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captain-sodapop · 5 months ago

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The Winchesters: A Post-Mortem

Endings are hard.

I’ve been dicking around, and as I wrapped up another Supernatural rewatch, I finally decided to follow through on something I’ve been threatening to do for a while: watch The Winchesters. Since the show is dead, done, and dusted, I feel okay about it because now it feels like it’s just some obscure piece of lost media and I’m not actually, you know, supporting it.

I think we have a hard time letting stories end, especially when they have been with us for so long. We live in an age of reboots and endless spinoffs. The Winchesters is an interesting case because when the flagship show ended, viewers had all their own feelings about it, but it was over and they knew it was over. Dead, done, and dusted.

Not so much.

As you know, on June 24th, 2021, about seven months after the end of Supernatural, Jensen Ackles announced his spinoff The Winchesters, produced by his and his wife’s new production company, Chaos Machine. Robbie Thompson would be heading the project, and it would be telling the “epic love story” of Sam and Dean Winchester’s parents. We’ve already established that there’s no story here, and no matter how you twist it you will never convince me there is – at least, not in the way they wanted to tell it. Diehard fans and conspiracy theorist Hellers seemed to end up being its primary audience, but considering its low viewership numbers, I don’t think it ended up attracting many people outside of the established fandom, and was thus canceled.

This was not a story people cared about.

This fact did not seem to matter to the good people at Chaos Machine and The CW.

Luckily for me, there are only thirteen episodes, and I have nothing better to do, so I am here to present my autopsy of The Winchesters.

The pilot moves so fast.

The Winchesters begins with Samuel Campbell, Mary’s father and Sam and Dean’s grandfather, who we know from the original show. In the prequel, he’s played by Tom Welling, not Mitch Pileggi, but he’s a mere shadow when we first see him, so we can’t tell yet how poor the casting is. All that matters is that we know he’s gone missing, and Mary wants to find him.

Immediately, the cold open of the pilot pales in comparison to the flagship program’s pilot. It really does feel like a cold open to any run-of-the-mill episode of Supernatural. It doesn’t create that same intrigue as the Supernatural pilot does.

But that brings us to one of the show’s central problems, and it’s something that shows up almost immediately: it is a poor attempt at rehashing the original, filled with Easter eggs that the casual viewer wouldn’t have gotten or cared about.

Right after that, we get the copycat title card and then a sort of awkward transition to John’s homecoming. He’s having PTSD flashbacks to his time in Vietnam, his tour having just finished, and goes home to see his mother (whose name I don’t even think is mentioned in the pilot, not until the second episode, so I think anyone wasn’t isn’t familiar with the original show might be a little confused.)

But this is where we hear him: Dean Winchester.

“March 23, 1972. The day Dad came home from the war, and the day he met Mom. Now I know this story might sound familiar, but I'm gonna put the pieces together in a way that just might surprise you. And in order to do that, I have to start all the way at the beginning.”

Um. Okay.

I’m going to tell you what this is, and it’s really very simple: it’s a justification.

Genuinely, I think these voiceovers are one of the worst things about the show. Now, Dean isn’t exactly a poet, and even Sam teased him for some of his corny lines, but these bookends are…beyond poorly written. Just strings of cliches put together, and the first one is the worst one because what it is attempting to do is justify this show’s existence within its very text.

As anyone who is familiar with the situation knows, when the prequel was announced, there was very public backlash – including from Jared Padalecki, who not only played protagonist Sam Winchester in the original show, but was not looped into any of this…at all. He found out at the same time the rest of us did, and it was pretty clear from the reaction that his was the majority opinion.

The thing about this little intro from the pilot is that it’s not really Dean talking here – it’s Jensen. It’s Danneel Ackles and Robbie Thompson trying to justify the fact that this show even exists. That exact sentiment showed up in several press releases and interviews for the show. Whoever was being spoken to, they’d be like “Oh, we’re gonna surprise you! It’s not what you think!”

The thing is, the prequel is:

Not surprising

Doesn’t exactly start at the beginning. That’s misleading.

(“I’m gonna put the pieces together in a way that just might surprise you.” Jesus Christ, shut up.)

The pilot does do something I appreciated, though, which was to acknowledge that John enlisted underage by forging his father’s signature. This could have been interesting, but they drop it pretty fast.

I know pilots sort of need to hit the ground running to prove their case, but if we’re going to use the original show’s pilot as a point of comparison, it’s incredibly weak. Not only were there rumored production issues and they apparently had to do reshoots, forcing them behind schedule for the rest of their run and putting immense pressure on the cast and crew, but it’s simply lacking. In the original pilot, we are given enough glimpses of the Winchester backstory to make the rest of the pilot interesting. Sam and Dean are brothers and therefore have history, a dynamic – though strained at the time – and an undeniable chemistry that intrigues us enough to keep us watching. With the Woman in White, we get an idea of what it is the family does and what Sam has run away from, while giving the episode a plot that isn’t yet mired in the show’s mythology.

The Winchesters doesn’t have that. What we have is John and Mary, and while a lot of people were rightfully confused as to why they – of all the characters on the original show – would be the ones to get a spinoff, the fact is that they did. Truthfully, while they would not have been my first choice, if treated properly, I believe John and Mary’s lives before the show could have potential.

What we know about John and Mary from the original show is that they were brought together by a Cupid from Heaven in order to ensure the birth of Sam and Dean, so that Michael and Lucifer would have vessels for the Apocalypse. In fact, the Cupid states that John and Mary couldn’t stand each other beforehand, but I guess when they bumped into each other outside of Slaughterhouse Five (which does happen in the spinoff’s pilot), I guess we’re to assume that’s when Cupid’s arrow struck and they fell in love.

Basically, their love is…not natural. It would not have been something they chose for themselves without divine intervention. The prequel doesn’t hint at this at all. Instead, the prequel has John and Mary immediately thrust together and John introduced to the world of the supernatural and the Men of Letters and on his first case all in those 42 minutes.

These are not John and Mary. Not the ones that we could be made to truly care about.

The John and Mary we know are much more complex. They are interesting, and flawed. We know from season 12 that Mary was sometimes sneaking out on hunts, even after Dean was born. We know that John and Mary would sometimes separate for a few days at a time, maybe even longer, probably because what they had for each other was not true love, but something divined by Chuck/God and the angels in order to carry out their plans. They were pawns, especially when it came to them as a couple. A story where Mary is struggling to keep her former life a secret while John is dealing with his post-service life, all while trying to be a couple and having these moments of realizing they don’t really know or love each other could have been a good premise. Instead, what they present is instead just sort of…confusing.

After the pilot, there are a series of Monster of the Week episodes. This is all supposed to be John’s intro to hunting and the true coming together of the Scooby Gang. This version of John and Mary are thrown together with Latika (she’s the pacifist who does all their research), Carlos (he’s the stereotypically slutty, sassy bisexual), and Ada (the wannabe witch who’s older than them and I guess sort of a mentor? Maybe?), and along with John’s mom, Millie, we’re told that they’re this big, happy found family.

Lots of telling and not showing here. In all honesty, John and Mary don’t have great chemistry, and that is not intentional. (I’m actually not gonna blame this one on the acting, at least not wholly, but I’ll get more into that later.) John is saying that he can’t live without Mary within something, like, three episodes. Honestly, he’s got better chemistry with Latika in the pilot than he does Mary. Actually, I’d say he has better chemistry with pretty much all the other main characters – Latika, Carlos, and Millie – than he does Mary, and that is interesting. Ya know why? It’s because it makes John feel like the protagonist. And John is the closest thing to a Sam-like character we get in this show.

We learn early on that the Big Bad is something called the Akrida, which are these weird, poorly CGI’d spider-looking things (all of the budget on this show went to music and reshoots, I swear), and they are out to destroy the universe – and not just this universe; all the universes are at stake, so it feels like the show is trying to play off what the original program was doing in its last few seasons. (Which, weren’t all but Earth One destroyed anyway? Or something like that?)

This is a big thing. It feels…too big. The first season of the original show did a good job of building to the reveal of Yellow Eyes, and they let that story breathe with the Special Children in the second season. We saw that while Sam and Dean were experienced, they were still novices in a sense, in over their heads, and did a lot of learning and had to figure out how to work together again. We don’t get that feeling here. They’re too good too fast.

xXx

In the tenth episode, John and Mary go up against a Golem. The Golem is under the control of a former Man of Letters who performed experiments on humans, and under the guise of helping them defeat the Akrida, he wants to use John and Mary to bring back what the Akrida took from him: his wife, who was killed by them in the late fifties.

When John and Mary dispose of the bodies at the end of the episode, John thinks what the Man of Letters was doing was out of love, trying to bring her back, but Mary says that he was only doing it for himself – that he was being selfish. And then she asks John if she thinks they’ll ever turn out like that.

Immediately, this seems to be an assertion that what Mary did in the original show – making the deal with Azazel after he killed her parents and John to bring John back – was this awful, selfish thing. That saving the only person she had left, the only person she could save (because she wanted Azazel to bring back her parents, too), was inherently wrong. This seems to ignore the fact that Mary had no idea what the repercussions of the deal would be. All she knew was that the demon was going to “pay her a visit”, whatever that was supposed to mean (probably assuming he would come to collect her soul as usual), and all she wanted was to save just one person, and that was the man she believed she loved.

I know we’ve established that John and Mary’s love was contrived, but to Mary, she believed she did love him, and it is ridiculous to think that her saving him was something that makes her inherently bad, or selfish, or unloving, as the prequel seems to imply. She could not have known that Azazel would do what he did to her, to Sam, and to their family. She didn’t even know there would be a Sam and Dean! She was nineteen years old!

And yet, the prequel takes this opportunity to vilify her. The fandom already did enough of that. When Mary made her return in season 12, her character endured endless misogynistic takes. When even Dean said it was ridiculous of him to expect her to tuck him in and make his lunch, the fandom still didn’t want to accept it.

Mary is a complex character. She was dealt as shitty a hand as any other character, but still had to absorb a lot of blame. Oh, god forbid she struggle to adjust to the 21st century, and having adult children, and not being dead anymore, and learning what the consequences of her actions were. She clearly felt immense guilt for the hurt that was brought on her family, which was something she would have never intentionally done. She wanted her and her family to be safe and did the best she could with the information and resources she had. God forbid a woman be complex or have flaws or be anything less than the perfect mommy to her adult sons. (Who – again – were not as upset about that as the fucking fandom was.)

And now the prequel is piling onto her, too. Our Mary is better!! Shut the fuck up.

xXx

The prevailing sentiment I had when watching this show was that none of it mattered. The plot, the characters, the monsters…none of it mattered. Not as a story, and not as it related to the original show. It doesn’t even really succeed at doing what it really set out to do, but we’ll get to that later.

Like I mentioned, the Akrida feel like a really big Big Bad for the first season of a show. Ultimately, what the Akrida are, are a failsafe for Chuck. Basically, they were his backup plan if he were to ever cease to be and they would carry out his plan to finish destroying all the universes he had created. I guess those of us who watched the original show are supposed to gather that he created these Akrida sometime around season 15, when he started getting rid of all those other universes. And, since the Winchesters and Jack defeated Chuck at the end of season 15 and Jack took over as God, these creatures are supposed to come in and finish what Chuck couldn’t.

Alright. A little convoluted, but I can follow it. It’s how the spinoff attempts to connect itself back to the main show’s plot.

But, wait a second – I thought this was the epic love story of John and Mary!

Let me just say this: this is not a love story. The love story in the show is pretty weak. Like I mentioned earlier, the show moves so fast, which means John and Mary’s relationship moves incredibly fast, and the show makes no indication that this is because of any Cupid effects (but maybe they knew the clock was ticking and they didn’t have a good chance at renewal.) We get no sense of how much time has passed here. I’m being told I should care about this relationship, but I don’t because of how little effort the writing puts into not only developing this relationship, but the characters themselves. So it’s hard for me to say that the love story matters in any way.

Then there’s John and Mary’s searches for their fathers. Those of us who have seen the original show know that Henry Winchester died in the future killing Abadon. We also know that Samuel Campbell first died when he was killed by Azazel in 1973, and then in season six after being resurrected by Crowley to help him search for alphas. After the show opens with Samuel going missing and Mary starting the search for him (which just doesn’t pack the same punch as the search for John), Samuel’s presence in the show after they find him is negligible. For one thing, he’s not a great portrayal of Samuel, and doesn’t even look like him – not a bit. That part isn’t as important, of course, but it does still take you out of it a bit. This Samuel is still sort of a jerk, but it just feels like he’s sort of…there. So when they find him, it doesn’t feel like a big deal.

John’s search for Henry is carried out a little better. The reason for John deciding to go home to Lawrence after returning from Vietnam is because a Mystery Man (who we all know is Dean) gave him a letter that Henry had left for John before his passing. It leads John to finding an old Men of Letters clubhouse in Lawrence, which he and his new friends use as a base throughout the show and is a resource for them in learning about and fighting the Akrida. When John finally does see Henry as a ghost (the result of a séance similar to the one Sam and Cas perform to contact Bobby in season 10), Henry is once again portrayed by Gil McKinney, like he was in the original show. That does help. Henry is mostly there to give them information to help them with the Akrida, but it does give John and Millie a sense of closure, unlike in the original show, where John spent his whole life not knowing what happened to Henry and hating his guts.

This all happens in the seventh episode – the show’s midseason finale: both John and Mary get answers on their fathers. It’s supposed to be the episode where all these things start to come together. Mary finds Samuel, John and Millie find Henry (sort of), we get some answers on the Akrida, and John and Mary kiss. Woohoo.

After that, there are another few Monster of the Week episodes with Big Bad plot running alongside it, just like in the original show. It follows a similar structure. The episode with Richard Speight, Jr. as Loki (not sure if it’s supposed to be the real Loki or Gabriel as Loki, but probably the latter?) is maybe the worst one. Loki/Gabriel just comes off as an annoying caricature, the plot and his scheme are just sort of confusing, and there’s just…way too much singing. Part of Carlos’s story is that he wanted to be a musician, and he and his former bandmate do some singing, and the songs don’t even sound as if they fit the time period, so. That’s awesome.

Carlos is also subjected to more humiliation when in an episode with vampires – and I’m sure those in the know already know where this is going! – he has Latika douse his hair in holy water and he whips it around to splash it on the vampires. Like…since when are vampires affected by holy water? Not only is the physics of it stupid (it would be so inefficient to have to be constantly whipping your head around, just fucking squirt them with a water bottle or the water gun Carlos used in the pilot), it’s just not even right. It’s incorrect within the show’s own mythology.

The penultimate episode is a creepy clown episode. I will say, the clowns are sort of creepy, but maybe that’s just because I agree with Sam about clowns just being inherently creepy. It’s an okay case, I guess. This is also the episode with Rowena. Ada is trying to find some sort of magical way to deal with the Akrida, and she stumbles into a witch club where Rowena finds her. Ruth McConnell does what she does, and it’s hard to complain about Rowena because she always plays her well. She does give Ada the magic to use against the Akrida in return for a bonzai tree that has a demon trapped in it (I know, I know) because the bonzai demon has information on her son. (Who we know is Crowley, but he doesn’t get a namedrop here, and there’s no further explanation there. I guess it’s possible Rowena could have known in the seventies that Crowley/Fergus was a demon or otherwise had something to do with demons and hell, but when she sees him in season 10 for the first time, she doesn’t recognize him. I do think that can be written off as him just being in a new vessel, though, so I’ll give this one a pass.) Of all the guest stars they brought on from the original show, Ruth/Rowena is by far the best, both in performance and purpose. She shows Ada how to kill Akrida using magic, but doing so kills off a bit of her soul, similar to the magic used to resurrect Jack in season 14.

And then it’s the finale. Just like that. In the final episode, they go up against the Akrida and their queen. In order to kill them, they either need to use the magic Rowena showed Ada, or they need to use something from another world. They connect with a hunter, Joan Hopkins, who has been in contact with Dean/Mystery Man, who she has thrown into the portal and destroyed after months of him staying ahead of her, and no living thing can survive the portal (the portal being the thing that the Akrida use to destroy worlds.) John and Mary find out this hunter is actually the queen. She and her family have hunted with the Campbells for generations, and we find out that Joan was actually born in 1673 and after losing her entire family and her husband, she turned on humankind and imbued herself with monster essence. She claimed monsters weren’t the problems, but humans for always needing saving, making it so hunters always paid the price for protecting them. She was made the Akrida queen when she was cast out of her world, and she is helping them carry out Chuck’s final mission of wiping the universe of universes of humanity. And now, Joan/the Queen is at full power, and will open up the portal to finish the destruction.

In the end, there’s this battle, and all our new friends are there fighting the Akrida, and they use this thing called the Ostium in an attempt to summon something from another world to kill the Queen, the Ostium being the only thing known to be capable of doing such a thing. They use Dean/Mystery Man’s journal to try to summon him, but nothing happens at first, leading them to conclude that the Mystery Man is dead.

And then – as we all know – the Impala appears.

Mary realizes the Impala is not from their world, and therefore can be used to kill Joan. With the portal open, she runs Joan over with the car, but also ends up accidentally going through the portal, which as we know, no living thing can survive. Womp-womp.

But wait! The Impala reappears, and inside it is a living Mary – and Dean Winchester.

Apparently, the Impala somehow protected her (I don’t know how, it’s not explained, don’t ask me), and Dean tells them all he’s already dead, so it’s not like it could do anything to him, and I guess that tracks. He was stuck in between worlds after being tossed into the portal by Joan, waited by the portal, and gave Mary a ride out.

I’ll let Dean explain the rest:

“I'm a Hunter, just like you. But I'm not from this Earth…When I died, I made it to heaven. And [the Impala] was waiting for me. So I went for a drive, and then I took a little detour. Through the multiverse…I was looking for my family. See, I come from a long line of Hunters. I guess I was hoping that somewhere out there was an Earth that had a version where my family had a shot at a happy ending. When I was driving, I caught wind of the Akrida. Turns out that they were one of Chuck's last creations...basically, he's a real dick. He left the Akrida behind to wipe out all of existence in case he failed. Well...he failed. Eventually the Akrida were going to make their way to my world, and I got family there, so I couldn't let that happen…I took my little detour. The rules were simple. Don't mess with anything. Well…I gave it a little nudge. Thought it might need a little help. Looks like it worked out pretty well. So now that the Akrida are gone, you all can choose your own destiny. You can write your own story.”

Then Bobby and Jack show up. We already saw Bobby at the beginning of the episode, and he more or less feels like Bobby, but it’s still like…what are you doing here. What’s going on here. This scene at the beginning of the finale shows us when Dean gave John that letter from Henry, when he’s dressed like a Bond villain, setting the story in motion. Bobby reminded Dean then that they weren’t supposed to meddle, but Dean is Dean and does whatever the fuck he wants, apparently, and Bobby says he’s off to get the cavalry, a line I’m still not completely clear on because who is the cavalry in this situation? Is it Jack? Can’t be Gabriel/Loki because they’re dead, can’t be Rowena because not only is she Queen of Hell in the main timeline, but nothing about her appearance here suggests that she was the current iteration of herself from the original show. So I don’t know who the hell the cavalry is in this context, but I’ll let Jack and Dean take it from here:

JACK: Dean. DEAN: Yeah. No, I know. I know, Jack. JACK: When I restored things, I wanted mankind to make their own fate. That meant no interference from on high, anywhere...no exceptions. DEAN: I couldn't let our world get destroyed. Sam's still down there, okay? He deserves a good, long life. Hell, they all do. So, if you want to cast me out of heaven...so be it. BOBBY: If we're taking a vote, I'd say you give the guy another chance. JACK: There's always another case with you Hunters...even in death. Well...if you're going to meddle in things, finish what you started. After this...it's time to get around to the..."there'll be peace when you are done"…part of the song.

Jack then hands Dean the journal he had been writing in and the Colt. Yes, the Colt. Dean gives them to John and Mary, telling them to use the Colt if a Yellow-Eyed Demon ever comes to them, and to use his journal to help guide them as hunters. The journal is what we see Dean with in the final episode of the pilot, and what he says in voiceover at the beginning and end of each episode (which are just these platitudes and cliches about hunting and family) are written in that journal. They ask his name, Dean tells them it’s James Hetfield (founding member of Metallica), and then he, Jack, Bobby, and the Impala disappear.

The episode ends with all of them happy the Akrida are gone and free to make their own decisions about their lives. John plans to keep hunting with the gang, but Mary isn’t sure. She got into Kansas State earlier in the season, but she needs time and space. But she does show up at the Winchesters’ repair shop at the end, and she and John go on a drive while “Ramble On” plays over a montage of scenes from the show.

And that’s it.

xXx

Okay.

What becomes abundantly clear at the end of this show is that all that mattered – all that ever mattered – was what the fuck Dean was doing. It wasn’t John and Mary’s love story, it wasn’t the search for their dads, it wasn’t the question of whether to hunt or not, it wasn’t the Scooby Gang’s found family. It was just…Dean.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love Dean. I think he’s an interesting character. I also think his death was appropriate. But one person was so frustrated by his ending that he decided he needed to do something about it.

The logistics of the finale are…weird, to say the least. I can understand the logic behind the Impala being capable of killing Joan based on the show’s rules. It’s of another world, and Joan really gets her shit rocked by it, like Regina George getting hit by that bus, so I can buy it killing her. Sure. And I guess Dean waiting by the portal in the space between spaces or whatever is…plausible, I guess, since we don’t know how anything works between universes, so I’m willing to buy that. (Notice I’m not buying anything here with much enthusiasm, however.) But what the fuck does Dean mean, he heard about the Akrida while he was driving around? What does he mean, he took a detour? Did Jack tell him what was happening? Was he the one who set the rules? If so, did he not take care of the problem himself because of his own self-imposed resolution to not meddle? Did Jack want Dean to give John the letter? I don’t think he did because Bobby seemed to think that was meddling, which Dean was expressly told not to do, but how does any of this work without some level of meddling? And speaking of Bobby, I know we see him in the original show’s finale, but what the hell is he doing this whole time? Did he get caught by Jack doing something offscreen that we’re not told about, or did he run to him and tattle? (Super out of character for Bobby to be a narc, by the way, if that is the case.)

Or, maybe I’m supposed to interpret this another way, as something Dean stumbled upon while he was taking his Heavenly drive. He said he took a little detour and went looking for his family. That he was hoping there was a version out there that had a happy ending. Maybe he somehow found this potentially happy version of John and Mary and learned their universe was being threatened by the Akrida when he did? I don’t know.

I am baffled. Befuddled, even.

This episode is the only one to acknowledge Sam, and what’s funny about that is that for as much as the show excluded him, it inadvertently reinforces the idea of Sam as protagonist. Dean wants to stop the Akrida not to save this universe, necessarily, but because he’s worried about the Akrida getting to Earth One and getting to Sam. He did it all for Sam. It’s fucking poetic, is what it is, and I don’t think they did it to be poetic. I think they did it because they knew that:

They were stupid to leave Sam out of it in the first place, and

They had to justify this whole thing somehow.

In the end, none of it mattered.

xXx

At the beginning of this, I mentioned how hard it can be to let things end. While we can joke about how ridiculous Carlos whipping his hair back and forth to spray vampires with holy water is, or how Mary was dressed like a knockoff Claire Novak in the pilot, or the vanishing Impala, or how bad the Akrida looked, or how convoluted the premise of the whole show is, I think there’s something more we can take away from this: The Winchesters is a study in both vanity and poor media literacy.

Dean Winchester dying at the end of Supernatural makes perfect sense within the text of the show. This is a tragic character completing his tragic arc. His death also symbolizes the end of an abusive cycle, but in order to acknowledge that, you have to acknowledge that something very complex exists within Dean’s character. Many fans do not want to acknowledge that Dean continued the familial cycle of abuse. Do I believe he loved Sam? Absolutely. Do I believe he was unfairly parentified? Yes. Do I believe he was also a victim of neglect? One thousand percent. But that doesn’t change the fact that Dean continued these harmful cycles. That’s part of the tragedy. His death made it possible for Sam to break those cycles and live a life he had been continuously guilted and shamed and ostracized for wanting to live, and while that’s in a sense a win, it comes about in a tragic way.

The tragedy is the point. The hurt is the point.

But Jensen Ackles just didn’t like that. Of all the people on the cast and crew, he was the only one who it didn’t seem to click with, and look – I can understand that maybe he needed to take some time to sit with it because he brought that character to life for fifteen years and that character has a rough end, and it also marks the end of fifteen years of his life. It’s tough stuff. But what Jensen and the producers of The Winchesters did didn’t add to Dean’s story or his character, it didn’t add to the original story, it didn’t improve upon anything, or clarify anything, or rehabilitate anything.

It was Jensen’s attempt to get the last word, and it failed spectacularly.

I said earlier that I don’t want to blame a lot of the show’s problems on the acting, and I think that’s true. The main cast are young actors who haven’t been in a ton of projects (Meg Donnelly, who played Mary, has the most experience with ABC’s American Housewife and Disney’s Zombies movies), and I don’t want to blame cast and crew for just wanting to get work, and the main case certainly isn’t unwatchable. They have to do and say some pretty cringy shit at times, but that’s not on them. The supporting cast is generally serviceable to forgettable, and only truly bad a couple of times (the guy who plays Ada’s half-djinn son is…not great. He sounded like he was having lines fed to him and wasn’t comprehending any of what he was saying). Carlos and Latika aren’t particularly bad characters or poorly portrayed or anything, even if they do rely on some stereotypes (again, not on them), and might be fine in another context.

I will also say, though, that while Meg Donnelly isn’t like…a bad actor, she’s not a good Mary. The Mary we know from the flagship program is sweet, and hopeful, and resourceful, and very capable. I could absolutely believe that the Mary portrayed by Samantha Smith or Amy Gumenick could both kill a monster and struggle to break out of the life she was raised in, and absolutely, 100% want out of that life and apply to Kansas State University behind everyone’s back (just like someone else we know!) Donnelly’s Mary just feels like a Claire Novak rip-off. Which was a weird choice to make, and I guess they could try to justify by being like Oh, well this is a Mary from another universe, but that’s not gonna fly. We got a Mary that could certainly kill monsters, but otherwise doesn’t really feel like Mary Winchester at all.

Then there’s John, portrayed by Drake Rodger. He was my favorite of the main cast, and the one who seems to be the true protagonist, which I noted earlier. Rodger had mentioned having watched the original show, and he has that sort of gentle giant quality that Sam had, and even does a good job of picking up on some of his mannerisms that make him at least feel like a Winchester. Does he feel like John? I mean…that’s harder to say than it was with Donnelly’s Mary. We know from the original show that John before hunting was a pretty different guy. He was probably struggling with PTSD after his tour, but Mary repeatedly refers to him as a sweet, open person, so I can believe that this John could be more like Sam: generally a very nice, gentle guy who you need to watch out for when he’s angry or scared. As far as performances go, he did pretty well – or, as well as he could, considering the writing.

So, yeah, I’m not gonna pin the show’s downfall on the acting because that wasn’t it. And I’m not gonna pin it on the crew, either. Sure, the special effects and editing weren’t always great, but they weren’t always the best on the original show, either.

This is a project that never should have been greenlit, for one reason because it would have saved that crew member from getting struck by lightning. The crew member sued, naming Ackles and the other producers in the lawsuit along with the network for not following proper safety measures. Director John Showalter, a Supernatural alum, decided he wanted a scene shot in the rain, even though there was lightning in the vicinity. The show had already dealt with reshoots and short filming windows, so Showalter, the producers, and the network decided to risk everyone’s safety, and a crew member literally got struck by lightning and woke up in the emergency room. I hope he gets a giant settlement.

It also shouldn’t have been greenlit not just because it was apparently poorly run and unsafe (which, really, is the worst thing about all this – the show’s not even good, and you’re endangering people for it), but because it was a petty little vanity project. Jensen Ackles just couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stand that he wasn’t the protagonist, and had to try to get in one last word.

But he couldn’t do it. He was never going to be able to do it. This wasn’t a project driven by love of storytelling, but by spite. He wanted everyone to be thinking Where’s Dean? How does Dean fit into this? What’s he doing there? He didn’t want to explore this weird, difficult relationship, or the original show’s major theme of autonomy; he just wanted attention. That’s what comes through in all of this because the story itself doesn’t matter. If these characters don’t reveal anything about the original characters or story, then it doesn’t matter, and it’s certainly not written or performed or produced well enough to make it matter. Why should I care about this John and Mary? I don't know, and the show doesn't, either.

And the kicker is that all of Dean’s voiceover bits are stupid cliches, it doesn’t make sense how he even got himself into this mess, and it all still comes back around to Sam in the end, anyway. So there was literally no point. It was all a waste of time and money and a man got struck by lightning.

This show was doomed from the start. Dead, done, and dusted before it even made it to your screen.

#supernatural #spn #spn prequel #the winchesters #spn meta #jensen ackles #john winchester #mary winchester #dean winchester #sam winchester #that's right I'm putting this in the main tags #idk if anyone will be interested in this or not but here it is #I know it's long but there was quite a bit to say #and I had nothing better to do #abby speaks

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