Photo: Tamara Brooks
MYTHBUSTERS Rock San Diego Comic-Con, Plan For More Seasons
By : TAMARA BROOKS
The primary cast and creators of SUPERNATURAL were on hand to give the SDCC crowd a preview of the post-apocalypse adventures of the Winchester Brothers.
Jensen Ackles started the panel by introducing a clip from an episode he directed, his first time doing so, called “The Powers That Be.” “The most difficult part of directing an episode is directing Jim Beaver,” Ackles jokes. It’s the first they’ve filmed but isn’t the first episode of the season and focuses on Bobby Singer. The clip, which followed a recap of last season, showed Bobby summoning the demon Crowley (Mark Sheppard), the current owner of his soul, and discussing the deal. They, of course, have differing opnions on what should happen.
The panel was moderated by Brian Truitt of USA Today and consisted of show runner Sera Gamble, creator Eric Kripke, Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Beaver, and Ben Edlund.
Photo: Tamara Brooks
The Highlights:
Though he’s no long the show runner, Kripke will stay involved in the direction of the series to the point where he’s a pain in the writers’ behinds. “I’m like delightful hemorrhoids, fuzzy hemorrhoids,” he says. He feels Season 6 will kind of be like a sequel to a movie, with all the major plot points wrapped up and unhindered by the weight of the Apocalypse. He didn’t want the creativity of the show to suffer and felt the new regime has great ideas and the energy to keep it going.
Sera says there are more monsters this season than there have been lately. “We got very epic…and then we were like, we want to shoot a lot of monsters in the face.” But the Monsters of the Week will actually have some bearing on the overall storyline.
Jensen on directing: It was refreshing to look at scripts in a different way, making creative decisions about everything as opposed to just his character. Spent 5 of 8 days directing since it was a Dean-lite script.
Jared has no idea how Sam got out of Hell. Eric, Sera, and Ben didn’t say a peep either.
Misha on Castiel’s new role: He’s on clean up duty in Heaven since the “government” collapsed and things are in disarray.
When asked if Bobby will ever get a girlfriend, Beaver says “Hell will probably freeze over before Bobby gets a girlfriend.” Eric and Jensen both joked that freezing Hell could be a possibility on the show. Adds Beaver, “I can pretty much assure you that the kissing days between Bobby and Crowley are over. I can assure you because you’d need me to film it.”
Edlund, who excels at the weird and twisted, is working on a episode with fairies in it. He promises it will be “rich in absurdity.”
Sera on female characters not lasting long: “There are a few female characters that have survived so far this season. I don’t think we’ve had a character who’s lived period. You’re kind of dead meat on this show”
When a bunch of people started shouting out random things, Jensen marvels, “What is this, the JERRY SPRINGER SHOW, people just yelling out crap?”
On the Supernatural Anime: Kripke says so far it’s only airing in Japan but the fans should let Warner Brothers know they want to see it. Jared and Jensen will do a voices on a few episodes. “Which will be interesting since my Japanese is terrible” quips Jensen.
Is Chuck really God? Kripke says it’s open for debate. “We’re not going to give an answer…We didn’t want a character to come on at the end and say ‘And that’s because I’m God.’ That would be such an M. Knight douchey thing to do.”
We didn’t get too many guest star mentions but Mitch Pileggi will return as well as the introduction of a maternal female family member. Sera says they love Jeffrey Dean Morgan and would love to work with him again but he’s so busy.
Jared played Sam vs LuciSam by acting against a tape of himself because he didn’t want someone else interpretation to affect what he was going for.
Did five-year plan and the finale change based on Season 6? Kripke admits he tweaked a few things. Had it been a true season finale, “there wouldn’t be as many living characters as their are” but the Lucifer/Micheal story ended as planned. About 80% was unaltered.
On Ruby’s DUMBO-related comment to Sam: Demon blood is the battery for Sam’s powers. Ruby’s “you didn’t need the feather” bit was about his inner darkness and the bad/reckless decisions he was making, not his abilities
The GhostFacers could return. Sera says it’s a matter of the right story at the right time.
Kripke is really proud of how “Swan Song” was the culmination of all the mythology and how it’s all about family in the end. It was never about seeing the Apocalypse, it was about the Sam and Dean’s bond stopping it.
On Dean’s S6 arc: The show picks up a year later and he’s domesticated and living a normal life. It’s about how he gets pulled back in to hunting and reconciling who he was, who he’s become, who he really is, and who he wants to be.
Jensen says “I’m looking forward to killing some vampires properly this year…Cut this pasty, waify s–t out and just [shank ’em].” The crowd very much liked this.
SUPERNATURAL will air Fridays beginning September 24. 2010 at 9pm. Season 5 comes on DVD September 7.
