#2019-aug

Context: Summer TCA 2019 (...) During the 2019 Television Critics Association press tour, Pedowitz took the stage and answered questions about the decision to wrap the long-running sci-fi series, at which point he revealed that he had a “very, very long, sad, heartbreaking discussion” with stars Padalecki and Ackles, as well as Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth. “We all came to understand what the guys wanted to do,” Pedowitz said, explaining that Ackles and Padalecki wanted to go out while the show was “still relevant.” Additionally, Pedowitz cited spending time with their families and seeing “what else was out in the world” as the guys’ reasons for ending the show. Pedowitz then joking added, “If you can convince them to come back, I’m open.”

When asked about future Supernatural spin-offs, Pedowitz said, “I’ve been involved in two spin-offs that did not connect. We have had no further discussions with [Supernatural EP]Bobby Singer. We have had no further discussions whatsoever in terms of Supernatural spin-offs. I tend to believe, at this point, [that] the show’s essence and blood is Jared and Jensen.”

(...) (...)In response to Den of Geek pointing out that some fans would like a “human” Cas for the end, Misha Collins said, “I would almost go in the opposite direction and see Castiel become some sort of purely ethereal, metaphysical, invisible being or something like that.”

Collins described a purely human Cas as “strangely unsatisfying.”

“So yeah, I hope for death or something transcendental.” Collins said.

Supernatural has built up such steam through a strong run on the CW that each season’s ending was simply a chance to do another big cliffhanger to lead into the next. Executive producer Robert Singer cites “tremendous support” from the CW for their longevity and security in coming up with season after season.(...) (...) Singer described having chats with Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki and Andrew Dabb since the end of season 14 about the end. (...) “I think we’re all really happy with the way this thing is going to go,” Singer said. Singer teased certain guest stars and characters coming back, but didn’t want to ruin the surprise. He stated that he was excited for fans to see the end, hopes they like and said they were working towards something special, but stresses the end won’t be enigmatic like the infamous cut-to-black on the finale of The Sopranos.

“I think the end will be bittersweet for us but I think it will also be bittersweet for the fans, but that’s okay,” Singer said. “Tears of joy mixed in with tears of sadness, I don’t think you can beat that.” (...)

Context: Summer TCA 2019 (...) Pedowitz also spoke about the end of CW cornerstones “Supernatural” and “Arrow,” both of which will conclude during the 2019-2020 season.

“All I can tell you is Jared [Padalecki], Jensen [Ackles], Peter Roth from Warner Bros,, and myself had a very long, sad, heartbreaking, discussion and we all came to understand what the guys wanted to do. They wanted to go out still loving it, they wanted to be with their families, and they wanted to see what else was out there.” Pedowitz also said that the feeling at the network had always been that when the leads were ready to stop doing the show, they would stop.

“For them and for Stephen Amell and ‘Arrow’ these shows will go out the way there were supposed to go,” he said. He also praised “Arrow” for spawning six additional DC shows in the so-called “Arrowverse,” saying that “Batwoman” was the “next evolution” of that universe. “We believe these franchises, this universe will continue for many, many years,” he said.

Pedowitz also addressed whether there would be any more attempts at developing spinoffs of “Supernatural” after two previous failed attempts.

“We have had no further discussions whatsoever in terms of a ‘Supernatural’ spinoff,” he said. “I tend to believe at this point that the show’s essence and blood is Jared and Jensen.” Pedowitz did say, though, that the CW was actively looking at a new DC property to develop currently. (...)

(...) Side note: Eric has always been fine with fans “playing in his sandbox” and understands transformative works as a sign of affection for his characters and his worlds. There’s a whole chapter on our early conversations about Supernatural in Fangasm Supernatural Fangirls if you’re curious. (...) E: And I didn’t spend an incredible amount of time thinking about politics or the world that my children will grow up in, because I didn’t have any yet. I was just trying to make a scary show and put into it stuff that I emotionally felt was right. And I think now I spend a lot more time worrying about the world we’re in and how – look, whether you’re left or right wing or conservative or liberal – we’re in a world in which we’re completely inundated by social media and corporations, massive frankly God-like corporations, using those mediums to manipulate us to work against our own best interests.

L: Scarily true.

E: Instead of coming together. So to me, what Supernatural kind of ended up being about and what The Boys is really about is real people taking on that machinery because that machinery is manipulating us and turning us against each other and making us scared and angry. Instead of what we should be, which is a community of people trying to help each other muddle through all this bullshit.

L: Like Sam and Dean and Cas do on Supernatural. (...) E: The best episodes of Supernatural, the monsters and the creatures they’re up against were always metaphors for something. We started with, what are Sam and Dean going through, and now how can we come up with a creature that personifies that? (...) (...)The theme of Supernatural and the theme of The Boys is the thing that I most value, which is family and loyalty to your friends and pulling together in tough situations and showing your humanity and vulnerability and just sticking together. That’s the closest thing I’ve got to a world view. (...) E: I mean, we’ll see what they’re doing, but I’ve chatted with Jensen a little bit over the last couple months and he’s like, how’s The Boys doing? And I said it’s so cool, it’s so fun and so filthy and like when you get done with that other short term show you’re on, come on over and play with us…

L: (laughing) You know they would love it!

E: My guess is they’ll wanna sleep for a year, but I’d be happy – no, I’d be proud – to bring Jared and Jensen into The Boys if they wanted to do it.

L: Fingers crossed. So, last question, and this one’s more about Supernatural. Jensen said that he struggled a bit with the ending of Supernatural and you were really able to help him see it differently. What stuck out to you in that ending that made you feel okay with it, as the creator of these characters and this world?

E: It was interesting because, the truth is, the ending that I probably originally had in mind when I was starting the show – we’ve pretty much spent it one way or another in story. It was probably not viable from Season 7 on. I think I kinda made peace with that, that we’ll never be able to do it because we’ve done versions of it here and there over the seasons just because inevitably a show goes on that long, you use every possible story.

L: That makes sense.

E: So when he pitched me the ending I was like – it was new to me, the first time I’d heard it – so I said give me a day to really think about it and get back to you. And I thought about it and I thought about it – (laughing) I’m sure much to Andrew and Bob’s chagrin because they’re doing all the work – but I sat down and really thought about it because, you know, I love the show. And I thought okay, at this stage, if I were to come up with an ending, what would my ending for the show be? And I went through all of these different thoughts and angles and I ended up calling back Jensen and saying, we’ve got the perfect ending, man. I really went through some others – I tried to top it and I couldn’t – and I think for one main reason. So I give those guys a lot of credit because I think they really landed on the right ending for the show. And what I would say is – what I said to Jensen is, without spoiling everything – is like, I think after everything they’ve gone through, the thing that Sam and Dean deserve more than anything is peace.

L: (nodding because I suddenly couldn’t see my questions written down in front of me anymore…)

E: And without spoiling anything, I can say that this ending gives them peace. Their lives and their adventures are so painful and angsty…and like, just the idea that they get an ending that they have peace and some sense of resolution, I think it’s the thing they deserve. And the thing the fans deserve most of all.

As “Supernatural” prepares to sign off this year, the men behind the show are trying not to let “the weight of what this season is creep into” their daily work on-set, series star Jensen Ackles said at the farewell panel for the CW demon-hunting drama at the Television Critics Assn. press tour Sunday.

Instead, they want to focus on the work, doing what they have done for 14 seasons, rather than try to “reinvent the wheel,” added Ackles.

“I want it to do justice to what we’ve built for the past 14 and a half years, and right now I think the game plan we have is going to do just that. You’re not going to please everybody — you just can’t — but for the majority of the fans that have been with us on this journey, it’s going to feel right and it’s going to feel good. I know that’s how I feel and I’m still excited to tell that story,” he said.

In the show’s earliest days, “Supernatural’s” future was not so certain. Series star Jared Padalecki admitted that he originally thought the show would simply end when they closed the trunk and said, “We have to work to do” in the pilot. The show had not been picked up to series yet, and the pilot process is “such a bizarre thing,” he said.

The show did get picked up, but in its earlier years it was very much a bubble show, filming (and often airing) a finale without knowing if it would see more life. In the later half of the show’s life, that began to shift, with the CW granting the series early renewals.

“One of the blessings, I feel, has been that we’ve known that we’re carrying on so we don’t have to create a false ending every season,” Padalecki said.

Over the seasons, a couple of spinoff ideas were attempted at the network, as well, but they did not go. Earlier in the CW’s TCA tour Sunday, network president Mark Pedowitz admitted he was not looking at other ways to continue the world without Ackles and Padalecki right now.

“There is something very, very humbling about the fact that this show keeps going. We do see a lot of spinoffs on our networks and other networks and in movies, and it’s humbling to think still want us to be a part of it,” Padalecki said.

Added Ackles: “When you have a show that is so anchored, not in a world but around two characters, it makes it difficult to tell the story without those two characters.”

(...)

The boys and Castiel (Misha Collins) are stuck in this temporary shelter, and although “it’s a triage situation first,” Padalecki told Variety to first stay alive, “there are undercurrents of anger, of tension, resentment [that] we’ll get to when we get to.”

Added Collins: “At the outset of the season [Castiel] is working with the boys but also not feeling emotionally integrated, if that makes sense. We have a fight to fight here, but I think there’s a detachment there, too. And that’s hard, and that plays out later in the season.”

The reason for this, he continued, is that “This is an instance in which Jack’s death is so hard on him, but he’s also dealing with Dean being mad at him about Mary’s death, and I think that Cas doesn’t really feel responsible for that: I think he feels he did his best — he was trying — so it’s a rare instance of him not taking the full burden of something.”

Those pieces of the story come in the second episode, although all three men (Ackles, Padalecki and Collins) admitted they hadn’t thought about how much animosity might have been caused by the fact that Chuck aka God answered Castiel’s prayer in the Season 14 finale, after he had failed to answer the brothers’ prayers for so many years.

“I don’t think they’re there yet, to complain about that,” Padalecki said. “I think Sam and Dean, certainly Sam, is more like, ‘Have we been hamsters on a wheel the whole time? Rats in a maze? What have we done?’ I think we then start dealing with questions of, ‘What is free will? Is it all predetermined? Why try hard if it’s all going to turn out the way Chuck decided it’s going to turn out?'”

Added Ackles: “Basically, is everything we’ve done our whole lives now erased — eradicated — because these things are back? All of that work is essentially gone.” This will lead the brothers — and the show — to “tackle” why one should keep fighting if nothing they do matters, to which, Ackles said the ultimate answer is, “This is what they do. Any excuse to give up is not an excuse good enough for them. This is who they are.”

Although Dean and Sam would be willing to spend “years and years and years” fighting all of these things again, as Ackles put it, maybe the bigger question is how to handle Chuck. After all, if they can get rid of the big bad that brought back all of these foes, wouldn’t that ensure the little bads stop coming?

“The season hasn’t been written yet,” Padalecki admitted, “but I feel like we’re after Chuck. We’re trying to get answers. We’re trying to earn our free will, so to speak. So I feel like what’s been really important to Sam and Dean for many, many years was, ‘Hey, we’re making decisions to make the world a better place — to help the people who can’t help themselves.’ And now we’ve been told, ‘You’re just a story I like to watch,’ and now we’re trying to fight for the privilege and responsibility of actually having free will.”

Executive producer Robert Singer noted that in previous seasons, they would always end on a cliffhanger, but in developing the final season, “it’s a different experience.”

“It’s a true ending,” Dabb added. And “in a true ending, people can’t keep coming back over and over again. They’re going to be facing life or death — this time it’s for real.”

Collins was one actor who admitted that he didn’t feel his character needed to survive the series. “It’s funny, but from the very beginning I’ve always imagined that Cas would die right before the end, because I feel like the show somehow needs to end with Sam and Dean alone,” he told Variety. “But I don’t see a lot of people living at the end of ‘Supernatural’ because I think it needs a kind of closure that only definitive death can bring. That’s very morose, but true. I don’t think we want a ‘Game of Thrones’ ending on ‘Supernatural.'”

One thing Collins did say he wanted before the series ended, though, was to see Castiel truly express his loyalty to the Winchesters. “I would love to see him just be able to say, ‘You’re my people. You’re who I care about that.’ I’d love to see him make a sacrifice,” he shared.

The reason they wanted to go out now, Padalecki shared because they didn’t want to be “the last guy at the party.

“This show is going so strong. It’s going so well right now,” he explained. “We’re such a well-oiled machine, we thought it would be almost poetic and indicative of what ‘Supernatural’ is about to say goodbye too soon.”

However, while “Supernatural” as a long-running drama will definitely end in 2020 after the 20-episode 15th season, Ackles said he felt the culture the show has created and the experience of the show is “a long journey that I don’t think is ever going to be over. I just think we’re going to go away for awhile.”

Does this mean the “Supernatural” cast and crew would be open to a limited series revival in a few years or some kind of movie?

“I’m never ever ready to close doors or burn bridges, I think that’s foolish. Am I saying there’s conversations? No. Am I saying I’d be open to conversations in the future? What’s the harm in that?” Ackles said.

(...) On Sunday, the cast and producers took the stage at the 2019 Television Critics Association press tour, where they were asked about their vision for the ending back when the show first started. Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean, referenced creator Eric Kripke’s original five-year plan, saying, “I don’t think that that ending would make sense anymore.” As for the ending they have come to now, Ackles said, “I want it to end in a way that does justice to what we’ve built for the past 14½ years. The game plan that we have is going to do just that.”

Ackles noted that while they’re probably not going to please everybody with the ending, he said for the majority of fans, “This is certainly going to feel right and it’s going to feel good. It should put a lot of people in a position to feel great about the journey they took with the Winchester brothers.”

Additionally, when discussing the show’s ending, Ackles said, “It’s a long journey that I don’t think is ever going to be over. I think we’re just going to go away for a while. How long? I don’t know.” And when asked if he’d be open to returning to the Supernatural universe in the future, Ackles said, “I’m not ever going to close doors or burn bridges; I think that’s foolish. Am I saying that there’s something in the works? No. Am I saying I’d be open to having a conversation about this in the future? What’s the harm in that?”

As for why the show is ending now, Jared Padalecki chimed in to say, “You don’t want to be the last person at the party, even if it’s the best party on the planet.”