All right, I was forced to start up a tumblr just to post this thing. So, I watched the first five seasons of Supernatural while doing field research on the birds of northern Alaska, and when Castiel spread his wings for the first time my first thought was “Oh look, that angel’s in molt”.
For the whole rest of season 4 I kept thinking of him as “the molting angel.” I kept wondering what on earth had happened to him in Hell that left his wings so messed up, such that he had to do an out-of-season molt with both alulas broken. And I kept wondering whether his new feathers had come in all right!
But mostly I became convinced that Castiel must have suffered some real injuries while rescuing Dean from Hell. Castiel never mentioned anything about this… but I like to think that there’s a pretty dramatic story there that he has never told.
