#and i tried but in hindsight and with more context clues from the other perspective..

[bunnihearted]

🕸️

[timeagainreviews]

My Series 10 Rewatch: The Husbands of River Song

One of the beautiful aspects of starting this blog has been the opportunity to revisit old episodes. The title of this blog "Time and Time Again," isn’t just a reference both to Twin Peaks and Doctor Who, but also a raison d'être. The hope is that repeat viewings will bring forth new insights. Things I loathed previously may seem charming in hindsight. Things I initially adored may begin to show cracks in their facade. Some records take a few listens until we discover their greatness. Sometimes art requires consideration.

I mention this because our first review for the series 10 retrospective is for "The Husbands of River Song," an episode of which I detested. It's important to give this context as my opinion of it has indeed mellowed over time. I will endeavour to highlight this shift in perspective as memory permits. Before the other day, I hadn't watched this episode since it first aired on Christmas of 2015. What then can nearly half a decade add to the experience?

It should be noted that I have never been a big fan of Doctor Who Christmas specials. It would be quicker to count the reasons I like them, or in this case, the reason. That being, it's more Doctor Who. Other than that, I find the whole Christmas theme to be hokey. Growing up, I was a Halloween kid. I really don't like Christmas all that much, so an entire episode themed around it is not my idea of a good time. Even worse is when the villains themselves have Christmassy gimmicks like Santa robots or evil snowmen. I suppose in some ways, it's in the Christmas spirit for the Doctor to die and regenerate on Christmas, as they so often do. The concept of birth and renewal are a big part of the holiday. But if I was known to die a lot on Christmas, I might use my time machine to skip it every year.

Landing his TARDIS on Christmas Day, in the year 5343 is Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. The planet, Mendorax Dellora, is one of Steven Moffat's usual Christmas village planets, stuck somewhere in a vortex of quaint sentiment. The Doctor appears to have about as much Christmas spirit as I do. Having just lost Clara both in spirit and memory, he's reverted to the Doctor's most worrisome state- hermitic and bitter. Not even the TARDIS' holographically generated reindeer antlers can bring out the holiday cheer. It's a visit from Nardole, a nebbish sort of man, that brings the Doctor out of his slump. Mistaking him for a surgeon, he leads the Doctor to what appears to be a crash-landed saucer. The obscene redness of its exterior against the plain backdrop gave me the strangest pangs of the circus tent from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." Just throwing that out there.

From the outset, Peter Capaldi is at his most charming. I've never actually covered a Twelfth Doctor story before now, so I would like to mention how much I adore his performance as the Doctor. I know he gets a lot of flack from certain fans (see: dipshit morons with no class), but I think he's brilliant. Right away his banter with Nardole is apparent. It's easy to see why someone may have watched Capaldi and Matt Lucas interacting and thought "There's something here." Lucas' history in comedy gives him great timing as the foil to the Twelfth Doctor's eccentricity.

However, it won't be Nardole filling the role of co-star for long. As the Doctor enters the ship of King Hydroflax, he is greeted by the familiar face of River Song. As I have mentioned previously, I have issues with the way River's story plays out, but by this point in the show, I had grown to love her. Which is why this episode pains me so much. The problems inherent in having the Doctor and River's relationship play out like two ships in the night are at their worst in this episode, but I'll get to that in due time.

The King Hydroflax, played with great relish by Greg Davies is a mere head atop a giant robot body, painted in the same garish red as the flying saucer. River, acting very unlike herself, is practically prostrating herself in front of the vain king. Furthermore, she doesn't seem to recognise the Doctor's new face at all. Even more disturbing to the Doctor is the fact that River appears to be married to the king tyrant, talking about him as some sort of cherished lover. After analysing his new patient, the Doctor discovers a foreign body lodged into Hydroflax's skull. All the while, the king's loyal subjects watch a live feed of the operation, booing the Doctor when he refuses to placate the ego of their leader. It's an idea that has become painfully more believable in the years since airing.

The Doctor and River go into another room of the ship where River explains that the foreign body is, in fact, the most valuable diamond in the universe known as the Halassi Androvar. Somewhat to the Doctor's relief, he discovers that River's love for the king has been a ruse to recover the diamond for the Halassi people, from whom it was stolen. Much like the Doctor has turned into a bitter hermit, loneliness has brought out River's more sadistic nature as she takes to the idea of killing Hyrdroflax for the diamond in stride. Less enthusiastic of the idea than even the Doctor is the emperor himself, who has somehow managed to eavesdrop on two Time Lords while walking around in a massive robotic body. This kind of logic will continue throughout the night.

The king is much displeased with learning that his new wife is some renegade archaeologist with a sonic trowel. Taunting the pair, he removes his head from his robot body, leading River to improvise. Holding his head hostage at trowelpoint, River improvises and takes the entire head in a duffel bag. River's other husband, a beautiful but submissive man named Ramone, teleports her and the Doctor to safety with the head in tow. Meanwhile, Hyrdoflax's body sets about taking on a new head in the form of poor Nardole. It’s worth noting that River wiping Ramone’s mind of any knowledge that they were married is a bit creepy. There are implications involved that kind of gross me out.

The Doctor, having just met Ramone, is taken aback after having met yet another of River's husbands. Beginning to feel like a bit of an afterthought the Doctor takes small potshots at River's sense of loyalty, while also fishing for clues that he may or may not have ever meant something to her. For all this episode does to highlight the Doctor and River's secret feelings for one another, it does a piss poor job of actually staying true to River's character in one key manner. Throughout a majority of the episode, River fails repeatedly to recognise the Doctor for who he is.

Moffat tries somewhat to cover his tracks by making it look as though River only knows of twelve previous regenerations, including the War Doctor. In what looks like one of the cheapest props of the episode, she even has a little fold-out wallet with all of the Doctors' pictures. Knowing that the Eleventh Doctor was the end of his regeneration cycle, she never even considers the idea that the Doctor may have lived on. Even though toward the end of the episode, she remarks that the Doctor always finds a way to cheat fate, she wholeheartedly buys into the idea that the Doctor would just never regenerate beyond the Eleventh Doctor. In a single episode, not even River's own logic believes River's own logic.

Learning that River sometimes shows up to places he's been long enough to take the TARDIS for a joyride, the Doctor is given a chance to act as a bit of a spectator in his own life. There is a definite bit of glee to be found in the Twelfth Doctor's over the top reaction to his own TARDIS. Finally being able to say "It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor savours the moment to great comical effect. Ramone parts ways to he and River's pre-established rendezvous point. However, he is cut short by the giant robot body holding a gun to Nardole's head. Poor Nardole, he's having such a rough go of things. First, he brings the wrong surgeon, then he loses his body, and now he's being held hostage by his new body. The robot’s only demand is that Ramone send a message to River.

River, as always, is quite at home in the TARDIS, even taking a moment to raid the liquor cabinet of which not even the Doctor was aware. However, her flawless piloting of the TARDIS is thrown out of whack by unforeseen circumstances. Even after the Doctor deduces that the TARDIS won't fly while it senses the King's head and body are both inside and outside the TARDIS, River still doesn't grasp the fact that he is the Doctor. I would also like mention that while I found the TARDIS' failsafe to be a rather creative invention, it did immediately make me wonder about the Cyberhead Handles' body. What constitutes a body the TARDIS recognises? Could the Face of Boe fly in the TARDIS? Could Dorium Maldovar? Oh well, it doesn't really matter.

A knock on the TARDIS door from Ramone, now part of the robot, quickly reunites the head and body. However, for the third time in this episode, any action is immediately sidestepped by yet another person taking a disembodied head hostage. This time it's the Doctor threatening to throw Hydroflax's head down the garbage chute. Every chance this episode gets, it bravely avoids the perils of forming some sort of plot. The stakes have never been lower. The Doctor and River take the TARDIS to a restaurant aboard the starship Harmony and Redemption. Everyone onboard is some sort of war criminal or seedy individual, including the Maître d', a bug faced man named Flemming. After taking a seat in the restaurant, River reveals that she never planned on returning the diamond to the people of Halassi. Instead, she plans on selling it to the highest bidder.

The Doctor uses this moment to probe River for further information. River reads silently from her TARDIS diary. She reveals to the Doctor that the person who gave her the diary was the type of man who would know just how long a diary she would need. It's at this moment that the Doctor begins to see traces that River is very much still in love with him and that she may be a little lost without him. I would say this scene was touching if it weren't for the fact that it was undercut by River's inability to recognise the man sitting directly in front of her. It's so out of character for River to be this myopic. By this point in my initial watch through, I was so annoyed by this betrayal of her character that it took me out of the story completely. The second time around was only a little less irritating due to the fact that at least now I expected it.

River's buyer turns out to be Scratch, a very Moffatty body horror bad guy, in the vein of characters like Colony Sarff or the Headless Monks. After accepting River's price, Scratch opens his head like a coin purse and pulls out a little orb that connects to any bank in the universe. By this point, I've grown accustomed to Moffat's over the top exploits like this. It's feasible to imagine that Scratch's cruel master may have torn his head open to store money. It's like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," when Humma Kavula removes a servant's nose to reveal a control pad that opens a series of draws tucked into his chest. However, it gets a bit far fetched when it is revealed that many other diners in the restaurant are the same species as Scratch and they all have the same scar across their faces. Is this some evolutionary trait? Are they a species so greedy that they evolved a place to squirrel away their money? Do they keep other stuff like car keys or bags of space weed? Not every bad guy needs to be a toy, Moffat!

The reason the patrons suddenly turn on the Doctor and River is that they discover the diamond is lodged within the head of their great leader. This brings up even more questions about their heads. Why doesn't Hydroflax’s head have the same scar? Are they the same species? How did this asshole even get so much power in the first place? There seems to be neither anything likable nor competent about him... oh right. Once again, the events of the years since have made this episode more believable. Dinner is even further interrupted by the King's body barging in, demanding its proper head. Only now it deems King Hydroflax's head unsuitable. Having been detached from his body for too long, the King's head is now dying. The body disintegrates the King's head, leaving behind the diamond. Flemming uses this opportunity to alert the patrons of the restaurant to the fact that River knows the perfect person to become the next head of state, so to speak. Of course, it's the Doctor.

Why Flemming knows River knows a Time Lord, but doesn't know she herself is a Time Lord is anyone's guess. Or maybe he knows and is just throwing shade by implying that the Doctor is a better Time Lord. It's at this moment that Alex Kingston is given one of her finest moments as River Song in the form of an emotional monologue. After arguing that the Doctor wouldn't be there with her because he doesn't care, it finally dons on her that the Doctor has been standing next to her the entire time. Despite the fact that Moffat sacrificed River's intelligence for the sake of a big reveal, the moment still resonates. Capaldi's warm gaze meeting River's expression of shock followed by his soft utterance of "Hello sweetie," is genuinely touching. No cynical sensationalism can undo the beautiful performances given by Capaldi and Kingston, who bring more gravity to the scene than the script.

For all of the hand-wavey tripe this episode heaps upon us, the way in which the Doctor and River escape this sticky situation is actually rather brilliant. In any other show, the appearance of a sudden freak meteor collision with the ship would seem convenient. But River is an archaeologist and a time traveller. She picked her meeting location perfectly- a starship about to be destroyed by meteors. Her line of "I'm an archaeologist from the future, I dug you up," is easily one of the best River Song lines ever written for Doctor Who. If this is truly her final episode, that's one hell of a line to go out on.

In another convenient moment, the diamond lands in River's dress as they're making their escape. I guess she planned that too. The Doctor uses Scratch's money orb to short circuit the robot body with its firewall. River and the Doctor run to the TARDIS while the ship crashes into the planet Darillium, knocking River unconscious. While River is out, the Doctor uses the opportunity to do a bit of time travelling. First, the Doctor gives the diamond to one of the crash's first responders, telling him to build a restaurant in front of the singing towers of Darillium. Then he jumps forward to a time when the restaurant has been built to make reservations. Then he jumps forward to the day of the reservation. River wakes up to find herself wandering into a beautiful restaurant on Christmas Day. Even Ramone and Nardole have survived due to some trickery on the Doctor’s behalf. Nardole is having a bit of “alone time,” which River remarks must be difficult as a head. That one goes up there with Ursula becoming a blowjob dispensing pavement stone at the end of “Love and Monsters.” The Doctor is waiting for River in a First Doctor style bow tie and coat. He treats her to a romantic meal and the gift of her own sonic screwdriver, the same sonic screwdriver she has when we met her in "Silence in the Library."

There's a nice little cap on the entire River storyline here that feels a bit more final than the one between her and the Eleventh Doctor. Perhaps it's the fact that it's the last time Moffat wrote her character, or perhaps it's because even River seems to know something is up. Having heard the legends of her own romance with the Doctor, River knows that her last night was spent with the Doctor on the planet Darillium. This is a bit of retconning that you often find in Doctor Who. River doesn't really know in her first appearance that she's headed toward her own demise, yet here she's all too aware of it. It's compounded by the fact that the Doctor reveals that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years. It's meant to be a sweet line that implies they got to spend a lot of time coupling together for 24 years, but it's really just 24 years for River to know, for certain, that she's going to her inevitable doom.

Retcons like these don't necessarily ruin the show. Storytellers shouldn't be forced to sacrifice the current narrative all for the sake of creating tidy bookends. Should Big Finish not put Peri and the Fifth Doctor in more adventures for fear that it may dilute the Doctor's sacrificing his own life for a woman he barely knows? Does him knowing her better make his sacrifice any less admirable? How about the many times River meets the Doctor in his previous forms even though the Tenth Doctor clearly had never met her in his life? I'm not going to answer these questions because they should be open-ended. It is a thing to consider in Doctor Who. If time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, then maybe the storylines are allowed to be as malleable.

As I've demonstrated above, our own experiences with the stories can be malleable. I watched this episode with my boyfriend because I wanted to gauge his initial reaction. A lot of his reactions mirrored my own. We both found ourselves enjoying it as a light romp afforded by the air of a Christmas episode, while also deriding it for its lack of plot. Like myself, he too felt that the big reveal was detrimental to River's intelligence and went on past the point of acceptability. It's one of the oddest things about Steven Moffat as a writer, no matter how clever his ideas actually may be, he doesn't ever seem to know when his audience has caught on. Perhaps it's the suits at the BBC underestimating the audience. Or perhaps this is because he spent a lot of his life as a Doctor Who nerd, oftentimes feeling out of place when talking about Doctor Who to casuals. But the modern Doctor Who audience has been raised on science fiction and intricate narratives. No hand-holding necessary.

Regardless of how attuned he perceives his audience to be, River's realisation seems more slavishly timed to the climax of the story than anything else. One can't help but wonder if Moffat hadn't been so insistent on making this moment the crux of the episode, we may have actually gotten a more serviceable plot. Instead of heads held hostage and hand waving, we could have gotten a stronger villain. Scratch could have represented more than just some guy with a coin purse head. There are lots of fantastical elements on display, but none of them is ever given any gravity. Moffat's fixation on character relationships is so single-minded that it comes not only at the sake of plot, but character as well. It's unfortunate that despite Alex Kingston's greatest efforts, River's goodbye is undercut by one writer's need to be clever.

[veritascara]

Jacen Syndulla: Answers to All the Big Questions

After the bombshell finale revelation that Kanan and Hera actually had a son, I found myself pouring through all the Kanera moments in the rest of the season again to reassess what was going on between the two of them. In hindsight, I found some things did look different—really different. And the questions Jacen’s existence brought had some reasonably good clues left along the way to help solve them.

Because we’re all dying to know how this green and orange kid came about, right?

So here you go, this is the fruits of my (mostly unscientific) labor. Fair warning, I’m tackling this whole situation from the perspective of a married person, a parent, and a nurse—birds and the bees and all that.

Putting everything below a cut because this got a *little* out of hand.

When did Hera get pregnant/when did Kanan and Hera find the time to have sex?

The short answer: Most likely on Lothal, during Flight of the Defender.

The long answer: Based on what I see throughout the series, there’s no clear evidence that Hera is pregnant before their return to Lothal, although they have had a sexual relationship for many years. Kanan is on edge about their relationship early in season four, and I get the sense that this is an ongoing argument—that after the Zero Hour disaster, he’s been pushing to make their relationship more public and is getting increasingly frustrated with her focus on the Rebellion and busyness, but that’s all there is to it. Hera gives no outward signs that she’s pregnant until the very end of the series (we’ll get to that), and the prisoner uniform she wears in Jedi Night makes a big show of the flatness of her belly.

When the rebels return to Lothal during The Occupation, we finally get a moment to see them in relative privacy. They are romantic and loving as ever and both seem more relaxed away from the larger rebellion. And here we get Kanan’s “Huh, I just realized, it’s been awhile since we spent some time alone” line, followed by Hera’s “And when we do it’s in situations like this” response. While this has been discussed before, it bears repeating that Kanan’s comment is very much ‘parent code’ for “It’s been way too long since we last had sex.” And the disgust in the way Hera states “situations like this” makes it pretty clear that she would much rather be enjoying the kind of situations he’s suggesting as well, rather than the one they’re stuck in.

I don’t know what Kanan’s definition of “it’s been awhile” is, but I do know that even in the healthiest married relationship, there can be phases where busyness and sheer exhaustion take over, and because you have to work, and you have to make sure you keep the kids alive, the something that has to give usually ends up being sex. Before the two of you know it, it’s been weeks and you’re desperate for a little energy and no screaming children (or in their case, troublemaking teenagers) around to interrupt you.

Cue the next day and Flight of the Defender. I don’t know what else to say other that when two parental adults talk about wanting to spend ‘some time alone” one day, and then the next day find themselves child-free for hours without a whole lot to do . . . they do each other.

They had good, old-fashioned sex, okay.

Ta-da! Baby.

Did Kanan know about the baby?

The short answer: Yes! I think there is good narrative evidence to support this.

The long answer: From what we see in the show, he probably knew almost right away. At the beginning of Kindred, we get the beautiful scene where Hera approaches Kanan while he meditates in a field, the morning after Flight of the Defender. They talk about how they keep getting drawn back to Lothal, and Kanan says “There’s more to it, I’m just not sure what.” The next time we see them, Sabine and Hera are preparing for her flight, and Kanan approaches her, now uncharacteristically agitated. It’s still morning, and we can safely assume he has just returned from his meditation. It’s not a huge leap from there to guess that something he learned while meditating, probably regarding why they are on Lothal, has upset him. He immediately launches into an unprovoked argument with Hera regarding the safety of the old u-wing ship and the future of their relationship.

At the time this episode aired, this scene really bugged me. It felt like a forced attempt at creating “will they, won’t they” tension between an already obviously dedicated couple, and seemed drastically out of character for Kanan. But in hindsight, it makes a lot more sense. Fact 1: Kanan was meditating and is a Jedi. Fact 2: Conception usually takes place about 12-24 hours after sexual intercourse. From there we can infer that Kanan has seen or sensed something of their future child—either a vision or perhaps a shift in the Force itself with his conception (remember this is the next morning)—and this sets off a sudden surge of anxiety both for Hera’s safety as well as an unreasonable, but not unfounded, fear that she might put the Rebellion first before their child, just as she has to some degree with their relationship. He waits for her in the ship to talk to her again before she leaves, this time calm and apologetic, like the adult he is, but he never gets the chance to fully explain himself. She kisses him, and then has to leave rapidly before the Empire arrives.

The next evidence I see is Kanan’s reaction to Hera’s crash and capture in Rebel Assault. He tries initially to follow the others back to base, but quickly because too upset, to the point where he turns back alone to try to rescue her. When stopped by the wolves, he is angry and impatient to a degree we haven’t seen before. Even when Hera was nearly killed by Fenn Rau, he was calm and collected, but he’s out of control here, for no apparent reason. The wolves are able to recenter him, and he returns to camp, knowing that he needs Ezra to plan the mission because he can’t think clearly enough to do so. His overblown reaction makes more sense if he either knows about their child or at least the potential for his existence.

Lastly, in Jedi Night, we get this enigmatic line from Kanan: “Hera, there’s something I need to tell you.” Rukh interrupts their moment, and what he needs to tell her is never clarified. He dies before he can bring up the subject again. I can only assume in context that he wanted to tell her something significant, and telling her either about the existence of their child directly or indirectly as some enigmatic Jedi-esque line for her to remember later on would make sense here.

When does Hera know?

The short answer: Likely around the beginning of Family Reunion – and Farewell.

The long answer: As @mandaloriandragontrainer pointed out, at the beginning of this episode, we see Hera down below while Ezra is “talking” in the gun turret to his parents. She briefly touches her abdomen, a gesture we’ve never seen her do before. We see her do this at least once more later in the episode when they are on the bridge of the Imperial Command Center, after Thrawn and Ezra are taken away by the purrgil. This is the first change we get in her behavior throughout the series that is unrelated to her grief over Kanan’s loss and the strongest indicator we have that she knows she is pregnant here—but not the only one. When they go to invade the dome, Hera’s behavior is also significantly subdued. She waits until the last minute to enter the fight to get into the base, and does little physical fighting. When she does fight, it’s purely defensive, and she gets out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

Timing wise, this would also make sense. Unlike previous seasons, which stretched out over months, most of this season occurs in a matter of a few days, with days and nights clearly demarcated. Rebel Assault takes place only about three days after Kanan and Hera have sex, and Jedi Night occurs the next day after that.

From a medical perspective, while a fertilized egg begins developing immediately, pregnancy itself does not begin until implantation of the embryo, which occurs between 5-14 days post-conception. Assuming Twi’leks, as a compatible humanoid species, have pregnancies that are relatively similar to humans, Hera technically isn’t even pregnant until after A World Between Worlds. After that episode, an indeterminate amount of time passes before A Fool’s Hope, probably a few days, as Hera hunts for a way to smuggle herself off Lothal and meet up with their “extended family”—enough time for implantation to have occurred and the pregnancy to have developed enough for advanced Star Wars medical technology to detect it.

We can’t know how Hera would have known to even check for it (if Dave Filoni bothered to think about that); perhaps Twi’leks have specific symptoms that appear sooner than humans, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we see this from her the first moment we see her alone in her own ship, when she would have had a private moment to run a simple medical test.

Why does Hera not have a miscarriage?

The short answer: She wasn’t even technically pregnant yet.

The long answer: As pregnancy does not technically begin until after implantation, you cannot miscarry until after that point. It’s estimated that between 50-80% of conceived embryos actually fail to develop of their own accord and are simply flushed out of the body with menstruation without ever implanting. This is most often the result of genetic abnormalities that prevent further development. But aside from internal factors that cause the embryo’s demise, there is almost nothing else outside of it that can cause its destruction.

The uterus is perhaps the best-protected organ in the body—even better than the heart or the brain. It’s shielded by the pelvis on three sides, sacrum on the fourth, and muscular pelvic floor on the fifth, and it’s cushioned by the bladder and intestines everywhere else. Because an unimplanted embryo has no connection yet to the mother, it cannot be affected by drugs in the maternal system, nor does it have a heartbeat that could be interrupted by electrical shock. It cannot be detached from the uterine wall by trauma, and will just continue floating its merry way down the fallopian tube to its destination, regardless of what is happening externally.

Ultimately, assuming this is the stage of pregnancy that Hera was in, it’s the absolute safest point for her baby during the trauma she suffers in Rebel Assault and Jedi Night, and his development would be completely unaffected.

What if she really was pregnant earlier?

The short answer: It’s still possible that the baby might survive despite the trauma/torture.

The long answer: First trimester miscarriage is a complicated phenomenon that occurs for a wide variety of reasons. Yes, trauma and stress are risk factors for miscarriage, but risk factors are not causes in and of themselves. Even with horrific domestic violence, women do not always lose their pregnancies. The uterus does not rise out of the pelvis until around the second trimester (second twelve weeks of pregnancy), so even a few weeks along, the embryo or fetus is still well protected. Hera’s fight with Rukh is pretty brutal and would pose the biggest single risk, but as long as the uterus was small enough it might be okay. A few years ago there was an uproar when it was found out that Kerri Walsh Jennings won the Olympic gold medal for beach volleyball, a notoriously physical sport, when she was five weeks pregnant (which is three weeks post-conception).

Electrical shocks could pose a theoretical risk by stopping the pulsing of the fetal myocardium, but from what we see, the electroshock torture is designed to be superficial—causing pain upon contact with the skin and by inducing skeletal muscle spasms. It doesn’t penetrate deep enough to affect the victim’s heart, and likely wouldn’t make it deep enough to the uterus either. Being stunned by Pryce would probably be a bigger risk in that regard than the electrical shocks.

The vascular connection offered by the placenta does put the embryo at risk to adverse effects from drugs that can cross the placental barrier, but it is unlikely that a single dose of a short acting psychoactive drug such as the truth serum would have any major teratogenic (birth defect or miscarriage causing) effects.

What points would support an earlier conception date?

There are a couple lines of dialogue where it felt like it would make a lot of sense for Hera to have been pregnant earlier, once in Jedi Night when she first tries to tell Kanan something but gets distracted by his hair, then again later in Dume, when she says “Why did I wait so long to tell him” and “I thought we would have more time.” It’s these lines alone that give me pause and make me wonder if maybe she knew all along in that arc that she was pregnant and simply couldn’t get it out, foolishly thinking that her rescue meant she’d be able to tell him later, at a more private, meaningful moment. Instead she chose to tell him on the fuel pod that she loved him because it was easier for her. This concept is really appealing on an emotional level because it makes much more sense than Hera having never told the man she’s called “love” for years that she actually loved him, and breaking pregnancy news feels awkward even if the best of scenarios. But Kanan’s own response seems to indicate that her reticence to tell him she loves him is true, as do as their earlier arguments.

And beyond those moments, we don’t get a single other visual clue before Family Reunion – and Farewell that Hera has any knowledge of being pregnant—no physical fatigue, nausea, or bloating that we can see, and no abdominal guarding (not even once) or holding back during fight scenes, even though she would have been a few weeks farther along and quite likely symptomatic. And while her belly wouldn’t show for quite a while since she is pretty tall, the show makes a pretty big point about just how flat her stomach is right up until the end. Combining those reasons with the evidence that supports her knowing only in the finale, and I can’t see that being the case.

Well, that’s all she wrote! Ultimately, these are my personal opinions, and they require some fill-in-the-blanks guesswork that others may not agree with. But their relationship arc as a whole and characters as individuals make more sense to me through the lens of what we know at the end, and hopefully some of you will find this useful as well!

[elizabethrobertajones]

I've been thinking about this a lot and it's been bugging me. Do you think Dean loves Cas despite his angel-ness or he loves Cas's angel-ness simply because it's a part of Cas? Because I believe Dean when he says he hates angels. But then there's Cas, and I feel like he loves Cas warts and all. I need answers!

Hahaha, he definitely makes a Cas exception when talking about hating angels. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 instances where he wasn’t just making passing comments about them being dicks (where we just have to apply a Cas exemption unless Cas HAS been acting like a dick from Dean’s perspective, in which case he probably is vagueblogging :P), which were really interesting to me - in 9x08 when Cas is conveniently still human he tells Jody they’re dicks while “Zeke” is in the room:

JODY Wh– angels? You’re joking.DEAN Don’t get your pants on fire. They suck.

and in 7x21 the whole awful thing where he tries to explain to Kevin why angels want to abduct him to the “desert” and ends up lamenting about his personal life:

DEANOh, I don’t know, man. What can I say? You’ve been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There’s no use asking “why me?” ‘Cause the angels – they don’t care. I think maybe they just don’t have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just… breaks them apart.

I’m not really paralleling these moments or anything, I just think it’s funny one of them Cas is 100% exempt from being an angel currently (and this is the episode which seems to follow on directly from 9x06 based on the recap conversation Sam and Dean have like they didn’t have 9x07 in between and only now are reflecting on what happened in 9x06 :P) and so in this one instance Dean can say whatever he likes about angels, he’s not covering Cas in blanket statements.

And of course in 7x21 Dean is miserable about what’s happened to Cas, and so frustrated he can’t get through to Cas and Cas can’t speak plainly to him so they’re at this awful emotional impasse and he can just see how BROKEN Cas is at that point. And he knows why - that’s the betraying moment that he understands exactly what Cas has been through and what it would have done to him and he’s making it clear he knows why this has broken him apart. Because he *cares*.

But yeah. Dean n Cas. Cas n Dean. It’s a weird one because I think Dean initially was both terrified and attracted to Cas entirely BECAUSE he was an angel and he was terrifying and all up in Dean’s face, and way hotter than an angel had a right to be, and so on. We all know the story :P But obviously Cas rebels and then Dean bonds with him a lot over human things - absent fathers, and last nights on earth. (This is literally their theme all through the season from 5x01 to 5x22 if you pay attention and it kills me because of the nonsense context 5x03 puts it all in :P)

But then in season 6 when Cas is acting distant and angry at Dean again, he describes him like this:

DEANWhat happened to you, Cas? You used to be human, or at least like one.

It really struck Dean how human Cas became in season 5 - not just losing his powers, but emotionally, how Cas clearly cared about things and related to him. Dean saw the humanity in Cas and he clearly started to like that MORE. Even though he tells him not to change in 5x04, it’s just about avoiding the bad future and he prefers Cas as he is - on an arc which is mellowing him out, to Dean’s eyes, without making him into end!Cas. Cas saving him and being a dork over the phone, so doing things very unlike season 4 Cas who was far more rigid and less likely to help. He definitely sees Cas getting his powers back as a way of losing Cas in 5x22 and over season 6 he feels that he’s lost what he had with Cas before - the profound bond and all - because Cas isn’t honest and caring like he was. It’s the loss of a friend as much as anything and Dean describes it as losing the human part of him. And season 6 is very much the time he would think of Cas as a dick. 

And in season 8 it’s Cas responding to Naomi’s orders that makes Dean most angry and confused about Cas’s behaviour, because he’s still not able to care about things in the way Dean knows he can… He doesn’t know that Naomi is metaphorically “cutting out Cas’s human weakness” by making Cas kill Dean over and over and over to make him aloof and ready to kill Dean instead of do as he asks. Breaking through to the side of Cas that used to be what Dean loved and has been buried under this forced angelic duty is the victory of 8x17, and the loss is that Cas takes the tablet and a new angelic duty, and leaves again. 

I mean Dean obviously cares for all of Cas but I think from season 8 they are very very very much structuring Cas’s sense of duty and angelness as something he owes to heaven, and in the way of him bonding with Dean, and of being where he wants to be. In season 9 he gets to be human but he can’t be around Dean, and Dean knows in 9x06 he wasted his shot and has to leave Cas with Nora and to do human things without him. Cas then takes on another angelic duty until Hannah makes Cas pick between Heaven and Dean, and Cas picks Dean because Dean is more important, but before he knows it, Dean is a demon, and Hannah ropes him back into more duty, which is where they have some very interesting dialogue over several episodes of exploration of being an angel and that duty. Cas and Hannah’s perception of earth and angels, and what worth there is in on staying on earth, and understanding human things and so on. It’s so hard for me to be concise about this one because I was brand new in fandom when that all happened so I was reading 10000 bits of meta on it and it was all The Most Important Thing That Ever Happened :P But it all happened AWAY from Dean and I remember writing the post at the end of the season about how Dean basically could have assumed Cas and Hannah dated all season and Cas was off doing angel business without him for ages because Cas used the lie in 10x18 that Hannah had helped him get his grace back, when he hadn’t seen her since 10x07 and then in 10x17 got put on Heaven’s shitlist for jailbreaking Bobby to jailbreak Metatron. I mean in hindsight I don’t think, based on Dean’s info, he had a CLUE what Cas had been through, except via what he sees of Cas interacting with Claire, and in 10x09 when they first get there he’s *baffled*. It takes until 10x20 for him to have a good conversation with Cas about wtf is going on here, and then they go to the hot topical together so it all worked out (for 2 episodes :P) … Aaah, season 10. 

Anyways, it’s been less of a thing since then and I think after 11x03 Dean has to know Cas has been exiled from Heaven and how bad it really is because there was no reason for Cas to lie about being tortured by angels and all. And once Dean knows that, I think Cas is a bit easier for him to understand again (honesty!) and at the very least they don’t have this between them? And when he talks about heaven and angels being bad he just excludes Cas because to him Cas isn’t even part of this conversation, when he knows the angels hate Cas. I’m pretty sure he’s expressed a lot of concern about Cas seeing angels, like 12x10 and 13x07, because he knows they hate Cas. I can’t remember how much else contact Dean has had with it all but he can take Ishim as a good example of how Heaven feels, probably :P

And in the meantime Cas HAS softened up a lot and he’s of course behaving very differently from how he used to back in season 4, 6 or 8 (or 10 as Dean thought) and in the bits in season 10, 11, 12 and 13 where they’ve been around each other it’s pretty obvious they are much softer with each other… Although Dean’s had a special soft expression for Cas for years, of course :P So I think Dean is getting back to where he was in season 5 where Cas was “human or like one” and he is seeing the Cas he truly loves rather than the scary hot smitey angel, and it’s less of an issue, the more Heaven rejects and attacks Cas around Dean and he knows about it? I mean he’s pretty much seen Cas get attacked by every angel he ever knows Cas hung out with, so he has a pretty clear picture of how it goes now :P I think he can reserve a small part of him that finds Cas getting all smitey kind of hot, but only in the safe contexts where he’s doing it FOR them and not because weird ulterior motives from Heaven which are MAKING him do it :D