Epitaph For Castiel
I suppose we all had some forewarning that Castiel would be going away, especially when Misha Collins was cut as a regular. But now that he has gone into that obliterated pile of black goo at the bottom of a Kansas retention pond, his demise is starting to sink in a bit. Sera Gamble has even confirmed that Castiel is indeed dead, but we know that in Supernatural that doesn’t mean he’s truly gone. Yet, we are left with a hole, and perhaps a lot of sorrow depending on what fan you ask.
Call this a fan memorial service. Picture if you will a happy place, perhaps the peaceful garden in Heaven where the autistic man is flying the bright, beautiful kite on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s a sunny day, the bloody trenchcoat is floating in the center, and everyone is gathered in a circle to share their fondest memories of this wayward angel that in the end had no freaking idea what he was getting into when he was sent to Hell and Earth to save Dean Winchester.
I’ll go first.
“Castiel, you had our attention from the word go. We “little ants” as you angels like to call us never saw giant dark angel wings before and we were certainly in awe. You saw something in Dean so yes, we liked you. Great minds think alike! Quite frankly at the time, we were hoping some being like you would come along and shake up things a bit. Things were getting quite dull with just the demons running amok. I mean, what would Star Wars have been with just the stormtroopers?
We know that your true form was the size of the Chrysler building, yet there was something endearing about your vessel choice, tax accountant on the edge. That thin tie never did sit quite right, did it? When it came to life on earth you were childlike, never quite grasping all our concepts, but that’s what made you so special. We could laugh at your little irregularities, like not understanding personal space and missing every single pop culture reference that Sam and Dean threw at you. I don’t know how many mishaps have happened in my living room when I spit out my drink after hearing your deadpan words like, “She’s Glenn Close,” and “He’s not on any flatbread.” Oh, despite the desperation of the situation, you kept it light, even when you didn’t realize it.
You were a true friend and grasped the very human qualities of loyalty. You took both brothers under your wing, even after one used his demon abilities to accidentally start the apocalypse and had steamy “relations” with a hot demon chick. Of course you decided to see what that was like yourself and found that demon chicks in leather do have a certain quality. We don’t blame you for having that curiosity.
We loved your profound bond with Dean, even if he couldn’t understand that you made that deal with Crowley so he could continue his life with Lisa and Ben. It’s all water under the…reservoir now. You averted one disaster yet started another, but that’s okay. Considering you learned from the Winchesters who have been doing that for years, it’s understandable. Abominations to the natural order indeed! You have earned your place as an honorary human, at least our eyes.
All in all you made us laugh, you made us cry, and you made us feel for you when the writers ran out of things for you to do, and your end did come with at least some brief redemption. Sorry to see you go so soon. We hope that you are out there somewhere, with God/Chuck perhaps, drinking whiskey and taking on that whole virgin/hooker thing. It was Dean’s hope once you’d get laid before you die, so we can only hope that becomes an after life thing for you.
Rest in peace my friend, you served your trenchcoat well. If God/Chuck or some desperate writer decides to bring you back, may you never have to don the wardrobe of Columbo again.”
Okay, that’s my pitiful attempt, but then again I never really know what to say at these things. Anyone else have words for our favorite fallen angel?
Alice Jester is the founder, editor-in-chief, head writer, programmer, web designer, site administrator, marketer, and moderator for The Winchester Family Business. She is a 30 year IT applications and database expert with a penchant for creative and freelance writing in her spare (ha!!) time. That’s on top of being a wife, mother of two active kids, and four loving (aka needy) pets.
[fv]Epitaph for Castiel[/fv]
Cass, my most beloved brother, I will refuse to accept your demise till ‘Supernatural’ itself ends! Your coat will forever be a shrine reminding your loving siblings and friends of you love, glory, and eternal patience (and misconstruded humor) forever! Our hearts are broken and bleeding for all the Four Realms to see! Rest well, beloved,Castiel! You MORE than deserve it!
well done you brave little soldier you.. well done.
I refuse to believe Castiel is gone! He came back after being smited by Lucifer! He has to come back… he is just on a hiatus! Yes! That is it! He’s on a hiatus! :-*
Castiel, you are our friend still, even if we never see you again.
Your journey has inspired us. You started out as a faithful soldier, and a distant admirer of humanity. Slowly, with the help of a few special humans, you grew to understand this world, and to recognize the fallacies that you had once accepted unquestioningly. You were punished for daring to step out of line, but when the moment came you sided with us, and stuck by us to the bitter end.
Even as a cast off of Heaven you continued to fight. When all hope seemed lost, when the Devil had no one to oppose him and you felt your faith betrayed, you still fought, even if you could not say why. You showed the truest loyalty, and learned all that love and friendship could teach. Four friends saved the world, and you found free will in the bargain.
And you used it, as best you could. Sometimes you shone and sometimes you faltered. Naivete and pride misled you, and you knew not how to rise above your situation. You only knew that you had to keep fighting, and you did. You betrayed and were betrayed. You vanquished your enemy in the end, but at the cost of isolation. You lost yourself. You tried to rule the world, and discovered that you were not equal to the task.
And yet, in spite of all your mistakes, you remembered friendship, and you answered its call. You humbled yourself, and saved the world from the dangers of your vanity with the help of those friends you found that you could not forget.
You fell, rose, and fell again. And in the end Castiel, your sincerity and your sorrow and your flaws remind us of who you have become. You became one of us. A human. A brother. A friend. Always.
Beautifully put, Glass! Beautiful! Am very sure Cass would have appreciated it!
Cas is the most inspirational character I’ve encountered in years, it’s the least I can do for him.
I agree. This is so well done that I can’t think of anything to add except that I will miss you, Cas and hope to see you return someday soon.
I hope to see that too!
Just beautiful! You see, I knew that someone would have better words than I. Thank you.
I take your words as inspiration Alice, and loved what you had to say.
I understand that grief has stages, after all I (@StJon)majored in Religion and Death and Dying was my favorite class. I suppose I remain in the denial stage and I could stay there quite a while. I see other fans at different stages: Anger…often in the comments of any word about you. Bargaining via the outcry from dedicated followers. Depression: They abound. Acceptance: The epitaph above seems to be a good example of that category.
The very fact that we are all, in our way, grieving for our loss is the most telling sign of your meaning to the Winchester Gospels and in our lives.
I read fan fiction about you every day. In some small way it makes me still feel connected to you. Whatever stage we are at, we can all agree you mattered and STILL matter to many. To me you represented hope in the lives of the Winchesters. Seeing an angel cope with the demands of humanity and unlike many of the Host, demonstrate generosity, faith and loyalty was inspiring. It also meant a lot for me that for once Dean had someone to turn to that he could rely on. You were the one person he didn’t have to protect, instead you protected him. I will always love you for that.
He isn’t dead. And as a Casfan I find you indecent haste to declare him dead a tad offensive.
Help me out those that know the stages of grief better than I. This is denial, right?
Thanks for commenting and your point is understandable. We’re honoring his memory. No one ever really dies on Supernatural. I’m just going with what Sera Gamble said.
No need to be offended. From the sound of it, she read the tvline article that said Sera had confirmed Cas was dead. But that was just the reporter overstating things–the direct quotes from Sera didn’t support that statement, and in other interviews she has confirmed he would be coming back. But it was easy to get the idea from that one tvline report that Cas was gone for good–a lot of people thought the same thing, including many very unhappy Casfans. It’s obvious from her eulogy that she loves Cas, and that she wasn’t disrespecting him, or in a hurry to get rid of him. On the contrary, she expressed great appreciation for the character.
Open letter to Sera Gamble.
Sera:
It’s time to let the cat out of the bag before you lose more viewers. You are not a foolish person. I see that Brad and Eugenie are back.
It’s time to stop tormenting your fans. Before you have no fans. Not that J&J aren’t enough, but your fans require MORE than enough.
Give them what they want, or you won’t be able to get a job on Octocobra.
Anger! You see, this is therapeutic.
Great Octocobra line BTW.
Beautiful eulogy, but I’m not going to bury him just yet. You probably read the tvline story where the reporter put words in Sera’s mouth, saying Cas was DOA even though her direct quotes did not support such a statement. In other sources, they said the opposite, such as this article on EW.com:
“Gamble also confirmed what many fans had hoped, which is that we haven’t seen the last of Castiel, who the boys presume to be dead. “We all love Misha [Collins], and we plan to write material for him. But in terms of where we are in the story right now, it’s a lot about Sam and Dean and Bobby losing this person that was incredibly important to them.â€
Their story line right now is to make the boys suffer losses and strip them of their defenses and isolate them from their allies–so it makes sense to deprive them of Cas, as he is both a powerful ally and a very close friend. Doesn’t mean they have to do it permanently.
Yeah, I’m with you there. Most of those “exclusive” articles twist words. Still, Castiel has earned something from us.
Aside from the fact that [i]CASTIEL IS NOT DEAD[/i] this is a sweet and touching tribute. It’s never a mistake to express appreciation for Castiel in all his awkwardly human superpowered glory, for the way he cares for Dean and Sam, the way he tries over and over to do what’s best, and (one can’t help but mention) his beauty. But [i]someone[/i] is the boss of Leviathan, and somewhere inside that is the remains of our Castiel, who will rise again.
I enjoyed this tribute and I enjoyed the comments as well. Am I in denial? Well I can see the pyramids from here if that helps? I am putting my faith in the quote shared above where Sera says he’ll be back when the time is right. They all love Misha Collins over there on the Supernatural set. Well I like him too and if that affection is all that brings Cas back then I say vive le affection of the Supernatural creation team!
What can I say about Cas himself?
Oh my dear God! I hardly know where to begin, there is so much to say!
He is a beautiful being in all his powerful and flawed glory. I have been so deeply moved by his journey and by watching him learn and seek and try, when no one else in Heaven really seemed interested in anything more than themselves. Castiel, despite his mistakes and flaws always seemed to me to be the most righteous and truly sacred of all his sisters and brothers. He was the one who who still had faith, who still wanted to see God and follow the plan, who sought guidance and revelation for the sake of both Heaven and Earth. Castiel wanted to save us all, humans and angels alike. He was different, awkward, often isolated or removed, but in the end he was all heart. Even at his worst, in the face of his biggest and most terrible mistake, when he’d rather accidentally gone all darkside, he was still trying to do right by us, to set things right, to save the world, to be a good parent. He did it all wrong and royally screwed up, he was full to the brim with pride and hubris and it made my chest ache to watch it…but even then, deep down it was all about searching for goodness and making things better. How could you fail to love him? How is that anything less than beautiful?
May he return to us soon and at last know his own worth, his own place in the universe and that he is love. And mayGod/Chuck get up off his pasty white behind and show Castiel and his boys some freaky gratitude!
Thanks for writing this article, Alice. Like most, I’m in the denial stage. This is a very cathartic piece and I’m glad to see a beautiful memorial here for our favorite Holy Tax Accountant, Angel of Thursday, and Nerdy Dude with Wings. Cas has helped a lot of fans pull through some RL hell so in that vein, he’s still alive and kicking. One can never, ever, kill an idea especially if that idea goes by the name of Castiel.
how little we care for Sam but grieve for the aNGEL ho destroyed his sanity.
who destroyed his sanity .I meant to say.
I think we grieve for all of them, Sam included. But he is still with us, and we will follow his coming struggles with rapt attention and sympathy.
Great Job Cas! Now rest, you’ve earned it!
I’m not a Cass-girl for sure, but I loved this powerful warrior of God turned humanity’s champion, naive and awkward, yet so full of knowledge, who was slowly learning, through mistakes and falls, what free will is.
So I’m still in denial phase: I refuse to think that’s the last we’ve seen of Castiel. Maybe I could have accepted his demise if it was less rushed and sad and he had really the chance to redeem himself, fix Sam’s mind, earn Dean’s forgiveness.
But if that’s the real departure of Dean’s “best friend”, then I could go directly to the anger phase… 😮
Oh Cas, you child! Or as my daughter used to call him, “God’s best little angel.” I kept saying, all summer, that I would rather see Cas dead, with some shred of honor, than turned into the Big Bad of Season 7. (Misha, I will miss you and I hope you get lots of high-paying work! Just leave space in your schedule for several guest spots, because I refuse to believe that you won’t be back!) Still, the sight of Dean repeatedly wringing bloody water out of that trench coat nearly broke me. Will he dry it out and keep it in the car? Or send it back to Jimmy’s family to let them know that poor Jimmy is at least getting some rest now. Wah! It’s too sad either way.
I am 100% in denial about Cass really being dead and will happily stay there until proven wrong. Yep. *whistles innocently*
I too am in denial that our nerdy beloved Cas is really gone. But then, I also refuse to believe that Gabriel is really gone. Its about time the brothers and these two angels received some gratitude from Chuck/God. It’s only fair that they should. Lovely article anyway!
And by the way, just because we are fond of Cas doesn’t mean we don’t care for Sammy. I don’t get that at all. Sammy is still here among the living. I don’t believe he will ever die unless both the boys go together, like Cassidy and Sundance. Hope that never never happens. After all, this is the saga of the Winchester brothers and we can be allowed to care when their friends depart this earthly plane. I know they care. 😥
If Episode 2 is meant to be Cas’s death and he really is dead there then it’s the most lamest death on TV, even worse than the guy on CSI Miami who died because he fell down at the lab station and hit his head. And I certainly won’t watch SPN anymore if this is how they treat the exit of a character who has made more impact than most. I’m done, honestly I haven’t been this let down in a long time, I expected better from this show, I expected more, and all they do now is lie to me and let me down. Well good riddance.
Sera wants to just have Cas be dead in Ep 2, fine, whatever, I don’t have to watch the rest of the season for her to string me along with some false hope that Misha or Cas might come back. I’ve had enough. That was a lame exit, it was dumb, and it had no impact or meaning, and it was the lowest and dumbest way to exit a character. I’m shocked that Ben would write an exit like this. Some two minute zombie walk scene is stupid and I will keep saying that until the day they bring Castiel back and fix what lame ending they have done.
I’m honored, thank for reading.
Wow, I like Alice do not now what to say at these things, so I will let your beautiful words stand alone. It had me tearing up. I try never to go to funerals, whether for people I knew well or barely knew, I cry as soon as the eulogies start! So thank you for the most beautiful eulogy of all MisterGlass. Let’s hope Castiel got his redemption in Heaven.
Cass can’t be dead or I am going to be so mad.. how can they say that storyline is over?? we haven’t even seen god yet?!? I know Gamble wants to make her mark but you can’t take a beloved character like that.. that they made us love and take them away.. it would be like killing Bobby at this pt..
According to Karen, our reporter who attended this weekend’s Toronto con, Misha said in his panel he’s not in the next ten episodes and didn’t know if he would be in any afterwords. I don’t want to discourage, but it’s not happening anytime soon.