The end is nigh — in more ways than one — on “Supernatural.”
The series is bracing for what creator Eric Kripke has long maintained would be the end of the storyline that started in 2005. This season, you’ll find out once and for all whether or not the Winchester brothers, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padakecki), can actually save the world.
“We’re really committed to climaxing a storyline that began since the inception of the show and doing it right,” Kripke says.
Caught in the midst of a war between Heaven and Hell last season, plucky demon-hunting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester were pitted against each other, each thinking that they had a better way to stop the forces hell-bent on releasing Lucifer from the fiery pit.
Dean, who’d been rescued from Hell by angels, relied on seemingly God-given angelic advice, while Sam turned to the dark side, depending on what he believed was a rogue demon’s suggestions. Sadly, the boys were misguided and, despite their best efforts, failed to stop Lucifer from rising.
This season, Lucifer — described as gentle and conflicted, the fallen angel you see at the start of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and wearing the “meat suit” of actor Mark Pellegrino — is free to walk the earth. The boys must brace themselves for what could just be the end of the world as they know it. Or, at the very least, the end of humanity.
“It’s going to be a real blow-out season for the fans, they’ll get a lot of answers,” says Kripke of the season. “We’re certainly going to specifically reveal what the angels’ plans are for Dean and how and why exactly he’s their chosen one to fight Lucifer. In facing Lucifer, we’re going to unveil what the demons’ and angels’ plot is in this whole apocalypse.
“We’re also going to reveal another, and really final, twist in the demons’ plans for Sam,” Kripke hints.
With that kind of a “slam, bang climax” to the storyline, it seems like there won’t be anywhere left to go — surely nothing left for a sixth season of the horror movie-like cult series.
Not true, says Kripke.
“ ‘Supernatural’ has always been a show that doesn’t hold on to endless mysteries and doesn’t let the mythology collapse under it’s own weight, as happens on a lot of genre shows when they go into their fifth season and beyond,” he says.
“Even though we’re closing this chapter, there’s no reason another chapter can’t open. However this story ends, it will end with a return to the ‘Supernatural’ status quo, which is a world full of vicious monsters and demons that are ripping mankind limb from limb. There’s still going to be plenty of stories for the Winchesters.”
Besides which, stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are under contract for a sixth season if the CW will have “Supernatural” back again next year.
While it may seem like this season is going to be all gloom and doom to reflect the finality of the storyline, never fear: Kripke promises plenty of light moments.
“It’s been really important to us to make sure that, even though the show is about the end of world, it’s not grim,” he says. “It’s more exciting, quirky, funny and thrilling than it is dour — we’ve been calling it the ‘party apocalypse.’ ”
SUPERNATURAL
Thursday, 9 p.m., The CW
Series creator Eric Kripke’s sneak peek at this season’s upcoming “Supernatural” episodes:
* Paris Hilton plays a shapeshifter that attacks the Winchesters. “She’s a hell of a good sport — she has a lot of dialogue poking a substantial amount of fun at herself and she was cool with it.” And, “Sam [gets] in a very vicious fight to the death with Gandhi.”
* The Trickster (Richard Speight Jr.) returns. He “zaps the boys into a world of different TV programs. One’s about sexy nurses and doctors, like ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ another one is an overly grim, quippy procedural show that’s suspiciously like ‘CSI.’ They’re also in a sitcom in which ‘Supernatural’ is filmed before a live studio audience.”
* A sequel to last season’s episode in which the guys learn that they’re the heroes of a series of cult novels. “They attend a convention for the Supernatural books, where everyone dresses like Sam and Dean. There’s a Q&A panel where fans point out all the flaws of the books — all the things that we privately talk about in the writers’ room as the flaws of the show.”