It’s official! The Winchesters are coming back to our screens, but not the ones we’ve known and loved for 15 years.
This new spin-off from the popular show Supernatural will be very different to the original, obviously the same premise (saving people, hunting things) but with a different character focus and timeline.
Supernatural finished nearing the end of 2020, after running for 15 years it’s an understatement to say that fans were saddened to hear of the show’s demise. Whilst cast members were also broken up about the end of the show, Jensen Ackles took the opportunity to pitch a new spin-off show to Warner Bros.
This deal was made in conjunction with Ackles’ production company, Chaos Machine Productions, which he founded in 2020 with his wife Danneel.
So, what can we expect from the spin-off show? What will be the focus? Who will be involved? Well, keep reading to find out all the details.
Plot
The show will follow Dean and Sam’s parents John and Mary Winchester, but not as the lovebirds we knew in Supernatural. The Winchesters will investigate how John and Mary met, how John found out about hunters and the supernatural, and their adventures together.
Ackles will be narrating the show as his character Dean, explaining how he wants to look more into his parents’ lives together and to do this, he has to start from the beginning. This means looking all the way back to 1972 in Lawrence when John returned from the war and met Mary after she saved him from a demon attack.
The show will dive into how Mary came to be a hunter, as well as Mary’s influence on John’s transition from being a soldier to a hunter. The trailer makes a link between hunting and John’s father, which influences John’s interest in being a hunter claiming that “saving people, hunting things, […] is what [he] was born to do”.
The story follows one similar to Sam and Dean’s, with Mary searching for her father after he fails to return home after a hunting trip. Mary’s search for her father leads her to meet John, who she then introduces to the world of demons, ghosts, and other supernatural beings.
Since we witnessed Dean’s death in season 15 of Supernatural, it is unclear how this spin-off will clear up that anomaly since Dean will be investigating the life of his parents. Of course, Dean could have carried out this investigation before his death and the whole “God ending the world” problem, but again there are some anomalies in the timing. We’ll have to see what comes of it.
Whilst the aspect of Dean diving deeper into his parents’ lives causes some inconsistencies, this isn’t the only one. With John and Mary’s story being explored here and there in Supernatural, seeing the trailer for this spin-off show contradicts sections of their story we have witnessed previously.
Supernatural included various aspects of Mary and John’s life together, both before Sam and Dean were born and later, but the details of how they met and came to be a couple were portrayed much differently in Supernatural to how it will appear in The Winchesters.
Originally, John didn’t find out about Mary’s hunter roots until after she was killed by Azazel, and he discovered that what took his wife’s life was supernatural, leading him and his sons into the hunting world. Although, John had found out about Mary being a hunter on two separate occasions prior to this when Dean travelled to the past, once by himself through the help of Castiel and the second with his brother Sam, interfering with the timeline and unintentionally revealed Mary’s secret due to the actions of Azazel and Anna Milton.
However, in The Winchesters, John finds out about the supernatural and Mary being a hunter the first night they meet. Maybe this will all be tailored so there are no anomalies between the arcs of these characters, but as of this moment it doesn’t seem like consideration of the information disclosed in Supernatural was taken into account when the ideology for this show was decided.
Cast
As mentioned, Dean will be the narrator meaning that Jensen Ackles will be starring, along with his role as Executive Producer. Ackles is sharing the role of Executive Producer with Danneel and a handful of others.
Drake Rodger will be playing John Winchester who is the male lead of the show. Drake’s acting career began in 2020 and he has previously starred in The In Between and Quiet In My Town.
Meg Donnelly is playing the main female lead, Mary Campbell. Meg has appeared in several projects since 2013, a selection of those being Disney movies and shows, as well as animated Spider-Man series and American Housewife.
Other members joining the cast include Bianca Kajlich as John’s mother Millie Winchester, Jojo Fleites and Nida Khurshid as fellow hunters Carlos Cervantez and Latika Desai, Demetria McKinney as a bookstore owner and occult enthusiast Ada Monroe, and Michael Tacconi as Hank Murphy whose role is yet to be more defined.
Ackles previously expressed his dream to get two previous John Winchesters included in the show. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Matt Cohen both played John Winchester in Supernatural but two different versions.
Whether Ackles manages to get both Morgan and Cohen on board is yet to be determined, but he said that his intentions behind wanting three different Johns in the prequel were inspired by Spider-Man: No Way Home where all three of the characters from different timelines banded together.
Whilst fans would hope Jared Padalecki would be included in this project, there shows no sign of his involvement. There was a brief conflict between Ackles and Padalecki back in 2021 when Deadline released an article announcing the show, which Ackles shared on his Twitter blindsiding Padalecki with the news.
Dude. Happy for you.
Wish I heard about this some way other than Twitter.
I’m excited to watch, but bummed that Sam Winchester had no involvement whatsoever. https://t.co/bAcEvFKM7p— Jared Padalecki (@jarpad) June 25, 2021
Padalecki expressed his disappointment that he wasn’t informed about the project. Later the same day, Padalecki posted an update on his Twitter letting fans know that he and Ackles “had a great talk” and patched things up. Ackles responded to this by expressing his love for Padalecki stating “you’re still my brother.”
Love you @jarpad …
Miss these talks. I forgot how much face time we always used to get. And I miss that too. I know you’re busy…as am I, but you’re still my brother. I miss you, pal. https://t.co/KtRKYkvc2K— Jensen Ackles (@JensenAckles) June 25, 2021
Ackles explained in the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast that there was a miscommunication that led to Padalecki discovering the news of the Supernatural spin-off through social media. According to Ackles, he didn’t share the news with a lot of people because it wasn’t a done deal, and he didn’t want to jinx the project before it even got its legs.
Apparently, when the spin-off show was announced last year, a script hadn’t even been made at that point; The script was handed out in January 2022. Ackles went on to explain that it was his first day on a new set when he was informed that Deadline had “caught wind of [the show]” and was going to publish an article announcing the news. Ackles then felt pressured to put out a statement not thinking about all the people he had yet to tell.
Ackles said that he apologised to Padalecki for not telling him before word got out, and Padalecki explained his motives behind sending out the tweet and expressed his apologies for sharing his feelings over social media. Ackles concluded in the podcast that he and Padalecki were on great terms and Padalecki is excited to see the finished product of the spin-off series.
When will The Winchesters be released?
A new trailer recently dropped announcing the official date of the show’s release. The Winchesters will finally be airing on October 11th 2022 in the US, however, a date for the UK has yet to be announced.
Supernatural used to air in the UK a few months or so after the US, but then you have shows like The Walking Dead which are available the next day. Therefore, we won’t know until an announcement has been made when and where the show will be available for us Brits.
By Ellimay Mead
Instagram: @ellimays_activism