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shallowseeker · 8 days ago

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I didn't want to mess up your beautiful post @farenmaddox, so I decided to throw all my initial thoughts in here.

Jack Kline, Euphoria, and the muddy line between manipulation and choice

(Alternatively: how Jack's recruitment tactics are very crunchy)

Jack in the womb

In true SPN style, the early story around Jack’s birth is intentionally muddy. The show leaves it ambiguous on purpose. It makes us ask: how much of Jack's influence is instinctual / innocent, and how much is active manipulation?

New life is inexperienced; it takes what it needs instinctually, not maliciously. Dumah will mention something similar later in 14x19: that Jack goes where he feels safe.

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I think you're right that brainwashing isn't quite the right term. Because when I think more deeply about it, and especially considering how he acts in The Bad Place, I favor manipulation.

It's ultimately a very complicated form of emotional manipulation—one that's deeply tied to Jack's own desperate need for connection and acceptance.

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Tapping into people's needs

When Jack first meets Castiel, he feels safe with him for a reason: Cas couldn’t pull the Colt’s trigger.

Jack imprinted on Cas the way an infant bonds with a parent. Up till that point, everyone had tried to kill him, even Kelly. Kelly, in fact, actively tried in the most horrifying way possible, killing herself AND Jack at the same time.

(SIDE NOTE: Dean will embody both of these Cas-and-Kelly elements later in 14x20 Moriah, with the Equalizer gun... and the idea of killing himself and Jack at the same time... for the good of the world.)

Kelly killed herself because she believed what the people around her told her, that her baby would destroy the world.

KELLY: (Groans, sniffles and sighs) I love you. (fills tub) But we won't ever be together. There is no happy ending for either of us. And if what she said is true if this is what you really are (voice breaking) what you'll do to the world, all that pain, all that death, I can't let that happen. (crying) I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Kelly NEEDED to believe that her baby would be good. Jack was able to do that by saving her life. She felt him and felt his relatable emotions, and she realized he was very human indeed.

This may have been the first time he ever talked to her—that she got to know him and saw his good intentions.

Dagon takes the most uncharitable view possible, but the bond between a parent and a child can be complex, as loving as it is parasitic and draining. (SEE: The symbol of Sam as "the vampire.")

KELLY: He's not. My baby's not evil. He saved me. DAGON: That's what you think happened? (Laughs) Uh, he saved himself. He doesn't care about you. Nothing's changed. He's born, you die. But don't worry. I'll be there, right by his side, to nurture him, love him, to help him to kill everything. You know, like a mother should. &

KELLY to CAS: His power his soul surged through me, and it was good. Pure. I feel I know he is good. CAS: Kelly, what your child did, that's a testament to his power, but it's not proof of some goodness. He needs you alive. KELLY: Maybe. Or maybe it was a miracle. Maybe—maybe everything that I've been through, everything that I still have to go through, is happening for a reason. Maybe it's part of some plan.

Pure is a Poughkeepsie word in SPN, but also... there's something very human about needing to believe in something bigger than yourself. (This gets echoed in 13x04, The Big Empty, when Mia asks Dean what he believes in, and it's implied that what he has faith in... is Cas. Like with the Cupid way back in 5x14 Bloody Valentine, Dean believes in love, not cupids. That's also why... SPNwin.)

But Jack is looking for a father figure to keep him safe, not a mother to nourish him with the blood of the world. He wants to be protected. He wants a dad.

And he will get sense that insanely fatherly-protectorship aspect of Cas when he feels Cas's hand:

(Cas puts his hand on Kelly's belly. Her eyes flash – she gets a vision, a flashback of when Castiel jumped in front of her to protect her) FUTURE CAS: You stay away from her.

I do think it's interesting that Jack didn't show Kelly visions of the future directly. Instead, Kelly will lean on CAS in 12x23, borrowing HIS vision and HIS hope for the future:

KELLY: Tell me again. Tell me again what you saw. CAS: Right, I saw– I saw... [Cas closes his eyes and recalls the events of 12.19, Kelly taking his hand and the golden glow taking over him, his eyes glowing gold] I saw the future. I saw a world without pain or hunger or want. I saw the world that this child... that your child... KELLY: Mm. CAS: ...will create. KELLY: Mm. CAS: And it is a world without fear and without suffering and without hate. KELLY: Mm. CAS: I saw paradise.

Charitably, Cas was dressing up his vision in the most palatable way possible, with excessive hope as a balm for Kelly’s impending death. (This can be very important for the terminally ill!)

But uncharitably, it's a hapless, positive, light-filled nihilism. Whereas the hunter is negatively nihilistic with the mantra: "It only ends one way," the angel-soldier can at times swing into the opposite parallel, "happily ever after."

MARY: I don't know. He's sweet, kind. Even after the war, after everything, he still believes in happily ever after, you know? He's everything a hunter isn't. (beat) No offense. 4x03

(But the true balance is of course... actually neither of those things.)

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The recruitment of Castiel

From Castiel’s side, it’s equally messy. Cas couldn't shoot Kelly or Jack, but he WAS prepared to take them to Heaven.

Like with Dean and the bomb for Amara and Jack in season 11 & 15, Cas can't do it himself, so he's finding a way for it to happen more passively.

Cas & Jack & Kelly:

DEAN: Your plan? KELLY: He's taking me to Heaven. DEAN: You – You're taking her to the sandbox? CAS: Yes. I'm ending this, once and for all. Kelly and her baby have to die. 12x19

Dean & Amara:

SAM: You want God to kill Amara because you don't want Amara to be killed? DEAN: Yeah, maybe there's a part of me that just can't hurt her. But if she's already dead— SAM: Then she's already dead. Right. LUCIFER: Well, that got weird. 11x23

Dean being unable to hurt Amara is in parallel with how Cas can't hurt Jack. It's no wonder Dean chafes. If he views Amara (and Cain-Crowley) as nonconsensual brainwashing, then of course he'll be wary of Jack on multiple levels. I think this speaks more to how he views both his time as Demon Dean and his connection to Amara than anything.

So, we're back to our original question. How much of Jack's influence is instinctual, and how much is active manipulation?

Most importantly, is it at least partially consensual? Is it all Cas, or all Jack, or a weird mix of both?

(If we lean on the Amara parallel... it isn't wholly. Jack and Amara tap into vulnerabilities to get the outcomes they want. Crowley also parallels this in season 9-10, manipulating an outcome in a way that's predatory and nonconsensual. Crowley/Cain is a huge Amara parallel, which makes them off-key to Jack as well, right down to how Rowena & Crowley used Amara, and how Asmodeus & Sam used Jack.)

CASTIEL: I’m sure Sam knows that whatever you said or what you did, it wasn’t really you. It certainly wasn’t all you. 10x03

So then, I think I fall somewhere in the mud, that it's Cas, but it's his deepest fears and vulnerabilities brought to light, and it's not completely consensual.

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Cas and the idyllic future

Cas is vulnerable and psychologically wounded this season.

He feels like a failure. He needs a win. The delayed grief of losing his human fam is hitting him in the biggest way. (SEE Ishim’s: "You're sad and pathetically weak.")

And like how Kelly NEEDED Jack to be a force for good, Cas NEEDED a win, so Jack shows him the win. (The win is ofc, is actually Cas living freely with his human family.) And much like how Dean operates when it comes to collecting allies, Cas quickly judges Jack as "good" because they seemed to want the same things.

Jack is the symbol of the djinn. Jack needed someone to believe in him, and Cas fell prey to Jack’s euphoria. A dream-like, djinn-style vision: a future where Cas's human family was alive, happy, and, more importantly, SAFE WITH HIM. It was everything Cas wanted.

And this, make no mistake, this is a visual taking of Cas, a possession. A "see what I see, feel what I feel" parallel to Crowley:

And then...

Cas and Jack burn "the bad woman" and Cas himself becomes an off-key parallel to Azazel and even the Father Shapeshifter, killing the "false parents" and living in the specter of, "I'm your real family."

This is a reverse Azazel, burning not the good mother, but the bad mother. Jack in so many ways WANTS to be the reverse Azazel.

Cas later tells Kelly, "I saw a world without pain or hunger," but crucially, that world wasn’t real. It's a balm. It even stands in direct contrast to Cas’s larger character arcs: embracing the reality of death, pain, and imperfection as essential parts of life. (See: The Rit Zien episode 9x06 Heaven Can't Wait: "You say you want to live. But you can't see what I see. By choosing a human life, you've already given up. You… chose… death.") To live is to die.

(Cas says this to Jack in Ouroboros, trying to be okay with his human family dying—but even in Season 14, he really isn’t. He flips almost immediately from "All humans die, even the best ones, even Sam and Dean," to "Dean WILL wake up.")

Cas and Mary mirror each other: both are horrified by the fragility of their human families and would do anything—right or wrong—to protect them.

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But is Jack truly at fault?

Not long after this, Jack’s powers are described like sneezing—a reflex, not a conscious choice. He wanders into the world in episode one carrying his deep emotional expectations to find Castiel, near-distraught as he looks for him:

JACK: My mother, she’s in heaven. My father, he was supposed to be here, but he’s not. I’m trying to find him. I have to find him.

But the tragedy is already written into him. His powers respond to need, not will. He saved his mother when she tried to end her life and his. He saved Castiel from Dagon's killing blow.

But at the moment of his own birth, when he needed them most, he could save neither.

I'm thinking. that... Perhaps instinctively, Jack wants his powers as much as he doesn't want them?

KELLY: I go with you, you take away the thing that makes him special. ... KELLY: Because he chose you, Castiel. When you put your hand on my stomach, I heard him. He spoke to me. He told me that even if it seems scary, if I just went to the gate, if I just followed your plan, that you would make sure he was born. Sam and Dean, they want to take away his powers because they're scared. ... CAS: I am. I've been so lost. I'm not lost anymore. And I know now that this child must be born with all of his power.

There's a great meta about this somewhere, that this could've been Chuck's interference at work with Kelly. It's definitely echoing what we'll see of Zachariah's manipulation in 13x14 Good Intentions:

ZACH!CASTIEL: Well, if only they’d accepted you, instead of teaching you to fear your powers.... Because they feared them. Now, if you’ll just do as I say—

To me, it definitely reads as manipulation, which is why it echoes Zachariah. Whether that's an outside god or the god inside Jack, who's to say? But he's preying on vulnerabilities, giving hurting people some direction.

That's why he steals BABY in 12x19. He's literally stealing the narrative.

On the other hand, we eventually see that Kelly's instincts are a little bit right too, especially about taking away Jack's powers—since, in Unhuman Nature, we learn that a Jack without his grace might die very quickly.

I think ultimately, once we learn more about Jack, we see he hates his powers almost as much as he likes having them.

Perhaps what Jack always subconsciously wanted—in true Dean fashion—to be responsible for saving everyone. To be powerful so he can be good for the world. (But it’s a burden he’ll never be able to live up to.)

Dean sacrificed himself for Sam in large part because he felt like his life had to mean something, that he had to justify his own existence:

DEAN: That's my point. Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way, something good could come out of it, you know? I—I—It's like my life could mean something. BOBBY: What? And it didn't before?! Have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? [...] I could throttle you! 2x22

Jack is on earth, because Kelly is not. Just like Dean was on earth, because John was not.

It's a savior complex. Which brings us to...

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His more active manipulation with Kaia

In 13x09 The Bad Place, like Cas, we find Jack desperate to "bring back a win" for The Winchesters. He wants to save Mary more than anything, and Jack and Dean become aligned in coercion and desperation.

JACK:

& DEAN:

Dean, showing his increasingly desperate and compromised state of mind, pulls a gun on Kaia to force her help.

Jack, by contrast, will later catch the fly with honey: he uses his power to influence Kaia emotionally, recruiting her with a vision.

And Jack is so often a bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, even… but he's also a drug, euphoria-inducing.

Like Kelly NEEDS to believe Jack would be good for the world, or Cas NEEDS to believe in a future where he can freely live with his human family (because despite the lip service otherwise, that's what paradise actually IS for Cas / if it's "destiny," then he doesn't have to feel guilty for wanting something so selfish despite all his crimes; destiny for Cas is also the PERMISSION to be happy)...

...Kaia NEEDS to believe her powers have meaning. Kaia NEEDS to believe that her horrible, painful powers can be a force for good—so Jack shows her they can be.

Jack subconsciously and consciously gives each of them exactly what they need to tip them into joining him. His influence on Kaia sparks a euphoric rush that convinces her to help... and it mirrors the manipulation tactics of angels like Gabriel and Zachariah, who show people visions to sway them.

BONUS: In 13x14 Good Intentions, we see the desperation mindset in Cas, too—that overriding someone else's free will can be for the greater good, maybe even mutually beneficial because it's for the good of the whole world. (It's also very much that Mary-esque response to losing loved ones!)

CAS: "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you or anyone hurt the people I love. Not again."

And of course, by Exodus 13x22, Dean and Cas are teamed-up horrifically, torturing people for information.

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Lastly, brainwashing... it's a fun parenting metaphor!

On a broader level, this kind of "brainwashing" makes an excellent metaphor for parenting/caretaking. When you're responsible for a creature who needs your time and resources, it's unfortunately common to get weirdly attached to serving them—they're your new mission, your cause, and the thing you must now order your life around.

But it's also common... to project your own hopes and dreams onto them. Especially when you either don't feel allowed to have dreams of your own OR you're giving up your own to care for them.

This can be positive! It can also go too far.

Jack, even before he's properly born, becomes the projection point for both Kelly and Castiel—just as Dean, much later, will hang his burdens on Jack in 13x23, when he talks about retiring and Jack saving the world.

(Dean starts putting big savior expectations on Jack much earlier than season 15. In this way, Jack is a "purely son" character to Dean in a way almost no other character is.)

Here in 13x23... Dean is echoing EXACTLY what Cas got caught up in during 12x19 The Future!

This is the idea of paradise.

Jack’s presence is stoking Dean's idea of freedom: retirement, and lounging on a beach with Sam and Cas. (Aside// It's also notable how AU Michael allllmost mirrors this too, with Dean's retirement dreams in Nihilism with Rocky's Bar, but with bare-bones-contentment instead of happiness.)

It mirrors Cas's 12x19 script dreams in many ways: of Kelly on the beach, Sam running free, and Dean saying "thank you" in extreme closeup, while Cas himself preens with restored wings—big, strong and shirtless.

So paradise then... is worry-free time with loved ones.

And it's sadly, this is to Jack's detriment.

Which is why the scene directly following this?

It's Jack having nightmares. Dean's retirement is directly paired with Jack in pain. The burdens that are put on him because of the powers are just too heavy! You could even say that he... "doesn't deserve what they put on him."

There’s something about all of this, though, that can’t be separated from the idea of family. So often, we don’t choose family initially—we inherit it, or we stumble into it, or we find ourselves trapped WITH it against our will.

What matters is that we keep choosing them, over and over, even when it’s hard, even when it hurts. That’s why AU Michael’s attack on Jack in 15x09 ("burden no one asked for") hits so hard—because it taps into the same cruelty we saw from Zachariah’s figment of Mary in Dark Side of the Moon.

It weaponizes that fear that love is conditional, that you were never really wanted in the first place. Jack-Dean is directly paralleled here with Dean-Mary.

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Overall, this tendency for Jack to manipulate is crunchy, because it so often stems accidentally from his emotional needs

And even when it's on purpose, it either comes good intentions or from being backed into an impossible corner...

For Jack, it reflects a deep and uncomfortable truth: he feels he needs to save people to feel good about himself. (Hello, John in SPNwin, wanting to save ppl to paper over his own grief!)

Jack craves affirmation and meaning so intensely that he unconsciously and at times consciously uses his powers to create them—even as he struggles with how unfair it is to possess those very powers in the first place.

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