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After the SUPERNATURAL panel (which, sadly, did not include another performance by Kansas this year), the cast — Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Alexander Calvert and Misha Collins — and the executive producers — Bob Singer, Andrew Dabb, Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Lemming — headed to the SUPERNATURAL press room to speak to reporters about what’s in store for season 14 of the show.

The SUPERNATURAL writers “always kind of keep a lot of balls in the air,” Singer teased. “This year we have Jack without his powers, which is a big story and is going to arc through the whole year. And the Dean/Michael [situation]. There’s a brewing Bobby/Mary relationship that we’re going to explore. We’ve left a lot of balls in the air last season and we’re going to be paying those off over the course of this year.”

Retrieving Dean. The focus is on saving Dean at the start of the season. “The first thing we’re trying to do is find Michael because he’s off our radar. Our objective at the outset is to find Michael and extract him from Dean’s vessel. We have conversations about [whether it’s] OK to destroy the vessel in pursuit of tackling Michael and we’re split on that,” Collins hinted. Bucker also said that “The core team that goes out in search of Dean is going to be Sam, Mary and alternate [universe] Bobby.”

Ackles said that the entire experience about playing Michael “was difficult. And it wasn’t just difficult because [I’m] playing a different character. The challenge was playing this different character in the environment that I’ve been playing Dean for the past 13 years. So I’m looking around and it’s all the same faces and it’s in the same sets designed by the same production designers — usually when I step on to that soundstage and I see all of those faces I instantly get transformed into Dean. It’s like hitting a button. And to not do that and do something completely kind of opposite of that, it was challenging. But it was one of those challenges that was like ‘I gladly accept it. I’m going to take this as a challenge and I’m going to work hard and hopefully succeed’.” He did lament “I’m missing my flannel and I’m missing Baby.”

The beginning of the season is very much a hunt for Dean — a literal hunt. According to Padalecki, “[Sam has] had no communication with Dean or Michael but he has leads and all hands on deck – [including] Apocalypse World hunters and Bobby and Cas and Mary and Charlie and Ketch. They have some leads and they’re following each and every one, even if that lead is a dead end it’s still not a complete dead end.” Be warned, fans, Padalecki said that he and Ackles hadn’t filmed together in the first episode, but it seems like Sam plays a big role in the season premiere. Dabb did say that “I think you’ve got a Sam who is really, really scared, yet also cautious in a way. Let’s say you even had a way to kill Michael, which they don’t at the moment — but let’s say you did — in doing so, you also kill Dean. I think Sam, as much as he wants to find Dean and drive Michael out of his, [his number one goal] is to save Dean. His number one goal is not necessarily ‘kill Michael’, which is a very different goal. You’ve got Sam [and] he’s extremely driven and wants to get what he wants to get, but he does have an agenda and that agenda is to save his brother.”

The big question is how long Ackles will be playing Michael. Singer explained “That’s something we want to keep under wraps. I can tell you that Dean will return — he won’t be Michael all year.” And if you’re wondering whether our Michael could be unleashed to combat the Alternate Universe’s Michael, Singer said “We discuss it. Lots of stuff gets thrown around. That certainly gets thrown around quite a bit. We don’t have any specific plans for that now but that’s always lurking back there. I think it’s a card we think we don’t want to play quite yet.”

Finally, when asked if Dean will be struggling to break free of Michael’s hold, Dabb said “We’ll see Dean putting up a fight but it’s a really hard fight to win. But Dean’s a fighter — he’s going to try to get out even if it doesn’t quite go his way.” How will that look visually? “We have a couple of different approaches to it. Some are very much like he looks into a mirror and some are going into people’s heads. It’s dependent on the story.”

Michael’s Grand Plan. The sneak peek that was screened during the SUPERNATURAL panel hinted that Michael is on the hunt for a new method of taking over the world — one that is very different from what he did in his own universe. “In the last episode of last season he said he wanted to make a pure world,” Dabb recapped for us. “The question is, what does that mean? And even Michael in the last episode of last season said the world he has right now isn’t the world he wanted. This was not the plan; a bombed out apocalypse was not the goal. So when he comes to our world he has a second chance — that’s the good news. The bad news is what is he going to do and how is he going to go about doing it? We know that whatever happened with the angels and demons and all-out war, this nuclear war essentially, [it] did not work. He’s going to have a different strategy going in. This strategy may look, on the surface — a little less violent. The world is not being blasted to ash. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any less insidious, or that his end goal [isn’t the same] — which is essentially to create a world that is pure enough for him, [that is] worthy of him.”

“As we saw, Lucifer can’t create new angels, Michael can’t either,” Dabb went on to explain. “But that’s actually an issue for him. In Apocalypse World he had an army of angels. He had all the angels united behind him. Now he comes [into a world and] there’s no army there. There’s 10 angels. That’s not an army. So what do you do when your go-to power base isn’t there? Do you try to go without it? Do you try to find another power base? That becomes the question he’s asking himself.”

Sam’s Leadership Role. With Dean missing, Sam has to step into the role of leader in season 14 and part of that will mean him struggling alone, to a degree, and keeping his feelings bottled up. Padalecki said “[Sam] hasn’t really leaned on anybody yet. He accepts help from [the others] as far as hunting and helping find Dean, but he hasn’t yet really opened up.” He hasn’t even been able to shave either, Padalecki joked.

“I’m very proud of who Sam is this year,” Padalecki said. “It’s almost like his loss is accentuated further and is exacerbated by the fact that he also has 30 people living in the Men of Letters bunker that are from a different planet. And all of these people want to kill Michael. Not necessarily want to save Dean, they want to kill Michael. He’s not at odds with these guys, but he has to continue to guide these Apocalypse World hunters that are living with them and tell them how to use toilet paper [for example]. They’re on a new planet and they’re living under his leadership. So Sam can’t find his brother, he knows there is a ticking clock. Sam also knows, uniquely almost, that [other than] Sam and Cas, there’s few people that have been possessed by an archangel and lived to tell about it. And so Sam is trying to be as methodical as possible to find his brother and get him back safe and sound without just trying to destroy Michael and Michael’s vessel, Dean.”

The Apocalypse World Hunters. “We will get to know a few of the new apocalypse characters a little bit better,” according to Dabb. “But we’ve got a big cast. We’ve got a lot of people who want and need more time. We’ve got a lot of people who we know but we don’t really know, like Apocalypse World Charlie and Bobby. If you think they’re the people you loved on SUPERNATURAL when they were on SUPERNATURAL, they are not. They may look the same, they may talk the same, they may even act the same in some ways, but they’ve been through extremely different experiences which have changed them in ways that made them maybe not the characters we’re used to.” Bucker did say that alternate Bobby does “feel an affinity towards Sam and Dean” for whatever reason, so he won’t necessarily be all that different from the Bobby we knew and loved. “He kind of easily steps into that father-figure [role].”

Buckner said that the addition of these new hunters to the bunker is a good thing. “It’s really interesting, I think, because the bunker has always been this isolated, eerie place with two guys rattling around in it. And I think it’s going to be much more populated now because it’s going to become a base for a while. [People will be] in and out.” The Apocalypse World hunters will be learning to become hunters on this planet. “Sam is learning to wrangle the hunters. It’s much more of a hub of activity going on in the bunker than we’ve ever seen before.”

The Problems in Heaven. According to Collins “The season starts with us, for the most part, [focusing on finding Dean and handling Michael]. But there is this ominous, looming fact that Heaven’s angels are so depleted that all of the ghosts in Heaven could be unleashed on the Earth. I think it’s something we’re going to deal with a little later in the season.”

Jack and Castiel Bonding. Collins acknowledged that “In that first year [Jack] didn’t really spend much time with Cas, but Cas for him sort of took on a bit of a mythological quality as his sort of would-be adopted father. Or caretaker, or guardian angel. So this is really our first time where we actually get to flush that relationship out at all. And it really is one of passing things down from one generation to another because Jack is going through a lot of the struggles that Cas went through in seasons 5 and 6. So we have a lot of stuff to really get to work on together.”

“[For] Sam and Dean, their role initially was that they had this incredibly powerful entity (Jack) who was a bull in a china shop who just had to be taught not to kill people every time he waved a hand. All that’s out of the window [now] because Jack — who has only been on the planet as a person for about a year — has never had one day of just being a guy,” Buckner said. “So he’s got to figure that out. Cas has been there. Cas lost his powers after the fall and he can become more of a mentor. He was also the person assigned by Kelly Kline to really be the surrogate father and I think he kind of steps into that role right now. Especially since Sam is preoccupied with grieving/finding Dean and Cas is the one who has to pick up the pieces with Jack.”

The Loss of Jack’s Powers. “Dealing with the loss of his powers is [a big part of Jack’s story in the beginning],” Calvert said. “I don’t think he’s coping well with the loss. What was interesting about Jack’s arc last season is that he found that he could be helpful. He found that he really could save people — help out Bobby and Mary and the apocalypse people. And to lose all of that is, I think, really crushing to what he considers his role — saving people and hunting things.”

Can Jack ever get his powers back? “It’s a slow regenerative process from what I understand. It takes time. But Jack being half-angel/half-human, it’s going to be different than if he’s just human or just an angel. It’s going to be a different process than traditionally for someone to get their grace back.”

The loss of Lucifer will also continue to affect Jack, Calvert hinted. “It’s going to be interesting to see how he feels about Lucifer [Mark Pellegrino’s character]. We spent a lot of last season kind of building towards that moment and then for Jack to deal with the fallout of that relationship is going to be something that we’re going to explore this season.” But the good news is that Jack feels very much a part of the group now. “I think he considers himself part of the family. He knows his role is to protect people, [to] save people as much as he can. But with the SUPERNATURAL universe, especially with his lineage being what it is, there’s always a possibility that Jack could turn and flip. Just because of his nature, I think. For me, I’m always hoping he stays good, but I think this show has shown that everyone can be evil. We have a Dean/Michael right now so who knows where I’ll be at the end of the season.”

Are we Finished In the Alternate Universe? Singer said that world is “pretty much done. I would never want to say never, but with Michael in our world now and that universe sort of decimated by the war [it’s unlikely we’ll see it any time soon]. And Michael in his own way says ‘maybe that plan wasn’t so good because it’s an awful place’ so I think he wants to stay here and try to see if he can do it better this time.”

A Budding Bobby/Mary Relationship. Could the Winchesters’ mother and the alternate version of their surrogate father come together next season? Singer said yes and he seems to think the brothers would be fine with it: “I think the boys would be on board with this. It’s not their Bobby, but it is their mom who came back from being dead [after] many years. And if it would make their mom happy they would go for that. This Bobby is a little more complicated of a character — what he’s seen and done can be a roadblock in the relationship.”

The 300th Episode. Dabb, who will be writing the episode with Singer directing, said “The 100th episode was very much a straight up episode of SUPERNATURAL. The 200th episode went very much in the other direction, which was very meta. I think for the 300th we want to do something that kind of lies in the middle. The idea kind of floating around right now is Sam and Dean, for years, have lived in the bunker. The bunker is in a place called Lebanon, Kansas, which is a real town. A very small town. We’ve never actually seen Lebanon, Kansas in the show. We’ve never seen what the people in the town think of two guys who drive this muscle car through [and probably visit the dry cleaner with a lot of blood on their clothes]. So it becomes how do these people view Sam and Dean, with a Sam and Dean story in their too. We think it could be a real love letter to the show in what we hope is a very heart warming way. Heart warming with murder.”

Which Characters will Return? Buckner said that “Sister Jo/Anael is in the very first episode. Jody Mills appears fairly early on — certainly in the first several episodes.” In addition to Jody, another character from the Wayward Sisters episodes will also appear. We’ll also be seeing alternate Charlie again and Bucker said that she’s a much tougher version of the character we knew since she’s had to be a warrior for a number of years.

SUPERNATURAL returns for season 14 on Thursday, October 11 on The CW.

The cast and producers of SUPERNATURAL came back to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con to give fans a sneak peek at the premiere of season 14 and tease what’s to come next season.

Preview of Season 14. The panel opened with a recap of “The Road So Far” and then quickly revealed new footage, which showed a man waking up in a cabin and washing up. Soon revealed to be a Muslin, he takes to the floor to pray. The man straightens up to see Michael/Dean sitting in a chair. He introduces himself as the archangel Michael and says he’s there to ask this man a question – the same question he’s spent weeks traveling around asking all sorts of people (holy men, leaders, killers). The question? “What do you want? If you can have anything, name it.” The man replies that he would like peace and love, but Michael/Dean just chuckles. “That’s not what humans want. That’s what they say they want when the lights are on and people are watching,” but he insists they don’t really want those things. He insists if the man wanted peace and love he wouldn’t have left his friends to die in Syria and wouldn’t have cheated on his life.

Michael’s in Control. Michael is really driving the wheel right now according to Jensen Ackles, who said he hasn’t had much of a chance to play Dean yet in season 14. It’s been a bit of a challenge, but “very exciting, very fun.” He also said that he’s a big fan of the show PEAKY BLINDERS and he had been hoping to have “that timeless look, [as] he is kind of a timeless figure”, which is what led to how Michael dresses. Ackles explained that he was paying attention to what the actor who had been playing Michael was doing last season and then asked him for tips on how to play the character. The advice? He swoops back his long coat and smoulders. Producer Andrew Dabb said that Dean is aware of what’s going on while Michael is in charge, but he’s taking a back seat. And Michael is not the pop-culture savvy person that Dean is and he’s not a funny character either.

What’s Michael’s Plan? We all saw what Michael did in the previous world, which wasn’t a good thing. He decimated it and called it “purifying the planet”. But what’s his version of purifying this new Earth? He’s curious as to “what humans want out of this [life].” And because he doesn’t have an army of angels this time around, the big question is who he will gather together to do whatever he’s going to do with Team Michael, according to executive producer Brad Buckner.

Sam the Leader. In season 14, Sam has taken on “more of a leadership role, at least in the beginning”, according to Jared Padalecki. He’s very distracted (which explains his new facial hair) and all of the people from the apocalypse world are “under his watchful eye. Sam, without Dean for however long, needs to take the cues and lessons he learned from Dean and try and pass them on to the apocalypse world hunters who are all living under this crazy roof. It’s a fun new part of Sam.”

Taking Jack Under His Wing. Meanwhile, Misha Collins said this is a “roll up his trench coat sleeves movement for Cas. He’s also taking Jack under his wing a little bit because Jack is struggling with the same things that Cas has gone through in the past”. Alexander Calvert said that “Jack having no powers is a real adjustment” for his character and things are very difficult to deal with as a half-human. Meanwhile, Cas and Jack will continue to have a “sustained celestial bond”, but everyone’s driving motivation is to really to “get Dean back”.

Other Teasers. Jody Mills will return in season 14 and we’ll see “some other members of the Wayward family as well”, according to Dabb. We’ll also see Rowena return. As for what’s in store for the 300th episode….it will be episode 14.13 and executive producer Robert Singer will be directing it.

SUPERNATURAL returns for season 14 on Thursday, October 11 on The CW. Stay tuned for more spoilers from the press room.