Spoilers ahead for the series finale of Walker on The CW, called "See You Sometime."
Jared Padalecki's long run of CW projects has come to an end with the series finale of Walker in the 2024 TV schedule, after it was confirmed back in May that the end of the fourth season would be the permanent end of the show. The finale had already been filmed by the time the cancellation was confirmed, and "See You Sometime" ended on a cliffhanger hook for Season 5 that involved a former icon of the network and a new storyline for Cordell and Co. Alas, that storyline will never happen now, but Padalecki and showrunner Anna Fricke weighed in on what the plan was for the new character... played by none other than Dawson's Creek cast alum James Van Der Beek!
Okay, technically James Van Der Beek was never a CW star, since his Dawson's Creek days were before The WB rebranded itself as The CW, but it more or less remained the same network and this was a show that all but launched the primetime teen soap genre, starring the likes of Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams, and Joshua Jackson alongside Van Der Beek. The show was huge over the course of its six seasons from 1998 - 2003. And while Dawson's Creek – on which Van Der Beek played the titular Dawson – ended before Padalecki joined forces with Jensen Ackles for Supernatural, they did have some mutual WB days when the future Walker star was on Gilmore Girls.
And it turns out that the connection between the actors is what brought James Van Der Beek to Walker. Speaking with TVLine, Padalecki shared that the former Dawson's Creek leading man is "a personal friend," and elaborated:
He lives here in Austin, and he and his family are friends of me and my family, and so, it was kind of a phone call. I was like, ‘Hey, dude, you want to come do this?'... He came over, and just drove from his house and brought one of his daughters, and did it. We were really excited to explore that storyline.
Van Der Beek's scene in the finale was seemed innocuous on the surface, as his character was revealed as the Walkers' new neighbor who left a gift on their doorstep. That might just have seemed nice and neighborly, but he was dressed in all white and dropping off soap, and it just felt... off. Plus, the way the episode concealed his face until almost the last moment made it clear that this was a lot more than just a nice guy next door played by the guy from Dawson's Creek. Padalecki went on:
The season was not written, but needless to say, that [James Van Der Beek] cliffhanger was going to pay off as an enormous part, probably the main driving force, of Season 5. Cordell taking a backseat with his Ranger duties and maybe being purposefully naïve to what’s going on next door… There were so many ways we could go, and it was going to be a damn good season of television, but it’s going to have to live in our imaginations.
Our imaginations can run wild in the wake of the finale, but just because Walker was cancelled doesn't mean fans will never know more details about the plan for James Van Der Beek's character. Showrunnner Anna Fricke, who started in the entertainment industry on Dawson's Creek, shared:
That whole process was so exciting. We always wanted to leave some threads for Season 5. We were going to do the cult next door. So he was supposed to be a cult leader. Ever since James Van Der Beek moved to Austin, we’ve been like, 'How do we get him into the show? What can we do?' and this just seemed like the perfect thing, and we finally got him for this part.
Viewers who know James Van Der Beek as Dawson Leery (and/or his highly memed cry face) might find it far-fetched to imagine him as a cult leader, but his work as one of Criminal Minds' most chilling villains proves that he can be versatile. That's not to say that he'd be a cult leader worthy of Criminal Minds on Walker, though, as the showrunner explained:
I talked to James, and it was so last-minute. He’s a saint. I think it was truly like the day before we were shooting. It was really, really insanely last-minute, so thank God he lives there. He loved the idea of the cult leader, and I think, actually, half those clothes are his own clothes. [Laughs] He was super into it and super into the dynamic he would bring, and he was really into the idea of playing a fun character, an interesting character, a bad character. He was going to be kind of quirky bad, but amusing. He was going to be a really whimsical, amusing character. We were not going to do blood cult, bad, bad, bad cult. We were going to do like kooky cult.
As grim as Walker could get from time to time over its fourth season – including Cordell's recent near-death experience – the plan was not to go super dark with his new neighbor as a cult leader. I like to imagine their earliest interactions being about soap, since that's what Van Der Beek's character dropped off.
Sadly, imagining is the best that anybody can do after getting the bonus details from Anna Fricke. If you want to revisit the earlier seasons of Walker and/or short-lived spinoff Walker: Independence, you can find both shows streaming with a Max subscription. It remains to be seen when the fourth and final Walker season will be available on the streamer.
