‘It’s the Fun Apocalypse’: Creator Eric Kripke Talks ‘Supernatural’
This is an interview with “Supernatural” creator Eric Kripke done by Maureen Ryan for the Chicago Tribune back in 2009. This interview has since been removed from their online archives because Mo is now with the Huffington Post. It’s an interview we are rather fond of, so Mo has graciously agreed to let us republish it here.
August 26, 2009
‘It’s the fun Apocalypse’: Creator Eric Kripke talks ‘Supernatural’
by Maureen Ryan
I sat down with “Supernatural” creator and executive producer Eric Kripke at Comic-Con to talk about the show’s evolution and what’s ahead for Sam and Dean Winchester. I’ll use portions of what we talked about below for an upcoming feature/review of “Supernatural” that will be posted closer to the show’s Sept. 10 season premiere.
But, and this has become a thing around here, I couldn’t wait any longer to post the full transcript of our chat. There is a chance that “Supernatural” fans may want to read the whole thing (if you just want intel about what’s coming up in the first few episodes of the season, skip to the very end of the post; pictures and promos from Season 5 are below and also here: http://www.movieweb.com/news/NELujPMR1u8bOT).
Newcomers to the show, however, may just want a sense of how Kripke views “Supernatural” and a little insight about its core ideas and evolution (in other words, newbies and casual fans may not want to read the whole transcript. As Dean would say, “I get it”).
In any case, two things before we get to the transcript: Here’s my revised list of Episodes “Supernatural” Newcomers Should Watch So That They Are Up to Speed Before Season 5 Starts (and this is not my list of Favorite “Supernatural” Episodes of All Time, though there is a lot of crossover on those lists). And if you look at my thoughts on Season 2, you’ll find a link to a “Previously on Supernatural” clip.
Following that is another Newbie Section: Some thoughts from Kripke on the underpinnings and ideas behind his show. By the way, if Season 5 is terrible, after all these “Watch ‘Supernatural'” pieces I’ve done, I am moving to another country and living under an assumed name. I’m just letting you know that ahead of time.
Episodes “Supernatural” Newcomers Should Watch So That They Are Up to Speed Before Season 5 Starts
• “Pilot” (Season 1)
• “Devil’s Trap” (Season 1)
• “In My Time of Dying (Season 2)
• “Croatoan” (Season 2)
• “Born Under a Bad Sign” (Season 2)
• “Tall Tales” (Season 2)
• “What Is and What Should Never Be” (Season 2)
• “All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2” (Season 2)
• “Mystery Spot” (Season 3)
• “Jus in Bello” (Season 3)
• “No Rest for the Wicked” (Season 3)
• “Lazarus Rising” (Season 4)
• “In the Beginning” (Season 4)
• “On the Head of a Pin” (Season 4)
• “The Monster at the End of This Book” (Season 4)
• “Lucifer Rising” (Season 4)
OK, technically, you could get by without watching “Croatoan,” “Tall Tales” and “Mystery Spot.” But they’re among my very favorite episodes and definitely among the best standalone episodes the show has ever done. So if you’re not pressed for time, try them. Actually, if you are pressed for time, heck, skip the “Pilot” and “All Hell Breaks Loose” watch those three episodes instead.
Direct from Kripke, here are some thoughts for newbies and veterans alike on the nature of the “Supernatural” beast:
“When we started out, we were going to make a horror movie every week. It was about the monsters, and it was about Hook Man and Bloody Mary and the urban legends and and the boys honestly, in the beginning, Sam and Dean were an engine to get us in and out of different horror movies every week.
“[Now] for me, the story is about, ‘Can the strength of family overcome destiny and fate, and can family save the world?’
“If I had a worldview, and I don’t know if I do, but if I did, it’s one that’s intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole — it’s about human connections.
“What you’ll find as the mythology of [Season 5] unveils, it’s this massive, Byzantine mythology of angels and demons and what they want and their destinies for the world. But it’s basically about two red-blooded, human brothers giving them all the middle finger and saying, basically, “Screw you; it’s our planet. If you want to have a war, pick another one.”
“If you look at Season 1, the first half, it’s a little repetitive, but it really picks up and catches on right around about, I think, Episode 7 or 8, when they go home for the first time. That’s when we started realizing that we should play to the strengths of what’s in front of us, which is these two amazing actors who have this unbelievable chemistry. And sure enough, now that’s really, more than anything, that’s what the show’s about.
“What’s funny is, in Season 1, we would start [story breaking sessions with], “What are the episode ideas?” And we’d start with, “What’s the monster?” And now we do that last.
“We break with, “OK, what should we put Sam and Dean through?” And then we say, “Oh, we should have them be confronted with an author who’s their ‘creator,'” or “We should see what their lives were like in high school,” — we come up with all of these different random notions of [what they are going through]. …And then we say, “OK, what’s a monster that’ll let us do that?”
“We always had the demon plan [for the seasons as they progressed], but the angels came in, and it was one of those things where it’s like, if anything, we felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner — because how do you have demons without angels? And then we always had a problem with the show because we wanted all this scope. We wanted this “Lord of the Rings,” giant scope of battle but we could never have it because we had demons and we had our main characters, and we couldn’t afford these massive battles.
“But suddenly, when you bring in the other army, now you have these two massive armies of demons and angels — they can mesh and clash in a way that’s really satisfying, and [you can have the giant clashes] just off camera.
“We slap our forehead against our hands, and say, “Why didn’t we think of it sooner?” Like, look at “Star Wars” for a moment. You have this massive empire and you have this massive rebellion. And they were having these massive battles over countless planets. But the story is about one farm boy, a princess and a pirate.”
OK, the interview transcript is below. There are a few sentences scattered here and there that refer to story ideas for Season 5. It’s not Spoiler Party 2009, though. We mostly talk about the overall growth of and ideas behind the show. But I wanted to let spoilerphobes know that we do touch on Season 5 ideas.
We began by talking about the arrival of Lucifer, whom the Winchesters released — totally by accident! — at the end of Season 4.
MR: I know you don’t want to give away too much but is Lucifer’s goal that everyone in the world dies? Everyone in the world turns into a demon? A minion?
EK: No.
MR: What’s the deal there?
EK: His feeling is — and we base a lot on various pieces of lore and “Paradise Lost” and whatnot — his whole attitude is, he loved God more than anyone. The story of Lucifer is, he loved God more than anything, and then God created these sort of bizarre little hairless monkeys called humans, and he said to Lucifer, “Now this, this is my masterpiece. I want you to love them more than you love me.”
And Lucifer said, “They’re kind of squirrelly; they seem kind of violent, I don’t like them. No.” And that was his crime that got him sent into hell, and that’s what turned him into Satan. And so the idea is — he got sent to hell for [that]? It’s really a question of, did the punishment fit the crime?
So that was somewhere around the Garden of Eden, when there were about two people. And now he comes back up, and there’s six billion, and look what they’ve done to the planet. And so one of the ways we’re trying to make him a little more complicated is to say, he actually finds the [original state of the] planet beautiful. He sees it as really his father’s masterwork, and these hairless monkeys have just ruined the damn place.
And so I actually think he’s sort of more interested in a cleansing of humanity. We sometimes joke in the room that if Ed Begley, Jr. were a raging psychotic with unlimited power, he might be a little bit like Lucifer. In a way he’s kind of like an environmentalist, he hates what we’ve done to the planet. It was this beautiful natural garden, and we’ve turned it into this cesspool, and he wants everyone punished as a result.
MR: So that means — my way or the highway? Agree with me and my program and you’re good?
EK: I don’t think he’s down to convert anyone. He’s got his demons; he’s working his endgame plan.
MR: So he’s just feeling like, it’s time for the genocide of these monkeys.
EK: It’s time for a cleansing. It’s time to dip the entire planet in Purell.
MR: In terms of the stories that you’ve typically told on the show, how do you have the boiling seas and the plague of locusts alongside, “Oh, there’s a haunted school”?
EK: It’s challenging, quite frankly. The most honest answer is, we’re still sort of figuring out.
But we’re finding ways so far [where our approach] seems to be working is. Even when we have an episode that’s self-enclosed, we find a way to tie it in, even tangentially, to the Apocalypse. Because you’re right — it’s hard to deal with the end of the world, and then the next week your problem is that there’s a haunted house.
MR: Yeah, that always seemed like the primary challenge of Season 5 to me, balancing the Apocalypse with the story of the week.
EK: Yeah, but I’m not too, too worried because we’ve had huge seasons before, where the mythology is epic, and then we always … You know, the audience always seems to forgive us for taking a left turn into an episode as long as the episode is one, really entertaining, but also two, there are usually some lines of dialogue, some exchange with the boys, where they say, “Shouldn’t we be working on the Apocalypse?” They’re in the Impala, and then the other one says, “Trail’s dried up; there’s nothing we can do. The least we can do is save people.”
Jim Beaver’s character, Bobby, says it in the season premiere — I think he says it, it might have been written out, I don’t remember — but the idea is, yes, they’re trying to stop the apocalypse, but they’re also trying to save as many people as they can along the way.
And that gives us the freedom to do that. To give an example, [in Season 4] the prophet Chuck episode [Season 4’s “The Monster at the End of This Book”] was an episode that was a really fun standalone, but we tied it into the mythology at the end. And so that formula’s kind of been working for us.
MR: And I think I heard you say earlier today that there’s also an element of, “This is one of Lucifer’s minions, it’s a henchman running amok, and we’ve got to deal with him” — that can be thing on its own.
EK: Yeah. We have our own “Supernatural” versions of everything — we have our “Supernatural” version of [the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse], and that’s going to be an episode. We actually just figured out our “Supernatural” version of the Antichrist, and that’s going to be an episode.
MR: The nuns who taught me in religion class are going to be mortified that I don’t know this, but Lucifer is not the Antichrist?
EK: By totally nerdy, specific lore, Lucifer is not the Antichrist. Lucifer is to the Antichrist as God is to Jesus, if you believe in Jesus.
MR: OK, I get it.
EK: So we have our own version of that, and so again, we’re finding ways to do our own spin on things. And the good thing about the apocalypse is, you can have all these self-enclosed episodes, because when you read the Book of Revelation, it is an endless line of really scary monsters and events that can be episodes. So it’s been a really useful story generator.
MR: “And then there was a plague of flaming locusts.”
EK: Right, and then we do our version, because we can’t afford boiling, bloody oceans, and we can’t afford the size and scope of the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse, but again, we find our own spin on it.
What happens when war settles into a small town, or what happens if a kid was the Antichrist but he didn’t know it — what would happen in that town? It’s about finding our own twists on it, so it’s not so straightforward, so they can be quirky. For the record, the Antichrist episode’s hilarious.
MR: As it would be.
EK: As it naturally would be. So it’s about finding those angles and trying to twist it into something a little quirky.
MR: It sounds like you’re saying it’s a lighter season — it’s not all doom.
EK: It’s a fun apocalypse. It’s light, it’s rollicking, it’s fun. [laughs]
MR: It’s a laff riot.
EK: The laugh-a-minute apocalypse. But really, I give a lot of credit to the writers. They’ve really looked for the humor in it. Not only is it not grim; it feels different. It just feels like really fun and rollicking because either we’re finding quirky humor, or there’s a gallows humor from fighting a fight that you know you can’t win.
There’s a lot of heroic [moments], you know, very much like Indiana Jones kind of [moments] — “Ah, well, screw it!” And you dive into the fray anyway, and it makes things sort of really heroic and likable and fun. And all the quips are still intact. So it’ll still a good time.
MR: What’s the awareness of the average Joe or Jane of the Apocalypse in their world?Is it a case of, “It’s the Apocalypse! Run for your lives!”
EK: We’re trying to keep it as under wraps as possible.
MR: For the populace at large, they’re not really aware?
EK: Yeah, in the world of the show [average people don’t know]. [Our] rule of thumb, at least for the show, is that I like to keep a lid on things whenever possible and keep them under wraps whenever I can. So you don’t have characters panicking in the streets. One, we can’t afford that scope. And two, it’s a much more interesting, scary world if we can convince the audience that it’s happening down the street and they just don’t know about it.
MR: It’s like Lilith turning up in someone’s cul de sac [in Season 4].
EK: Yeah, exactly, and holding a family hostage.
MR: For them, it’s terrifying because it’s out of the blue.
EK: Yeah, that’s the idea. If it becomes aboveboard and public, then it’s harder to maintain that sense of reality. Luckily for us, unfortunately for the world, if you actually just stop and look around and kind of orient your mind towards looking for signs of the apocalypse, they’re everywhere [in our world right now].
MR: True.
EK: I mean, if you’re looking for things like drought, famine, you know, spread of disease and war, they’re wherever you want to look for them.
MR: I don’t know what you’re referring to. I work at a newspaper. They’re generally full of puppies and rainbows. [laughs]
EK: Right, right. It’s sort of horrifying. And we are, for better or for worse, taking advantage of that. In the season premiere, we talk about, well, there are hurricanes where there are not supposed to be hurricanes, and there’s swine flu, buildings explode when they’re not supposed to explode…
MR: There’s a global financial crisis.
EK: Right, and who’s to say [the Apocalypse] is not happening now? Which is a chilling question I don’t like to think too much about.
MR: Yes, let’s not.
EK: Let’s just not.
MR: So what’s the journey for the individual characters? Because I feel like, when it comes to Dean — in some ways his purpose is yet to be …
EK: Unveiled.
MR: Unveiled and fully engaged. And with Sam, it’s like, “Uh, you sort of started the apocalypse.”
EK: I know, how you come back from that?
MR: Can you talk a little bit about Sam and Dean? Between them, is it pretty rocky or do they just kind of move on and go back to hunting together? Do you have it mapped out?
EK: Yeah, we certainly have the main emotional sweep of the season mapped out. Sam’s part for the season is primarily one of redemption. He has a lot of wrongs to set right. For Dean, it’s a little bit about understanding what his role is, but having the strength of character to do the right thing.
I mean, Dean’s story has really always been — both boys’ stories have been — [about the same thing]. The core concern of the show is free will versus destiny. And when you’re destined to do something, can you rail against it? From Sam’s perspective, when he’s destined to do something and then he has fulfilled that destiny, which was to end the world, how can you come back and be redeemed?
And so they both have their stories. But I always say that it’s about them coming together, because the story is really not about one or the other; it’s about the bond between them that’s called brotherhood. It’s about this connection of the two of them. The two of them being one unit is for us really what the story is about.
And people online, they get furious — alternately furious and upset — or they throw their arms up because they think we’re focusing on one brother or the other, and some people are Sam fans, and some people are Dean fans. And in my mind, anyway, you know, they’re both on completely equal footing because the story is about the two of them being intertwined. For me, the story is about, “Can the strength of family overcome destiny and fate, and can family save the world?”
If I had a worldview, and I don’t know if I do, but if I did, it’s one that’s intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole, it’s about human connections.
What you’ll find as the mythology of the season unveils, it’s this massive, Byzantine mythology of angels and demons and what they want and their destinies for the world. But it’s basically about two red-blooded, human brothers giving them all the middle finger and saying, basically, “Screw you; it’s our planet. If you want to have a war, pick another one.”
MR: That’s the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to the show. The plots, the stories themselves are really satisfying, but they’re always grounded in that worldview, that emotional underpinning. You’re not just doing one thing or the other.
EK: Yeah.
MR: Were you saying to yourself in Season 1, “Yeah, we’re going to do that — that’s our show?” Did you know it would be that specific mixture from day one?
EK: No, no, not all. When we started out, we were going to make a horror movie every week. It was about the monsters, and it was about Hook Man and Bloody Mary and the urban legends and and the boys honestly, in the beginning, Sam and Dean were an engine to get us in and out of different horror movies every week. Because that’s when “The Ring” was burning up the box office, and so we were really setting out to tell bring the horror movie esthetic to television.
I would say right around Episode 4 or 5 [of Season 1, executive producer/director] Bob Singer and I were watching the episodes, and we just started saying, “God, those two guys and their chemistry is so much more interesting than the horror movies we’re showing.”
And then we started re-breaking story for that. And if you look at Season 1, the first half, almost it’s a little repetitive, but it really picks up and catches on right around about, I think, episode seven or eight, when they go home for the first time. That’s when we started realizing that we should play to the strengths of what’s in front of us, which is these two amazing actors who have this unbelievable chemistry. And sure enough, now that’s really, more than anything, that’s what the show’s about.
What’s funny is, in Season 1, we would start [story-breaking sessions with], “What are the episode ideas?” And we’d start with, “What’s the monster?” And now we do that last.
We break with, “OK, what should we put Sam and Dean through?” And then we say, “Oh, we should have them be confronted with an author who’s their ‘creator,'” or “We should see what their lives were like in high school,” — we come up with all of these different random notions of [what they are going through]. The siren episode came from, “We just want them to beat the crap out of each other, and all their angst to bubble to the surface and let them confront each other.” And then we say, “OK, what’s a monster that’ll let us do that?”
And sometimes we don’t even have the monster until way late in the break, once we get all the angst and the drama done first.
MR: Well, you know, with the addition of Castiel in Season 4 — do you feel the show went to a different level with that?
EK: I do.
MR: What was that process like? Did you know that Season 4 was going to click like it did? Did you have that feeling in advance?
EK: Season 4 has up to this point, and I hope Season 5 tops it — but Season 4 was up to this point the most satisfying season of the four. And I hope Season 5 will be as good, if not better.
MR: No pressure.
EK: No pressure to top it. [laughs] But it was really, really creatively satisfying, this coherence from start to finish. I have mixed feelings about Season 3. I think we did some great episodes, but overall I had some issues with it. We picked up some story lines, then we dropped them, and then the strike shortened the season. And I wasn’t as thrilled with it.
MR: I just re-watched Season 3. I was like, there just wasn’t that galvanizing …
EK: Story line that tied it all together.
MR: Right.
EK: There were wonderful individual episodes but as a coherent piece, it’s not … I mean, I have a lot of affection for, you know, all my children, but some of those things didn’t work as well as others. So in between Seasons 3 and 4, I think I was actually just puttering around my house, and all of a sudden the idea of angels just kind of came. Just as a notion of, “Well, if we’ve had the bad guys, let’s see what the good guys look like.”
I think it was a series of things that were really lucky. I think that [idea] really fired up the writers in a way that was actually beyond my expectations, because everyone was just so energized by “Here’s the keys to a whole new piece of real estate that we haven’t played with yet.”
MR: Right.
EK: And everyone was feeling a little shagged out on demons and well-trod territory. But to have a whole new continent opened up with stuff to explore — that got everyone really excited. And the ideas just started, the writers’ room became a really fun, energetic place to work.
None of that would have meant anything if we hadn’t lucked into Misha, who just came in to audition, and [you see on the show] everything he does in that part — the way he kind of views humans as curious [creatures], that otherworldly thing. He’s alien-like; you can really feel that he doesn’t have a lot of interaction with humanity. He just brought all that to the role, and he just took off like a shot.
You could tell from the minute we saw the dailies of the season opener last year, we just couldn’t believe how good he was and what presence he had and all the depth that he brought to it. And it was just so exciting to see. And then we said, all right, so we’ve got a cool story line, and then we knew angels were going to end up being [revealed as] bad, so we had this amazing ace in our sleeve to play. And then on top of that Misha was killing it. And so Season 4 felt like a season where everything came together in a really satisfying way.
And we hope to duplicate that with Season 5, he said, stressed out of his mind.
MR: You have to go a level higher with the new season, you know that, right?
EK: I know; it’s got to be better. I know, I know. Everyone is like, “Season 4 is the greatest season, and now you’ve got to top it.” But I need more crystal meth. [laughter]
MR: So you have said in the past that it was always your plan to go up the demon food chain, as it were, ending up with Lucifer. But the angels just came to you between Seasons 3 and 4? That was the new part?
EK: Yeah, pretty much. We always had the demon plan, but the angels came in, and it was one of those things where, if anything, we felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner — because how do you have demons without angels? And then we always had a problem with the show because we wanted all this scope. We wanted this “Lord of the Rings,” giant scope of battle but we could never have it because we had demons and we had our main characters, and we couldn’t afford these massive battles.
But suddenly, when you bring in the other army, now you have these two massive armies of demons and angels — they can mesh and clash in a way that’s really satisfying, and [you can have the giant clashes] just off camera.
We slap our forehead against our hands, and say, “Why didn’t we think of it sooner?” Like, look at “Star Wars” for a moment. You have this massive empire and you have this massive rebellion. And they were having these massive battles over countless planets. But the story is about one farm boy, a princess and a pirate.
But they have this amazing off-camera canvas. “Lord of the Rings,” same thing: There’s these armies and these battles, and they’re all happening off camera, and it’s about a couple little people and a wizard.
And so we finally stumbled onto the formula by saying it’s about two greasers and a muscle car, but the canvas that they’re on are demons and angels and battles and the apocalypse, and that’s when it finally coalesced as a coherent worldview, that the angels were the missing part that we were looking for all along.
To recap, here’s what I know about Season 5 of “Supernatural.” There are also more Season 5 info bits here. Spoilers ahoy.
• We meet Lucifer in Episode 1 of the season, “Sympathy for the Devil.” Here’s the network logline for the episode: “Picking up where the finale left off, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) watch as the Devil (guest star Mark Pellegrino, ‘Lost’) emerges from Hell. The brothers and Bobby (Jim Beaver) deal with the aftermath of Lucifer rising and the stunning news from Chuck the Prophet (guest star Rob Benedict) that Castiel (Misha Collins) was blown to bits by the archangels. Robert Singer directed the episode written by Eric Kripke.”
• Jo and Ellen Harvelle are back as a hunter duo in Episode 2.
• Sam’s fiance Jessica (Adrianne Palicki) is back in Episode 3.
• Episode 4 is “Supernatural’s” version of “28 Days Later,” which pays off the “Croatoan” story from Season 2.
• In episode 5, Paris Hilton will play a demon who takes the form of Paris Hilton.
• At some point, we’ll meet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — who get around in muscle cars.
• As mentioned above, there’s an episode that revolves around a kid who is the Antichrist but doesn’t know it.
By the way, before you comment, you should know that I agree with critic Alan Sepinwall’s rules for commenting, especially the first one: “Be nice. This is an opinion blog, and a place where people can and should argue passionately for their point of view. But there’s a difference between arguing with passion and arguing with hostility. If you can’t find a way to express your viewpoint without insulting other commenters, or getting strident and self-righteous — say, equating your opinion with fact, and deriding other people for not seeing the truth of your words — then either tone down your words until they’re more respectful to other people, or don’t comment.”
To recap: Nobody else is “wrong.” And please don’t repeat the same comment if other people have already made that observation many times. Thank you!
September 10, 2009
‘Supernatural’ returns: It’s the end of the world as they know it — and it’s funny!
Like
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Share |
The following feature is based on this extensive interview with “Supernatural” creator Eric Kripke. To see clips from the Season 5 premiere and my posts about previous seasons of “Supernatural,” go here, here and here. For an interview with Misha Collins (a.k.a. the angel Castiel), go here. “Supernatural” fans, come back to this site Friday for exclusive comments from Kripke and from one of the show’s cast members about the events of Thursday’s season premiere. UPDATE: The Kripke/Jim Beaver interview is here.
Finally, for newcomers to the show, the video clip is on this post should get you “up to speed” on where things stand as Season 5 begins. For longtime followers of “Supernatural,” this fan video is just sublime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZi6nIOunkc
The first half of “Supernatural’s” debut season gave few indications of what the show would become.
Back in 2005, as is the case now, there were monsters, ghouls and demons on the prowl. Two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles), would go from city to city in their 1967 Impala and hunt these otherworldly critters down, frequently quipping along the way.
But creator Eric Kripke is well aware that “Supernatural,” which returns for its fifth season at 8 p.m. Central Thursday on WGN-Ch. 9, has evolved far beyond the idea he pitched several years ago.
Season 5 depicts the brothers trying to stop the apocalypse, dealing with the arrival of Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) and other rather large events. Yet the focus of this solid, compelling and funny (yes, funny!) show remains admirably clear: “Supernatural” is less about monsters and more about familial bonds and how they somehow survive self-doubt and radical tests of loyalty.
When the show began, Sam and Dean were merely “an engine to get us in and out of different horror movies every week,” Kripke said in an interview at San Diego Comic-Con in July.
Then Kripke and fellow executive producer/director Robert Singer had an epiphany: Padalecki and Ackles’ subtle skills and palpable chemistry could anchor a much more emotionally compelling story about two young men who lost their parents and sometimes come close to losing faith in themselves and each other.
“To me, the story is about, ‘Can the strength of family overcome destiny and fate, and can family save the world?’.” Kripke said. “[My worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection; that’s the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs — for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole — it’s about human connections.”
The show’s fourth season upped the stakes in several ways: When he thought his brother was dead, Sam became addicted to demon blood and experimented with dangerous powers. Dean, who’d been sent to hell to fulfill a contract, was pulled out by an angel, but only after going through terrifying experiences, some of which left him guilt-ridden. And Castiel, the angel who pulled Dean out of Hell and tried to prepare Dean for his special role in God’s plan, was played so well by Misha Collins that the actor is now a series regular on “Supernatural.”
Viewers and the press responded positively to Season 4, “Supernatural’s” ratings increased and CW executives are already talking about a potential sixth season. Where that would go is anyone’s guess, given that Kripke has said many times that he doesn’t want to drag out the Apocalypse story over more than one season (and that’s one of the great pleasures of the show — its mythology is interesting and well-crafted but not overwhelming).
Kripke said the show had always planned to bring in ever more powerful demons, including Lucifer, but he hadn’t thought about adding angels until Season 3 was over.
“We [always] wanted this ‘Lord of the Rings’ scope, but we could never have it because we couldn’t afford these massive battles,” Kripke said. “But … now you can have these two massive armies of demons and angels—they can mesh and clash in a way that’s really satisfying, and [you can have the giant clashes] just off-camera.
“We slap our forehead against our hands, and say, ‘Why didn’t we think of it sooner?’” he said. “Look at ‘Star Wars’ for a moment. You have this massive empire, and you have this massive rebellion. But the story is about one farm boy, a princess and a pirate.”
Given that “Supernatural” has always displayed a subversive sense of humor, viewers shouldn’t expect the apocalypse to be all doom and gloom, Kripke said.
“It just feels really fun and rollicking because either we’re finding quirky humor, or there’s a gallows humor from fighting a fight that you know you can’t win,” said Kripke. “There’s a lot of heroic [moments], you know, very much like Indiana Jones kind of [moments] — “Ah, well, screw it!” And you dive into the fray anyway.”
And if you’re expecting an angry Lucifer sporting horns and a forked tail, well, don’t. “Supernatural’s” version of Lucifer, who appears in the first and third episodes of the season, is not what you may be expecting.
Lucifer was sent to Hell around the time of the Garden of Eden, and “now he comes back up, and there’s six billion [people], and look what they’ve done to the planet,” Kripke said. “One of the ways we’re trying to make him a little more complicated is to say, he actually finds the [original state of the] planet beautiful. He sees it as really his father’s masterwork, and these hairless monkeys have just ruined the place….It was this beautiful natural garden, and we’ve turned it into this cesspool, and he wants everyone punished as a result.”
Thank you, Alice, for giving this superb interview a new home! (Especially since I linked to it in a couple of articles …*grin*)