Blurring the lines between heaven, hell and purgatory

MANILA, Philippines - The thrilling and terrifying journey of the Winchester Brothers continues with the seventh season of Supernatural currently airing on beTV (formerly AXN Beyond) every Friday night at 10:55.

This season finds Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) reeling from the loss of their friend, fallen angel Castiel who made a deal with the king of hell to open a door to purgatory and harness the power of monster souls by absorbing them. Castiel’s power is now god-like, and Sam and Dean have no idea how to stop him. Sam’s violent memories of hell threaten to overtake him, threatening not just his life, but his brother’s as well. Meanwhile, Dean struggles under the weight of a secret that threatens to tear them apart.

And even as the brothers traverse the backroads of America, hunting things that go bump in the night, something is coming for them. They are about to face an enemy more canny and adaptable than any they’ve ever fought. As the landscape around them becomes increasingly treacherous, the tools they’ve come to rely upon will be stripped away. Our heroes will find themselves utterly outmatched and outgunned, with no one to rely on but each other.

In this exclusive interview, Jensen, Jared and the show’s executive producer Ben Edlund share what’s in store for the brothers in this latest season of Supernatural.

With Castiel now a god, how is that going to push season seven and what are the themes of season seven?

Jensen: I will say that there is a new foe that is introduced this season. They are clever, they know how to get to the brothers and there is no law that the brothers can rely on to battle these things. They don’t have any of their old devices to rely on and to utilize against this new evil and I think that is going to be their biggest hurdle.

Is Castiel’s loss a huge loss for the brothers?

Jensen: They can’t rely on his knowledge or his power anymore, so you’ve got Sam and Dean and Bobby trying to put their heads together to try to figure out how the hell they are going to deal with this stuff, so I think that’s going to be a big, big issue for them. Also, it’s taken away their only ally they really had in that realm.

Are Sam and Dean going fight over how best to deal with Castiel?

Jensen: I think they are on the same team, which is refreshing for me as an actor because last season was a nightmare not having that partner-in-crime. This season, they are all headed down the road together. Where that’s going, I’m not quite sure, and how they are going to get there is of course going to be difficult. 

Is it still fun for you to be playing the brothers who are at odds?

Jensen: I think the brother bickering has always been part of the show that he and I have done pretty easily. Last year when soul-less Sam was around and he wasn’t playing Sam that was a real challenge for me as an actor because it wasn’t Sam. A lot of playing Dean is the relationship that he has with Sam, so I wasn’t able to play Dean with Sam as I did the last five seasons, I was a little lost. But no, we don’t have trouble bickering.

You played three different Sams in the finale of season six. Did you have a favorite one?

Jared: Yes, my favorite Sam is always soul-less Sam. I love the cold, calculating side of Sam that we don’t see very often, and I don’t know if I like that just because Sam is usually the soulful, heartfelt, thoughtful guy but it was fun to be cold and ruthless a little bit. I guess it was also knowing that I was going to go back, but I have always had fun playing the bad guy version of Sam — like demon-blood Sam — I don’t get the chance to do it a lot. Obviously, Sam and Dean are the heroes of the show, so they’re not going to be bad very often.

With the arc of last season very noir, can you tell us about this new season?

Jared: I can tell you what I know. Supernatural has a habit of having what we call our big bad. First it was the yellow-eyed demon, then it was Lilith, then Ruby and then it was Crowley. So each and every year we have some ultimate bad guy — or it can be a bad girl — it’s usually a bad thing. We obviously have to deal with that, and with Castiel and Crowley indisposed, we’re going to encounter another big bad creature, or set of creatures, I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do. But we obviously have a big bad.

Last year was very “monster of the week.” So is that going to continue?

Jared: It is. We are doing similar monsters of the week again. We obviously had that big 100-episode arc of the first five seasons. What have been our bread and butter is the monster of the week, that’s what we set out to do. So we certainly will go back to monster of the week but obviously keep some through-lines.

The world has really narrowed down for Sam and Dean and now Castiel is off crazy. Is there any chance that they’ll pick up a bit more help along the way?

Ben: Yes, I think so. We need to repopulate so that we can kill more people. We’ve talked about various possible characters. We always want to have a ground of people for them to relate to. Yeah, new characters will come. They’re going to have a tough year, Sam and Dean, like they always do. We’re really looking at, how have they been operating all these years, what have their tools been, what have their methods been? How can we take those things and make them difficult for them to use and they have to learn new tricks? They have to evolve, too. This season is about challenging them as hunters. Previous seasons have often been about challenging them as brothers or as humans or as men. They’re going to have some professional difficulties because the world is going to try and eat them again. Well, that happens every season.

Will we possibly see heaven again?

Ben: Yes, in fact there are visits to heaven already planned for us to tell various parts of the story. And I imagine further into the season we’ll probably play more with it. Because basically now we have these different provinces to play with: We have heaven, we have hell and purgatory, we have the veil, which is where ghosts live, we have earth itself. Technically, we have the fairy dimension, I’m not sure how that wires in fully but I’m working on it. Alternate timelines, we got a lot of territory to play with. All of those things we’re going to use all the way through. We’re going to milk it.

Catch the seventh season of Supernatural on SkyCable Ch. 35, Dream Satellite Ch. 36 and Cignal Digital TV Ch. 37.