The Winchesters: Jensen Ackles Explains the Series' Multiverse Twist

The Season 1 finale for The CW's Supernatural prequel spinoff The Winchesters gave fans a lot of what they wanted. Not only did they get to see Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) again, but the episode also answered some big questions about how The Winchesters fits into the overall Supernatural canon. After John (Drake Rodger) and Mary (Meg) defeated the Akrida once and for all, Dean explained that he's been sort of nudging things along and, more than that, he's from another world entirely and his reason for meddling was, ultimately, keep the Akrida away from his own world and thus protect Sam (Jared Padalecki) who is still alive and well.

The episode serves, in a sense, as something of a coda to the Supernatural series finale in that it explains what Dean's been up to since going to Heaven while also not messing with what Supernatural set up in the first place. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Ackles explained why they made the choice to go the multiverse route — and how it has ties to the original series.

"It would have been a fool's errand to try and box ourselves in with what had been created on Supernatural," Ackles said. "We would be boxed in by that. In order to get our two heroes together and make it make sense in that timeframe, it had to be messed with. And the only way to really mess with that was just to make it a completely separate, alternate thing, which luckily the mothership had established with Chuck when he was like, 'I've made multiverses and you guys are my favorite,' So, we knew that there was still stuff out there. And then also to tether it to the fact that, oh, if this was a fail safe that Chuck created, how many other fail safes does he have?"

Ackles also explained that the multiverse option also goes beyond simply preserving the canon of the original Supernatural series. According to him, it also further's the show's lore.

"Everybody's like, 'I cant' believe you're gonna mess with the show's lore,' and it's like, 'Hang on, just trust us.' And in fact, it plays right into it," Ackles said. "You've got Bobby, you've got Jack, you've got the fact that Sam is still on Earth, and here's Dean, literally in heaven trying to do things to protect the life his brother's living. So, it furthers the lore."

Has The Winchesters been renewed for Season 2?

At the time of this article's writing, The Winchesters has not yet been renewed for a second season. However, series showrunner Robbie Thompson is hopeful there will be more to come for the series.

"That's a great question, and I'm going to be judicious with my answer because I don't know what's going to happen, obviously, [at The CW]. I don't think anybody does at this point. These are interesting times, as the kids say. We looked at [our first season] as chapters, and this first 13 episodes, whether we were going to get only 13 or 22, we wanted to end this chapter, both on the emotional side with Dean and on the plot side with the Akrida. That was by design, and some of it is exactly what you just said, which was this was the big romance of the, for lack of a better word, meet-cute of it all, and to me, it was an ending [to] that part of the story," he said. "In terms of where we can go, the scale of this was, "It's the end of the world," and all of the normal hijinks. But that also kind of matches the scale of what you feel when you're in that young romance, where you're like, "Oh, my God, it's us versus the world." In success in a Season 2, without spoiling anything, we certainly know where we would want to go, and I think maybe you and I even talked about this as well when we spoke earlier [this season], the romance of this was always what was most appealing to me as a writer because I'd never really written much of that stuff in my career. The first act of that is always the meeting and the falling in love and the intensity of that. But then it's a question of how do you sustain it, and what does that look like, especially in a universe where monsters are real? And so, we have an incredible opportunity, given a chance to tell more story, to really get into the meat of what it means to be in a relationship in this kind of context, what it means to sustain love, not just fall in love."

He continued, "It's one of the reasons why we ended it the way we did. We didn't really change anything when we found out we were only going to be 13 episodes. We wanted it to feel like this chapter had closed and that the plot mechanics had closed, but that, emotionally, there was room for more story. There's so much more story to tell about where these two kids go. And because now, as Dean says at the end of the episode, they have a chance to write their own story that doesn't have to be necessarily what happened on our version of Supernatural, we have an opportunity to really go into some interesting places. I'm hopeful that we get a chance to do that."

What did you think about The Winchesters' Season 1 finale? Did you like the multiverse twist? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section or hit me up on Twitter @lifeinpolaroid!