#personally i'd like to interrogate buckleming

[pollsnatural]

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[mittensmorgul]

Hi Mittens! Hope you are doing well :') Not sure if you have a post on this or not but do you think Cas could have escaped through the Season 8 Purgatory portal through which Dean got out? Thanks in advance :)

Hi hi! I'm pretty good, all things considered :'D I hope you're well too :)

I'm sure there's posts going back to when early s8 was airing, speculating on what the portal could mean, but as we learned more about purgatory over the years, I think my personal understanding of it has evolved a bit. So rather than going through my tags for all the relevant episodes trying to find what I thought of it at the time, I'm gonna spend a few minutes attempting to explain in a more straightforward, concise manner.

Under a cut, because I apparently do not understand the meaning of "concise."

Back at the time, when we had no reason not to take things like the structure of the universe and the nature of creation at face value, my personal assumption was that the gate was exactly what it said on the tin. That it opened only in response to there being a human in Purgatory.

When Benny first met Dean there, he presented Dean with a way out, and credited God with having engineered it so that a human couldn't become trapped there. We questioned how Benny would even know about the portal at all, where it was located, and what its purpose or intent even was. How did he come to know that information when apparently no other being in Purgatory did? Or surely at least one of the beings Dean had fought, tortured, interrogated, and killed would've dished that info up in hopes it would've saved them, you know?

At the time, it was a mystery, and personally I credited it to "this was built into the structure of that place, only activated by the presence of a human soul that did not belong there." We kind of get confirmation of that when Sam goes to Purgatory and then into Hell, then BACK to Purgatory with Bobby's soul, at which point he needs to find the Human Portal again to escape. Except... Bobby's soul, without his body, still needs to do the ride-along with Sam in order to get out. Bobby-- even as a purely human SOUL-- apparently can't just walk through the portal unassisted. So it seems it needs to be a living, whole human being and not just a human soul to activate it.

(and for some reason, the equivalent portal into hell remained open until living whole human Sam returned through it back into Purgatory, which Bobby's soul had no trouble doing on its own, either. I am still convinced that the "connecting portal" between Hell and Purgatory was not something that was just always open and no demon nor hell-bound soul just never bothered to notice it before, but that it opened specifically because of Sam's presence there-- and possibly had opened while Dean had been there before, but since this is Bucklemming Canon I never bothered to wonder much about it >.>)

But we know-- especially after 14.20-- how much Chuck enjoys messing with his own rules. It would be 100% plausible to credit all of this to Chuck inserting Decision Points into the story, starting with Benny himself. I am NOT suggesting that Benny was a creation of Chuck's and not 100% real. I'm suggesting that however Benny came by that knowledge of the portal was engineered by Chuck to force Dean (and then Cas) to a Decision Point.

I mean, I'd always sort of seen it this way. That SOMETHING had given Benny this information. That SOMETHING had prompted him to come up with the ensuing plan to trade this information to Dean for a potential way out back to Earth. SOMETHING had given him the knowledge of the spell Dean used to transport his soul through the portal, and to resurrect him from his bones when they'd returned to Earth. Because I'll say again, if ANY other being in purgatory had known that information, Dean would've heard about it on his wild murder spree during which he earned a reputation among the residents of Purgatory as a terrifying monster in his own right.

But then after 14.20 it was one of those things that finally settled into concrete for me as "ah yes, Chuck was forcing an agenda for his story."

Like... he couldn't leave one of His Guys off the table forever. He had to push him back to Earth, because that was the story he wanted to tell (the whole dysfunctional family narrative the story always seemed to circle back around to-- up to and including everything that happened with Amara escaping through her own weird human portal built into the MoC, you know?). But the only literary device he had available to control the narrative when all his characters had free will to make their own choices was to give them these specific sorts of Choices™.

Dean could choose to go through the portal or to stay in Purgatory. He'd spent the better part of a year trying to find Cas, insisting that he wasn't leaving without Cas, and hadn't even been LOOKING for a way out until he accomplished that mission. I think Chuck was probably getting bored with him lol. So enter Benny who knows there is an exit door, and how specifically to use that door (including how he himself can use it with Dean's help, providing a reason for Benny to also stand by Dean and offer protective services, etc. because without Dean alive the portal won't work for HIM either). But here's where the terrible choice comes in:

Cas has a nugget of humanity about him, yes. He'd already fallen far enough once (s5) that he was effectively human or as near to as an angel can get-- no powers, etc., that the portal MAY have worked for him. For all we know, angels are perfectly capable of going through the portal, but if Chuck had been paying attention at all, he'd know that Cas had no intention of going back regardless because he felt he "deserved" to be there. I mean, we do eventually learn that it took an incursion of angels to rescue him from Purgatory, and according to Naomi it had cost many angels their lives, and it makes me wonder...

Cas had NO MEMORY of how he got out of Purgatory. We know he was mind wiped after this. We know he was rescued for the specific purpose of being USED by Heaven as an unwitting operative. This was the punishment for disobedience and his actions in s6 that Naomi had decided was most appropriate for him-- trying to take away Cas's choice in the Big Picture of things, while giving him the illusion of choice in small ways (see what she tells him at the end of 8.08, asking him what he'd like to do after telling him he was not allowed back in Heaven and, then letting him know he would have no memories of their little conversations where he informed on the Winchesters' activities to her).

So those angels who were lost in the process of bringing Cas back-- was it due to some essential nature of the danger of purgatory to angels? Was it attempting to get back out again through some portal akin to that Human Portal? Was it due to conflicts with Leviathans? Or, as I've always assumed, was it due to Cas fighting them off and refusing to go with them? A la Hannah's conflict with the angels who wanted to remain on Earth in s10? "Many angels were lost, because you killed them trying to avoid taking your punishment the way we believe you should."

Honestly? That feels most accurate to me.

Which means... I don't think Cas needed a portal at all to escape. If angels were able to get into and then back out of Purgatory to retrieve him, I think he could've left at any time if he'd only known HOW, you know? Because somehow-- the same as Benny-- Naomi knew something about Purgatory that apparently nobody else did.

Even Michael in 15.08 was able to open that portal directly into Purgatory. It seems that for some angels, simply knowing that trick was enough to make that portal a reality. And as the de facto angel in charge of Heaven in s8, we assume that knowledge fell to Naomi-- I have to assume as a similar function to what happened to Billie when she gained the knowledge of being Death after her promotion to the job, you know?

Which brings us to the question of WHY. Why did Cas choose to stay behind in Purgatory rather than even attempting the portal? Because we know that's what he wanted. He wanted Dean to save himself, and didn't understand how badly Dean needed to save Cas, too. He had to "trick" Dean into even going up to the portal in the first place, pretending he was prepared to try to escape with him and then effectively pushing Dean through at the last possible moment, shutting off his only known route to escape.

But what was Chuck's story at this point? What was stirring the drama for his Main Characters? They weren't taking the bait on the Tablet Storyline he was trying to manufacture. He needed to motivate them to start messing with the Cosmic Order again, or they would've just gone about living their lives taking little hunts and staying out of Cosmic Problems. Chuck NEEDED to drag them back and suddenly we had Abaddon, Crowley looking for Tablets and cosmic knowledge via the prophets, the MoL, the Winchester Family Legacy, and all this other Big Destiny stuff rearing its ugly head.

Much like Chuck would eventually use Eileen to unwittingly "infiltrate" the Bunker in 15.06 to be his unknowing spy, Naomi used Cas for the same purpose in s8. Cas was conveniently already a trusted friend to the Winchesters. Dean was wary about how Cas escaped, but concerned enough for his friend to offer support and comfort rather than suspicion and mistrust, you know? But then it became clear that Dean knew something was Not Right with Cas, and wouldn't just let it go. Especially after 8.10. So Naomi planted a Kill Switch, and then even that failed in the end.

I have veered wildly off the point here lolololol

Point being, yeah, I think Cas could've gone through that portal if he'd wanted to, but it was his choice not to, which led to him being dragged out against his will because the story needed him to push it in the directions Chuck wanted it to go at the time.