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These 'Supernatural' Stars Break Down That Totally Tragic Cliffhanger

by Sydney Bucksbaum
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The newest member of Team Free Will has officially lost his innocence on Supernatural (airing Thursdays at 8 p.m. on The CW). Half angel, half human Jack (Alexander Calvert) was doing so well during his time with Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), learning the ropes of being a hunter and actually managing to get Dean to warm up to him ... until all hell broke loose. In tonight's cowboy-themed episode, "Tombstone," while Dean was living his childhood dream of getting to play Texas Ranger while working a case, Jack used his nephilim powers to save the day.

He didn't realize just how strong he was, though, and an innocent bystander paid the ultimate price for Jack's recklessness. A small town cop was accidentally killed via Jack's telekinetic abilities, and Jack couldn't handle the weight of his grief, guilt and shame. Despite having been reunited with Castiel (Misha Collins) — which "means everything to him," according to Calvert — and the Winchesters not blaming Jack for the man's death, Jack used his powers to push everyone back so he could leave, and the guys have no idea where he'll end up moving forward.

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"Jack at this point is really naive to the world and to get his first taste of being responsible for something so terrible really weighs on him and throws him in a direction that he's not ready for," Calvert tells Bustle along with a small group of reporters on the Supernatural set in Vancouver. "That's going to lead him to make his next decision and his next progress of where Jack is."

Since Jack is half his human mother, who was a force for good, he is also half his angel father, Lucifer (Mark Pelligrino), so he could go either way when it comes to the battle of good vs. evil. This act of killing an innocent will start to push Jack down a path that Sam and Dean were worried about.

"Moving forward is him taking on that darkness that he wasn't really ready for yet," Calvert says. As for where Jack has gone, "working would be a good way to put it," he says. "He's definitely trying to figure himself out and because of the guilt of what happens in 'Tombstone,' he really pushes himself forward because he's so guilty and messed up for hurting this person who was innocent."

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Sam and Dean were completely shocked by Jack's disappearance by the end of the hour, with literally no clue where he would go after leaving the Men of Letters bunker. At least they had some good news during the episode in the form of Cas' resurrection, since they both thought they would never see their angel BFF again. After Jack called out for Cas, he woke up in the dark void where angels and demons go when they die, and was sent back to the land of the living. For Dean, who was completely hopeless and lost all his faith after Cas died and his mother Mary (Samantha Smith) disappeared into the alternate world with Lucifer, the return of Cas signals the beginning of the return of Dean's faith.

"It obviously affects it big time," Ackles say, sitting next to Padalecki wearing matching blue flannel shirts. "At the end of last season and the beginning of this season we do see that Dean has just given up, so to speak. So the return of Cas has ignited that fire again. He's got some hope and motivation to dig a little deeper and see what we can figure out."

Since Dean had wrongly written Cas off and assumed there was nothing that could be done to save him, he's starting to realize that maybe other's he's written off like his mother and "a few other people that shouldn't have been written off," according to Ackles.

"And we figure that out as the series continues to move on," he says. "Dean's a little less questioning [of how Cas returned] and more accepting of 'I don't care how it happened, we got our buddy back.'"

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As for Sam, Padalecki likens the younger Winchester brother to the "chef" where Dean is the "consumer."

"Where Dean eats the pizza, Sam's like, 'What kind of cheese is that?'" Padalecki says. "Sam is looking to find out what happened and how did it happen, not just because of Sam's intellectual curiosity but Sam still wants mom back. And, heck, if we can start calling out who we want back, I'm sure there are a lot of people Sam wouldn't mind to bring back."

While Dean is "so relieved to have that win he's looking for and to have our buddy back," Sam, while in agreement that Cas' return is great, "'To quote Dean — the other shoe is probably going to drop,'" Padalecki says. "'So what else can [Jack] do?'"

Hopefully he can learn from his mistakes and realize that accidents happen, or else Jack is about to go down a dark path for which no one is prepared.