#feasts of affection

Metafest: Castiel, Angel of the Lord

Castiel’s unasked for and undrunk bottle of beer was a feature in season 13-- a D or even E plot of its own if you will. Even beverages that Cas is known to consume were pointedly avoided over the last two seasons-- in 13x06 (Tombstone) it’s implied that Castiel makes the coffee that Dean is seen drinking later, but he does not drink any himself.

We’ve known Cas to drink coffee before…

And even the hard stuff…

And we’ve been told that doing this-- sharing in this feast of affection-- would be good for Castiel, as evinced in 13x13 (Funeralia)when Dean and Cas are in the bunker kitchen. Dean pours himself a cup of coffee. He and Cas are brainstorming ways they might track down Gabriel to “hijack his grace” in order to reopen the Rift. Dean decides to grease the wheels and gets a beer for himself and one for Castiel-- even though Cas declines, the minute Dean opens the refrigerator and gets him one anyway, Cas finally has an idea. It is this moment when Dean involves the “family” beer, Margikugels, that he and Cas are able to work together.

(Granted, Cas’ idea was bad, but then, he didn’t drink the beer.)

So even though Castiel has a seat at the table, so to speak…

... Sam has picked up on the way Cas is setting himself apart when the unopened beer (and now an uneaten pizza) again shows up in 13x21 (Beat the Devil.) Even in what was revealed to be Sam’s dream sequence Cas is not partaking in the shared meal.

This abstinence is meant to be noticed. It’s borderline rude.

Compare Cas’ aloofness then to 14x8 (Byzantium,) where Castiel not only drinks alongside Dean and Sam during Jack’s wake, he at one point brings a couple of bottles to the table.

In the next episode, he sits and eats “Krunch Cookie Crunch”, with Jack, putting aside his own dislike of “molecules” to partake in a late-night meal with his adopted son.

Cas over these three seasons, starting with his rescue of Kelly Kline from his own friends when he tentatively positioned himself as Jack’s guardian up to Byzantium where he (mirrored by Lily Sunder) fully accepted his role as Jack’s surrogate father, has finally integrated himself into this human family, and it wasn’t textualized by anyone calling him brother or dad, but by the primal act of sharing a glass and a meal with the people he loves, like a thanksgiving, or an agapefeast or lovefeast in the Christian church. It’s no accident that the scene where he told Jack that he loved him and then took his place to save him from the Empty happened in a kitchen.

Two times-- in Sam’s dream and then with the coffee in Tombstone-- Cas offers food but does not share it. LIkewise, Dean calls Cas his brother, but it is not until that exchange in Funeralia that Cas begins to believe it.

It took me a few episodes (and honestly all of season 13) to finally “get” what is going on in the Dabb era, to realize that things we think are being forgotten or retconned are instead choices and indicate growth in the super-poetic storytelling the writers are crafting this season. With that in mind, it’s been really wonderful to watch Cas blossom this year. I like seeing him getting closer to humanity through food sharing, as though he’s letting himself relax from a tension he hardly knew he was carrying, but that we were meant to spot throughout these last two seasons. It is a kind of reversal or subversion or mirror-image of the Aarne-Thompson motif C211.1-- “eating in fairyland”-- wherein a mortal eats food or drinks from a cup offered by fairy-folk and has to remain there forever. Cas has gone from refusing to eat even in someone else’s dream to sharing clandestine candy cereal at night with his son, and he is deciding to stay. It is striking in a season where things a character says turns out to be Very Important that in Castiel’s case, his vital development is coming in scenes where we are being shown and not told.