Cas is Lamp
In 15.10 The Heroes' Journey, Chuck has given Sam and Dean a taste of what it is like to be average people rather than heroes — parking tickets, car trouble and in Dean's case a mouth full of cavities. On a trip to Garth's to help on a case Garth, who has resumed his career as a dentist, offers to fix Dean's teeth. After giving him some gas, Dean hallucinates that he and Garth are tap dancing in the bunker in the style of an old black and white movie. At one point, Dean grabs a tall lamp and proceeds to dance with it.
Fans theorise that the lamp represents Castiel, and the scene is a metaphor for Destiel. Support for this theory includes:
- As an angel, Castiel is a "being of light" and thus is represented by the lamp.
- In canon, Dean "tap dances" around his true feelings for Castiel.
- The style of the clip reminds viewers of the Hays Code which limited explicit representation of sexuality, and led to it often being represented through visual metaphor.
- The song is "Let's Misbehave", a song about sex, which was written by Cole Porter who was bisexual.
- Dean dances with the lamp on the map table in the bunker, a scenes where Dean and Cas often have sex in fanfiction.
- While looking at Garth and Bess dancing, Dean saying "I always thought I'd be a good dancer" supports that the sequence is about Dean's yearning for a partner.
Not unrelated, prior to the episode some fans had referred to Castiel as a "sexy lamp" because they felt that sometimes the writers didn't know how to use him in the story, "so he was always just kind of there, like, decoratively, and used only as a plot device, you know, you turn the lamp on when you need it and then you turn it off and kind of forget that it is standing there in the corner.". Also sometimes used pejoratively by bibros to describe Castiel, the trope is generally used to refer to women who have poor characterization and little involvement in the plot of a story.
External Links
- Dean's dance scene (full)
- Dean's dancing with a lamp supports Destiel; archive link by dotthings
- An Analysis of Dean's dance scene; archive link by castielsgal
- Breakdown of the 'Let's Misbehave' Dance Scene from Heroes’ Journey; archive link by deanwasalwaysbi
- Sexy Lamp test on Fanlore
