'Supernatural': Jensen Ackles on playing a 'super demon,' what's next

Heading into Supernatural‘s 10th season, showrunner Jeremy Carver has teased that this year’s mythology will be “very, very personal” for all of our favorite characters. But before we can get to that chapter, we have to deal with all things Demon Dean.

From the promos, we know that Demon Dean is a fan of strip clubs, karaoke, and porn. But how does he feel about his younger brother—and what is Sam willing to do to find him? We talked with Jensen Ackles about playing the Deanmon and what comes next. You know, after all the evil.

EW: When we catch up with him, has Demon Dean come into his own? Is he enjoying being awful?

Jensen Ackles: Yeah—I think to say the very least, he is enjoying being awful. It’s interesting because it’s actual Dean’s twisted soul, not a demon that has possessed Dean’s body. [So] there are those traces of Dean that are still left in this version. But as we saw in season 9, the weight and the guilt and the stress and all of those things kind of piled on Dean. He was having a rough go of it. You mix that with the Mark of Cain, and with his brother not trusting him anymore, and all the guilt that he was carrying with him regarding his brother and Gadreel and so on and so forth—he was bordering depression.

And now, being a demon, none of that’s there. He doesn’t have a care in the world. So it’s less about him being demonic and evil and sinister, and it’s much more about him being carefree and jovial and doing things regardless of the consequences. He could give two sh-ts of what anybody thinks, including Crowley, which ends up being a bit of a situation.

So with the Mark of Cain still around, does it make him a stronger demon?

It’s kind of a demon on steroids. It’s like a super demon. I think that he doesn’t necessarily know how to control it as a human, and he doesn’t even know how to control it as a demon, and that will continue to be a problem as the season goes forward.

Is Demon Dean our biggest worry this season, or will we top that at some point?

I would say that it most certainly is a worry for the beginning of the season. But as I’m sure most people know, it’s not going to last forever. We don’t want to see a whole season of Supernatural without one of its main characters, so Dean will eventually come back into the fold and will be saved by some miraculous event.

Once that happens, then it’s essentially, the boys are back together, they’re on the road, and they’ve kind of got to bridge that gap that’s kept them so far apart over the past year—from the possession of Gadreel to Dean going dark side and being with Crowley. And then also, I’ve got to think of what Sam had to do or what he’s trying to do to get his brother back. He might tend to go a little dark. He gets pretty desperate, so there’s a lot of bridging gaps to be done once that situation does rectify itself. But once that happens, then of course, there’s gotta be something on the horizon for more of the characters involved.

The Winchesters need a camping therapy trip.

Oh yeah. If there was a family counseling vacation, they need to go on it, for sure. For hunters, that is. Ex-angels, ex-demons, ex-everything.

Does Demon Dean even appreciate a bacon cheeseburger?

Absolutely. In fact, he appreciates all of the guilty pleasures. And he has no problem indulging in them. So yeah, you’ll see that.

Once Dean is back to being Dean, is Cas’s fading grace on his top list of priorities?

Yeah. There’s a bit of a shelf-life on his grace. It’s a massive issue, and of course, Cas being the martyr that he is, he’s going to put that aside and do what he can to help Sam fix Dean. That being said, yeah, the issue of his grace fading is going to need to be addressed, and it’s going to need to be addressed very quickly. I will say that it gets addressed, but it does not get cured.

Supernatural returns tonight at 9 p.m. on The CW.