‘Supernatural’: Jim Beaver on how he pulled a fast one on the fan base

Image Credit: Jack Rowand/The CW

No one told him to do it. But Supernatural actor Jim Beaver, whose character was killed several weeks ago, knew that pretending to have an ongoing movie project in the Vancouver area (where the show films) would throw fans of the show off the scent of his surprise return at the end of the last new episode.

“They didn’t really say anything to me other than ‘Keep it quiet,’” he says. “But I knew I was going to get spotted. I was going to go to the grocery store and someone was going to say that I was here and [assume] I’m coming back to life. So I needed a cover story and made up this story about an abominable snowman movie that I was shooting an hour out of Vancouver. And it turned into something really fun.” Fun and very realistic. After his ultimately temporary departure and before his return, he’d tweet photos, and post updates via Facebook. “If you go back and look at some of those things in retrospect, you’ll get an idea of just how much fun I was having.”

The effort was worth it.

The reveal that Bobby had been following the brothers around in ghost form was something many fans had caught on to — as hints were dropped in the past few weeks. But a reappearance from Beaver in the flesh seemed out of the cards. To be fair, Bobby’s still not “in the flesh,” per se. His spirit, however, shown to be tied to his old flask, which Dean (Jensen Ackles) had carried around since Bobby died.

In this week’s episode, now that we know Bobby has returned, we’ll get a glimpse into his feelings now that he’s a lingering spirit — and all the frustrations that come along with it. “He’s always been a capable hunter and a capable man who does most of what he sets out to do and does it all pretty easily and with a certain amount of flair. All of a sudden, he’s the new kid in school who doesn’t know the rules and keeps making mistakes and isn’t strong enough to do some of the things he needs to do,” Beaver says. “There’s a lot of frustration with him getting his sea legs as a ghost.”

The process is almost immediately complicated by the fact that Bobby finds himself “confronting whatever the ghost equivalent of hunting is.” “He has a task he has to do, and he doesn’t have all his normal tools to accomplish it with,” Beaver previews. His new shortcomings aside, emotionally, Bobby also could be better, especially as resentment toward his predicament sets in. For ghosts, however, any bad feelings could easily lead to a dark path toward becoming a hostile ghost. (More on that in Spoiler Room.) “He has to deal with the boys’ concern of what he may or may not become,” says Beaver. “I think once they realize that he’s back in this new form, they’re going to be very, very worried for him. He’s convinced he can handle it, though. We’ll have to wait and see.”

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