Went to a book club meeting and discovered one member's husband is a huge SPN fan (he wasn't there, she was telling me), complete with quoting Sam and Dean. I'm now dying to meet this guy, even though I find her sort of a blank space.

Cas actually putting it on was strange.

Oh, I don't think so. I don't think that's the kind of thing you can refuse, for one. And I think Cas was so stunned, actually putting that life/existence back on physically might have helped make it all a little realer in the moment.

Cas actually putting it on was strange.

Mostly I was thinking that with his fully returned angel mojo Castiel was capable of materializing his trenchcoat all by himself.

I was thinking that with his fully returned angel mojo Castiel was capable of materializing his trenchcoat all by himself.

But that coat doesn't have the impact. Even cleaning it up would dilute it. As it stood, it was a direct reminder of what he went through right before he walked into the reservoir, everything he suffered as he tried to atone the first time, which he didn't feel was enough.

Also, a newly materialized trenchcoat lacks the possibility of Dean having used it as a pillow at some point. IJS.

I rewatched last night. I wonder if being in the cage with Lucifer opened some kind of connection with Sam -- or Sam being his vessel. So when Cas took that damage into himself, he was taking that open phone line, too, so to speak.

Meaning, Lucifer is still in the cage, which we knew, but the hallucinations aren't as much hallucinations as Lucifer actually taunting Sam *from* the cage. That would explain why Lucifer could talk directly to Cas after the transfer (and makes me feel a little better about the logic of the thing).

I'm wondering about the mechanics now. Cas has eaten souls and made them a part of himself before. Is it possible that he could have just eaten the bad parts of Sam's, leaving the rest as a functional whole?

Still not buying that Sam's trauma would exceed what he had to have experienced containing 30-40 million monster souls that had been in Purgatory for thousands of years and a bunch of Leviathans that had been there for hundreds of millions if not billions.

Why does one have to assume the experience of being tortured by Lucifer in a cage in hell is comparable to "living" in purgatory? I can't find a reason to support the idea that the souls that Cas ingested were in torment, and that there was any personal malice in that experience.

What do we know about the environment of Purgatory from canon, and most specifically, what sort of a time the monsters would have had there? Maybe their memories are all pleasant.

Either way, being hatebanged by Luci is supposed to be a special case, isn't it?

Trailer we already saw: [link]

Interestingly, it doesn't seem that Dean actually gave up drinking when he said he would. I was actually half okay with him doing that, but am happier that he didn't.

Also, it seems that not only will we see him drinking, which we've seen plenty of, we'll see him drunk, which we have seen rarely (I contend not at all).

I do wonder if we're driving closer to some sort of moral or resolution of his alcoholism. I'm wary of that.

In Christian theology (I think, I'm not actually a very educated Christian), purgatory is sort of endless boredom. It's nothing, not good, not bad, more like an endless layover with no real distraction.

Bobby described it like this:

It's like the backside of your worst nightmares. It's all blood and bone and darkness. Filled with the bodies and souls of all things hungry, sharp, and nasty.

However, that doesn't mean that the monsters wouldn't enjoy it. Just that it wouldn't be good times for humans. But Cas didn't ingest human souls, so I don't know what mood they'd be in.

Hell is now like the theological description of Purgatory. Which is a good gag, and even a nifty comment on the forward-thinking nature of Crowley, but I don't really like it from a universe-construction point of view. I want a place of sheer and abject terror, where all the most horrible things we can envision are happening, to everyone, and repeatedly. That isn't Earth, I mean.