Interview: Eric Kripke from Supernatural

We had the pleasure of chatting with Eric Kripke the creator and executive producer of Supernatural at Comic Con ’09. He talked with us about the 5th season, if there will be a 6th season, and the feedback he’s gotten on the series from fans.

What does, “God has the left the building,” mean?

Eric Kripke: God in the mythology of our show has gone missing. He’s not in heaven. There is a bureaucracy of angels who don’t necessarily have the most benevolent intent – who are running things in his absences. That’s sort of why Zachariah and his ilk have jump-started the apocalypse. I think they just got impatient and there was no one telling them not to.

Did God go on a vision quest and he’s just in the wilderness, or was there foul play?

Eric Kripke: I’m not going to reveal that, and the reason I’m not going to reveal is because – not in anytime of the first half of the season – but God will be a character in Supernatural this season. Which has lead to no end of hilarity in the writer’s room of Supernatural trying to break God’s motivation. We’re like, “What would God do?” “What’s his motivation in this scene?” We start laughing and say well Gossip Girl doesn’t have these problems.

He will be a character. I’m not going to reveal how or where. He’s not going to thread in anytime soon. This is the big season. We felt we couldn’t bring on the devil without bringing on God too. It brings us no end to amusement that our little show has these characters, and is asking these kinds of questions. Hopefully, we don’t bore everyone silly this season.

You said that you had a five-year plan for the show. This is going to be season five, so what are your plans?

Eric Kripke: The real answer is that we never dreamt it would go five years. At least I didn’t. So yes, there was a five-year plan, and a five-year story. We are in the fifth year of that story. This is the last chapter of this volume. We plan on telling it well and climatically. We certainly are also batting around ideas, and there’s no reason why there can’t be another volume, and no reason a new epic story can’t begin. We’re not going to stretch this one out past its expiration date. We’re not going to drag this one to a place it isn’t. We’re going to tell it the way it supposed to be told and it’s going to end. Another story can begin. That’s what we’re preparing for, and well just see how the season goes.

You would be on-board for a new story?

Eric Kripke: I’m going to cross that bridge when I get to it. I am breaking episode six of the season. My head is so far away from season six that I honestly have no idea. I’m very interested in anything can happen. I need to see how this season goes first.

What has the network told you about this season after the show exploded with critic acclaim and popularity?

Eric Kripke: They’ve been really supportive from the beginning in the key and most important way. They’ve always let us do exactly what we wanted to do. I mean, we are sort of in the CW class and we’re the Goth kid is sitting in the back row. They don’t try to pretty us up. Which is great. They let us do what we want. They let us have episodes about suicide and death and gore. And then episodes about angels and God, and angels that swear and are cruel. I appreciate that because I’ll definitely take that. The creative freedom is great, and they let us just kind of work in our mad laboratory.

Have you gotten any negative feedback on how God and angels are being portrayed on the show?

Eric Kripke: Nothing major, which shocks me quite frankly. I still kind of keep waiting for more. Not really. Every so often you catch on websites with just random comments that people don’t like where the angels story is going. Even though there are malevolent angels, that doesn’t mean we’re still not talking in overall order of the universe. Again, God being a character was not saying there aren’t more benevolent higher powers at play here. Funny enough we’re actually becoming a very religious show. We’ve actually heard anecdotally, fundamentalist really love the show [laughs]. I swear! I swear! One of our writers has friends of friends, from where he grew up, that know a group of fundamentalists. No other show on television has ever talked about end times with any vague references to the Bible. I think they appreciate it, even though we’re saying angels are evil and it’s a Godless universe, and God is either missing or dead. I think they just appreciate the little we are talking about it.

Was this the direction you planned the show to originally, or did it just kind of happen?

Eric Kripke: These things always evolve. The main thrust of the plan is happening. The reality is, when you sit out in the beginning you sit out with a cocktail napkin sketch of what you want the season to be. The progression of demons and evil, which is what I was initially interested in. What’s the bad guy plan? What are they up to? And that’s always been the same of building from Yellow Eyes, to Lilith, to now the Devil. That was sort of how I structured it, and that’s where we’re going. You can go back to interviews I gave where I said I’m not putting angels on this show, screw that. The angels kind of evolved because we started to realize that we needed this sort of cosmic battle. We had the empire, but we didn’t really have the rebellion. We sort of saw that missing. Then we started talking more and more about angels, and that we wanted to open the door to a whole new real-estate. It has triggered all sorts of stories. But if you look at what the main thrust of mythology is, it’s always what the demons are up to. Now the devil is bringing about the end of the world, and all that was still going to be true – that the fifth season was going to be the apocalypse. At the beginning of last year we said that we should maybe have warriors fighting in the apocalypse, so that’s sort of how that evolved.

Can you expand a little about Castiel’s decision at the end to defy the others?

Eric Kripke: He’s totally, totally screwed in season five. You’ll even see the clip at the panel if you get a chance to see that. Things didn’t end well with him and the archangel that came down. I can say this – certainly throughout episode 1, he is dead and exploded into gory smithereens. If you noticed, he’s in the room so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. So he’s on the run, he’s fallen, they’re hunting him down, he’s cutoff from where he was. He’s now sort of lost and scared and alone with the guys. Everyone’s totally boned as their trying to stop the apocalypse from happening. There’s basically about four good guys trying to stop the apocalypse.

Interview By: Emma Loggins

– Supernatural Series

– Comic Con Gallery

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