Entrevista a Eric Kripke

Eric Kripke & Robert Singer: Preparing for a demon war

Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) and his brother Sam (Jared Padalecki) return for more demon hunting in season three of The CW’s spooky drama Supernatural. Series creator/showrunner Eric Kripke and fellow executive producer Robert Singer spoke to Abbie Bernstein about where Supernatural has been and where it’s going.

Is season three primarily about retrieving the demons that escaped from Hell at the end of last year?

Eric Kripke: Just like our other seasons’ mythologies, we revisit [the mythology] every four episodes or so. I don’t think we’re really interested in the Scooby Doo version, where every week, they have to put back another soul that escaped from Hell. War has begun, and every few episodes, they fight another battle in that war.

Are you still relying on urban mythology for your monsters?

Eric Kripke: Definitely. Our bread and butter is, and always has been, urban legends and mythology. The majority of the season, 15 out of the 22 episodes, are going to be urban legends. It’s just that interspersed will be this demon war.

You’re introducing two new female characters this year. What are their story functions?

Eric Kripke: They’re not series regulars. We’re not changing the format of the show, where it’s the guys with girlfriends in their backseat every episode. Contractually, the very most they can appear is 12 episodes out of the 22. We feel we learned from some of the missteps we made last year, which was, God love the character and God love Alona [Tal] the actress, we conceived Jo improperly. She ended up being this kind of little sister who was very eager and wanted to be a Hunter.

We feel we can introduce some female characters and do them right this time - which is not to introduce them as love interests, and not to introduce them as friendly supporters of the boys, but introduce them as antagonists. These are the boys’ enemies. And you don’t know if they’re good, you don’t know if they’re bad. They’re dangerous, they’re there to cause more trouble for the boys rather than to make things easier. There’s no love affairs on the cards until we see who the actresses are, how we like them, who they spark to.

What are their characters like?

Eric Kripke: Ruby, played by Katie Cassidy, is a Hunter. She’s brutal, ruthless, rough around the edges, probably more violent than the boys would be comfortable with. She’s got the vibe of our character Gordon in a different package.

And Bella, played by Lauren Cohan, is actually a character we’ve never seen before in this world. She’s not a Hunter – she’s a mercenary. All of these amulets and occult items that the boys find every week are worth lots of money. She’s not interested at all in any altruistic impulse. She’s motivated purely by her own selfish reasons, by how can she profit as much as possible from this world. So she’s not in it to be a fellow Hunter and help the boys; she’s in it to steal things from them and she’s very erudite and sophisticated. She’s English and so there’s a very different vibe to that character.

Are there any production changes this season?

Robert Singer: Less money! No, we have the same production team and it’s a well-oiled machine. We think we’ve got the best-looking show on television and it will continue to be that.

How easy is it to create a ‘demon war’ on the show’s budget?

Eric Kripke: You really choose when to go big; you’re very intelligent about how to depict it. I mean, some of our best episodes last year - and some of our most dire episodes - were fairly limited, had a very contained focus. And ‘big’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘cavalry charging over the hill.’ ‘Big’ means emotional stakes and end-of-the-world stakes.

Robert Singer: And this war is not World War II. It’s a CIA war, it’s a covert war, it’s under the radar war.

Eric Kripke: This war will never be on the six o’clock news, so our boys and other Hunters fight it in secret. Remember that old show, The Invaders? I think it’s like that – where are the demons, what are they doing? Hundreds have been released. Are entire towns demons? Where have they infiltrated? The model is real world terrorism. Where are the bad guys, what are they doing and when are they going to strike?

What did you learn from making the second season?

Eric Kripke: My frank assessment of season two is that I feel we had a stronger, more interesting over-arching mythology in season one. The search for Dad was more interesting and mythic and vibrant rather than, ‘there’s this generation of psychic kids and the demon’s got this plan for them and he wants Sam to be this and if you refer to Flow Chart Five-A, here’s exactly our plan…’

In season one, our mythology was stronger. In season two, our stand-alone episodes were stronger. And in season three, we feel we’ve learned from both of those, and I think we have the same level of stand-alone episodes that we had in season two, with a much more powerful and interesting mythology similar to the one we had in season one - much simpler, much more direct, much more emotional. We feel this is the season to join the party.

We’re not sure we’re going to be back for season four. We sat down with the writers on day one and we said, “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and let’s just kick the doors off it this year.” We knew that in season three there were going to be some really big mythology triggers, and we said, “Let’s pull those triggers and let’s go as big as we can and let’s just have the most exciting season possible.” Up to this point, everything’s been preamble to war, and in this season, the war starts. So we’re thinking it’s the most exciting season yet.

What would you say to fans of the show at this point?

Eric Kripke: Honestly, it’s a direct message to the fans - which is, thank you for loving the show as much as we do, but I have to ask to spread the word. We’re fighting for our lives, we want there to be a season four. If every fan can tell their friends to find this show and that anyone who enjoyed Buffy or X-Files and is looking for that on the air, it’s on The CW network. We want a season four, but that’s going to depend on ratings, and that’s going to depend on the fans.


Segundo esta entrevista o Eric diz que quer que exista uma série 4 mas tudo depende dos fans. Se depender de nós vai haver sobrenatural até á série 100!!!! :)

Créditos: ckll