Episode 4.10 Heaven and Hell

If their ability to find an escape hatch out of this one irritated Chuck, I can’t help but imagine that’s at least part of what pushes him in 4.18 to “write himself into the story,” you know? When does Chuck ever show up in the story, when the Winchesters could really use a helping hand from a loving God? Nah. Well, maybe a little bit... but mostly it’s when they’re finding loopholes in the story-- the whole “we’ll find another way” rather than make this most awful choice the narrative has been pushing them toward. But that’s besides the point, because this episode isn’t about him :’D

Mostly what we learn about here is the intro to all the stuff that will underpin Castiel’s entire character arc for the next 13 seasons-- the nature of angel grace, what an angel is, what differentiates and what makes them similar to a human soul, and the oppression angels experience under Heaven’s rules of “obey or die.” Right there you get the foundation for Cas’s fear of allowing his “humanity” to blossom, and if you let me I’ll rant forever about why this alone makes his end in canon the ultimate tragedy. But I won’t do that today >.>

We also learn a little more about Dean’s 40 years in Hell and that he wished he couldn’t feel any of that at all-- the worst human emotions. He’d give up the good stuff just to not have to feel all that bad stuff, as Anna tells him even knowing what he experienced and feels right then is worth it to her, that she doesn’t want to give up any of it to go back to being an angel who can’t really feel any of it...

on to the references for this week’s episode!

The Superwiki page for this episode

My tag for this episode

but especially these posts:

the destiel uh.. the dean/anna sex scene and other callbacks to 4.01
June 2019 rewatch notes
on Dean’s “weakness”
angels and emotions
this episode’s installment of lizbob’s “dean and cas are in love” series
and a second “dean and cas are in love” post for this ep
Anna, Grace, and Humanity
April 2017 rewatch notes
that old nugget that “Cas stole Anna’s role in the narrative” after this episode... if you read this you must read the whole thing and not cherry pick the bits that confirm your preferred narrative, while remembering that tvtropes and the fandom wikia are not reliable info sources :’D 

The cut scene of Cas and Uriel talking about their orders that is absolutely essential, likely cut because it gave too much away of the larger plot (1:47 long video)

The CW promo for this episode (:20 long)

Interviews with Gen & Thunderbird linked on tumblr bc i hit AnchorFM's 4k character lim

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