curled around these images

I think BAMF Cas is the best Cas. Those first scenes are hard to beat, as is the intensity of his 'show me some respect' line... While I do laugh at Castiel the clueless angel scenes, their inherent silliness is a bit irritating. And yes, Future!Cas was poignant - I thought Misha definitely put across the sense of what Castiel had lost, as well as his deep abiding love and probably misplaced loyalty for a man who had changed so much he was willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for his cause.

This is my favorite flavor of Cas, especially toward the end when he was starting to ask questions. Who else is enough of a badass to carve a banishing symbol in his own chest. I liked the humor of finding a liquor store and drinking it. His early journey was fun to watch. Future!Cas was awesome. I can just see him drinking absinthe. Where he got it post apocalyps, who knows. Chuck probably found it along with the toilet paper on a supply run.

Well I don't think anyone would need to guess my answer... The real Castiel of course so I think I'll just write a little about my favourite time on the show.

My favourite Castiel has to be season 4-5 Castiel as the development he undergoes in those seasons are extremely compelling for me to watch. He enters the show in Lazarus Rising as the perfect brainwashed soldier of heaven. He knows exactly who he is, he is a soldier of God, and this means to begin with Castiel is absolutely confident in himself. Due to the way he has been raised he is the ultimate soldier to begin with emotions such as guilt and doubt are absolutely foreign to him. He is just a soldier the morality of his actions are not for him to determine, but the person giving the orders. He is in his mind completing the orders of God after all. I think to understand things such as why he behaves the way he does after letting Sam out of the panic room in When the Levee Breaks one needs to understand this aspect of his characterisation.

But there is a chink in the armour of this perfect soldier a chink that has always been there (suppressed by Naomi prior to the series) namely his love of humanity. We see throughout the season this love for humanity and later the Winchester's specifically (let's just stick with platonic love to avoid this becoming a shipping debate) leads him to begin to doubt... We first see it when he prays for Dean to save the town in The Great Pumpkin Dean Winchester, he is clearly torn by actions commanded of him such as manipulating the brothers into doing his bidding in Death Takes a Holiday or asking Dean to torture Alastair in On the Head of a Pin. This of course climaxes with Castiel finally turning away from heaven choosing to fight with Dean, with humanity against his own family in Lucifer Rising.

Season five quite deeply explores the consequences of these actions for the angel. At the beginning of the season he is filled with a new found mission, he is fighting with the brothers and needs to find God in order to make things better. However, as the season goes on the character begins to feel the negative affects of his decision to do the right thing more and more he is hunted by his brothers and sisters, no longer able to deal with those he once considered comrades in fear of his life. He finds out that the God he had always cared for, always believed in, had abandoned him to his fate in Dark Side of the Moon and later loses the very powers that in his mind defines who he is (Two Minutes to Midnight.

In some ways Castiel is the character I feel the most sympathy for in season five while all of the characters sink to their lowest he is the one who is truly left alone in his depression. Sam managed to find the strength required to recover himself from despair by revaluating his past actions and using this new self-awareness to do better to regain a sense of mission and help his brother (Dark Side of the Moon), Dean fell into depression but he had the help of Sam and the faith Sam had in him to help him recover from the worst of it (Point of No Return) and Bobby also had Dean to help him through his own depression as highlighted most strongly in Point of No Return. Castiel however never really had anyone to help him deal with the depression and the frustration he felt, Dean was too deeply entrenched in his own depression to care about Cas' (something I don't blame Dean for), Sam was too busy focusing on Dean's issues to care about Cas and the same applied to Bobby. This is most strongly examplified by the fact that when Cas finally does try to reach out and talk to someone about how he feels, he is shot down by Bobby in Two Minutes to Midnight. Castiel only really begins to recover from this depression in Swan Song when he is resurrected by God leaving him to feel he has not truly been abandoned and is required to help restore peace and goodness to his family.

S4 badass!Castiel was definitely my favorite flavor, too. (And you were quite succinct with this one -- me, I may have gone overboard this time.) XDDD

I agree very much and yay, gifs! :D