The city of Byzantium was an ancient Greek colony, which then became, under the Roman Empire, Constantinople, and finally, Istanbul…

Byzantium was also used to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire (with Constantinople as its capital city).

In Glynn’s beautiful episode (14x08) of the name, Byzantium is Heaven - also an ancient (esentially despotic) empire.

One of the outcomes of Castiel’s encounter with the Shadow in Heaven, after it has stormed the pearly gates and laid waste to angels there, is that Cas rescues Byzantium. Cas saves Heaven from destruction.

Castiel, the renegade angel with a crack in his chassis, Castiel, Heaven’s outcast, Castiel who has been corrupted by Dean’s touch (as Hester tells Dean in Edland’s episode 7x21 Reading is Fundamental)…

Castiel, whom Naomi once tried to break and bend to Heaven’s will in the white torture vault of Heaven itself by commanding him to kill a thousand Dean Winchesters (8x17 Goodbye Stranger)…

Castiel, whom Heaven has despised for the sin of being in love





(9x22 Stairway to Heaven)

Castiel, whose first encounter with Lily Sunder (seen in flashbacks in 12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets) was when he (in a female vessel) was sent by Heaven, as part of a punishment squad to condemn the angel Akobel for the same:

……………

CASTIEL. Akobel, Seraphim of the Sixth Choir, you have lain with a human and you fathered a Nephilim.



AKOBEL: What?



…….



CASTIEL: You have broken our most sacred oath, and the penalty is…



MIRABEL STABS AKOBEL.



CASTIEL: …death.



…………..

Castiel, who now finds himself in Akobel’s (apparent) shoes, the adopted father of an actual Nephilim, bound by love to humans…

Castiel, renegade angel with “too much heart” (8x02 What’s Up Tiger Mommy) saves the Heaven which has despised him.

And how is Heaven saved?

By the very love it has despised…

Because Cas saves Byzantium as a result of his bargain to save the half-human Jack, whom Cas explictly tells he loves in the act of making his deal with the Shadow.

So there is a lovely narrative schadenfreude in witnessing Naomi un-bending to thank Cas, after she tried so hard to “cure” him of the love which has become her salvation.

One might almost say the narrative architecture to get us here has been rather…. byzantine…

Bravo Meredith Glynn!