Supernatural Star Jared Padalecki, EPs Talk Winchesters' Grief, Cas' Return, 'Connection' With Jack and More
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Thursday’s premiere of Supernatural.
Lucky Season 13 of Supernatural got off to a heartbreaking start for Dean and Sam on Thursday.
With God not answering Dean’s prayers to bring back his loved ones, the elder Winchester was forced to accept that his mom Mary and friend Castiel are dead for good. He then salted and burned Cas’ body as a goodbye, but the emotional toll of all that the brothers have been through and lost along the way will continue to be felt.
“This episode, although it did have action, there was a reflective quality to it,” executive producer Eugenie Ross-Leming says. Throughout the season, “there’s still passion and fire and regret and revenge and all of those matinee qualities you need in an adventure, but I think there’s a deepening a little of these guys and the trip that they’ve been on.”
Adds EP Brad Buckner: “There’s a… feeling of sadness to overcome, a feeling of loss this episode. And that doesn’t go away. They don’t bounce back from it right away.”
Read on for scoop on the Winchesters’ angelic reunion, the premiere’s Lucifer/Mary twist and the challenges of raising satan’s spawn Jack.
CAS | The angel is “not coming back real soon, and it influences, greatly, Dean’s state of mind,” Buckner previews. “Both of the guys have had to rebound from stuff over and over and just kind of shake it off and go on with the family business, and this overwhelming loss at the start of the season is something that Dean just can’t dig his way out of yet.” But eventually, the brothers will be reunited with their angel buddy, much to their “great relief,” star Jared Padalecki says. However, there’s also “great concern” because of what happened to Cas’ body. “I don’t know if we’ve had somebody come back after they’ve been salted and burned,” Padalecki notes. “There’s some genuine concern about what could have made this happen, who made this happen, why they made it happen. Can you trust it? Can you trust this version [of Castiel]? When [Sam] came back, [he] was soulless.” So while “the major emotion is relief and happiness,” there’s also a sense that “the other shoe might drop,” Padalecki adds.
MARY |
Unbeknownst to her sons, Mama Winchester is still alive in the alternate apocalypse world — but so is Lucifer, and he might have a fate worse than death in mind for her. Rather than killing her in the premiere’s closing minutes, Lucifer declared that maybe he needs Mary. “He knows a way he could make use of her,” Buckner shares. “He’s an opportunist, and he thinks there’s a way he can use her to his own advantage.” As such, Mary is “a pawn in his big-picture game,” Ross-Leming describes. “The angels, generally, are middle management. They sort of do what they’ve been told. They’re not policy makers, but Lucifer is a big-picture guy, so he always has a plan.”
JACK |
While in the womb, Lucifer’s spawn was “left with the imprint that Castiel is his de facto father,” Buckner explains. But with Cas gone, it will fall on Dean and Sam to parent him, and as seen in the season opener, they have very different approaches to the nephilim. Dean’s first instinct was to shoot Jack, while Sam took a kinder approach to the confused “kid.” “I’m trying to play Sam as if he feels, like, a bit of a connection,” Padalecki says. “We explore that a bit more, and I really enjoy the way it kind of ramps up a little bit as the season carries on. Sam doesn’t want to be wrong, but he doesn’t want to be careless if this kid, if this nephilim being, is going to be evil. He doesn’t want to just be blind to it, but he certainly does see a bit of a chance for redemption. He wants Jack to be good, to seek the same redemption that I think Sam seeks himself.”
As for Dean, he agreed to take Jack back to the bunker — until he figures out a way to end him. In the meantime, Lucifer’s son will become the newest member of the team, even bringing his own set of “peculiar gifts” to the boys’ cases. “But he doesn’t really know what he’s doing so it lends itself to some funny stuff,” Ross-Leming says. Speaking of Jack’s abilities, he’s actually even more powerful than the angel who sired him, and “has this ancient wisdom that I don’t think even he knows he has. He has a knowledge that’s imprinted in his essence, which starts to unfold for him.” It’s no wonder then that the angels want to get their hands on him, and they’re not the only ones hunting the nephilim. “Lots of entities are after Jack, for their own reasons,” Buckner teases. Adds Ross-Leming: “There are a lot of new bad players on the scene.”
Supernatural fans, what did you think of the season opener? Grade it via the poll below, then hit the comments to back up your pick!
Launch Gallery: <I>Supernatural</i> Season 13 Photos
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