How Supernatural director Jensen Ackles got [SPOILER] to return
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Thursday’s episode of Supernatural.
He wasn’t back for long, but his return still made an impact.
The fourth episode of Supernatural‘s final season kicked off with a dream — or was it a vision? — of Sam’s. In that dream, Dean is seen making his way through the bunker’s hallways killing demon after demon. And when he finds one of his fallen teammates, he leans down and we see that it’s Benny! Sadly, Benny doesn’t make it out of the scene alive — then again, neither does Dean — but for director Jensen Ackles, it was important for fans to see a familiar face in that moment.
“It was just written as a soldier,” Ackles recalls. “I was like, ‘Can we get a familiar face, somebody that we know?’ So they sent over a couple of names of people from the past. I think one was Donna or Jody or Bobby. There was a list of possibilities, and they started calling down the list and nobody was really available for that day. Then I was like, ‘What about Ty [Olsson]?'”
Olsson first appeared on Supernatural in season 2 as a vampire named Eli but would later return to the show in season 8 as Benny, Dean’s vampire bestie from his time in purgatory. He was last seen on the show in season 10.
“I called Ty and was like, ‘Dude, are you available to come for like half a day on Friday and shoot this,'” Ackles says. “He was like, ‘I’m in Calgary. I’m working Thursday and then I have to work Monday but I have Friday off, I can fly in no problem.’ So he came in and literally he was there for a few hours and knocked it out. It was so cool having him there. It was like he’d never left.”
Supernatural airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.
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