The long and winding road of Supernatural came to an end back in November 2020 after 15 seasons, and the series finale seemed like it pretty definitively ended the stories of Sam and Dean Winchester. The brothers were both dead and in the afterlife by the end of the finale, along with a whole lot of other characters, although most did not appear on screen. Now, however, Jensen Ackles is already bringing Supernatural back to The CW less than a year after the show ended, and in a surprising way.
Jensen Ackles, who of course played Dean Winchester for 15 seasons on The CW, is developing a Supernatural prequel centered on John and Mary Winchester, fittingly called The Winchesters. The project is in development at The CW and has a script commitment, according to Deadline, with Ackles and wife Danneel Ackles serving as executive producers with their production company, Chaos Machine Productions. They're joined by a fellow Supernatural alum: former co-executive producer Robbie Thompson, who is on board the prospective prequel as a writer and executive producer.
The WInchesters would tell the "epic, untold love story" of how John Winchester met Mary and how they "put it all on the line" to save their love... and the entire world. While Supernatural has technically already shown a lot of the milestones of John and Mary's relationship (and lives), the show also wrote and rewrote its own canon many times over the years, so there's no saying what kinds of twists the potential prequel could put on their story.
In particularly exciting news for Supernatural fans, Jensen Ackles would reprise his role as Dean for the new show, but not with any of the time travel shenanigans that saw Dean meeting younger versions of his parents during the original series' run. Much like Jim Parsons with Young Sheldon over on CBS, Ackles would serve as narrator for the Supernatural prequel about Sam and Dean's parents, with the series told from his perspective. Ackles explained the decision to pursue The Winchesters, saying:
After Supernatural wrapped its 15th season, we knew it wasn’t over. Because like we say in the show, ‘nothing ever really ends, does it?’ When Danneel and I formed Chaos Machine Productions, we knew the first story we wanted to tell was the story of John and Mary Winchester, or rather the Supernatural origin story. I always felt like my character, Dean, would have wanted to know more about his parents’ relationship and how it came to be. So I love the thought of having him take us on this journey.
If The Winchesters scores a series order from The CW, it will be the first of the potential Supernatural spinoffs to get farther than the backdoor pilot stage while Supernatural was still running. The Bloodlines spinoff that would have been somewhat tangentially connected to the Winchesters never got off the ground, but Wayward Sisters seemed to have a good shot at a series order with a cast of familiar faces before it too was axed. A big question is who The CW would cast as John and Mary Winchester.
The characters were played by multiple actors over the years of Supernatural, most notably by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith as the older versions of John and Mary Winchester. Matt Cohen and Amy Gumenick played the younger versions of John and Mary, but that's not to say that they'll be recruited to reprise those roles for The Winchesters, if it receives a series order, which seems likely with Jensen Ackles on board.
And hey, if The Winchesters plays by the same rules as Supernatural – or the same lack of rules, really – who's to say that Jensen Ackles couldn't turn up in the flesh, perhaps with Jared Padalecki taking a break from Walker to reprise his role as Sam? Still, The Winchesters is still in the development stage, and there is no guarantee that the third time will be the charm for Supernatural spinoffs and it will score a series order.
For now, you can always find all 15 seasons of Supernatural streaming on Netflix, and look forward to Jensen Ackles playing a very different character than Dean Winchester when Amazon's The Boys returns for Season 3.
