A Good Question To Ask Misha Collins Praps? - Tumblr Posts

What d'you think gave Cas back his sanity between season 7 and 8? Purgatory?

*tries for several minutes to turn reply into a punchline with an exploding Dick joke but fails*

I don't know. I'm not sure how far gone Cas really was in the first place, you know? He was fragile after he woke up in the hospital, dissociating for sure, scared to be himself having effed things up so badly - broken by taking Sam's torment into himself - but he was lucid at that point. He'd learned at some point offscreen to discern Sam's leftover hallucinations from reality.

He seemed to be looking for safety or some peace by refusing to engage with reality, rather than struggling for balance because he couldn't tell what was real. Like he shut parts of himself down so we're only seeing limited aspects of him, softer and much more open, childlike, and his resulting behaviour is so jarring compared to his usual persona that we go with 'crazy' because there's no good word for that sort of sudden shift.

Suddenly arriving in Purgatory with Dean to worry about might have jolted him awake, bucket of cold water style. "Make this important decision or Dean is going to die" might've been enough all by itself if Cas wasn't so much crazy (in any human, clinical sense) as hiding or suppressing parts of himself that he couldn't face or trust.