Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki recently teased some season 8 plotlines, including Dean’s time in Purgatory, Sam’s new love interest, and the effect of the year apart on the Winchesters’ bond.

Dean in Purgatory

Ackles told TVOvermind that this season will explore both in the present and in flashbacks how Purgatory “changed his outlook and his perspective on things.” Sam and Dean “are always kind of at war with the evils of the world, but he got kind of a heavy, heavy dose of it [in Purgatory] because he’s surrounded by all the things that he kills when he’s topside.”

Ackles adds that Dean is now “really, really a hardened warrior and ready to use those sharpened skills in the real world,” and compares Dean retuning topside to Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker struggling with everyday tasks like going to the grocery store.

Ackles went on to discuss his excitement about the introduction of Benny, the vampire Dean works alongside with to survive and escape from Purgatory, calling the character “a really great kind of contemporary for Dean. It’s a foxhole relationship. He’s been at war with this guy. On paper it’s not the kind of character that Dean would allow to live, much less team up with. Benny really earned his stripes with Dean.” And Sam will be aware of Benny, though Ackles was mum on how Sam finds out.

Sam’s love interest

Meanwhile, Padalecki discussed Sam’s romance with Amelia, which will also appear in flashbacks, with KSiteTV: “[T]hey’re both misfits, they’re both going through a loss, and they’re both not outcasts so much, but they’re brought together by a bizarre set of extenuating circumstances, and they find each other in each other’s arms, in each other’s minds, and say, ‘This is good, what we’ve got. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Let’s just kind of go with it.'”

Padalecki adds that while the relationship is in the past when the season opens, Amelia is still on Sam’s mind and that getting back into the hunting life is not something he wants. He’s been living what Padalecki terms a “Supernatural Winchester normal life,” which creates a different dynamic than in previous seasons when the brothers have been separated.

“Usually when they’ve been split up, there’s been the impetus of ‘My brother’s in trouble. I’ve got to save him. I’ve got to help him. He’s got to help me. He’s got to save me,'” Padalecki says. “But here, Sam is like, ‘You know what? [Everyone’s gone]. I’m going to take off the hunter garb, and just live a normal life, because I have nothing tying me back.'”

The brotherly bond

Ackles acknowledges that there will be problems with them picking back up: Sam living a normal life “is sensitive” for Dean “because he wasn’t doing what his brother wanted him to do. Having all that information come to light is going to pose problems for the relationship, but at the end of the day they’re still brothers and they still have each other’s back and it’d take way too much to break that up.”

It looks like the brothers will be fighting not only outside threats this season, but also having to do so while relearning their relationship with one another after such disparate experiences during their year apart.

Supernatural season 8 premieres on Wednesday, October 3 at 9:00 p.m. ET.