lizbobjones | Dean & Cas are in Love 1

A hopefully one day conclusive study of these assholes, hopefully told as briefly as I can.

Written for the people in the fandom who care but sometimes need a pick me up on this, and not written to prove a point to anyone who doesn’t already care. <3

First up, just letting our guys meet. This is not insignificant but not of course where they fall in love or anything - it doesn’t work at first sight. But Cas unsettles Dean to the core, in a way that is long foretold, aka not in the writers’ intent, but in the character set up, that *if* such a character as Cas were to come along, it would fuck Dean up six ways to Sunday, and the writing of season 4 kindly honours this set up.

DEAN
Get the hell out of here. There’s no such thing.
CASTIEL
This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.

These lines echo back through Dean’s history right back to the very start, the earliest days of his character development to do with faith and believing in his own damn self. Last summer wrote these posts about early hints of this character development which would pay off within the first few episodes of meeting an angel.

In 1x07 Sam nudges Dean to pray when they are attending the funeral of the hook-man'd boyfriend.

The reverend asks everyone to pray and Sam bows his head right away and Dean sits there facing forward and needs a nudge from Sam to bow his head as well. At this point in canon it just looks like him being unaware or just kind of… casually not inclined to pray, but… Argh, this is a wonderful 1 second introduction to Sam and Dean vs faith. They get asked to pray and Sam just does it unquestioningly without even really knowing anything about the guy they’re praying for. And we know this is foreshadowing for Dean’s ongoing issues with the whole thing.

100 points for blink and you miss it characterisation that holds true for the entire extended emotional arcs of these characters. Bravo.

We’re still only really halfway to Faith, which sets out this whole thing plain on the page, but I love the staging of this. That Sam is the one who at the very least with no context you could assume gets the social nuance of what you’re supposed to do here (and the previous episode was Skin, where we found out for the first time in plain words that Dean feels like a “freak” specifically to regular society and whether Sam fits this bracket too or not he can at least pretend and pass for ~normal~)…

I like as well that you could assume if you were going into this blind that Dean as the apparently more loyal connected-to-the-family-business son (in the words the show likes to use about them ignoring deeper fandom analysis) in a job where they have already been shown utilising religious exorcisms and holy water to fight a demon, Dean might also be the more religious (which might also be more surprising reversal of expectations because he plays bad but Sam seems the goody two shoes and there is that association)… But nope. 4x05 confirms Sam is Van Helsing :P (I have no idea why my brain jumped there. Favourite episode skewing my thought process >.>) Guess he was the one who did the exorcism in 1x04 as well, but Dean was annoyed Sam didn’t think he knew “Christo”, like, duh of course he studied this sort of thing. Anyway, turns out Dean is just a hunter who utilises all the tools, but doesn’t hold any stock in the power behind them.

And Sam telling Dean what to do here, and early example of him policing Dean to behave more politely. Maybe not to blow their cover, but maybe just because Sam thinks you should be respectful even when it’s a grabby jock who they know saw Lori as a conquest and wasn’t exactly sweetly in love with her - I think they could guess how things were going/would have gone between a frat boy and preacher’s daughter exactly as they did in the cold open :P Depending what types of make out spot murder lore they already know about, the idea of punishment might already be on their minds at least low key…

My favourite thing about this layered moment is just the Destiel thing. Dean’s issues with faith getting their first nod on the screen here showing so so early on that Dean doesn’t particularly like praying. Then Faith cracks it all open and sets up emotional threads which echo all the way through the show. That and Houses of the Holy work together to basically create the entire Destiel framework in a way (and it’s because of 2x13 I’ve been using “angels are watching over you” for my Mary & TFW interactions tag all year).

There’s a sort of semi-conspiracy thought (I’ve never seen a source for it but ~everyone knows~ that Dean’s original love interest was meant to be an angel or whatever (I don’t believe this)) but definitely from the very very start and certainly long before their faiths were actually tested by real angels showing up, Dean had a relationship with the divine directly setting him up with the irony of it being real, while for Sam it would be the irony that it would be cruel to him. And the building blocks are all in place by season 4, easily, for Sam to have his thing with Ruby and Dean to basically have Cas as his equivalent character, their respective mentors for Heaven and Hell, through the season. I think they were pretty much always meant to come down on these sides if the show ever made it to Heaven vs Hell escalation, even if it was something a bit easier to grapple with in a version of the show that never brought in angels. Dean’s reluctance and lack of faith are integral to the irony that makes Cas such an immensely fascinating character to introduce *for* Dean and then to be strongly associated with him through the rest of the show, whether you ship them or not.

(And since I do ship them, welp, for me this is literally, 7 episodes in, where I start counting what will retroactively be excellent Destiel subtext and the beginning of any portrayal of their onscreen relationship. Because they are SO much more than 2 dudes staring at each other.)

Here’s bullet point no.2 on season 1 Destiel and how Cas comes at it from two completely different but vital angles and basically was fated utterly to be a character to change Dean forever and to be so firmly embedded in his life and character that losing him is like cutting off a limb within a couple of years of knowing each other…

This time it’s 1x11, Scarecrow, and Sam and Dean’s big blow up fight:

DEAN: Dad doesn’t want our help.
SAM: I don’t care.
DEAN: He’s given us an order.
SAM: (firmly) I don’t care. We don’t always have to do what he says.
DEAN: Sam, Dad is asking us to work jobs, to save lives, it’s important.
[…]
DEAN: Dad said it wasn’t safe. For any of us. I mean, he obviously knows something that we don’t, so if he says to stay away, we stay away.
SAM: I don’t understand the blind faith you have in the man. I mean, it’s like you don’t even question him.
DEAN: Yeah, it’s called being a good son!

And later in the episode, when they’re sort of making a peace with the way things are, and that these are way too firmly embedded character traits to pry them out of Dean in one argument and lesson learned about not trusting people who won’t let Dean have any of their magic apple pie…

DEAN: Sam. You were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life.
SAM: Are you serious?
DEAN: You’ve always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I—

Anyway, John goes and dies not even without giving Dean any real closure (the bastard) but despite Dean standing up a little to his treatment in 1x21, he ends up just getting another massive burden put on him, which spirals him out all the way to season 3 and -

DEAN
My father was an obsessed bastard!
All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap. He’s the one who couldn’t protect his family. He-
He’s the one who let Mom die.
– who wasn’t there for Sam. I always was! He wasn’t fair! I didn’t deserve what he put on me.
And I don’t deserve to go to Hell!

But it’s too late, he can’t confront John properly. Now on one front this episode also has the first time Bobby is addressed as being a literal father figure to them and Dean especially (Sam getting separated out while Dean has a more intense bonding moment with Bobby when they go into his head, never mind the parallels between them this episode.) Having a positive father figure eases the pain a great deal, I think, and Bobby works as the fatherly counterpoint to Cas.

So in season 4, Cas shows up and for a couple of episodes he seems like an absolute authority figures, giving orders and in this way seems like he might be a potential John mirror, speaking for Heaven, where God is paralleled even more directly to John. But as soon as Cas starts getting a chance to be a fleshed out character, he swaps instead to being a direct Dean mirror, and it’s on exactly the same order questioning thing that Dean got a free pass out of confronting because John died before he could make any real progress. Instead of confronting an authority figure and rejecting John in a mirror character, Dean ends up with a character going through his exact footsteps where, like Sam feels in 1x10 that Dean is acting like his boss, it turns out he’s only following orders too, and this all comes about in one episode, with this last line serving as a great way to link it all as well -

DEAN:
Of course you have a choice. I mean, come on, what? You’ve never questioned a crap order, huh? What are you both, just a couple of hammers?
CASTIEL:
Look, even if you can’t understand it, have faith. The plan is just.
SAM:
How can you even say that?
CASTIEL:
Because it comes from heaven, that makes it just.
DEAN:
Oh, it must be nice, to be so sure of yourselves.
CASTIEL:
Tell me something, Dean, when your father gave you an order, didn’t you obey?

Quietly revealing that Cas has this reliance on Heaven being just, but then at the end of the episode, and I really don’t think Cas was allowed to do this but he did it anyway…

CASTIEL:
Our orders –
DEAN:
Yeah, you know, I’ve had about enough of these orders of yours –
CASTIEL:
Our orders were not to stop the summoning of Samhain, they were to do whatever you told us to do.

And like that Cas is close to an equal when it comes to just being the guy who follows orders and if he can’t think for himself, at least would like to and has opinions and feelings about it (all his arguing with Uriel specifically to contrast a harsher angel who doesn’t care)…

And that leaves Cas to question, and Dean to nurse him that final step of the way to rebelling in 4x22 - that conversation where Dean urges Cas to rebel acting as his way of working through some of the left over unaddressed issues.

I love that by season 5 he can joke about absent fathers with Cas and know that they’ve been through, by then, the exact same process and at that point have sort of reached a point where their feelings on it overlap perfectly. And I think Dean got something out of it as much as Cas got a hell of a lot out of Dean over season 4.

The point being, once again some lines in season 1 which seem perfectly innocuous on their own in shippy ways but when you hold them up to the whole story, Sam’s side of this arc goes off one way, and Dean’s a different, which ends up having Cas’s thread braided all around it almost immediately.

Like, again, when Cas says he and Dean have a more profound bond in season 6, it’s not just because they casually spent more time together - they emotionally mind meld over their first 2 years of knowing each other, and it’s this exact thing Dean dealt with and had left over as an open wound for 3 years until Cas.

(And thinking of open wounds - in 1x09, Missouri describing how evil could cause wounds which festered and attracted poltergeist - I think it’s a good metaphor for things like this too - open character arcs which don’t get resolution, build up and fester. It’s not like Dean *totally* gets over John because it takes years and years and again, to go back to 12x22 as I seriously can’t stop doing, I think Dean really sees HIM for the first time with clear eyes while telling Mary about it, and getting to deal with his parents (or at least one of them) face to face for *real*, no mirrors or any emotional catharsis trickery involved. But then it’s not like Cas actually feels any better about God, he just reached a place of being bitter and accepting than chasing after his approval - and I think 5x16 is Cas’s point similar to 3x10 where he can angrily reject seeking that approval.)

Some comparisons:

1x12 -

DEAN
You know what I’ve got faith in? Reality. Knowing what’s really going on.
SAM
How can you be a skeptic? With the things we see everyday?
DEAN
Exactly. We see them, we know they’re real.

4x01 -

CASTIEL
I’m an Angel of the Lord.
DEAN
Get the hell out of here. There’s no such thing.
CASTIEL
This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.

1x12 -

SAM
But if you know evil’s out there, how can you not believe good’s out there, too?
DEAN
Because I’ve seen what evil does to good people.

4x01 -

DEAN
Right. And why would an angel rescue me from Hell?
CASTIEL
Good things do happen, Dean.
DEAN
Not in my experience.

1x12 -

YOUNG WOMAN
(Overhearing) Maybe God works in mysterious ways.
DEAN
(Checking her out and smiling) Maybe he does. I think you just turned me around on the subject.

4x02 -

CASTIEL
The Lord works…
DEAN
If you say “mysterious ways,” so help me, I will kick your ass.

(1x12 -
DEAN
(Looking after her) Well, I bet you she can work in some mysterious ways.)

1x12 -

ROY
Dean. (nods to himself) I want-I want you to come up here with me.
DEAN
(shaking his head) No, it’s ok.
[…]
DEAN
(Hestiating again) Well, yeah, but ahh…(The crowd claps and makes encouraging noises.)… maybe you should just pick someone else.
ROY
Oh, no. I didn’t pick you, Dean, the Lord did.

4x02 -

DEAN
I mean, I’ve saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and the ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to get saved? I’m just a regular guy.
SAM
Apparently, you’re a regular guy that’s important to the man upstairs.
DEAN
Well, that creeps me out. I mean, I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, much less by… God.

1x12 -

DEAN
Look, no disrespect, but ahh, I’m not exactly a believer.
ROY
(smiling) You will be, son. You will be.

4x18 -

DEAN
Well, I feel stupid doing this. But… I am fresh out of options. So please. I need some help. I’m praying, okay? Come on. Please.
CASTIEL
Prayer is a sign of faith. This is a good thing, Dean.

(& if that one isn’t good enough for you, 5x14, Dean @ the sky AFTER leaving Cas downstairs -

DEAN
Please…I can’t…I need some help. Please?)

1x12 -

DEAN
Can I ask you one last question?
ROY
Of course you can.
DEAN
Why? Why me? Out of all the sick people, why save me?

4x02 -

SAM
Okay, look. I know you’re not all choirboy about this stuff, but this is becoming less and less about faith and more and more about proof.
DEAN
Proof?
SAM
Yes.
DEAN
Proof that there’s a God out there that actually gives a crap about me personally? I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.
SAM
Why not?
DEAN
Because why me? If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?

1x12 -

ROY
Well, like I said before, the Lord guides me. I looked into your heart, and you just stood out from all the rest.
DEAN
What did you see in my heart?
ROY
A young man with an important purpose. A job to do. And it isn’t finished.

4x01 -

DEAN
Why’d you do it?
CASTIEL
Because God commanded it. Because we have work for you.

1x12 -

DEAN
I’m sorry.
LAYLA
It’s okay.
MRS. ROURKE
No. It isn’t. (To DEAN.) Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?

[…]

LAYLA
I wish you luck. I really do.
DEAN
(Voice cracking) Same to you.
Layla turns to walk away again.
DEAN
(under his breath) You deserve it a lot more than me.

[…]

DEAN
You know if Roy woulda picked Layla instead of me she’d be here right now. And if she’s not healed tonight she’s gunna die in a coupla months.

4x01 -

CASTIEL
What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?

2x13:

TELEVANGELIST
You don’t have to suffer, you don’t have to be lost. The lord is talking to you right now; he’s saying, you are my child and you have a purpose! You think God forgot about you? I tell you no! All you got to do is listen! Can’t you just hear those angels singing? Isn’t it beautiful? It’s time. It’s time to receive the message he’s sending. It’s time to listen to the Word of God! Do you hear the glory? I said, can you hear it? I said, can you just hear the glory?

Once again, these 2 exchanges about purpose…

4x01:

DEAN
Right. And why would an angel rescue me from Hell?
CASTIEL
Good things do happen, Dean.
DEAN
Not in my experience.
CASTIEL
What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?
DEAN
Why’d you do it?
CASTIEL
Because God commanded it. Because we have work for you.

4x02:

DEAN
Proof that there’s a God out there that actually gives a crap about me personally? I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.
SAM
Why not?
DEAN
Because why me? If there is a God out there, why would he give a crap about me?
SAM
Dean –
DEAN
I mean, I’ve saved some people, okay? I figured that made up for the stealing and the ditching chicks. But why do I deserve to get saved? I’m just a regular guy.
SAM
Apparently, you’re a regular guy that’s important to the man upstairs.
DEAN
Well, that creeps me out. I mean, I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, much less by… God.
SAM
Okay, well, too bad, Dean, because I think he wants you to strap on your party hat.

& here, this is an interesting one I’m sure someone’s put the two visually side-by-side already with them both sitting in a hospital staring up and generally Anna using the same sort of aesthetic, but in word choice they compare as well -

GLORIA
I’ve never felt better.
SAM
So, no disturbances lately?
GLORIA
You mean am I stark raving cuckoo for cocoa puffs?
SAM
I didn’t say that.
GLORIA
It’s all right. I know what people must think.

4x09:

ANNA
I was trying to warn them.
PSYCHOLOGIST
Warn who?
ANNA
Everyone. Forget it. It was stupid.
PSYCHOLOGIST
What were you trying to warn them about?
ANNA
Look… I get it. You think I’m nuts. If I were you, I’d think I was nuts. But it’s all true.

Some more obvious side by sides…

2x13:

GLORIA
I know, it sounds strange. But what I did was very important. I helped him smite an evil man. I was chosen. For redemption.

4x16:

CASTIEL
Yes. When we discovered Lilith’s plan for you, we laid siege to hell and we fought our way to get to you before you—
DEAN
Jump-started the apocalypse.
CASTIEL
And we were too late.
DEAN
Why didn’t you just leave me there, then?
CASTIEL
It’s not blame that falls on you, Dean, it’s fate. The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it. You have to stop it.

(Ignoring all the earlier stuff, this is what they essentially put Dean to work doing between his random resurrection and telling him it was all just a scam to soften him up for being Michael’s vessel. He was SUPPOSED to be filled with a righteous purpose and brought back after doing unspeakable evil in Hell to be redeemed by his actions/choices… Which being possessed would have supposedly to them been the ultimate redemption Dean could ask for… I think he and Cas are seeing right through it by this point but still, it makes it more clear than anything else so far what they ACTUALLY wanted him for)

2x13:

SAM
Yeah. Gloria Sitnick. And I’m not so sure she’s crazy.
DEAN
But she seriously believes that she was … touched by an angel?

4x02:

SAM
Well, then tell me what else it could be.
DEAN
Look, all I know is I was not groped by an angel.

(I like that one because of the way Dean changes the reference when it’s about him - after all he’s been through he can’t imagine anything good happening here so the more innocent “touched by an angel” reference gets corrupted into an attack on himself. And by “like” I mean “AAAAAAH” *clutches Dean girl feels and curls into a ball to weep*)

2x13:

DEAN
Well, little odd yes, supernatural maybe. But angels? I don’t think so.
SAM
Why not?
DEAN
(as if it’s obvious)
‘Cuz there’s no such thing, Sam.

4x01:

CASTIEL
I’m an Angel of the Lord.
DEAN
Get the hell out of here. There’s no such thing.

Bonus refuted nonsense line coming out of Dean’s mouth just to prove that the show wants you to know with hindsight that this episode is the biggest prank the universe ever pulled on Dean “literally married to an angel” Winchester:

DEAN
Yeah, you know what? There’s a ton of lore on unicorns too. In fact, I hear that they, they ride on silver moonbeams, and they shoot rainbows out of their ass.

(repeated conversation from Faith to tie 1x12 to 2x13 with reminding us of Dean’s stance about believing only the stuff you see bexause these are stepping stones to Dean being proven epically wrong - seemingly culminating in the end of this episode but really just to soften him up for later and I am convinced again that Michael or someone orchestrated this whole little thing for Dean to witness in order to make him a bit more credible and properly awed by divine wrath… Anyway I won’t quote all this back to back stuff about seeing is believing but Dean’s stance hasn’t changed)

2x13:

DEAN
You didn’t see any fluffy white wing feathers?

2x13:

SAM
(nodding to a painting on the wall)
Father, that’s Michael, right?

#no

FR. REYNOLDS
That’s right. The archangel Michael, with the flaming sword. The fighter of demons. Holy force against evil.
SAM
So they’re not really the Hallmark card version that everybody thinks? They’re fierce, right? Vigilant?
FR. REYNOLDS
Well, I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful. But, uh, yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God’s warriors. “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified.”

4x02:

DEAN
I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos – you know, Michael Landon. Not dicks.
CASTIEL
Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier.

(And Dean’s problem might be that this 'wrathful’ thing didn’t stick in his mind because the 'guardians’ thing was his impression - what Mary told him, the idea he clung onto all that time with the kind of miserable feeling that it was too good to be true… But bonus points for clearly aligning Michael with what they do and we know with hindsight, it’s talking specifically about Dean.)

2x13:

DEAN
I mean, what’s next, are you going to start praying every day?
SAM
I do.
DEAN
What?
SAM
I do pray every day. I have for a long time.
DEAN
(startled)
The things you learn about a guy.

(… the temptation to add the “I prayed to you Cas, every night!” gif from 8x02. But yeah not the point although a very good point others have made. I love that it establishes that Sam has a completely different relationship to faith and angels than Dean - he’s been fighting that it might be angels all episode but this point is where we get a statement on his feelings - that he HAS faith. Sam has faith to be broken, Dean has no faith for the sake of deeply, deeply complicating that for him. And in the end faith is a crappy thing to have anyway in this universe when it comes to higher powers, but when it comes specifically to angels and Cas within that, the lesson is very, very different for Sam as it is for Dean. Mittens just reminded me of Sam casually talking about Cas’s vessel as an “it” for example, while Dean thinks of Cas as “he” in any situation, and that’s from the end of season 11.)

2x13:

SAM
It just, it appeared before me and I just, this feeling washed over me, you know? Like, like peace. Like grace.

oh boy, angels and peace. This is also a great parallel to 12x19 and what happened to Cas with Jack - he sees a future with peace, and Jack uses him but other than giving Cas a very obvious new purpose he doesn’t change at his core. Sam is still Sam here, he just utterly believes that he has to go kill this guy and that it’s right.

(Jury still out on Jack and what exactly this future is…)

DEAN
Well, what’s to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There’s no higher power, there’s no God. I mean, there’s just chaos, and violence, and random unpredictable evil th, that comes out of nowhere, and rips you to shreds.

(How Dean dies in 3x16 because fuckin’ OUCH he’s smile-crying through this incredible speech. I think his eyes are still wobbling with tears even when I have it paused)

4x02:

DEAN
If he doesn’t exist, fine. Bad crap happens to good people. That’s how it is. There’s no rhyme or reason – just random, horrible, evil – I get it, okay. I can roll with that. But if he is out there, what’s wrong with him? Where the hell is he while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does he live with himself? You know, why doesn’t he help?

Wait I skipped Mary entirely.

DEAN
Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You’ve got faith. That’s — hey, good for you. I’m sure it makes things easier.
I’ll tell you who else had faith like that — Mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me.
SAM
You never told me that.
DEAN
Well, what’s to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her.

*screams at this incoherently*

Favourite nice bit: makes 1x01 retroactively Destiel because Dean puts this into his life story off-screen. Overt awful use of this line is probably 5x13:

MARY
Ohh…quite a kick there. Troublemaker already. It’s okay, baby. It’s all okay. Angels are watching over you.

Her obliviousness to the Grand Plan at the worst moment in season 5 for feeling they can resist the Grand Plan comes after Dean ironcially names Team Free Will sarcastically and miserably.

Buuut then Mary comes back and everything she ever seemed to have built is all fucked up - her family is gone, her sons are grown up, John is dead, she caused an apolocalypse… But hey, one silver lining - her first real interaction with the concept of the wider family they’ve made on the other side of all that is seeing there is an angel that watches over her sons after all… He’s not exactly what Dean was expecting and he’s not what Mary would have expected for totally different reasons, but hey, there he is :’)

Although not like this is even something that escapes criticism/being taken too far (it was Cas’s downfall in season 6 and 12) - I think this bit from 12x19 shows best how Cas is acting like this in a way where watching over them is crossing a line from fighting with them to feeling like he has to protect them more than they’d want him to

Kelvin:
You’re doing the right thing, you know. Committing to Joshua’s plan, putting angelkind above the Winchesters. I mean, your reputation in Heaven is –
Castiel:
This has nothing to do with my reputation. I am doing this for the Winchesters. I-I stole the Colt to keep them out of this mission and to keep them safe from Dagon, and I – I will kill this girl so that Sam and Dean don’t have to.

Anyway.

2x13:

DEAN
That’s funny, actually. Seriously. If Father Gregory’s spirit is around, a séance will bring him right to us. If it’s him, then we’ll put him to rest.
SAM
But if it’s an angel, it won’t show. Nothin’ ’ll happen.
DEAN
Exactly. That’s one of the perks of the job, Sam: we don’t have to operate on faith. We can know for sure. Don’t you wanna know for sure?

I am in a world of pain about Dean wanting to summon an angel to prove it’s not their because nothing’s out there looking out for them and aaall those times Cas isn’t answering when he needs him >.>

That’s not a firm meta thing that’s just me clutching my heart and sobbing

FR. REYNOLDS
Oh my god! Is that … is that an angel?
SAM
No, it’s not. It’s just Father Gregory.

UGH I hate watching Sam’s faith take a kicking. Considering how shitty angels and God are to him and how he’s the one set up to have it all kicked out from under him… Bleh :P

FR. GREGORY
Those innocent people are being offered redemption. Some people need redemption. Don’t they, Sam?

Also pointing out again Sam feels guilt/is one of these people who needs redemption, to go along with how terrible he feels about finding out what John said about him/being hunted by other hunters. … I forget how this episode is used to make Sam feel bad in the here and now because it’s so focussed on Dean and where his arc GOES.

…

This episode is just such a great little building block episode for a ton of arcs which are really rarely covered before they’re in your face relevant.

The next most important lines are establishing that Cas has Dean down cold, yet still despite Dean’s pre-existing lack of self-worth that led to him selling his soul in the first place and his fresh memories of breaking and torturing in Hell, sees in him someone deserving to be saved:

CASTIEL
Good things do happen, Dean.
DEAN
Not in my experience.
CASTIEL
What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?

Though that may turn out to just be part of Heaven’s grand plan to ruin everything, *Cas* continues to believe in Dean, and on his side, this establishes the character trait which runs through to date.