Supernatural: Sam & Dean Face Isolation

At the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour this week, I spoke to one of Supernatural's executive producer, Robert Singer (the namesake of Supernatural character Bobby Singer). Singer discussed the recent loss of Bobby and Castiel from Sam and Dean's lives and what the future may hold for those characters on the anything goes world of the show, plus this week's time travel episode and more.

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IGN TV: Sam and Dean have gone through so much, but Bobby was, in a lot of ways, their life line. Continuing forward, I would assume this loss will continue to be a huge weight on them?

Robert Singer: It's a weight they're going to carry for a number of episodes and that was kind of the idea of doing that to Bobby. Cutting that life line, they really were sort of out there alone. At the beginning of the year, that's really what we were aiming for – to isolate them and see how they behave with no real life line and probably the biggest adversary they've faced in seven years. That was kind of our plan.

IGN: They don't have Bobby, they don't have Castiel… They don't have any of their usual support.

Singer: The models were Butch and Sundance in modern times or The Wild Bunch. Strip them of the things that are normal to them – just going into motel rooms, driving the Impala, all those things. Take all that away from them and see how they behave and how they operate under this enormous pressure. And a big part of that pressure is the people they were closest to, they can't turn to. They're not there anymore!

IGN: We left Bobby with a major question, as he was at death's door. At what point will we find out the answer to that question?

Singer: We'll find out soon. And yeah, Bobby will be back. In what form, that I'm not gonna give you!

IGN: Without getting into specifics, I imagine it must be interesting for you to explore from time to time, even with that one episode where Bobby was dying, these guys who fight the Supernatural being on the other side of that equation.

Singer: Yeah. We do this quite a bit over the course of seven seasons. They've been in the veil themselves. All the times Death has bailed them out… And that's something that we're always interested in doing is looking at things from the other side. A number of years ago, we had Dean being wooed by a Reaper to come over. We sort of feel there's no bounds. We push it as far as we think the audience will take and try to keep it grounded in the reality of these characters, and that seems to have worked okay so far.

IGN: We know Castiel is coming back. Anything at all you can say about where we might find him, who's been through quite a bit himself in the past couple of years?

Singer: All I'll say about that is that the Castiel we find is not exactly the Castiel we left.

IGN: Last we saw, Castiel had briefly switched back to the guy we knew -- after proclaiming himself God -- and then the Leviathans took him over.

Singer: He went through a lot! [Laughs]

IGN: [Laughs] So will this be a brand new iteration or a variation on something we've seen before?

Singer: It's pretty much a brand new iteration.