The ‘Supernatural’ Reunion Hidden Inside ‘The Boys’ Is Even Wilder Than the Episode Itself
For over a decade, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins defined what it meant to be a television fandom. Their time on ‘Supernatural‘ as Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, and Castiel built one of the most passionate fan communities in the medium, and when the show wrapped its final season in 2020, many assumed that particular chapter was permanently closed. What nobody could have fully anticipated was that a superhero satire on Prime Video would be the thing to pull all three of them back into the same room.
The reunion is the work of Eric Kripke, who created both ‘Supernatural’ and ‘The Boys‘ and has been weaving former cast members into the Prime Video series for some time, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan appearing in season four and Ackles joining as the shield-wielding Soldier Boy in season three. Padalecki’s longstanding commitment to the CW series ‘Walker’ had kept him unavailable for years, but once that show was cancelled, the opportunity finally arrived. Collins, for his part, reached out to Kripke directly via email to make sure he would not be left out of the gathering.
The resulting scene, which debuted in the season five episode “One-Shots” on April 29, sees Soldier Boy and Homelander track down Mister Marathon, Padalecki’s character and the original speedster of the Seven, while searching for V1, a serum that could render Homelander immortal. Collins appears as Malchemical, a gas-emitting Supe attending a celebrity poker night at Marathon’s Hollywood mansion. It marked the first time all three leads had shared a screen together in five years, and for devoted fans of the original series, the moment landed with full force.
But the scene that made the final cut was not the only take they filmed. Director Phil Sgriccia suggested the trio try performing the sequence as their ‘Supernatural’ counterparts, meaning Soldier Boy filtered through Dean Winchester, Mister Marathon through Sam Winchester, and Malchemical through Castiel. Ackles told Entertainment Weekly the experiment quickly fell apart, with the group reaching about the halfway point before agreeing it was not working, not funny, and, in his words, just sad.
The candor makes the behind-the-scenes moment all the more endearing. These three spent fifteen years inhabiting some of television’s most beloved characters together, and yet even that deep familiarity could not make the hybrid performance click. What did survive into the finished episode was rich with Easter eggs, including a movie poster inside Marathon’s mansion describing his character as the “Supernatural Speedster,” a detail Kripke said he never commissioned and only discovered after the fact, laughing when he finally saw it and crediting the show’s art department.
The reunion lands at a meaningful moment for ‘The Boys,’ with the series finale set to air on May 20. Ackles, however, is far from done with this universe, having confirmed he will reprise Soldier Boy in the upcoming prequel series ‘Vought Rising,’ which is expected on Prime Video in 2027.
Whether Padalecki or Collins find their way back into that corner of the Kripke world remains an open question, and if you came to “One-Shots” as a lifelong ‘Supernatural’ fan, you probably already have a strong opinion on whether Dean, Sam, and Cas deserve one more shot at sharing the screen together.
