'Supernatural's Getting A Musical Episode

Joss Whedon, what hath you wrought? The 200th episode of The CW's broody-brothers show is coming right around the bend, and now we actually know what it has in store: Supernaturalis doing a musical episode. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't do this years ago.

A few years into its run, Supernatural — which is going into its tenth season on The CW this fall — saw a sharp uptick in its own meta with an episode that saw Dean and Sam Winchester traveling through different television channels at the whims of an alleged trickster god. They visited a spoofy version of Grey's Anatomy (feat. Dr. Sexy), a herpes commercial, a hammed-up sitcom, etc. Soon enough, the meta episodes were piling on top of each other: They discovered a prophet had written books about them that had a small but devoted fan following and a lot of slash fiction; they met one of their fangirls, a girl named Becky with some boundary issues; they attended a fan convention where they were the stars. In one episode they travel to an alternate universe in which they are not Dean and Sam Winchester, but actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki, complete with at least one real-life wife and reference to Ackles' past roles as a daytime soap stud.

In other words, in the realm of Supernatural, a musical episode's hardly the weirdest thing they've ever pulled. In fact, the show's long been a disciple of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's teachings, and Buffy practically invented the musical episode.

So what will Supernatural's musical episode look like? Well, it'll certainly be written on the back of some of the aforementioned meta moments the show's indulged in in the past. Just don't expect it to be centered around Ackles or Padelecki singing at the whim of a Broadway-loving demon as was the case on Buffy. As Padelecki told Zap2It:

We’re not at a convention, but we’re at a place where they’re doing a play based on the Chuck Shurley books. So not only are these books based on our lives, now people are doing a play based on these books, and someone is haunting it, so we go and try to investigate what’s going on at this play, based on the books about our lives.

Expect it to be a few as-of-yet-anonymous fanboys taking up the singing. Though, Ackles proved in the past he's got the chops, if Dean wants to jump in:

Executive Producer Jeremy Carver also teased the episode a little bit at the Television Critics Association press tour:

I think it’ll be one of the more amusing and engaging episodes we’ve done in a while. We’re going pretty meta. I would just describe it as something of a love letter to our fans, and there will be songs.

From the sound of this, it'll be more Fringe musical episode than Grey's Anatomy, and we'll get to see Sam and Dean's lives (and deaths) reenacted in front of us, musical-style. One can only hope there'll be a love song with Cas.

Image: The CW