Supernatural has had a complex relationship with Papa Winchester, but there seem to be some hints that the character may be returning.
Disclaimer: This is entirely speculation based on some recent developments on and off screen.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s John Winchester. Sam and Dean’s father was a specter hanging over much of season 1, as the Winchester family moved toward finding the demon that killed Mary Winchester. John made a deal with said demon in the season 2 premiere, “In My Time of Dying,” to exchange his own life for Dean’s, who was on the verge of death.
We saw John again in the season 2 finale as he clawed his way through the Devil’s Gate to help the brothers fight the Yellow-Eyed Demon before moving on — to where, we don’t know as Ash had been unable to find him and Mary in Heaven. His voice was then heard in season 3’s “Long Distance Call,” though it was a monster imitating John. Since then, John has either appeared in flashback (played by Matt Cohen); in shadow, like in season 4’s “After School Special” or season 9’s “Bad Boys”; or on the unheard end of a phone conversation.
In recent years, the show has also moved away from a complex relationship between the brothers and their father to demonizing John Winchester, implying he was an abusive drunk (season 8’s “The Girl Next Door”). Bobby Singer, Sam and Dean’s surrogate father, was written as making “good” parenting decisions in John’s place when the brothers were young — see Bobby and young Dean playing catch instead of training in season 7’s “Death’s Door” as a prime example. Season 9’s “Bad Boys” also portrayed John negatively, having him leave Dean at a boy’s home as punishment for gambling away food money.
So, it was interesting when the mid-season 10 finale, “The Things We Left Behind,” included a story from the Winchesters’ childhood of John rescuing Dean from a club — a memory both brothers recounted fondly, finishing each other’s sentences in the process of telling it to Castiel.
“Did you love your father?” Castiel asked.
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This seemed like a rather abrupt shift in the way the current writers’ room has been portraying John Winchester and the brothers’ relationship with their father.
It’s also notable that this conversation occurred in an episode heavy on portraying parental relationships as well as exploring the worsening effects of the Mark of Cain on Dean. Parental relationships are always complex and messy on Supernatural, but the themes of family inevitably come back to the Winchesters in the end.
So Castiel feeling like he had to take responsibility for Claire, whose delinquency was a direct result of him possessing her father, and Crowley finding himself drawn back to his mother because of his need to be loved should not be throwaway storytelling notes. Those are very particular parental parallels to draw.
Off-screen, though, comes the most interesting piece of evidence. At the Salute to Supernatural Burbank convention earlier this year, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki announced that Morgan would be appearing at the Las Vegas convention in 2015. Despite the many years these conventions have been running, this will be Morgan’s first appearance.
The timing is interesting, to say the least.
But would Morgan even want to return? In 2012, he told EW, “My stance always is, I would love to come back. In fact, they have trashed John so f–king much on that show that I would like to come back just to set the record straight the real way. I’m not that bad of a dad. I saved my kids. I went to hell to save my kids. How bad can I be, people? But there are a couple of storylines that I’d like to resolve, and more importantly those people mean a lot to me.”
So what would the point of bringing back Morgan’s John Winchester at this point? Dean is definitely going off the reservation with the Mark of Cain, and family has always been at the core of Supernatural. Could John make a return to help bring Dean back to us?
On their own, these instances don’t raise any particular suspicions, but together, well, they’re either going somewhere or are a very interesting coincidence.
Supernatural returns with new episodes on January 20, 2015 at 9:00 p.m. ET on The CW.