After an action-packed season premiere, Supernatural executive producer Jeremy Carver teases what is to come with a large angelic secret between the Winchesters.
In the Supernatural season 9 premiere, Sam was on the verge of death — literally, as he met with Death himself in a coma — and Dean made a deal with a fallen angel, Ezekiel, to save him. The only way for Ezekiel to heal Sam’s extensive internal injuries was to possess the younger Winchester and heal him from within.
Ezekiel, however, was also injured in the fall so was taking the opportunity to heal himself. When Sam finally regained consciousness at the end of the episode, he had no memories of his coma and Dean was keeping Sam’s angelic hitchhiker a secret.
“I think you’re going to see in [season 9, episode 2] truer, more indications, perhaps, of Ezekiel’s character,” Carver tells TVGuide. “The trust and everything we saw in Tahmoh [Penikett] when he was playing him, I think we have no reason not to believe this guy.”
However, as we saw in the promo for this week’s episode, Ezekiel may still be poking his head out to cause some trouble, which is “something that we really can’t wait for the fans to see for themselves,” Carver teases. “You have to start to imagine situations where this angel could possibly come out.”
But despite this, Carver says that Dean may form a bond with Ezekiel because he’s “isolated in the sense of who can he talk to about this.” As a result, “there’s a certain feeling of isolation, but there’s also a feeling of great burden upon him,” he adds. “In a crazy sort of way, the one person he’s able to talk about this with might just be the angel who’s possessing Sam.”
The secret of the possession may not be the only issue sitting between the Winchesters though. Dean watched Sam nearly leave with Death, a type of surrender that Dean refused to accept.
However, while Dean “might not have the emotional response that we’re expecting for this until a bit later on,” he will not forget Sam’s readiness to die; in fact, the conflict that may result “goes to the root of how these brothers are maturing and how they’re relating to each other and how they’re maybe looking at this hunting life a bit differently than each other in these later years,” Carver says.
He adds, “I feel like no matter what transpires in the present, there’s always this common bond of the past. I feel like the moments of joking or joy or togetherness are as ever-present as the moments of secrecy and disdain and distrust. To me it goes hand-in-hand. Its not quite either-or.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with TVLine, Carver addresses Dean’s decision to keep Sam’s possession a secret: “It’s a life saved, arguably at the expense of other lives.”
He adds, “It’s a tremendous burden on Dean. The decisions he’s made are really going to drive mythology in ways that he never really expected.” It will affect “their world around them” and “other characters and situations” in surprising ways.
But will Dean be the only one aware of the secret, or will Sam notice something different about himself? Carver calls this “the right question” though also “something I’d rather see play out.”
Outside of Ezekiel, there will be other angelic issues for the Winchesters to deal with. “We always mentioned the angelic factions of Heaven. We’ll be introduced to one of the leaders of these factions in Episode 3, and his name is Bartholomew,” Carver previews.
“He’s going to have to adapt. And he’s going to have to get back to the Winchesters,” Carver says. “Neither one of those desires is going to play out exactly the way he was hoping.”
There won’t be only angelic conflict for the brothers to face, however. Crowley and Abaddon return this week, with Crowley the Winchesters’ captive and Abaddon looking to take his throne. “The juiciness of that story this year is, how is Crowley going to potentially manage a civil war from his place in the bunker?” Carver teases.
“It’s something we delve into rather directly and have a lot of fun with. We find, if I can borrow a fan term, some unexpected feels for a character that maybe we never thought we would feel for. It’s a really interesting portrait we’re painting of Crowley this year that I’m very excited about.”
Supernatural season 9 airs Tuesday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET on The CW.