8.23 - SacrificeNew challenges for human Cas?Looking back on the last season and how Castiel's journey as an angel came to an abrupt conclusion, one can say that we'll have a few things coming up next season that might significantly chan...
8.23 - SacrificeNew challenges for human Cas?Looking back on the last season and how Castiel's journey as an angel came to an abrupt conclusion, one can say that we'll have a few things coming up next season that might significantly change the approach to writing this character.In the SpinOff Online interview for season 8, Supernatural writer Daniel Loflin talked about the challenges of writing for a character with too much powers at his disposal. The most crucial problem in writing a story with two human heroes seems to be that they shouldn't get too much support, because it undermines the challenges the Winchesters usually overcome. But what about human Castiel?In the season finale the show proceeded to show Metatron taking away Castiel's grace, which left the audience wondering whether his storyline will take Cas away from the role of a confidante, who is off-screen, and instead push for a more central storytelling. With Jeremy Carver recently implying that we will get to understand his character in new ways, including his connections to other people, we can expect things to shake up a little bit.Heaven vs Hell in season 9?One such thing would be the hunt for his grace and the ultimate fight in a world full of fallen angels with Metatron as the antagonist. We have seen how the fall has affected the entire world, and this is something of a fundamental change in the show. The world can finally become aware that supernatural creatures exist, and additionally, we get to see how fallen angels integrate into the human world, discovering whether they are a threat or not. An even more interesting scenario seems to be how the loss of the angels might affect the human souls that are still in heaven, for example, people like Bobby, and Ellen and Jo, Ash, and several others. Will they be playing a potential role from the other side?And there's one thing left that also alludes to season 9 extending the conflict between heaven and hell. Key players like Crowley and Cas are fundamentally changed after all, which means others will step up. One such character is Abaddon, who barely survived her confrontation with Sam. The imminent threat of demons wanting revenge for the mere attempt to close the gates of hell might force Sam and Dean into an outright war.How will Castiel be integrated into the story? A recap5.04 - The EndThere are several ways to do that and those ways include fleshing out how he reacts to being human in the first place, including his emotions, and especially his understanding of humanity. We already had brief glimpses of human Cas and it showed a very bleak picture overall. In 5.04 - The End, we saw Cas feeling useless and indulging in harmful behavior, facing the reality of what he supposedly was at that time. Fans still speculate, whether the reality created by another angel was an accurate representation of Castiel becoming human, or whether it was all a hoax by Zachariah. We will probably never know and it's not exactly something that everybody wants to see becoming real.As season 5 progressed, this hopelessness certainly increased, but in the end, Castiel still retained a sense of belonging and actively chose to prevent another Apocalypse. As we know, things only got worse - it wouldn't be Supernatural if they didn't - and we watched his journey from becoming a wrathful God to facing his death (I lost count how many times he died. But Dean still holds the record).Season 7, then, was driven by loss and Dean's feelings, to the point where even Bobby and Sam brought it up in a conversation (7.09). Castiel ultimately came back, chose to fight side by side with Dean against Dick Roman, and that's how the dynamic duo landed in Purgatory. Once Dean was reunited with him, we were introduced to another conflict that strongly played with perception, especially Dean's. He faced another loss and his subsequent guilt continued to play out on screen until the moment Castiel came back. Cas carried his own burden independently, and
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