Spoilers for the Supernatural: Season 8 season premiere follow.
Supernatural returned last week, setting in place plenty of big new storylines for the show, as Sam and Dean were reunited after Dean’s year in purgatory. So what’s next for the Winchesters? Supernatural executive producers Robert Singer and Jeremy Carver discuss their plans for Season 8 – and beyond.
There will be frequent flashbacks filling in more of what happened in the past year for Sam and Dean. “Not every episode, but where appropriate,” explained Singer, adding it would inform where “The boys’ headspace is in a given episode.”
Singer noted the flashbacks" allowed us to tell slightly different kind of stories.” When it comes to Sam and his newly revealed love interest, Emilia, he remarked, “Supernatural hasn’t spent, I think, a lot of time on relationship stories. This is a really nice mechanism to do that without imposing that on the forward momentum of these other stories that we’re telling.”
Noted Carver, “One thing we like particular about the first 13 [episodes] is the way we’re playing with perception… What happens as these brothers start to discover more about what they’ve done in the past year – and might those tables turn in terms of who has to answer for what?”
“Sam is keeping thoughts of this woman and this relationship to himself. It greatly informs where he is now at the beginning of the season. It represents something to him. It represents, essentially, another way – another life,” said Carver.
Carver, who returned to Supernatural in Season 8 in his new role as showrunner, after a couple of years away from the series, remarked, “The jumping off point, certainly when I came back to the show, was laid out by Bob [Singer] and Sera [Gamble]. You are truly alone. What does that mean? What kind of impact does that have on somebody? How does that affect somebody after so many years?”
While comparisons are inevitable to how Dean had his own domestic life when Sam was in hell, the producers noted that the big difference was that Dean “Never felt comfortable” in that scenario and couldn’t put aside all of his Hunter past – still salting windows and such. But Sam, “found real solace and real comfort. The only thing that sort of got him back was yeah, they were responsible for Kevin. ‘If we can do the Kevin thing and get this done, I’m done.’”
As Carver put it, Sam’s experience gave him, “A taste of something he never had before, and it had a really profound effect on him.”
As Carver noted, Dean had “a bit of a surprising reaction” to Purgatory, which was brought up in the season premiere.
“The idea that it was ‘pure’ down there… I think one of the last things you’d expect going to a place that is so horrible - That someone might actually consider it a happy experience. You have to ask yourself, why do you think it’s happy? What is this thing inside himself that he connected to? This primal side? How will he deal with that topside?”
As for Dean’s new friend Benny and how they became so chummy, Carver said, “It’s something we’ll see in those flashbacks. Hopefully the intriguing question that the premiere asks is, you see this warmness, but when they meet you see this reserve and general distrust. How did they get from that to that embrace? That’s what the flashbacks are telling us.”
As mentioned above, a big new player introduced in the season premiere is Benny, and Carver noted that as the season continues, “We use Benny as that thing that is representative of Dean in purgatory.”
“I think you’ll see Benny playing a pretty important part both in his physical presence and his psychological presence. The idea of Benny is hanging over our brothers pretty heavily. He’s a guy who has a tremendous, tremendous bearing and he’s really working out wonderfully. He’s a really complex character and adds really interesting wrinkle to the brother’s relationship this year – how they deal with something like this.”
Season 7 hammered home the hardline stance Dean had with the supernatural – going so far as to kill Sam’s old friend, who he believed was inevitably a danger. So just what changed for Dean to make him let a dangerous creature like Benny go, and how might Sam react to discovering this? Said Carver, “I think that’s the question that comes front and center when you see Benny. That’s something that’s got to be confronted at some point and arcs out through the course of the season.”
The Season 8 premiere also brought back Kevin, introduced at the end of Season 7, in a big way. Noted Carver, “We’ll learn more about how he personally feels about being a prophet and being involved in this mission that the brothers are a part of – the personal cost it has for him. And to see how his willingness or desire to do the job, how that rubs off on the boys. They’re all playing off each other and inextricably linked here.”
We’re also about to meet Kevin’s mom and Carver explained, “Putting aside the question of trust for a second, you could say Ms. Tran does something sort of interesting and sort of fun and it gives the boys, in an odd way, a bit of a mother figure that they haven’t had I a long time. It’s a fun dynamic and it can be a rather moving dynamic at times, also. It also gives you a fourth wheel on the car that you have to deal with…”
When it came to recurring characters in Season 8, Carver and Singer were still tightlipped on what role Bobby might play, despite Jim Beaver being part of the Supernatural panel at San Diego Comic-Con this summer.
What could they say about who we’ll see this season? Said Carver, “We’ll be seeing a healthy dose of Kevin. Crowley is set up to be somewhat of the boy’s main agonist. There’s Benny, there’s Emilia. There are some new angels that we’re introducing. Amanda Tapping is playing a fairly mysterious angel named Naomi.”
As for the big, “What happened to Castiel?” question, “We’ll be telling that story pretty steadily through the first seven or eight episodes. By episodes seven, eight you’ll start to get a really good idea of what happened in Purgatory to Cas.”
The premiere set up a big new mission for Sam and Dean - to actually close the gates of hell, once and for all. But if they accomplished that, would that mean all their enemies would be vanquished? Clarified Carver, “There’s so many other monsters in this universe. In the Supernatural universe, you’re thinking ‘I’ve eliminated a big chunk’ – but certainly not all.
As for how big a story arc this is establishing, Singer noted, “Jeremy’s hell-bent on multiple seasons.” Carver said the actual quest to close the hellgate story was a season-long arc, but added, “The questions that come up in this quest and the series of reveals and the series of discoveries are meant to start giving us underpinnings for questions and secrets and things that will be explored in future seasons.”
As for whether closing the hellgate to demons coming in and out would also affect human souls, Carver revealed, “That’s something that will be clarified later on – or dealt with.”
Supernatural has a reputation for doing some rather unusual and noteworthy episodes. Looking ahead to some highlights this year, Carver said, “We’re doing one a little bit later that’s dealing with what happens when you find yourself living in a cartoon universe. That’s a lot of fun. It actually won’t be animated. It deals more with cartoon physics in the real world. We will be doing an episode that deals pretty heavily with the LARPing universe, different from the way we’ve dealt with in the past. Those are two really fun ones we have coming up.”
There is also a found footage episode, which Carver described as “pretty unlike any episode the show has ever done before. Said Singer, “You’re living in this found footage. The boys are bracketed on either side in the opening and at the very end, but for 95% you’re living in this found footage. [Sam and Dean] are in it, unknowingly. It’s crazy. It’s a really good episode. It’s very compelling and has some great guest stars.”
Carver said the setup was, “College kids dealing with a situation that goes pretty horribly awry” and that the episode was much more in line with “your Paranormal Activitys or your Blair Witch” than the Ghostfacers episodes. Added Signer, “Tonally, it’s a 180 degrees away from Ghostfacers.” As Carver noted this episode “ain’t for laughs.”
Carver also remarked, “I’m excited about episode five. We’re dealing with a good deal of flashbacks from Sam and from Dean. That’s a really meaty and emotional episode. It’s somewhat of a turning point for the boys, also.”
Supernatural airs Wednesdays at 9pm ET/PT on The CW.
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