Warning: spoilers ahead for the Season 12 finale of Supernatural, "All Along the Watchtower."
Season finales of Supernatural have been known to get pretty wild, whether they're killing off a Winchester or kickstarting the apocalypse. In the Season 12 finale, we witnessed the tragic death of poor Castiel, who was (seemingly) killed by Lucifer. While the catastrophe of the finale was a culmination of events and certainly not solely on Castiel's shoulders, his decision to let Kelly and her unborn nephilim child did ultimately lead to his death via a Lucifer who was anxious to meet his son. CinemaBlend spoke with Misha Collins about the finale and whether Castiel regretted his decision as of the start of the episode, and he had this to say:
No, Cas does not. He's not second-guessed that decision when we find him in the finale. He's still determined to protect [Kelly]. I think the consequences of that decision for him are pretty big, but he still feels like he's doing the righteous thing. I think that the powers of that nephilim somehow have also overtaken him and clouded his judgment as well.
Well, Castiel's corpse and the scorch marks of his burned angel wings certainly qualify as "big consequences." All things considered, it's nice to know at least that Cas didn't feel guilty about his decision not to end Kelly and her baby's life. He had become an angelic expert in the art of blaming himself over the years on Supernatural, so much so that he really did begin to feel like a third Winchester brother. Misha Collins' explanation doesn't make Castiel's death any less heartbreaking, but it does feel slightly less tragic now.
There was no good decision to make based off the information he had at the time when he made his call to try and keep Kelly and her half-devil baby safe from demons, and Cas did not come to regret his choice. There is also the point that Castiel isn't entirely responsible for everything that happened after his initial decision not to end Kelly. The nephilim affected him in a way that changed him, whether he liked it or not, although the changes were perhaps not as obvious as in seasons past with other versions of Cas. Misha Collins went on in our chat to say this about the Season 12 finale version of Castiel:
As it ended up playing out, I don't think it was quite a starkly contrasted version of Cas as we have with some of the other versions. We've had crazy Cas, we've had Leviathan Cas, we've had human Cas, we've had these Cas iterations that were extremely different from one another, and this was a much more subtle character change. It almost brought him back to being a little bit more of Season 4 Cas, except for with a different mission.
The Castiel of the finale certainly seemed more powered than he had been in a while, and the scorch marks on the ground indicated that his wings were grown back and his batteries had been fully recharged. He was Cas as we hadn't seen him for a while. In fact, the finale managed to bring Season 12 Castiel full circle to Season 4 Castiel in one especially violent way. He left the Supernatural world the way he came into it: by being undeservedly stabbed through the chest. (Too soon?)
All of this said, there is the chance that Castiel isn't permanently dead. Sure, the finale played his death pretty seriously, what with the burnt wings and mournful Dean gazing to the heavens, but this is still Supernatural we're talking about, and Castiel has died plenty of times before. In fact, Misha Collins recently revealed which of Cas' many deaths he considers the best. We can only cross our fingers and hope that his story isn't quite done just yet.
We can't say whether or not Misha Collins will be back on Supernatural in a major way in Season 13 at this point. Still, he'll be plenty busy in the next few months with his enormous GISHWHES -- a.k.a., the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen -- charity extravaganza. Registration for the scavenger hunt is currently open, so be sure to check it out!
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