When it was announced that The CW had greenlitThe Winchesters, a prequel series to long-running fantasy seriesSupernatural, there were immediate questions about who would be appearing from the original series and how it would connect to the first season of the flagship series. At the time it became known thatJensen Ackleswould be acting as narrator on the new show, providing a voice-over as Dean Winchester, but in a recent interview withTVLine, Ackles explained that fans can expect some “crazy” connections to the lore of the original series. He said:
“To be honest, I was like, ‘I don’t know if we can do this,’ and then it took [writer] Robbie [Thompson] and me sitting down going like, ‘Well, we know we have to do this, and we know we have to do that, but if we just connect those dots with a straight line, that’s not entertaining. That’s boring. That’s a simple story. If we connect those dots in a much crazier, wild Supernatural way, then we’ve got a show.’ So that’s what we’ve been doing.”
The story of John and Mary Winchester was briefly explored in season 4 ofSupernatural, and Ackles was quick to point out that in that respect much of the work to establish the characters was already laid down and will be expanded in the upcoming series. He continued:
“That’s kind of the exciting thing, in my opinion, is that the waypoints or the tentpoles that were established on the mothership, as we lovingly call it, those will get touched on, but we’ll get to those waypoints in a way that we probably didn’t expect. And that’s what we’re really having fun with is, like, the story is coming together. It’s not the washed version. It’s not the sugar-coated version of how mom and dad met. This is like what really happened. But we do play into the moments that were discussed and that were talked about, just maybe in a slightly varied way that seems like, ‘Whoa, wait, we knew that happened, but I didn’t know that’s why it happened or that’s how it happened.'”
Related:Everything We Want to See in the Supernatural Prequel
The Winchesters Casting Does Not Include Jared Padalecki
As the news ofThe Winchestersseries was announced, it became very quickly clear thatSupernaturalstarJared Padalecki was not involved in the seriesthanks to a series of tweets in which the actor said he was “bummed” to be finding out about the new show via the media. However, any ill feeling between the former co-stars was short-lived, and they soon put the unrest to bed, but Padalecki will not have any role in the prequel series.
While there is still a lot unknown about the new series, it was revealed last month that as well as Ackles the show will feature Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly as John and Mary Winchester, whileLegaciesactressBianca Kajlich will play Millie Winchester, the grandmother of Sam and Dean. There is currently no word on when the series will make its debut on The CW, but it is most likely expected to be sometime next year.
