The fourteenth season of The CW’s ‘Supernatural‘ is mixing things up this year and having episodes without Dean Winchester and writing them have been “challenging.” We know that Jensen Ackles will have to tackle the role of Archangel Michael and while he is doing that, Dean is going to be absent. This is an upset of how the entire series has been presented for thirteen seasons so far and has changed the dynamic not just for the actors but the rest of the cast and crew as well.
According to Showrunner Andrew Dabb:
“The show’s built upon two pillars, and those two pillars are Sam and Dean. We’ve taken Sam away for little chunks of time here and there, but never in a huge way. He’s been soulless and things like that, but he’s still kind of present. Demon Dean was kind of a one-episode thing, and largely, the action happened off-screen.”
Dabb shares that “one of the pillars of the show is gone, basically” when the show returns and the Apocalypse World transplant is now running amok in Dean’s body, “and that, in some ways, makes things very difficult, because the show is Sam and Dean, and their interplay.”
This will give us a fresh take on Ackles acting ability:
“It’s challenging to write episodes without Dean Winchester in them, because he is such a fundamental part of the show. But it’s also exciting [for] Jensen and us [to have] the opportunity to play around with this new character.”
One great area is that this gives a more direct focus on who they’ll be up against as, “The hardest thing about a show like this, sometimes, is every year, you have to create the new Big Bad. You have to build that character. You have to build that actor to find a comfort level with the show and everything else. With Jensen playing Michael, there’s none of that. This is an actor who everyone loves, who knows exactly what the show is, who knows exactly who he is, who knows exactly [and] very smartly how to approach this character. So it’s really given us, like instantly, a great bad guy, which is kind of obvious, but it’s something where you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s really, really cool.'”
It sounds like we’ll see some great acting from Ackles and that the writing staff will be taking things up a notch moving forward. With the network giving up on ‘Supernatural’ spinoffs, the show will need to make sure that they keep viewership up somehow.
What do you think of Andrew Dabb’s thoughts on the season being “challenging” without Dean? Do you feel that having part of the season without Dean will help or hurt the series? Share your thoughts below!
Source: TV Line
