What broke the connection?

People have written brilliant meta about Dean’s prayer in Remember the Titans, and how it’s like a conversation he has with Castiel. This is the prayer that coincided with Naomi forcing to kill Dean a thousand times in preparation for the real thing, which happened in the beginning of the subsequent episode Goodbye Stranger. It’s heartbreaking, but we knew this already.

The conversation between Dean and Castiel is in the camera angles, the shifting of the angle to a wide shot from behind Dean marking Castiel’s part of the dialogue. And we can even deduce what his lines would have been. Had he been physically present, he would have answered in the positive with “Yes”, or even “Always, Dean.” Had he been able to answer Dean if not for Naomi, he would have answered “Always, Dean”. For every time the angle changes into a wide-shot to signal Castiel’s angel radio, insert “Always, Dean”.

“Cas, you got your ears on?”

“Always, Dean.”

“— So, I need you to hear me.”

“…Always, Dean.”

“I’m asking you, you keep a lookout for my little brother, okay?”

“Always, Dean.”

We know the answer to the question “What broke the connection?” The answer is “You did”, using the same negative space as the conversation in prayer. Dean broke the connection.

But what broke the connection specifically is that Dean’s prayer coinciding with the indoctrination planted a kind of trigger or a switch into Naomi’s programming. You can see that there’s a delay in the middle wide-shot. It’s off beat. It’s jarring. It’s noticeable. Like the camera was waiting for something. Like Castiel hesitated. Or like Castiel was struggling, struggling to get that answer out. For what ever reason, he wasn’t able to attempt to answer Dean right away.

It was the words “I need you” that Dean, who’s not one for praying, planted into Castiel’s heart in this earnest, heartbreaking prayer.

So, when Dean said those words, it snapped him back to a time when Naomi’s programming hadn’t been complete, when he’d still been able to hear Dean’s prayer even though he couldn’t answer it. What broke the connection was a faithless man praying.