3/5
For the first time since Supernatural aired in 2005, Dean Winchester is back without the company of his brother Sam in the CW’s new show The Winchesters. The prequel dives into the story of John Winchester and Mary Campbell before they were married, before the birth of the infamous Sam and Dean, and picks up shortly after John returns from the Vietnam War.
The Winchesters opens with a mystical underground ritual gone wrong, keeping with the Supernatural tradition of monsters picking off an unsuspecting victim in the first few minutes of an episode before Sam and Dean step in. There are plenty of SPN references to be found in the series premiere, from trauma bonding in the front seat of an old car to familiar symbols like the devils trap, but the most notable similarity is the motive behind John and Mary’s quest.
John is chasing the legacy of his father while Mary is trying to save hers from demons, mirroring the journey Sam and Dean went on in their own pilot episode to find their own absent dad. When it comes to nostalgia for the show that began it all, The Winchesters is packed with references Supernatural viewers will surely appreciate.
With that being said, The Winchesters disrupts the canon of Supernatural, which a lot of fans aren’t happy about. Series creator Jensen Ackles has spoken about the prequel and promised The Winchesters will eventually line up with the story that was created in Supernatural.
Ackles is narrating The Winchesters from the perspective of his character Dean, who also acknowledged the discrepancies between what fans know from Supernatural and what they’re seeing in The Winchesters. Dean claimed he’ll be putting the pieces of John and Mary’s story together in a way that’ll surprise audiences, but encouraged everyone to stick with him while he uncovers the truth.
So according to both Ackles and Dean, there will be some sort of answer as to why John and Mary are hunting together in the 70s, when Supernatural says John didn’t start hunting after Mary’s death in 2005. After receiving so much love for Supernatural, altering the origin story and doing major retcon is a big risk, meaning the explanation will have to be both believable and interesting enough for die-hard SPN fans to be satisfied with the change.
Ackles has put an incredible amount of time into creating The Winchesters and has publicly expressed how proud he is of the work he’s done on the prequel, so viewers are putting their faith into him as much as they can. Ackles spent 15 years playing Dean in the SPN universe and seems to be taking The Winchesters very seriously, so hopefully his vision for John and Mary will continue to keep fans interested.
The anticipation behind that explanation makes it hard to fully enjoy The Winchesters in all of its glory, and there’s been a few other changes that don’t make a lot of sense. For starters, demons now speak with a strange auto-tuned voice that’s meant to make them sound scarier, but it's a little jarring for Supernatural fans. John Winchester is also painted in a much more sympathetic light, a creative decision that has viewers divided.
Some people are happy to get a deeper look into the life of John Winchester, but others are struggling to let go of the negative way Supernatural often portrayed him. John was a no-nonsense, alcoholic drill sergeant in SPN. He trained his kids to be hunters for the sake of enacting his revenge on the demon that killed Mary, a selfish decision that put Sam and Dean in danger since they were children.
Needless to say, John Winchester wasn’t known for his A-plus parenting and Sam and Dean each had a ton of issues with how he treated them, so it’s definitely strange to see John as a lost kid with PTSD that’s still desperately searching for his own father. It’s funny at times, like when he received a crash course in demons from Carlos, especially since John was held up as this all-knowing, best-of-the-best hunter in Supernatural.
On a positive note, The Winchesters has stepped up to the plate in terms of diversity. Supernatural received a lot of backlash for how the show treated characters that were women, people of color, or members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and it took years for the show to start being more inclusive. The Winchesters doesn’t seem to have that problem.
As far as pilot episodes go, The Winchesters wasn’t bad. There’s a lot of nostalgia for Supernatural, and it has a great collection of characters that offer more representation. The lack of canon still looms over the series, but it definitely has great potential, especially with Jensen Ackles running the show.
Depending on how the rest of the season plays out, The Winchesters could be immortalized as the prequel Sam and Dean fans didn’t know they needed, or will join the ranks of the Supernatural series finale, which audiences are still desperately trying to forget.