I have now giffed this moment for microanalysis because I saw him pat Cas’s shoulder but I had missed the thing with his eyes and I had to see it for myself and just:
HE ACTUALLY DOES COMPLETELY AVOID EYE CONTACT AND GO STRAIGHT FOR THE SHOULDER.
And then he’s like BEER AND SNACKS ARE SO INTERESTING I KNOW YOU JUST GOT YOUR GRACE BACK BUT I HAVE TO UNPACK THESE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT THIS SECOND
And this last one just kills me because Cas is clearly SO UPSET about having to lie to Dean again and you can see Sam do this little micro-frown thing and he can totally tell Cas isn’t happy about the lying. And then there’s Charlie who appears to be LITERALLY WITNESSING AN OTP MOMENT. Like fucking look at her and that glowing smile. She’s not looking at Cas at all, she’s looking at Dean and I feel it in my soul that her internal monologue has got to be something along the lines of “MY SWEET LITTLE BISEXUAL PRODIGY! OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! (like Cas’s ass)”
I mean honestly, if she were paying even an iota of attention to Cas in this moment, she would have seen him in full on I-AM-LYING-TO-DEAN guilt mode. But no, she just watches Dean be reunited with his “dreamy” angel and UGH I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH TWO FUCKING IDIOTS!
The phrase I see all the time from naysayers is “You’re reading too much into it.” Supernatural is very open about it’s heavy use of subtext, we’re supposed to read into things, that’s one of the ways the show engages their audience. Any fan who claims that subtext doesn’t exist on Supernatural must not know how this show works. It was even told to us, clear as day, in Meta Fiction 9.18 that subtext is one of the things that makes a story work. At the other end of the spectrum are fans who acknowledge that Supernatural is heavy with subtext but ignore the subtext they don’t like and try to convince people that it doesn’t exist.
The confessional scene was obviously meant as subtext because Dean spoke vaguely, that’s a method writers use to invite the audience to look at subtext and determine what Dean really meant by his vague statements. But we have to look at the entire scene to read the subtext, we can’t draw conclusions based on one sentence.
It starts out with Dean spending a full minute talking about his sexual history with women. The only one mentioned by name is Gina. I can’t remember any time in canon that Dean hooked up with a Gina and my search of the wikis is turning up nothing. That means it wasn’t a reference to a specific canon event, Gina is being used as a general reference to Dean’s many sexual flings.
When Dean finishes his discussion about sex and the priest gives him penance they have this conversation:
Dean: Then that’s it? Then I’m good to go? Father Delaney: One would hope some inner exploration might occur. Prayers are just the beginning to some serious soul searching.
Dean’s confession was over but that last line from Father Delaney inspired him to keep talking and to be more honest. He spoke about his fear of death and then:
Dean: There’s things, there’s.. people, feelings, that I want to experience differently than I had before. Father Delaney: Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina. Dean: Yeah. I’m just starting to think maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.
The confession concludes with Father Delaney asking if Dean believes in God and Dean replies with the same thing he’s been saying since season 5, he believes God exists but doesn’t care.
The key elements of the confession were: Dean’s past sexual conquests, being told to pray, Dean’s fear of death, his desire to experience life in a different way, Father Delaney clarifying that by different he meant different from his past sexual/romantic experiences, and then re-affirming to the fans that Dean still thinks it’s pointless to pray to God.
I’ve seen people say that Dean’s line about experiencing things differently was a reference to the overall theme of the second half of season 10 which has been Dean trying things that he used to not be interested in (like Taylor Swift and cake). I do believe that was part of what he was saying, most people have several layers when talking about wanting a major life change, but it wasn’t the main reason for him saying that. We were told, very blatantly, that he was talking about sexual/romantic relationships because of Father Delaney’s clarifying remark of “Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina.” The priest wanted to make sure he understood Dean so he brought up Gina and Dean said yeah, Dean confirmed Father Delaney’s suspicions that he was mainly talking about sex/romance. That part wasn’t even subtext, it was actual text.
Now the question is, was he talking about wanting a deeper relationship with women or was this Destiel subtext?
It’s a little late in the season to plan on having Dean meet a new woman that he can enter into a relationship with. It’s possible that they’re planning to bring back someone from his past, like Cassie or Lisa, and this confessional speech was foreshadowing that. However I can’t find any scenes/subtext in this season’s episodes that reference Cassie or Lisa. That means it’s highly unlikely that this was foreshadowing him getting back together with an ex. This late in the season Supernatural doesn’t introduce new subtext lines, they reinforce the ones they’ve built up in earlier episodes.
The romantic tropes surrounding Dean and Cas have been significant since season 8. Two things that stand out to me about the confessional scene is that Dean was told to pray and then it was reinforced to the audience that Dean doesn’t pray to God. So who would he have thought of when the priest told him to pray? Who has Dean been praying to for the past 6 years? There is one specific person that Dean associates with prayer and right after he was told to pray Dean shared that he didn’t want to die because there are people and feelings he wants to experience differently. We don’t have to dig at all for that subtext, even people who hate Destiel know that when Dean prays he prays to Cas.
To answer your questions, people are saying we’re reading too much into things because they either can’t see subtext or don’t want to acknowledge the subtext they don’t like. They claim we’re only talking about sex because an effective method of invalidating people is to ignore the body of a discussion and flippantly say it’s about something frivolous or selfish. Supernatural has been fairly obvious about the Destiel subtext in the past 3 seasons, so obvious that they’re receiving a large amount of hate for queer baiting. Entertainment news writers have always turned a blind eye to queer baiting but many have started commenting on the Destiel subtext, that’s how blatant it’s become. Even TV Guide, who have always been supporters of Supernatural, wrote an article saying the queer baiting needs to stop. Whether or not Destiel will actually go canon is up for debate but the existence of Destiel subtext is not.
In the confession scene, the Destiel connections were fairly easy to make. It may have been foreshadowing, it may be queer baiting, only time will tell. My money is on foreshadowing because it doesn’t make sense that they would queer bait after receiving so much bad press for it.
I’m glad the scene excited you, and you don’t have to be queer to be happy about the possibility of queer representation. It’s important for everyone and queer allies should be just as excited about representation as queer people are.
You’re Sam Winchester and one day your brother comes back from hell with a handprint on his arm and an angel at his side. They fight and they scream and Dean complains about him but you know that he trusts him. Likes him too, at least a little. Sometimes you wonder if they forget you’re in the room. Sometimes you wonder what would happen if you weren’t.
You’re Sam Winchester, only you’re not, not completely. You’re back from hell, but something is missing. The missing piece is not Castiel, but he’s gone too, at least he is until the very first second Dean calls. You would be upset but you’re too busy wondering when exactly this happened, this “profound bond”. It’s also hard to be upset without a soul.
You’re Sam Winchester, and you’re whole again, sort of. Your brothers best friend is standing in front of you in a circle of holy fire and you ache for him. Dean went to bat for Castiel, and even now he tries to bring him around. You know a little something about betrayal and it’s not hard to imagine what he’s feeling. You hear them arguing in Bobby’s house later that night. Dean calls Castiel “brother” but you think you both know that’s not quite true.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother doesn’t talk to you about nightmares but sometimes you hear him call out for an angel in the middle of the night. Even that doesn’t hurt as much as the time you opened the trunk of the Impala for a knife and found a freshly laundered trenchcoat.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother is back from Purgatory. You never thought you’d see him again, but you’re Sam Winchester and the subversion of death no longer surprises you. You’re surprised the angel isn’t with him. Somehow, without even realizing it, you’ve begun to expect him to come back for Dean. It’s happened every time before. But Dean swears he’s gone for good and your heart breaks for him, what he must be feeling.
You’re Sam Winchester and your brother used to tuck you into bed and promise to scare away all the monsters. Today you wake up in the middle of the night, but instead of fighting monsters Dean is standing at the window. His voice cracks like the lightning outside and he tells you he’s seeing Cas. You tell him its impossible but even as the words leave your mouth you remember a beautiful blonde girl whose smile used to light you up from the inside out. You remember seeing her after she burned. Everywhere. When you warn him to walk past it, you’re speaking from experience. You don’t have a problem with your brother having feelings for an angel, but you wish he didn’t because Castiel is gone for good and now the only unshakable thing in your life looks shaken.
You’re Sam Winchester and you’re in a hotel room going over a case. Angels can manifest anywhere but Castiel comes into being directly behind Dean. You’re not surprised. You suspect the times Dean has seen him to be driven by Cas’s fading power and his attempts to contact the two of you. You tell him this. Dean hesitates, but agrees and that’s it. Right there. That little moment of hesitation. This is the moment where it is suddenly completely clear to you. It’s not just “feelings”, it’s love. Because even with a perfectly logical explanation available, Dean, who is perhaps the only person in the world who is better at repressing things than you yourself, still isn’t sure whether or not he was hallucinating with grief. Dean doesn’t believe in chick flick moments but you watch him watch Cas walk away and you wish he would have one, just this once. Because who knows how long it’s been true, but your brother is in love with an angel. An angel who seems to defy every possible law of death and logic and somehow always ends up back at Dean’s side.
The main reading I’ve seen—besides the bi!Dean or Dean/Cas interpretations—is that it was Dean admitting to wanting a long term romantic partner.
After Dean says that he isn’t ready to die, the exchange with Father Delaney goes as follows:
Dean: Recent events, uh, made me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And I don’t know, I mean, you know, there’s things, there’s people, feelings that I- I- I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.
Father Delaney: Go a little deeper, perhaps, than with Gina.
Dean: Yeah… I’m- I’m starting to think that maybe there’s more to it all than I thought.
So Father Delaney connects Dean’s confession of having people and feelings that he wants to experience in new ways to the probably-made-up fling he had with someone named Gina—and Dean agrees. He wants something more in a romantic sense. He wants a relationship.
This is something that has been hinted to in the narrative and through silent storytelling since the beginning of season nine, but after this scene it could only be clearer if he flat out says “I want a long-term partner.”
If there are other interpretations to this I’d love to hear about them, but I really can’t see this exchange suggesting anything other than a desire for romantic love. It’ll take a pretty convincing argument to de-romo this dialogue.
So basically everyone agrees on the wanting a relationship part, but those who don’t see Dean as bi think it’s a general longing for a women yet unmet.
That would be, frankly, really weird ten years in. New character, completely new relationship, adding a 4th person to Team Free Will. Is that the writing on the wall that non-Destiel shippers see?
If it’s actually possible to NO ROMO that confession without contorting the logic into a pretzel, I’m a cat.
And I really don’t see how, given what we’ve seen for the last three seasons, there are any possible candidates for a long-term romance that we haven’t already met, because Dean’s clearly thinking of a particular person, and not someone in the abstract.
And that is a very small pool of candidates. Sam and Charlie are out right off the bat, which reduces the pool even more. Claire and Chrissie are kids, so they’re out. Ann Marie has already NOPED out of the pool. Of the people Dean’s still at all close to, that leaves Donna, Jody… and Cas. And of those three, there’s only one that Dean’s said he ~needed~. Only one he’s ditched Sam and driven for hours to go and see. Only one he’s wished was with him when he felt alone and overwhelmed.
This was gonna be my usual initial thoughts post, but then the confessional scene happened. What the actual fuck. Ok, here goes.
Holy fricking goddamn. If that wasn’t a coming out scene I don’t know what is. I mean yeah, it was still in the show’s usual subtext level, but only barely. Dean started by spinning his story about “Gina”, someone who (as far as I remember) is made up, but is pretty much an amalgam of all the women Dean has been with. She was both the ongoing relationship (Cassie, Lisa), as well as the casual ones. He played up his wham bam thank you ma’am, overcompensating nature. She was made up, but was also an exaggerated representation of how Dean has tried to present himself. His version of himself was his mask, and you can set how ill-fitting it is now. And then it comes off, and it is both heartbreaking and glorious. The second half of the confession is the real Dean, contrasting in every possible way with the mask he presented in order to try and draw out the ghost in the first half. And what I love is the way the first half is all about women, how he’s sick of being dishonest, leading them on, but the second half, the second half… that’s not.
“There’s things…people, feelings, that I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.”
He mentions people, feelings. Given train of thought he was on, the subject matter of the preceding half, it’s not unreasonable to reach the conclusion that he is still thinking and talking about people & feelings in the romantic sense. And quite tellingly, he’s playing the gender game. He’s not talking about feelings for women, not in the same way he was before. It’s not that he lost attraction towards them. It’s that he wants something different. Something that he’s not ready to explicitly say, but something he feels he can bring up in the safety of a confessional, after he’s specifically been told that the priest cannot share what people tell him. Something that involves a modification of the pronoun game, something that a lot of queer people are familiar with. Now, the argument can be made (and probably has been) that it’s just general statement about changing his life, wanting something other than what he has. And is true, and likely is one layer. But this is Supernatural, which is renowned for pulling layer upon layer of meaning into things. And this is no different.
Did anyone else get the same sort of general feeling as they did on seeing Dean’s room in 9.14? Remember, when we were all speculating like mad about how it showed that Dean wanted someone in his life in a romantic sense? Well this is the spoken text equivalent. Dean is ready to have someone with him. There is no doubt in my mind that he was speaking in a romantic sense, none at all. Equally there is no doubt (for me) that he had someone in mind when he was talking about it. And he specifically amended his statement to include “Maybe even for the first time”. He’s had long term relationships. He’s been in love. With women. With men though? That side of him he has always kept suppressed (on screen, at least). He’s flirted with the idea, but he’s never allowed himself to go any further that. This would be something he’s experiencing differently than before, something he’s experiencing for the first time. It would mark a pretty profound shift in the feelings he has been experiencing. And it ties in beautifully with the way he starts it all, talking about how he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t. He’s got things he wants, things that are for himself, things he thinks he might have a chance to have.
And then it all wraps up with fantastically symbolic shot at end, of him leaving the confessional. He opens up, spits out the all-but-coming-out speech, then is seen walking out of that tiny little box that is so reminiscent of a closet, that room where your deepest secrets can be released in safety. It was kind of amazing.
There were two moments at the beginning and the end though that bookended it all nicely. First, during the ‘then’ segment, the shot that overlaid Rowena saying “The Winchesters”? That included not just Sam & Dean, but also Cas. They could have used any one of a million shots of just the brothers, but they chose one that included Cas. Then at the end, when Dean talked about how no woman has given blood for him (I forget the exact phrasing). And he’s right, no woman has. But someone else has, and very willingly. Many times, and he even made mention of how he was “always willing to bleed for the Winchesters”. Someone whose motivations just last season were revealed to be not heaven, not humanity, not even the brothers, but Dean. Cas may not have been mentioned in the episode, but he was there in every other conceivable way.
Dean wants love. He wants romantic love. He wants to both give, and receive it. And he knows exactly who he wants to share that with. There is only one person who fits the slot, whose death would hurt him something awful. And Dean, I think, is finally being honest with himself about why.
So, we talk all the time about the cupid’s bow and arrows in “Sacrifice.” But apparently “I’m So Blue” by Katie Thompson was playing in the bar as Dean and Cas discuss Cas’ imminent return to Heaven? (I’m probably late to the party, here, but I just learned about this in the process of making a separate post about Supernatural’s sound design.)
“I’m So Blue” (Katie Thompson) I’m so blue without you, thought our love was true Then you found someone new You loved me so but let me go Now I’ll never know how our love would grow Waiting, watching the stars above us Hoping that I could win back your love I’m so blue with without you, thought our love was true Then you found someone new Waiting, watching the stars above us Hoping that I could win back your love I’m so blue without you, thought our love was true Then you found someone new Thought our love was true Then you found someone new
I know it’s very quiet; I could barely hear it. But it’s much easier to hear if you know what to listen for; the song lyrics and dialogue line up roughly as follows:
What show’ve you been watching? [instrumental] Talk to me. Are you sure about this? I mean, it’s one thing me and Sammy slamming the gates to the pit, but you… You’re, you’re boarding up Heaven. [Waiting, watching the stars above us] And you’re locking the door behind you. [Hoping] Yeah. I know. [That I could win back your loooo—] You did a lot of damage up there, man. [—oooove] You think they’re just gonna let that slide? [I’m so blue] Do you mean do I think they’ll kill me? Yeah, they might. [Without you] So this is it? [Thought our love was true] E.T. goes home. [But you found someone new]
At this point, Gail enters the bar, and the song carries over to the beginning of Rod and Dwight’s meet-cute. The song ends around the moment Dwight says, “Rod rides a stool here most days.” Gallery’s “It’s So Nice to Be With You” begins to play instead, and it blatantly establishes the romance between Rod and Dwight.
So they play a song about lovers separating and pining over footage of Dean and Cas’ conversation about Cas leaving for Heaven, and then they juxtapose that with a song about lovers being together playing over footage of Rod and Dwight falling in love? And we’re supposed to interpret that sound design choice as an attempt to code Dean and Cas as platonic how, exactly?
You give them “Where’s the angel?” “I’m not leaving here without you.” “Where the hell are you man?” “I know you’re in there, We’re family, we need you. I need you.”
You let it simmer.
You give them face-cradling, death of a loved one. You give them “I can’t let you do this.” “Nobody wants him here more than I do.” You give them “He’s in love…” “Don’t lose it over one man.” “You gave up an entire army for one guy.” “It was all about saving one human, right?”
You let it simmer.
Then you pile it on.
You give them “You can’t stand the fact that he’s mine.” “Dean Winchester completes me.” “Our future” “We’ve done extraordinary things to triplets.” “all of this that’s bloomed between us never ends.” “I want you to kill for us.” “I think you don’t know what you want.” “Pick a bloody side!” “they’re good for a fling, but they’re not relationship material.” “We’re done.” ”Your misadventure with the older Winchester was quite the topic of speculation.” “you run off with your boy toy, Dean Winchester”
You let it simmer.
You bring in the idea of “shipping.” You give them three variations of the word “Destiel” to ponder on and a love song from “Cas” to match. “They’re a couple in real life.”
You let it simmer.
You give them “Bromance” Let them sit with the idea. Was it bromance? Or could they leave the “b” out of it?
You give them “There is no us.” You give them Dean choosing Castiel. You place Castiel in the spot of Cain’s romantic interest.
He looks surprised that he was even thinking about it in the first place.
He looks like he just realised the biggest, most simple truth he’s ever known. Like it’s something so deep and all-consumming that he managed to not notice it for some time, but that’s only because it was there all along. And that makes sense. Because his rebellion from Heaven began with this. This was his biggest motivation to walk into everything that happened afterwards. And it will break through his very nature, because it’s bigger. Stronger. More important. It was the first thing Castiel had ever wanted for his own.
Like everyone else, I’m just waiting for him to say “I need you too”.
A character has something he believes in more than anything. A person he has sworn to protect, an ideal he’s sworn to uphold. He might have spoken that vow in a sacred ceremony, or simply made a decision in the silence of his heart, it doesn’t matter. What matters it that no matter what, he will not break it.
And that, essentially, is the core of this trope – a character-trait so important to the character that he will break free of outside control or amnesia to keep it.
Simply having a vow will not suffice, if it has not been ‘tested’ in this manner.
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