Aithne

Very different ways, agreed. I think something the later seasons set up, for better or worse, is a sense that Sam was trying to live up to Dean. (This was completely absent as far as I could see in the first four seasons, so I consider it a bit of a retcon, but a long-running one.) In season 5, Sam retroactively attributes his blood drinking and consortion with Ruby to feeling inferior to Dean, and if Dean doesn't want him to do it again, he has to stop treating him like a little brother. In season 8, he says his biggest confession was failing Dean. There's even a line somewhere, I forget when, where he literally admits he went to Hell to emulate Dean. (Season 14 maybe?) Dean, by contrast, has a lot of pride in and respect for Sam, and of course he loves him like crazy. But he doesn't view Sam as someone to emulate, or a guiding star, or someone he could blame his actions on. Sam's just not that influential on him. Sam's a partner in crime, Sam's a responsibility and obligation, Sam's a source of great delight, but Dean doesn't look to Sam for an example of how to be or how to live.

This is a really good insight. I think this is absolutely true, and it's an interesting bit of characterization.

Absolutely. I think that's pretty much what Kripke means when he says his ending would've been darker, and we wouldn't have liked it. Because his impression of what we'd like has never really aligned with mine, haha - I would've been happy with this, even moreso because it would've rendered obsolete all the whinging about how Dean needed to exit the narrative in order to prove that he's a good person/brother. F that.

Ah, that's a really good point. I could see them doing that.

Well, they've only just met, and we know (or think we know) that there was a lot of tension between them (per the Cupid in 5.14). We also know that John found hunting traumatizing when he first started, even apart from Mary's death (per his words to Dean in 2.1), and that he always hoped for an endpoint to it (per his words to Sam in... uh... DMB, I think?). He never really adapted to it the way Dean did, finding happiness and pleasure along the way. All that to say, Mary and John may not have a smooth road here. Could be they are a really good match all other things being equal, but John's personality isn't suited to hunting, and it starts gnawing at him and changing him. But yes, the John and Dean story is always the most fascinating to me - childhood, Stanford years, and of course, what we got in the show. That relationship is the beating heart of this show to me, short as its onscreen presence was.

I think what makes it tricky is that Dabb set it up so Dean not only died, but we followed decades afterward of Sam alone til his own death. So unless that ending does change somehow, we either need to jump decades into the future for a sequel (ie, both guys resurrected, presumably at the ages they died if it works as it did in LR, which is gonna make Sam pretty useless), or there's something Dean was doing, aside from driving around in Heaven, that Sam never found out about. Dabb's made it tough to continue Dean's story, but he's made it nigh-impossible to work Sam into it. That being the case, I'd assumed any sequel was going to come from an altered timeline where Dean didn't die, but if Sam's ending is to remain unchanged... yeah. I don't know how that could work.

Yeah, it's him. Guy is a chameleon. This is some kind of picture, especially in motion. Well done, EW.

Then I'm doubly glad to support TW going forward. Imagine coming into a show in its fourth season, not even being showrunner until more than a decade in, and feeling that entitled to the final word.

Ahhh, resetting time a la Balthazar. Now there's one I hadn't thought of, but it fits very nicely - they are on a hunt and something throws them back to the very beginning, before they met, and things play out the way they do in our timeline.

Yeah, I'm banking on this investigation being relevant for a reason, not just out of curiosity and to reminisce. I think what would make most sense, if he's in Heaven, is that he has to prevent something from befalling the last members of their line (Sam and Dean the Younger), and the key is in a hunt his parents went on, but perhaps don't remember. He needs to figure out what happened before he can save Sam and DtY.

Oh no worries, haha. We were super hard on Kripke back in the day because of the mytharc situation too - I think he sounded stressed half the time he talked about the fans. And yeah, the WIAWSNB thing - so glad Tucker wrote that ep. She did an amazing job. That said, I can see where it could've worked, with Dean being a loser - it was a djinn dream, meant to keep him there. Nothing would've gotten him as fired up and absorbed in the false reality as failing his family and trying to make it up to them. (Again, though, I don't think that would've been Kripke's point - I think it just would've been something he found fun, since Dean is so successful and heroic in what he does in the real world.)

Totally. John's always been decent in the preseries canon - friendly and warm, but with a clear core of strength. And to me, that's important, because we see flashes of that good man in the John we know - in how keenly he feels his love and regrets, in the lessons he taught the brothers about altruism and loyalty, etc. What's complicated is that both brothers had the right take on their dad in S1 - Dean was right that John was doing what thought he had to, and that it came from fear for them. Sam was right that the way they grew up was fucked and it was bonkers that John expelled him from the family for wanting to go to school. John is a good person who got real messed up by his circumstances, and that's the tragedy of him as a father. It loses some resonance if he was never a decent person to start with.

I was around at the time, so maybe I can speak to how I perceived Kripke at the time through interviews and whatnot. I think Sam was Kripke's protag, but I don't think he disliked Dean (like Dabb) or had any serious favoritism toward Sam (like Gamble). I think he liked Dean and recognized how important he was to making this show work, and he clearly was and is close to JA. Kripke just isn't a super sensitive and thoughtful fella, and I think he just thought it was funny. He has a lot of strengths, but I think he has some blind spots, and he didn't quite realize how seriously the audience took Dean's trip to Hell. For him, I think it was a plot point to kick off the apocalypse, not a big character thing to dig into (note the difference in how Gamble approached Sam's trip to Hell in S6/7). So yeah. I think Kripke took it as a gag and was a little taken aback and concerned by the audience's rejection of it. But I don't think there was ill intent.

I don't know that JA and RT have messed with canon yet, have they? Just because John finds out about his dad and hunters in 1972, that doesn't necessarily impact the future, any more than John finding out about hunters and angels in 1978 did.

... Damn. That is a hell of an idea. I'm gonna think on it and try to poke holes in it.

The show will do fine. I think there certainly is an effort going on now to flood social media with negative reactions for various interests (some people, for example, are pissed that Mary and John might be portrayed sympathetically). But the general base of viewers for these shows is much bigger than the people who spam their opinions online, and once it airs, it's gonna find its audience. If that audience doesn't include these folks, that's cool too.

Great news, re: the music!

I like that they tied the movie theater thing in! Since I'm currently running with the spec that only John gets his memory of this time erased, I'm gonna assume that this is how Mary explains their first meeting to him - trying to stay somewhat truthful.

I might have told you that - it was from the leaked script. But in the leaked script, he's sitting in the bunker writing all of this with Miracle at his feet, so they changed the setting. (if that script was even legit.)

We know for sure that 1983 John doesn't know because of the angelic mind wipe in 1978. It's the fact that 1973 John is considered a civilian by Mary and her family, and that Mary says he doesn't know these things about her, that's the sticky wicket. I'm gonna guess, if they've plotted all this out, that The Winchesters can only have a short timeframe, say 9 months. By the end of April in the following year, Samuel's returned and Mary is dating a nice mechanic who knows nothing about the supernatural (as far as Samuel knows). Whatever happened in that year, John doesn't remember it. Mary is another story - she's treating him now as a civilian, but that's not to say she doesn't remember when he knew more. It could be just that she's protecting his ignorance now. My guess is that it's not angels and demons at all - the job was starting to fuck him up, she saw it, and they got (un?)lucky on a job that struck him with some sort of curse that made him forget her. She and Millie decide not to re-enlighten him to what he learned during their acquaintance, because he's the sort who's sensitive enough to go totally off the deep end if he hunts long-term, and they give him some story about how they met and started dating. So what would be the long-term plan? If I were writing it, it'd be to set up another familial loose end that Dean has to pursue in the present in order to make sure Sam's son has a future and is protected. Keep it a family story mixed with lots of horror, just like it always should've been. But I'm sure I'm way off as far as what they're thinking of.

Rewatched and noticed a few things. A) The John/Mary dynamic is super charming. "You really are a lot of fun, Mary." Aww, shucks, you cuties. B) "As long as a Winchester's alive, there's hope." What is THAT foreshadowing? Is Dean the Elder going down this rabbit hole for some reason related to Dean the Younger? C) "THIS story is just beginning." Again - what does this mean for the significance of this story? D) I love that John, mechanic from a long line of mechanics, was referencing his mama. Refreshing. E) I really can't get over how lovely and authentic the actors are. I expect way more cringe from the CW. They managed some good casting here.

Oh, very interesting point. Perhaps in heaven, he has access to see what's happened all the way down the past in his bloodline.

I need some time period-appropriate music, I think. But I like the actors a lot! Super charming (John repeatedly hitting Mary was hilarious - "STOP! HELPING!"), and I liked the subtle little callbacks too with saving people, hunting things and "When I told my dad I was afraid of the monster under my bed, he said 'don't worry - I know how to trap it." And you know. I'm sort of internally screaming about seeing Dean and the Impala again. But I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it. Just know that I'm internally screaming.

Nice interview, thanks for sharing! Interesting to hear the thoughts on Winchesters casting, visual vibe and location. It sounds like a lot of love has gone into this. And I love his take on a True Detective-esque mini-SPN revival!

I could see it being something where a different timeline branches off from this - the main show isn't erased, but it's completed from a Winchester perspective. Dean's dead, Sam's dead, Sam's kid doesn't hunt. So short of heavenly shenanigans to resurrect the Winchesters for one last ride, there's nothing to mine for a SPN sequel in the main 'verse. (Thanks Dabb and Singer!) If JA has interest in continuing into the brothers' middle age, it seems like an alternate branch off the timeline is the way to go - maybe it's very similar in many ways, but it diverges somewhere important. Say John is mindwiped and their childhood / young adulthood and Azazel hunt is essentially identical. There's just one difference that ends up butterfly effecting things later. The easiest thing to imagine changing, for me, would be Mary and John as breeding stock for the apocalypse. Maybe they do something here that disqualifies them to birth the archangel vessels, and the roles go to someone else, or the apocalypse is pushed off for hundreds of years, that sort of thing. Azazel still targets Mary to make one of his kids because it amuses him to corrupt a line of hunters, but his bellicose ambitions don't end up being tied to an imminent return of Lucifer. Sam dies in 2.22, Dean tries to sell his soul but it has no value to Hell sans the apocalypse plotline, so he has to find another way to resurrect him. Together, they keep hunting for a while, but Sam eventually leaves the life and settles down while Dean carries on. Maybe this is where we meet them in the sequel - Sam hasn't hunted in years, but has made a career as a defense lawyer getting people acquitted when supernatural situations have made them seem responsible for a crime. Dean is starting to slow down in his active field role as a hunter, but has been mentoring other younger guys and gals he meets along the way. Much less PTSD and angst because neither guy was ever in Hell, and a take on how they could've grown to use their knowledge in a productive way, rather than getting creepily codependent and tunnel-visioned on each other.