hold anyone. Castiel is defiant however; he's going to go ahead with his plan, and Dean can do whatever he wants to try and stop him. Aaand he Flapparates right out.
Finally we have narrator!Castiel, who's telling all of this to God. Am I doing the right thing here, he asks, one last time. Give me a sign. "Because if you don't, I'm gonna ch- I'm gonna do whatever I must." Ch - change? choose? what?
Castiel waits, but God does not answer.
End episode.
Congratulations, Show. Not only did this episode somehow manage to tie three seemingly disparate storylines together, it also made me enjoy forty minutes of exposition and Castiel-monologue. I don't know how you did it, but you did.
Also, I got my exam results today. Passed in first-class in all 4 subjects, which, yay. \o/
And, right! Show? Right, Show.
SPOILERS after the cut.
6.20: The Man Who Would Be King
Because I still fail at pop culture, I was forced to google the title again. This is what I came up with:
The Man Who Would Be King is a 1975 film adapted from the Rudyard Kiplingshort story of the same title. It was adapted and directed by John Huston and starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling (giving a name to the short story's anonymous narrator).
The film follows two rogue ex-non-commissioned officers of the British Raj who set off from 19th century British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan. Kipling is believed to have been inspired by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan during the period of the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire and James Brooke, an Englishman who became the "white Raja" of Sarawak in Borneo.
The plot of the story is given below, and it is both fascinating and terrifying. I love how it applies to this episode. Are we seeing Castiel-Danny parallels here?
There was much about this episode that surprised me - most pleasantly, I must say. The structuring of the whole thing, for one - with Castiel narrating, the snapping back and forth between the what he did immediately after Sam jumped into the Pit and the present, and finally getting that insight into Castiel's head that we'd all been waiting for this season.
And Castiel's head? A mighty interesting place.
Shall I just say I loved the pre-title-card sequence? Shall I? Because, by god it was awesome. "Don't step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish."
... "But come on. Dried dung can only be stacked so high."
... "It was averted by two boys, an old drunk, and a fallen angel. The grand story, and we ripped out the ending. And the rules, and destiny, leaving only freedom, and choice."
And then, looking right at the screen, "let me tell you everything."
And wham! The breaking glass and the title-card! Simply fab. ♥ ♥ ♥
(also, Castiel's sense of humour has improved drastically. Hee. I enjoyed this sequence so much.)
Castiel drops in on Dean in the Impala, spins some spiel about how he's so surprised that Crowley managed to escape, that he's looking for him, and asks Dean what he's up to. Dean does his moment-of-hesitation-where-he-works-his-jaw which is a red-light-indicator that he's about to lie his ass off, and says that Sam's tracking a djinn in Omaha, and that he's going to meet up with him. After all the lying and the awkwardness, however, Dean asks if Cas would call if he got into "real trouble". Cas doesn't answer; he just Flapparates away.
If you were invested in the Dean-Cas dynamic, I suppose there's already hints of tragedy here: both of them are lying through their teeth to each other, and they both hate it, but at the core of it is genuine affection and concern. I am still not invested in Castiel as a character, but this was a really well-done little scene. Well, shit. This whole episode was well-done.
Aaaand then we have... CROWLEY!! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ I am so glad you got him back, Show, you can't even imagine. I hope he sticks around for s7, although that looks unlikely.
Anyhow! We're in Crowley's torture room, which Castiel enters to the sound of lounge music - a disturbing contrast to the eviscerated corpses, blood spatters and implements of torture strewn around. There's one of them - an eviscerated corpse, I mean - that Crowley's working on. Much disgustingness and weird torture follow. I don't know, Show. I'm kinda divided on the torture scenes these days. What Crowley did to that vampire/monster/thing was awful and vastly cringe-inducing.
So okay. Castiel and Crowley are partners - a scenario I genuinely did not see coming. Which is weird, because I'm not that attached to Castiel, and I wrote pages and pages of fic featuring my pet theory: that Balthazar and Crowley were working together, and their dealings had to do something with Souls And Their Mysterious Mechanics. Hell, I have even written misguided!slightly-evil!Cas. I will admit I was blindsided by the very fact that Crowley was alive, leave alone in cahoots with Dean's friggin' pet angel. Well done, Show!
Well, their plans have gone just a wee bit awry. Apparently, Eve was supposed to have opened Purgatory for them - or something like that - but oh yeah: the boys just killed her last week (in a moment of epic badassery). Cas screwed up, Crowley insists. He screwed up and now "the hounds mangled the pheasant, and [Crowley] is upto [his] elbows in it." (Hee. ♥) There's a conflict of interest here, because quite clearly, while Castiel "still consider[s] [himself] the boys' guardian", the Winchesters are also hunting down Crowley. "The stench of the Impala is all over your overcoat," says Crowley in the first of a tiring succession of Dean/Cas injokes. Castiel continues to do what we call around here, "mazhuppify". Which is basically a combination of extraordinarily bad lying and clumsy backtracking. He does a lot of mazhuppifying this episode.
So! We get a flashback as Castiel explains this conflict of interest to us. The Winchesters have taught him to "stand up, and what to stand for", and the awesome "Assbutt!" scene is replayed, along with Cas's explosively gory death in slow-mo. We transition to Castiel being put back together in the next scene, where he finds a bloody and beaten Dean kneeling over where Sam sacrificed himself. He talks about knowing why he'd been put together again, and what he knows he must do.
Meaning, he pulled Sam out of the Cage.
I'll... um. I'll just quote what he has to say about it, and then comment later: "Once again, I went to harrow Hell, to free Sam from Lucifer's Cage. It was... nearly impossible; but I was so full of confidence, of mission -- I see now, that was arrogance. Hubris. Because of course I hadn't truly raised Sam. Not all of him."
There are several things that puzzle me about this, but nothing more than this question: how did you do it, Castiel? I'm fairly sure that it's mentioned in s4 that it took a lot of angels to rescue Dean, and that was supposed to be the easy rescue. This is before Castiel made the deal with Crowley, so it's not like the King asked his subjects to back off and make things easier for the angel. Plus, I'm pretttty sure that Lucifer and Michael are not going to give up their favourite past-time that easily.
Are you really that powerful, Cas? We see later that Raphael can knock Cas around pretty easily, so - how? "It was... nearly impossible" -- ah, don't try to handwave it, Cas. You're not telling everything.
I'm thinking - and this is seriously wild speculation - who else did Cas make a deal with? What did he have to do to get Sam out? Was he forced to leave Sam's soul Down There? Possibly in arrangement with Michael/the devil himself? What?
All this exposition is done over a rehash of the closing scene of s5 - soulless!Sam staring through Lisa's window at Dean trying to live the apple-pie life. Castiel is standing there, invisible to Sam. He looks like he's genuinely expecting Sam to go inside and join his brother. He's disappointed when Sam just turns and stalks away; like it's only then that he realised, "oh man. Maybe I screwed this up."
IDEK. /o\
(also: Sam's expression in the rehash is much colder than in the original scene, where it was more neutral and maybe vaguely speculative. I guess Padalecki realised that he was supposed to have been soulless in that scene and hence deliberately made his expression more sinister. IDK.)
So we get back to Crowley, who asks Castiel to kill the Winchesters. Naturally, Cas refuses. Crowley refuses to underestimate the boys, calls them "those denim-wrapped nightmares", which just made me laugh. Castiel's all, just get on with it and find Purgatory, 'kay? (I have to mention here the cool contrast between Crowley's histrionics and Cas's, um, stoicism, for lack of a vocabulary better word. They make a good pair.) Then he says something I found interesting: "If you don't, we will both die; again and again until the end of time."
I... am afraid I don't understand what he meant by that.
Cut to Bobby and Sam! ... doing some torturing of their own. Hm, Show.
They've tied a demon posing as a hunter to a chair, interrogating him on the whereabouts of Crowley. Apart from the standard snark, Sam is giving off some Robo!Sam vibes this scene. Maybe it's the smirk, maybe it's his pose, maybe it's just that he's torturing, I don't know. I could go on a meta-tangent here, but I'd be a) out of my depth b) sucking out the fun from the whole thing and c) stretching this recap too friggin' long - I still have about 30 minutes of episode to cover.
Oh god. All this for ten minutes of actual Show. *smacks self* Brevity, emmram, brevity!
So it turns out that since the Campbells aren't around anymore, the demons are bringing in the monsters for Crowley to torture info out of (or just conduct weird experiments on). So I guess that's about the importance the Campbells are getting this season. I guess they served their purpose in Cas and Crowley's Grand Plan - not just in terms of experience and expertise, but also as a cover. If demons were to do this, they would surely be caught, like what happened to Random Demon right here. But the Campbells? One of the most respected hunting families out there, and the perfect smokescreen for Crowley's real purpose.
Anyway. The torture continues - there's holy water strewn around, and Sam finally pulls out the ~knife~. Bobby sticks it in the demon's thigh and twists, demanding to know Crowley's location. While this is happening, Dean arrives, motions for Sam to come talk to him in private.
Bobby joins them, and both he and Sam are anxious if Dean told Castiel the truth about their suspicions that he's working with Crowley. Dean assures them that he hasn't, but is clearly upset about the whole thing. He wants to give Castiel the benefit of the doubt. He insists that Castiel could've just made a mistake, maybe burned the wrong bones. How can you suspect a friend, he asks. This instantly gets my hackles up, because I haven't forgotten him and Sam and s4, but-- okay, yeah. I'll move on.
Both Bobby and Sam go on about how they don't want to believe it, but that they just don't know anything for sure, and that they need to be prepared. Sam goes even so far as to say that he'd "die for [Castiel]", which, woah. Okay, then. (i am secretly delighted at that.) Bobby hopes it's not the case, but if there's even a slim chance that Castiel's become a "Superman gone darkside", they'd better "stock up on some Kryptonite."
Castiel is standing right behind them, by the way. He's listening in, invisible to everybody. It's... rather frightening.
(dean tells sam at the end of the superman comment, "this makes you lois lane." make your mind up, show! which part of fandom do you want to tease this episode?)
They go back to their efforts to find Crowley, and Castiel is Officially Worried. "The worst part was Dean," Castiel tells us, "trying so hard to be loyal, even with every instinct telling him otherwise." There's something about the way he looks at Dean at this point that really pulled on my heartstrings. Oh, Cas.
More torture before the demon finally gives: they don't report to Crowley directly, but go through a 'Dispatcher' called Ellsworth. This Ellsworth... well. Let's just let Castiel say it. "If there was ever a demon counterpart to Bobby Singer, Ellsworth would be it."
... Right down to the jacket and the hat! And dealing with and organising several hunter-demons! Except, he has bowls of blood to communicate, not phones, and I was laughing so hard. Even the same mannerisms! Given Crowley set this up, I can only imagine how much respect Crowley must have for Bobby Singer. After all, Bobby did manage to wiggle out of a deal with the King of the Crossroads.
So off Castiel goes to clean up his dirty trail. He kills Ellsworth and the other demons present, removes all traces of evidence. So when Dean, Sam and Bobby do burst into Ellsworth's hideout, they find nothing. Castiel is there, invisible of course, monologuing away.
Time for another flashback! So after Castiel rescued Sam, he went back to Heaven. Apparently, Castiel prefers "the eternal Tuesday afternoon of an autistic man who drowned in his bathtub in 1953." There, he meets up with 'ten-minute-wonder' Rachel and a whole bunch of angels, all dressed formally. Quite the corporate machine, Heaven. So they're surprised and happy to see him back in Heaven, convinced that God brought him back to lead them.
Cas disagrees; so what does God want, asks Rachel. For you to have freedom, replies Castiel. And what do we do with this freedom, Rachel asks, looking at her compatriots like it's the most alien concept she's heard. It's a pretty good question, actually. I lingered on this briefly while talking about 6.03: The Third Man - freedom is good and everything, but it is also incredibly scary. Castiel, as we can see, doesn't deal with it very well.
In fact, what's Castiel's current opinion on freedom? "Freedom is a length of rope; God wants you to hang yourself with it."
Ouch.
Right. So he talks about how his first few weeks back in Heaven were difficult, and--
Wait. Weeks? WHAT. Show, you are really fucking up your timeline this year, which is rather uncharacteristic of you. I'll expand on this later, but for now? FAIL, Show.
He goes to visit Raphael, who is apparently in Ken Lay's Heaven. Uh huh. Okay, then. "I still question his admittance here." Hee.
Also, hi there, old!Raphael! I like you much better than lady!Raphael. So Raphael's all about taking over Heaven and getting the Apocalypse rolling again by freeing Michael and Lucifer. He tells Castiel to pledge allegiance to him, to atone for rebelling against him and all of Heaven. Castiel, naturally, refuses. For all that Raphael says that angels were "built to follow" and not for freedom, Castiel still wants to stop him.
Raphael just goes, "Really," in this low, disdainful voice and opens his hand to Grace-Blast Castiel into his heaven, leaving him coughing blood into the grass. I love this guy. He's friggin' brilliant as Raphael. That casual dismissal of Castiel, like brushing away an insect off his shoulder, was perfectly done. ♥
We get back to Bobby and the boys in Ellsworth's cabin (oh man, I now kinda want to see how Bobby'd react to seeing Ellsworth...) and find it clean - too clean. Dean wants to call Cas, and when Sam and Bobby pull their Dubious!Faces out, he pleads Castiel's case - he talks about all that Castiel has done for them, sacrificed for them, and that the least they can do is give him the benefit of the doubt. Um, okay, Dean. Whatever. You've not been terribly sympathetic to Cas this whole season, so this impassioned speech kinda hit me as... weird. Out of the blue. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
Sam decides to give his brother's plea a chance (oh, Sam. ♥) and prays for Castiel to arrive. Nothing happens. Then Dean prays. Again, nothing. Castiel is right there, of course, being a creepy shit (I'm sorry, but the fact that he eavesdrops on them while invisible is just freaking me out), but doesn't appear to them. Obviously, they would "have questions that [he could] not answer."
Dean's disappointed, but they assume he's just busy with the Civil war and everything, and talk about their next move. That's when they're ambushed by Crowley's demons. Sam and Bobby are slammed through walls and against tables, while a demon pins Dean and starts pummeling his face. Castiel is caught just as much by surprise, and has an interesting choice to make: to appear and smite the demons and antagonise Crowley, or... just let it be. As always, the boys trump everything else, so he appears and goes all Smitey McSmiterton on the demons. "For a brief moment," he says, "I was me again."
Dean takes the opportunity to point out to Bobby and Sam that, look, there Castiel was, saving their asses again. They apologise to Castiel; admit that they'd been hunting for Crowley and actually suspected Cas of working with him. Castiel grabs on to the lifeline wholeheartedly ("will wonders never cease. They were actually trusting me again.") and goes all Quietly Affronted. The Winchesters and Bobby are even more apologetic, admitting that the idea of Castiel siding with Crowley was absurd. Castiel smoothly slides from Affronted to Magnanimous, saying all is forgotten.
And then, because he is a mazhuppifying idiot, overdoes it by saying, "It is a little absurd though. Superman going to the darkside." I swear I smacked my forehead at that point. Dean's smile fades, Sam's just about cottoning on, and Bobby doesn't realise it right away. "I guess we can put away the Kryptonite," Dean says, giving Cas one last test. Castiel fails spectacularly by smiling and going, "Exactly."
Castiel, you're a shitty liar. If Robo!Sam were here, he'd've seen through you in two minutes.
Castiel confronts Crowley - how dare he send demons to kill the Winchesters? Crowley's all, you killed my men, why can't I yours? Crowley says Castiel is this insistent on protecting the Winchesters, because, well, they still think he's good and righteous, and their belief makes Cas believe a little in it, too. As Crowley continues to taunt him, Castiel just says, screw this and slams Crowley into a wall, warning that if the demon so much as touched a hair on the Winchesters' heads, their deal was off. Aaand he Flapparates, leaving a very disgruntled Crowley ("this is not how synergy works!").
Flashback time! So okay, Raphael's clearly much stronger than Castiel; he's definitely not going to win fighting fair. So he goes to an "old friend" for advice - meaning, he goes to Dean (he's an old friend already?). However, watching Dean live his Normal Life, he doesn't have the heart to burden the hunter with his problems. That's when Crowley drops in, and offers a deal that would "help [Castiel] help him help [themselves]." Yeah.
"I'm an angel, you ass," Castiel says, "I don't have a soul to sell."
Yes, that deserved its own paragraph because I found it awesome. So Crowley's all, hear me out, I've got a plan that will guarantee happy endings all 'round. Castiel first refuses, then casts a sort of wistful look at Dean before following Crowley. So they go to Crowley-modified Hell, which apparently consists of waiting forever in endless queues. Hee. Hellish, indeed.
So Crowley asks what Castiel plans to do about the Raphael situation. "Submit or die," says Cas, but Crowley insists that he resist. After all, he's got his own legion of admirers who think he's God's Chosen; he could gather his own army to go against Raphael's. In other words, kickstart a Heavenly Civil War. Ooooh.
Crowley keeps going - maybe God brought Castiel back so that he could lead Heaven? Maybe this was just his destiny; maybe he really was His favourite? And Castiel is considering it, oh yes he is, he's clearly been thinking along the same lines somewhere in the back of his mind. But it would require a lot of power, Castiel argues, much more than he already has.
That's where Purgatory comes in, Crowley says, an untapped well of millions of monster souls, just waiting to be used as angel-fuel. So how do they find it, when nobody else has? Why, gather up some monster experts, round up the Alphas, and get the info from them, of course. Crowley wonders if he can get the Winchesters to do it for them; Castiel flat out refuses to allow Dean, now peacefully retired, back into the fray. So, okay, Samuel Campbell it is, then, to be brought back from the dead.
Noooooooooooow. Robo!Sam mentioned that one of the first things he did after being resurrected was join Samuel Campbell in hunting. If at all there was an interval, it was likely a small one. Except - this whole Purgatory plan comes after Castiel restores Sam, spends weeks in Heaven, and then meets Crowley! So what's Robo!Sam been doing all this while? Either this is Timeline Fail (I wouldn't put it past Show; I'm still boggling over the '2011' gaffe from 6.18: Frontierland) or Crowley'd already resurrected Samuel, fully confident that he could get Castiel on board with his plan. But no. Even for that, he ought to have already known that the Castiel v Raphael conflict had escalated, and that didn't really come to a head until, like Castiel said, weeks after he'd returned to Heaven!
Anyway. Moving on. Castiel's all, okay, but this is going to take a long time and I need the power now. So Crowley says he'd loan the angel 50,000 souls from the Pit, let Castiel show that he's ready to take on Raphael. "God chose you to save us all," Crowley says, and Castiel buys it, swallows it all down.
So when he next meets Raphael, he gives him a taste of his souped-up Grace-Blast, and declares that the angels are either on Raphael's side, or his side. And soooo it all starts.
We cut to the present, where the Winchesters and Bobby are still hanging around Ellsworth's cabin. Dean prays for Castiel to arrive, and when he does, they trap him in a ring of holy fire. Castiel is shocked - shocked, I tell you! "We gotta talk," Dean says, "about Superman. And Kryptonite." Oops, thinks Castiel. Or the Enochian version of it, anyway.
So they've figured out that Castiel's been watching them ("you know who spies on people, Cas? Spies!" Profound, Dean.), while Castiel still - very unsuccessfully - tries to cover his butt. How did this place get so clean of evidence. How come Castiel managed to burn the wrong bones. Castiel blusters on before Dean goes, look me in the eye, and tell me you're not working with Crowley. Castiel doesn't answer, and that's as good as a straight-up confession.
How can you do this, asks Sam. How can you open Purgatory and not expect to cause vast damage? To get to souls to defeat Raphael, says Castiel, they need to trust him on this. Sam asks just how they're supposed to trust him now, and, uh, I'm getting uncomfortably strong s4-vibes here. Particularly the end of 4.21. That scene was awesome, but friggin' painful.
Then Castiel reveals: he was the one who pulled Sam out. Dean and Bobby are surprised, but Sam's... well. His reaction looks to me like Cas's confession just confirmed what he'd already been wondering, and this combined with his little moment toward the end of 6.19 where he looked like he was remembering something, makes me wonder if he has vague memories of Castiel resurrecting him.
Then Sam asks: did you leave my soul down there on purpose? How could you think that, asks Cas, distressed, but yeah. Sam's not letting it go. I would love to have that question answered.
Castiel continues to try and justify, but Dean tells him he's made the wrong choice. Castiel ought to have come to him first. They could've dealt with it - Castiel didn't need to go behind everybody's backs and "make a deal with the devil."
They hear the sound of hundreds of demons beginning to swoop down on the cabin, and Castiel says it's too late to turn back now. Dean insists they can still fix this, but Castiel says, "it's not broken!" He yells at them to escape, and just as Dean is leaving, he turns back, and he and Cas share a ~lingering and meaningful~ gaze. Okay, then.
Crowley arrives at the cabin and frees Castiel from the holy fire. And they have... a conversation, at the end of which Crowley has effectively tried to accuse the Winchesters of holding Cas back, and tried to feed Castiel's pride. Cas dismisses him from his sight. Crowley leaves with this parting shot: "You know the difference between you and me? I know what I am. What are you, Castiel? What exactly are you willing to do?"
In the final (thank god) scene, we are in Bobby's house, where Dean is sleeping on the couch with angel-repelling sigils painted over the windows. That doesn't stop Castiel from Flapparating there, however, as apparently they "got a few of [the sigils] wrong." So why're you here, Dean asks.
Castiel wants Dean to understand that he's doing this for Dean, because of Dean. Because Dean taught him freedom, and free will--
"You're a friggin' child, you know that?" Dean interrupts. "Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want!"
Castiel assures him that he knows what he's doing, thank you very much, but Dean tells him: just stop it. All of it. Just 'cause. He confesses that next to Sam, Castiel and Bobby are the closest things he has to family. He goes so far as to consider Castiel like a brother, which as we know is about the highest estimation that Dean can hold anyone. Castiel is defiant however; he's going to go ahead with his plan, and Dean can do whatever he wants to try and stop him. Aaand he Flapparates right out.
Finally we have narrator!Castiel, who's telling all of this to God. Am I doing the right thing here, he asks, one last time. Give me a sign. "Because if you don't, I'm gonna ch- I'm gonna do whatever I must." Ch - change? choose? what?
Castiel waits, but God does not answer.
End episode.
Congratulations, Show. Not only did this episode somehow manage to tie three seemingly disparate storylines together, it also made me enjoy forty minutes of exposition and Castiel-monologue. I don't know how you did it, but you did.