something bordering on weird

Castiel and board games [♤]

I thought the idea of Cas trying to communicate through board games was truly fantastic. I’ve rarely seen such well-thought out metaphors in any movie, let alone a TV-show. Unfortunately, though, I guess this was mostly lost on the general audience; a friend of mine who watches the show thought Castiel totally went nuts and considered the board games thing as funny bordering on ridiculous. However, when I told her what I thought it was all about, she admitted that she hadn’t thought about it that way because the show hasn’t been THAT deep for a very long time. Which, unfortunately, is true.

But let’s talk a little about the games he’s asking Dean to play. There have been a lot of fantastic posts on “Sorry”, so I am going to limit myself to one particular aspect I found interesting. Both Sorry and Twister are no games involving clever tactics and strategy. They also don’t involve teamplay. You get an order and you follow through with it. That’s it. And if you fail, you have to start again. It’s pretty easy, actually. There are rules, but none of the players made them. While both games may involve “decisions”, they are minor and have to be made within a certain frameset.

So I think beside that fact that Castiel is communicating through board games, he’s also communicating something about himself: He feels safe in a world that has clearly stated rules, a world in which he can follow orders, a world in which he can’t make any more mistakes, because someone else made the rules.

This theme is further elaborated with the bee-metaphor. There have been fantastic posts on that, too, but I still believe the main point is that in bee-society, every individual has its place as part of the group. You’re just part of the bigger picture and you have a role to play. That’s it. No difficult decisions, no choices, no Free Will.

Clearly, these are all things Castiel associates with life as an angel (even though this may be a little nostalgia on his part, too). In 7x23, he’s talking about bees and then, all of a sudden, switches to his garrison. One might think that for him, it’s one and the same thing. As most of this started in 7x21, I think this is Edlund foreshadowing Castiel’s journey in season 8. Already in 7x21, Castiel is “gravitating back”, longing for all the things he’s lost, and eaten alive by the guilt he feels for all the things he’s done. Clearly, for him, acting on your emotions, acting because you made a choice, has turned into something terrible, something dangerous he wants to avoid at all costs.

Castiel believes if he could only go back to what he was, an angel following orders, then things would be ok again. For him and for everyone he’s hurt. He believes that as soon as he’s asked to make a choice, he’ll do the wrong thing. Because that’s how he feels about himself now. His self-esteem is right there with Dean’s: It’s virtually non-existent.

Quite frankly, I wonder where this will take him in season 8. I guess that he’ll have to come to terms with his own past and present to decide on his future. Seeing that his story is so much about choices and accepting the consequences of Free Will, I wouldn’t be surprised if season 8, for him, will lead up to a really important, maybe life-changing decision he’ll have to make all by himself.

The thing I’ve noticed, though, is that no matter how closely Amara’s story seems to reflect Castiel’s, in the end, it’s proving to be exactly the opposite of Castiel’s.

Amara claimed to have “saved” Dean in 11.01. But was he really in danger? Or had he already saved himself (well, with Sam, Cas, and Rowena’s help) by having the Mark removed from his arm? THAT was what Dean was saved from. Castiel, however, legitimately did save Dean from Hell. AMARA’S PERCEPTION THAT SHE HAD SAVED HIM WAS WRONG.

Amara claims she shares a “bond” with Dean, because he bore the Mark while she was the original Mark. Thing is, Dean did not want the Mark. He didn’t want a bond that stole his ability to choose. Conversely, his bond with Cas, symbolized by the mark Cas left on Dean’s shoulder, wasn’t about Dean sacrificing his autonomy the way Amara insists her bond with Dean should work. She really can’t understand why he isn’t leaping at the chance to give it all up for the supposed bliss she’s offering him. Then she attempts to take it anyway, by forcibly removing Dean’s soul. For the first time ever, she’s unable to consume someone’s soul.

Conversely, Castiel was the one who was most changed by his “bond” with Dean. Castiel was the one who grew a sense of free will, choice (what we consider to be the essence of humanity, possibly even including a human-ish soul), and in turn tried to teach this lesson to the other angels. Angels who had as little concept of what to do with free will as Amara does, despite her “bond” with Dean.

Once again, Amara’s perception of the bond she shares with Dean is simply WRONG.

Amara is not a flexible being. She IS. Just as much as God IS. She may be learning about humanity, but she just doesn’t understand. And I don’t believe that she ever will. Just like “Dark Charlie” was unable to change. All she could do was to be reunited with “Good Charlie.” Integrated back into the whole.

If her bond with Dean was truly a two-way street, she would’ve been able to claim his soul. She couldn’t. Therein lies the difference.

Plus, Amara’s appeal to bliss and destiny is a lot like Cas’ outburst in the beautiful room in 4.22 in his conversation with Dean:

But what’s important is that, with Cas and Dean, Dean wins here. He convinces Cas to drop his support of destiny (which is really just angel-lingo for coersion) and abandon the idea that peace and tranquility are anything but a sedative. And over time, like you said, Cas has become a complete convert to the wonder of free will, despite its agony. Maybe Amara could too, but right now, she’s still ALL about control.

I also think its interesting to hear you read Amara pulling back as her finding she couldn’t steal Dean’s soul - I saw it as her deciding that kissing him was a better method, whether for ‘convincing’ him or simply because she enjoyed him and wanted him to come around willingly. That fascination with Dean and that conscious manipulation, whether or not she sees it as manipulation, reminded me of someone else entirely different from Cas - and appropriately, someone who came back this episode too.

It was startling (and kinda cool, because of how tense and high it makes the stakes) how much Dean and Amara’s conversation also sounds like Lucifer’s conversation with Sam in 5.03. Its a lot of the same rhetoric about how linked they are, what they owe to the winchester/what the winchester is responsible for, how inevitable their connection is:

Considering how much of Season 11 has been consciously calling back to earlier seasons, interrogating and questioning those old narratives, bringing back old, familiar faces, looking at things in new ways, I’m hopeful that these parallels in Amara’s actions are at least somewhat intentional. I think it would be really interesting to have her parallel Cas’s story, as an opportunity to explore where their stories don’t match up (ie, there actually is a meaningful connection between Dean and Cas, where there is nothing but coercion with Dean and Amara), I think Lucifer’s return is fascinating and I’m hoping Michael’s absence gets some kind of explanation. We’ve still got a little less that 2/3rds of the season to go, which is plenty of time for this stuff to get explored in interesting ways.