The CW can never stray too far from the world of Supernatural. A new prequel series called The Winchesters is coming to the network this fall, and it will tell the story of how John Winchester (Drake Rodger) met a young monster hunter named Mary Campbell (Meg Donnelly), and then they fell in love, got married, and had two sons named Sam and Dean. Obviously, there’s a whole lot more to the story than that, and it will all be narrated by Dean himself, Jensen Ackles. He and his wife Danneel will also be producing the show together, along with Supernatural alum Robbie Thompson.
While they were not present for most episodes of Supernatural, John and Mary Winchester played a huge role in Sam and Dean’s lives. The show began with the death of Mary (Samantha Smith) when Sam was a baby and the disappearance of John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) after more than 20 years of trying to hunt down the monster that killed her. It was explained throughout the series that John believed his father had abandoned him and left high school to join the Marine Corps. He served in Vietnam, then was working as a mechanic when he met Mary.
What John did not know is that his father, Henry, had actually been a member of a secret order called the Men of Letters, and had died during his final initiation into the order. Mary, on the other hand, grew up with two hunter parents, and was raised to be a hunter. Both John and Mary died and were resurrected during the original series, allowing Morgan and Smith the chance to build the characters as adults. Now, we’ll get to know their elaborate histories as young adults, and meet the other hunters in their orbit.
Here’s everything we know about the new series!
Premise
The Winchesters will tell the epic story of how Mary and John met and put everything on the line to save not just their love, but also the world. It begins in 1972 and follows 19-year-old Mary, who has been fighting the forces of darkness since she was a child. After losing someone close to her, the hardened hunter considers quitting the family business, until her father’s disappearance and the arrival of newcomer John forces her to lead a new team. John has recently returned from Vietnam and finds a new mission back home, where traces of his father’s past lead him to a secret organization and a whole new war as a hunter.
Release Date
No specific date has been announced just yet, but The CW usually premieres its fall shows in October. The Winchesters will air Tuesday nights at 8 p.m.
Cast
Rodger and Donnelly will lead the new series as John and Mary, but they won’t be alone. Nida Khurshid plays fellow hunter Latika Desai, while Jojo Fleits plays Carlos Cervantez. Bianca Kajlich will play Millie Winchester, John’s mother, and Sam and Dean’s grandmother. Demetria McKinney and Michael Tacconi also star.
Trailer
How Does Supernatural’s Mythology Fit In?
In an interview with Variety, Ackles said he has been carefully thinking about how to make the show flow without disrupting the mythology established on Supernatural. “We were sitting around when COVID hit going, ‘You know what would be cool? If we went back in time and we actually saw the story of mom and dad and how they met — but do it in a way that skews the narrative so that we hit those waypoints that we established on Supernatural, but get you from A to B, B to C, C to D in a way that is really unexpected,'” he told the site. “And then we found a way to continue that story in a way that might be surprising, but always keeping in our back pocket getting us back to the mythology that is established, which is not an easy task. It’s not an easy map to draw, but we’re doing our best.”
Is There Still Drama?
While there was a momentary schism in the Winchester family when this show was announced, apparently all is well. When Ackles first tweeted about the show, his onscreen brother Jared Padalecki tweeted about how hurt he was to learn about the project over Twitter. Later, in a podcast interview with Michael Rosenbaum, Ackles explained that he is “superstitious” when it comes to projects. He didn’t want to “jinx” the prequel, so he didn’t even want to tell Padalecki about it until it was a done deal, and it was announced before there was even an outline. The two long-time co-stars worked it out, however, and they’re “great.” They’re also reuniting on the CW, since Padalecki stars in an executive produced Walker and its spin-off Walker: Independence.
