The Winchesters is an American dark fantasydrama television series developed by Robbie Thompson and is a spin-off of Supernatural (2005–2020), set in an alternate continuity.[1] It premiered on The CW on October 11, 2022, and concluded on March 7, 2023. In May 2023, the series was canceled after one season.[2]
Synopsis
Set in the 1970s, Dean Winchester narrates the story of how his parents, John Winchester and Mary Campbell, met, fell in love, and fought monsters together while in search of their missing fathers.[3]
On March 23, 1972, John Winchester returns home to Lawrence, Kansas from the Vietnam War where he meets Mary Campbell whose father, Samuel, has recently disappeared. Receiving a letter from his long-missing father, Henry, John is drawn to a Men of Letters clubhouse where Mary saves him from a demon. Introduced to the world of the supernatural, John learns that his father was a Man of Letters and joins Mary's search for Samuel, who was looking for a magical box that can trap and destroy monsters. With the help of Mary's friends Latika and Carlos, they track the box to a New Orleans cemetery where they face both a loup-garou watchdog and a demon possessing Ada Monroe. While John kills the monster, the others are able to use the box to exorcise and destroy the demon. In the aftermath, Ada explains that the box is the only thing that can kill the Akrida, monsters from another world that seek to invade Earth. With the Men of Letters gone and unable to stop them, Samuel was seeking the box to stop a coming invasion. Deciding to become a hunter, John joins the others in traveling to Savannah, Georgia in pursuit of another lead. Narrating these events, Dean Winchester reveals that, unbeknownst to the group, the Akrida are a threat to all of existence and he intends to continue searching for more information on this lost chapter of his parents' lives.
In Savannah, the group finds the files on the Akrida gone, but signs of Samuel having been present, including a newspaper clipping directing them to a case in Topeka, Kansas. Upon returning home, John clashes with his mother over his hunting and storms off. In Topeka, kids have begun vanishing from a hippie commune, taken by a shapeshifting monster. Mary's desperation to solve the case and resume the search for Samuel leads her to clash with the others, putting John in danger when the monster assumes the form of Millie and kidnaps him. The group identifies it as La Tunda, an abusive mother who was transformed into a monster and which consumes disobedient children. Locating La Tunda's lair, they rescue her victims and kill La Tunda with a piece of her own wooden leg. John reconciles with his mother while Ada uses a potion and automatic writing to access the echoes of the demon that had possessed her, searching for information on the other demon that the group had fought in the hopes that it will have information on the Akrida and the box. At the same time, the Akrida leader enters La Tunda's lair, absorbs a piece of her essence into a vial and is followed by several Akrida as it leaves.
Mary's neighbor Carrie is abducted, leading Mary, John and Lata on a search for her while Ada and Carlos hunt for Slick, the partner of the demon that had possessed Ada. Slick reveals that he and his partner, convinced that the Akrida can't be stopped even with the box, had made a deal to trade the box for their lives. However, he doesn't know anything about how the box itself works or about the Akrida aside from the fact that the Akrida leader has taken a human vessel. Rather than exorcise the demon, Ada magically traps him in a bonsai tree. After Carrie's brother Ford is also abducted, it's discovered that the culprit is Bori Baba, an Indian boogeyman who lures children in using items that they are seeking. Mary enters Bori Baba's bag to rescue the children while Lata learns from an estranged relative that the victims must destroy the items that they are seeking in order to be free. John is able to communicate this to Mary using a CB radio, forcing her to face her fears of life after hunting. When the monster follows them out, John is able to kill it and Carrie and Ford are reunited with their mom. During this time, John is reunited and makes amends with his ex-fiancé Betty while Mary enjoys a date at the movies. The appearance of La Tunda and Bori Baba, two rare monsters from other cultures, worries the group about the implications while an Akrida brings Bori Baba's bag to its leader who absorbs a piece of the monster's essence as she did with La Tunda. The Akrida leader is revealed to be possessing Rockin' Roxy, a local DJ.
The Monster Club investigates the death of Patches, a World War II veteran, leading John and Carlos, who is revealed to be a former Navy Corpsman, to join a therapy group that Patches had been a part of. Mary learns from her movie date, a reporter named Kyle Reed, that there has been a number of similar veteran deaths across the country. The case forces John and Carlos to confront their trauma from the Vietnam War while Mary and Lata confront their grief over the loss of Mary's cousin Maggie. It's discovered that the culprit is Mars Neto, a Celtiberian deity who posed as one of the group members. Mars reveals that a war is coming with the Akrida and that he believes that John, as both a hunter and a soldier, could be sharpened into a powerful weapon to defeat them. As John fights Mars, Mary, Lata and Millie find and destroy Mars' amphora, rendering him vulnerable and allowing John to kill him. However, the dying Mars tells John that he is now ready for the war with the Akrida. In the aftermath, Mary cleans out Maggie's old room, Carlos continues to attend therapy and John breaks down crying as Millie comforts him.
The Monster Club investigate a series of strange deaths that they believe to be the work of a djinn. At an abandoned warehouse, the hunters encounter Tony, a half-djinn who is Ada's estranged son from her relationship with a djinn named Ali who was killed by hunters. While the rest go off to search for leads, Ada and Carlos stay behind to confront Tony. However, Tony confronts Ada while she's sleeping. Still angry about her lying to him, and hurt that she thinks he is killing people, he informs Ada that he has actually been using his djinn abilities to help people face their fears and heal, while only feeding enough to get by. He reveals that the Akrida are actually responsible, having encountered one during his attempt to help one of the victims and that he was lured to the town by a strange sound that only monsters can hear. The team learns that victims were all injected with a mind control toxin that ultimately proved fatal to them. While protecting the Akrida's next victim, whose name Tony passed along to Ada, Mary is injected with the toxin. Ada convinces Tony to use his dreamwalking powers to help John enter Mary's mind where she faces the trauma of the night that her parents told a five-year old Mary that she would grow up to hunt monsters, allowing her to destroy the Akrida stingers. In the aftermath, Tony reveals that the Akrida are collecting the essence of rare monsters and the group deduces that the victims are all connected to a radio tower project that the Akrida are using to broadcast a signal to draw in rare monsters. Ada, having finally reconciled with Tony, decides to leave with him to make sure he gets to a safe place far away from the Akrida. From records of the project, they identify Rockin' Roxy as the Akrida leader. Another Akrida warns Roxy that Mary has failed to fall under their control, but she is unconcerned, believing that the Akrida will get the hunters the way that they want eventually. Throughout these events, John continues to develop romantic feelings for Mary, but he chooses not to reveal them in favor of encouraging Mary to follow her dream of leaving town to find a new life after she eventually quits hunting.
The gang must save Mary's old family friend Tracy Gellar, whom she admires for having successfully retired from the hunting life, from a soucouyant that's been killing off former members of Tracy's band of hunters. Meanwhile, John and Mary argue about John's reluctance to talk about what happened with Mars Neto and his using his determination to keep Mary alive long enough for her to retire as an excuse to throw himself into hunting and avoid his own issues. The soucouyant turns out to be possessed by the ghost of hunter Mac, a member of Tracy's group who was tricked into a death trap by the others when he became addicted to dark magic and they feared he was going to turn on them. Mac leaves the soucouyant's body and possesses John in order to try to kill Tracy. By sharing details about her own past and why she became a pacifist, Lata manages to talk Mac into stopping his quest for vengeance and moving on. Afterwards, John asks Lata for help controlling his own anger and she begins to teach him how to meditate. They are interrupted when Carlos and Mary announce that they've located the radio tower being used by the Akrida to broadcast the signal that's luring rare monsters to Kansas.
The Monster Club finds the Akrida's radio tower abandoned and signs that Samuel has been captured and Roxy demands an exchange of the box for Samuel. Ada finds files on the box in another abandoned Men of Letters office in Ann Arbor, Michigan with the notes having been written by Henry Winchester. The notes, deciphered by Millie, reveal that the box is actually the Ostium, a portal that can banish monsters from this plane of existence as well as the fact that the Akrida are all connected to their queen. If the queen is banished back to the Akrida's universe, the others will all die. The group performs a seance to summon Henry's ghost for more information and he reveals how the box can be recharged while getting to say the goodbye to his wife and son that he never had before. Assaulting Roxy's new base, Mary and John succeed in banishing the Akrida leader with the Ostium, but it fails to affect the other Akrida, revealing that Roxy wasn't actually their queen. Cornered, John and Mary kiss before an injured Samuel uses the Ostium to banish the rest of the attacking Akrida. Throughout these events, the Akrida's possessed servants dig for what is revealed to be the Akrida queen. Finding her, the servants bring the queen the monster essences, promising to make the queen strong again so that she can bring the others and the Akrida can make this world their own.
A recovering Samuel reveals that he had been looking for a way to get rid of monsters for good to give Mary a normal life when he discovered the Akrida and had kept her away in order to protect his daughter. Samuel clashes with John, Mary and Millie, but he eventually makes peace with them. With the Ostium having been broken, Millie begins attempting to repair it. At the same time, Carlos and Lata discover that Carlos' old friend Jericho has made a deal with Loki (Richard Speight Jr.) who demands first Jericho and then Carlos sacrifice innocent people to save themselves. After Carlos selflessly refuses to sacrifice his friends, Loki is trapped in his own indestructible hand mirror as a consequence of his defeat. Samuel leaves to hunt down magic possibly capable of stopping the Akrida with Ada, leaving the Monster Club to track down the Akrida Queen, while Mary finally decides to be with John. Amongst Samuel's light-damaged reconnaissance photos, John spots a picture of the man who gave him Henry's letter. Mary doesn't recognize the man, who is revealed to the audience to be Dean Winchester, getting into the Impala in the photograph.
Il Soarta, a vampire cult that worships the Ursitoare, the Romanian gods of fate, hunts for an amulet that can reveal a person's fate. The Monster Club finds the amulet hidden in the clubhouse, but it shows John dead and being fed upon by the vampire leader. Leaving John behind in the clubhouse, the others raid the vampires' lair, only to discover that they have the clubhouse's blueprints which reveal a weak point in the defenses in the local sewers. As Mary and Carlos kill the other vampires, John and Millie are cornered by the leader. Taking his fate into his own hands, John has Millie electrocute him with a live wire so that when the Il Soarta leader feeds on him, he ingests dead man's blood, allowing Mary to kill the vampire. Millie and Mary manage to revive John with CPR, in the process revealing to the others John and Mary's romantic relationship which she had previously insisted upon hiding. Having avoided Anton following their date, Carlos decides to ask him out again. Throughout these events, John's ex-fiancé Betty becomes suspicious of the Monster Club's activities and colludes with Kyle Reed, the reporter that Mary had gone on a date with. Kyle is revealed to be under Akrida control and using Betty to investigate the Monster Club for the Akrida.
In 1957, Dorothea Wilcox is attacked by an Akrida puppet and put into a vegetative state. In the present, the Akrida decide to focus their efforts on using the Monster Club to find Dean Winchester who they know brought the hunters together to stop them. After failing to find any sign of the Akrida queen at the locations that Samuel had previously scouted, Carlos and Lata approach Rockin' Roxy for help, learning that Roxy's life was ruined by her ordeal. Using a form of magical hypnosis taught to her by Tony Monroe, Lata is able to help Roxy recall her possession and the location of the Akrida queen. Although Lata offers to erase Roxy's memories of her possession, Roxy chooses not to, wanting to remember that her ordeal helped to stop the Akrida. At the location indicated by Roxy, Carlos and Lata spot several Akrida puppets and realize that they've found the queen. John and Mary are approached by a man claiming to be retired Man of Letters Porter Hobbes who offers them a way to stop the Akrida, revealing that although the Akrida had previously been repelled in 1957, several remained hidden on Earth, including the queen, and they presumably orchestrated the destruction of the Men of Letters. However, the two eventually discover that he's actually Jack Wilcox who was kicked out of the order for human experimentation after Henry exposed him. Jack intends to transfer his and Dorothea's consciousnesses into John and Mary's bodies, but he dies in the fight that follows while Dorothea's life support is disconnected. Returning home, John is ambushed by Kyle, who kills himself and frames John for his murder as part of the Akrida's plans.
Cleaning up after their confrontation with Jack Wilcox and his Golem, Carlos, Mary, and Latkia find John covered in blood after being framed by the Akrida for the murder of Kyle. Mary and John plan to head to her father's cabin to hide from the police, but John is arrested. Meanwhile, Carlos and Latika search for a bracelet that mystically leads to those who hide a dark secret. The bracelet attaches to Latika instead, but whoever wears it has to be pure of heart. The shadows in the bracelet lock them in the house to force her to reveal her dark childhood secret. Latkia's actions led to the death of a servant in her home growing up. An Akrida-possessed police officer grills John about Dean, but John truthfully reveals he knows nothing about him but can tell that Dean is not of this world and can hurt the Akrida. Mary and Mollie try to loop Betty into the Akrida situation but she won't believe it until they are able to get the bracelet on her and reveal the Akrida in the department. As John escapes and goes on the run, Betty becomes their spy in the police department.
While trying to find information about the mysterious man in the photo, Dean, The Monster Club finds an article about the mysterious disappearance of a teen, Wally, at a carnival. They later find a link between various disappearances, including Wally's, to Limbo the Clown who traps his victims as part of his clown troupe. The group discovers that during the Great Depression, Limbo had made a deal with an occultist to be perpetually happy after losing everything and falling into a depression of his own. They work with Clarence who has been searching for his brother Roger. Limbo took Roger 30 years ago after Clarence took him to a carnival after their parents died. The group realize that Limbo is targeting people who are going through the lowest points of their lives, with the promise to never feel pain or sorrow ever again, turning them into clowns like himself. During this time, Mary and John start fighting about how Mary is using hunting to avoid her fears of facing the future while John is using their relationship to ignore his own troubles, making them vulnerable to Limbo. Both Mary and John fall victim to Limbo's transformation, while Carlos and Lata end up trapped in a clown car that turns out to have Roger in the backseat. Carlos talks to Roger in an effort to get him to embrace reality. When Roger learns that his brother has spent all this time looking for him and desperately wants him back, he breaks the spell by crying for his brother. This causes Limbo to explode and his victims are freed. Roger is reunited with an overjoyed Clarence, and Wally is reunited with his parents. Mary and John recognize that they have been avoiding their problems and reconcile before Millie arrives with the news that she and Betty found a witness who has cleared John of Kyle's murder. At the same time, Ada's search for magic capable of stopping the Akrida leads her to Rowena who offers to trade the magic for the demon that Ada had trapped, intending to torture it for information on Crowley. After testing Ada's magical abilities, Rowena invites Ada to join her coven and provides Ada with a crystal that can kill the Akrida Queen when it is powered by a piece of Ada's own soul. Rowena reveals that the queen will use a planetary alignment to open her portal and Lata discovers that the alignment has already begun.
In a flashback, after John returns from Vietnam, he is given Henry's letter by Dean, who is hunting the Akrida with Bobby Singer. A hunter named Joan Hopkins reveals herself to be the Akrida Queen who, in the 1600s, was driven insane by hunting and consuming monster essences and, convinced that humanity needed to be destroyed, was banished from the world as she couldn't be killed. After Lata is possessed by an Akrida, Ada sacrifices the magic that Rowena gave to her in order to save her friend's life. As John, Carlos and Samuel attempt to stop Joan from opening her portal, the others use the Ostium to try to bring back Dean who was banished by Joan. They succeed in bringing back the Impala which Mary is able to kill Joan with as the car is not of their world, destroying the Akrida as well. Dean rescues Mary from Joan's portal and reveals that the Monster Club is in an alternate universe. While driving through Heaven after his death, Dean had taken a detour through the multiverse looking for a world where his family got a happy ending, only to find the Akrida who were created by Chuck as a failsafe in case of his defeat. With the Akrida threatening Sam's safety as well, Dean defied Jack's orders about no interference to stop them. Before departing with Jack and Bobby, Dean gives his parents his hunter's journal to help guide them and The Colt in case they ever encounter Azazel. When they ask his name, Dean hesitates before giving them a fake name. He then vanishes with Jack and Bobby to return to Heaven. In the aftermath, John and Mary set off to figure out their future together while their friends continue hunting.
Production
Development
On June 24, 2021, it was reported that a prequel series of Supernatural, titled The Winchesters that focuses on Sam and Dean's parents, John and Mary, was in development at The CW. The series is executive produced by Jensen Ackles, his wife Danneel Ackles (who portrayed Anael on the series), and Supernatural writer Robbie Thompson. Ackles also reprise his role as Dean Winchester as the narrator.[3] A pilot order for the series was confirmed by The CW on February 3, 2022; the pilot was directed by Glen Winter.[24]
On March 21, 2022, it was announced that Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger were cast as Mary and John.[25] On May 12, 2022, it was announced that The CW ordered it to series[26] and premiered on October 11, 2022.[27] In August 2022, it was confirmed that Ackles would reprise his role as Dean in a physical appearance in the first episode.[7] On May 11, 2023, the CW canceled the series after one season. Producers Warner Bros. Television planned to shop the show to other outlets.[28] On June 2, 2023, Deadline Hollywood reported that the series had failed to find anyone who would pick it up and all efforts in this direction had ceased.[29] The next day, Ackles confirmed the news and blamed the network shift as well as the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.[30]
Filming
Filming for the pilot episode began in April 2022 throughout New Orleans.[31] Principal photography for the rest of the series began in New Orleans on July 25, and concluded on December 15.[32]
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 8 critic reviews for The Winchesters are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10.[33] On Metacritic, it has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 6 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[34]
Ratings
The Winchesters had the most-watched series debut during the 2022–23 season for The CW. It was also the most-viewed premiere for the season.[35]
Viewership and ratings per episode of The Winchesters
