This week The Boys hosts something that Supernatural fans have been waiting for a long time – Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins onscreen, together again. It will be the first time the three have shared a screen since their many years together on Supernatural as Sam, Dean and Castiel. For Supernatural fans, this feels like a momentous occasion.
The three gave fans some rather tantalizing tidbits of information about the upcoming episode at a Supernatural convention in Rome this past weekend.
Eric Kripke is of course the common denominator between the two shows as the creator of Supernatural and the showrunner who adapted The Boys comics into a series. Jensen Ackles joined as Soldier Boy in Season 3 and has been making fans conflicted about loving and hating him ever since.
Fans figured out last month that Jared Padalecki will be playing Mr. Marathon from a photo on the wall when we caught a glimpse of the character in a promo, because nothing gets by motivated fans!
Jared confirmed it at a convention shortly after – which prompted Kripke to go out and confirm it too, saying that he had wanted a meaty part for Jared that was important to the story arc. Jensen Ackles has said that he was nervous about bringing his two friends onto The Boys – not because he worried about their performance, because he knew they’d be great, but in the way a dad worries about his son going up to bat. Picture him across the set going “come on guys, you can do it!”
Apparently they did.
Kripke recently confirmed that Padalecki had ‘crushed it’, unsurprisingly. We also know that Mr. Marathon is a far cry from Jared Padalecki, who has said the character says and does things that he would never do. He’s a douchebag and a cokehead, reminding many people of the fanfic Kripke read many years ago featuring a cokehead Jared and an assertive Kripke and let’s just say it wasn’t rated G and that I may or may not know more about how that all happened…
That was a long long time ago, as Supernatural was in its earliest seasons. This was Kripke back then, the first time we met him – baby Kripke!
Anyway… Collins’ role hasn’t been officially announced, but there are plenty of rumors that he might be Mr. Marathon’s partner and perhaps a supe named Synergy.
Looks like Soldier Boy is not a fan.
That would be an awesome (though probably tragic) twist for all the Mishalecki fans out there.
Jared and Misha have been having a great time teasing the possibilities.
Soldier Boy still not a fan.
Padalecki joked at the Supernatural convention in Rome this weekend in response to a prompt about getting naked – “next Wednesday on The Boys!”
Now that might just be a joke, but on the other hand, Ackles has already been sans clothes for Soldier Boy’s debut and the show is famous for Herogasm, so who knows?!
Padalecki and Collins also resurrected their long-running joke about “influence” on each other from an earlier convention in Rome, with influence being a bodily fluid that’s also not G rated, when answering a question about The Boys episode.
Jared: There’s quite a bit of influence going on… I mean, not as much because we’re older, but…
Misha: I think quite a bit of influence on each other… in each other? In this episode there’s more bodily fluid than…it’s a lot…
Ackles rolled his eyes at his two friends’ antics while fans cheered.
If all those teases aren’t enough to whet your appetite for this week’s episode, I don’t know what would – as someone whose favorite shows are Supernatural and The Boys, I can’t wait!
I’ve had some great conversations with Eric Kripke over the years about both shows and the similarities between them (the resistance in both comes in the form of plain old humans who are willing to go against the odds and keep fighting). So on the eve of this momentous occasion, I thought I’d share some excerpts from my interview chats with Eric over the years about the two shows and how they intersect. It’s a history of the Supernatural-The Boys connection as we get ready to make that connection a lot more direct!
I first asked Kripke about the similarities between his brand new show The Boys and his long-time show Supernatural at San Diego Comic Con way back in 2019, before Supernatural had ended.
Eric: This show is also about family. It’s about the boys, who are the good guys in this show. They’re the heroes because they stick together and show each other loyalty and have each other’s backs and they’re willing to admit vulnerability and weakness. They’re scared and they’re outmatched and they’re outgunned but they’re taking on these powerful forces. Not dissimilar to the way Sam and Dean would take on monsters and demons. What I love is that the heroes of the show are the ones who express vulnerability and weakness and can be imperfect, but we spend a lot of time building the iceberg under the water with the emotion and the satire.
That was enough to get me excited about the show and I’ve been watching ever since. I had the chance to chat with Eric in depth about The Boys shortly after that Comic Con. I pointed out that both Supernatural and The Boys begin with an everyman inspired to get revenge after the love of his life is violently killed (Mary burning on the ceiling and Robin mowed down by A Train). In the case of The Boys, that comes from the comics, but the show captured it.
Eric: Now that you’ve pointed it out, there are similarities to that. Robin dying in The Boys is taken almost frame for frame from the comic book so it’s funny, that hadn’t really occurred to me about that connection, because in The Boys the instigating incident is so infamous for anyone who’s a fan of the books. It was my job to capture it as faithfully as possible and that’s mostly where my head was, but yeah. Also, I think where they’re similar is there are a lot of tonal and thematic similarities. In a lot of ways, The Boys is a hard R Supernatural.
(Something many Supernatural fans would not mind at all!)