The CW network has a surprise smash hit on its hands with the Supernatural spinoff The Winchesters. The show premiered on Tuesday night and instantly became the network’s most-watched premiere this season.
The show pulled in 781,000 viewers, according to TVLine. It’s not completely surprising, however, as Supernatural is an extremely popular show for the network with a sizable built-in audience. There are also some surprises on the way and a lot of buzz.
At New York Comic Con, it was announced that another huge CW star would be joining the cast of the show – Tom Welling, who played a young Clark Kent in Smallville. Welling will play Samuel Campbell, father of Mary (played by Meg Donnelly) and the grandfather of the Winchester’s sons Sam and Dean.
In Supernatural, Mitch Pileggi played the same role previously. Another person with a superhero background will also join the cast: Bridget Regan, who played Poison Ivy on Batwoman. She’ll play Rockin’ Roxy, according to Comicbook.com.
In the show, Roxy is a “honey-voiced pirate Radio DJ.” She commandeers the airwaves to “broadcast a wicked new sound. Not surprisingly, being the world of Supernatural and all, Roxy’s listeners aren’t all of the human variety.”
Showrunner Robbie Thompson told EW he wanted the prequel to show audiences things they’d never seen before and that were different than anything in Supernatural. The first episode did that by introducing a monster that looked like a huge insect.
“One of the things that we talked about was how can we introduce something that hadn’t been seen before,” Thompson said about the insect monster. “It was kind of also just a proof of concept of what we wanted to do with the show was, ‘How could we shine a light on new corners of the Supernatural universe that maybe just hadn’t been brought to light on the mothership?'”
The Winchesters airs on the CW on Tuesdays.