TV Underdogs: Exploring the future of Misha Collins’ Castiel on ‘Supernatural’

Can you call someone an underdog who is a frequent People’s Choice Award nominee? We’re going to, mostly because you’re talking about America The World’s Favorite Angel in Castiel. Misha Collins doesn’t even show up in every episode of “Supernatural,” and yet you would think he does thanks to his internet presence (which includes everything from GISHWHES to thousands of people calling him “daddy” for some reason on Twitter every time he posts something). He’s popular, and the implication that comes from this is that people want more of him.

So how do you give said people what they want, aside of course from creating a whole Castiel and His League of Awesome Angels spin-off that we’ve wanted for years? That’s something we’ll have to try to figure out in this latest entry in our TV Underdogs series.

Why he’s an underdog – We wouldn’t be putting this here if it wasn’t for continuity purposes with our other Underdog articles; we’ve already explained it above! Anyone who doesn’t appear in every episode automatically qualifies to be discussed in this series, but to give some added context, we often see Castiel as an underdog among his own kind, whether it be struggling to find his grace, attempting to figure out where he stands on planet earth, and possibly even wondering why he doesn’t get to have an imaginary friend like Sam does. (Kidding on the last part. Maybe.) He is an outsider, and part of the fun of watching his character comes from seeing the dichotomy between how he handles circumstances around him as opposed to someone like Crowley, who certainly doesn’t check off the “normal” boxes and has a penchant for pot-stirring.

Why don’t we see more of him – Does CW have some sort of quota for how many times they can do dry cleaning on the trenchcoat a season? We really have no real idea why we don’t see Castiel on some more of the standalone Monster-of-the-Week missions, other than that since he wasn’t an original part of the show producers really want to keep that Sam / Dean dynamic there front and center. Still, Cas could be integrated at times more into these missions and the main plotlines than he is (yes, we realize that we’re saying this hours before he and Dean are going to have a big role both in determining the whereabouts of Amara and also rescuing Sam from Lucifer in the near future).

Ways to see more of him – We are actually serious about the spin-off idea. Castiel’s a popular enough character to handle it, and you could give him a 13-episode season to explore more angel mythology while still having some availability for him to do appearances over here, as well. Spinning off “Supernatural” would be hard unless it was with a character people already loved.

Since we’re largely just writing fanfiction at this point, let’s throw out some other possibilities such as giving Castiel even more of a human-like life, creating a couple more spotlight episodes a season, or just hire William Shatner for a bottle episode where the two argue with each other in some sort of magical basement. Collins is a perfect actor for this show; he can tackle the humor with ease, but he’s equally capable of taking on the emotional weight that comes with his character’s history. Why not take advantage of that more?

Fingers crossed that some of this comes true; if it doesn’t, we’ve at least got more “Supernatural” coming up Wednesday nights and Castiel will have plenty to do as per usual.

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