An Angel and a Former Demon (Sorta)

Can’t talk about this without spoilers, so if you’re not up to date with Supernatural, and don’t want to know the highlights of upcoming seasons, bookmark this post to read when you have caught up! — t.

__

I don’t know why I stopped watching Supernatural, but somehow, around the middle of season six or seven, we just drifted away.  I think they killed off Castiel and Bobby in the same season, and as they were two of the best characters in the show, and Crowley was already technically out of the picture, it took a lot of the fun out of the series.

Besides, how do you follow up with stories after saving the world from Armageddon?

Then someone — I think it was my daughter, actually — said that Supernatural got a whole lot better once you moved past the let-down feelings in season 7.

So, out of curiousity, Mark and I went back to season six, watched it all the way through, picking up the storylines we had more or less forgotten.  Then we braced ourselves and got through Season 7…and moved on to new material, for us.

I think even halfway through the season six rerun, I remembered why I liked the show.  We were quite happy to keep watching, right up to the end of this current season.

I always preferred Dean to Sam, if I had to pick one or the other.  Dean had the dark edge — very much a bad boy, while Jared Padelecki just looks young.  He’s matured a lot over eleven seasons, but he’s still a baby face to me.  Dean always had that wisened, seen-everything look.

But.

In the last few seasons of the show, he’s become even more compulsive viewing.  It’s only emerged recently in the series, but there are moments when Dean admits to himself or some bad guy (never to his brother!) that he doesn’t figure he’s in for a long life, that sooner or later (and probably sooner), the risks he’s been taking, the enemies he’s made, are all going to catch up with him in a very bad way.

It’s not a death wish, but a realistic acknowledgement of the life he leads and the expectations that go with it.  The knowledge gives Dean’s character an edge he never had before.  You can see it driving a lot of the decisions he makes, too.

I really enjoyed him as a psuedo-demon, when the Mark of Cain converted him.  It was interesting to see what a really bad Dean Winchester could get up to.

I’m very much enjoying this even darker side of Dean Winchester and itch to pay homage to it with one of my own characters.

The other surprise of the series is Castiel.

I always thought he was kinda cute in an innocent, babe-in-the-woods way, which was interesting because in reality he’s larger than an office building and more powerful than any human on the planet.

I think Cas caught my attention when he thought he was god.  There was a majesty in his presence that made you believe he really did believe that of himself, and his fall from grace (literally) as a result, was perfect writing, in my estimation.  Castiel has only become even more interesting since then.  You tend to lose sight of the fact that he’s an angel most of the time, then he does something awe-inspiring (also literally), and you remember that this is an entity that could go around using that power to overwhelm anyone in his path.  Instead, he tries to puzzle out the human equation and ask really dumb questions while doing so.

While Castiel isn’t exactly pulse-stopping in a romantic sense (although Misha Collins is cute), it is fascinating watching him learn to be more human and just as often failing at it, because being human should be hard.  Which makes him a brilliant juxtaposition to Dean.  One trying hard to be good, the other trying hard not to be bad.

Methinks there could be interesting slash fiction possibilities there!

Cheers,

Get the news that no one else does. Sign up for my newsletter.

For a short while, you get a bundle of ebooks, free, when you sign up, as a Starter Library. Details here.