Yeah, I think they might have a hard time at this point working out a coherent angel ethics, since they've kind of gone with the flow from season to season, but it would be interesting (and that's the kind of situation where I don't mind fudging a bit or retconning if they have something coherent and compelling they want to do now). I don't think we've ever had a statement on whether vessel consent is an ethical principle for angels or just the way things work -- like, in universes where vampires can't enter a house without permission, it's not like you can have theories about how good manners are very important to them because they wait to be invited in. And if they do consider it in light of angelic ethics, it would probably still read very differently from human ideas of free consent. In The Rapture, I think Castiel had changed from exposure to humanity and was genuinely trying to give Jimmy a more informed, more real choice than he'd had the first round, but the result was a consent situation that was much worse, by human standards, given that from Jimmy's end he was choosing under emotional coercion hinging on the well-being of his child.
Now would be a good time for them to do more with the whole question of vessels (and maybe get back to the fact that Sam and Dean seem to have lost any human feeling for the vessel deaths that they cause killing demons and angels). Hmm, that development could even go in a grim direction for Sam: having his body made into a tool without his consent and used for both healing and killing, I could imagine him actually going colder in his approach to vessels/meatsuits, in a kind of fatalistic acceptance of people, first and foremost himself, being reduced to instrumentality. Though that's something I'd rather see as a possibility in depressing fic than in canon.
I do wonder, though, practically speaking, whether they are even going to keep Gadreel as a character much past hiatus. Surely they can't leave him in Sam, and how could they convincingly bring back the Tahmoh vessel and have him conveniently available to say Yes again? I guess they could just cast a completely different actor, but having a new third person playing the part in one season might be a bit much to pull off. Earlier in the season people were speculating that Dean might take Ezekiel on, but I can't see that now: once Gadreel revealed his identity and killed Kevin, I don't think Dean would let himself be used for Gadreel's goals, even as a way of saving Sam.
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Date: 2013-12-17 02:07 pm (UTC)Now would be a good time for them to do more with the whole question of vessels (and maybe get back to the fact that Sam and Dean seem to have lost any human feeling for the vessel deaths that they cause killing demons and angels). Hmm, that development could even go in a grim direction for Sam: having his body made into a tool without his consent and used for both healing and killing, I could imagine him actually going colder in his approach to vessels/meatsuits, in a kind of fatalistic acceptance of people, first and foremost himself, being reduced to instrumentality. Though that's something I'd rather see as a possibility in depressing fic than in canon.
I do wonder, though, practically speaking, whether they are even going to keep Gadreel as a character much past hiatus. Surely they can't leave him in Sam, and how could they convincingly bring back the Tahmoh vessel and have him conveniently available to say Yes again? I guess they could just cast a completely different actor, but having a new third person playing the part in one season might be a bit much to pull off. Earlier in the season people were speculating that Dean might take Ezekiel on, but I can't see that now: once Gadreel revealed his identity and killed Kevin, I don't think Dean would let himself be used for Gadreel's goals, even as a way of saving Sam.