With spring in full stride, there is not a lot to report from Vancouver for Supernatural filming obviously.

The new season, their 10th, will begin in July. Till then, I have a few odds & ends left over from the past 2 years that I never used for whatever reason in the past.

A few from their fan conventions they have here yearly of Misha Collins, Jim Beaver, DJ Qualls & others.

Also, a few shots of Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles returning from Chicago after shooting the failed backdoor pilot for Bloodlines, which was episode 20 of this past season. Plus Misha Collins leaving town during a break.

Lastly some departing shots of Mark Sheppard and Jensen Ackles as they left Vancouver at the end of season 9.

So first up... a few old shots from past Convention weekends.

I cant be sure, but I think I have managed to see Misha Collins out & about almost every con weekend here. Some shots here from 2012, and 2013 of Castiel roaming the city during the weekend.

As well Jim Beaver stops to talk to some fans in the courtyard.

DJ Qualls grabs a snack in his downtime.

While I personally will never support these conventions, it is still cool for those of you with no other way to ever see these stars to have the chance I guess. Vancouver being the hometown of the show always seems to nab a pretty decent roster.

A few months ago I caught up with Misha Collins as he left town during Christmas break. Below are a few photos from that encounter.

As well, a few photos of Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles returning to Vancouver after filming episode 20 in Chicago. The episode, which was intended to be a backdoor pilot for a spin off that got axed needed a few shots of them in Chicago, so the pair left for 2 days of shooting.

Upon returning, I asked both of them how the filming for that went and they both had similar replies....cold. Apparently, the mild Vancouver winters had not prepared them properly for the real winters that Chicago can have, and both of them were less than excited with having to work in those condition.

When I joked that it probably made them appreciate Vancouver's weather a bit more, they both were pretty quick to agree.

Last batch of photos is of the post-season 9 departures of the cast.

First up was Mark Sheppard. The man who plays Crowley was in a good mood upon finishing his season 9 filming. When I told him I hoped he would be back for season 10, he played it coy & acted as if he didn't already know Crowley survived.

A little while later I caught up with Jensen Ackles for the final time of the season.

He was also in a great mood. The man who plays Dean Winchester seemed pretty happy to have some time off. Seemed excited to finally get some time to spend with his new daughter, Justice Jay whom he rarely saw for more than a weekend throughout most of the season.

He asked us if we got Jared leaving that morning. Both my buddy and I were disappointed to learn we picked the wrong flight to cover for him.  But also thankful at least Jensen let us know so we didn't waste time waiting on him either. Just wish he had told us BEFORE he started signing.. I would have focused on solo items, instead of duo items that I now need to get Jared on eventually. Oh well.

So that's it for my SPN photo dump.

I MIGHT do a Season 9 review sometime soon. I've started doing reviews, episodic, seasonal or complete series ones. Although so far I only really have 1 review up (for the How I Met Your Mother series finale). But I have started writing an entire S9 review...perhaps I'll have it finished before they start filming season 10.

As always, you can check out my Supernatural autographs gallery for any of the signed items obtained over the past few seasons I still have.

See you soon season 10.

THIS BLOG POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR AN EPISODE OF SUPERNATURAL SEASON 9 (POSSIBLY EP 9 OR 10). If you do not wish to view or read spoilers about the show, do not continue reading or viewing the photos below.
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last warning
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Yesterday the cast & crew of the hit CW sci-fi/drama "Supernatural" were at work in a familiar location to them, the Astoria Hotel in East Vancouver. They have used this place more than once over the years & were back there filming a variety of scenes yesterday.

Early in the day they did interior scenes at the hotel that had Jared & Jensen in their typical FBI suits. What was unexpected was that they were also there with another show regular, Misha Collins....who also was suited up.

Has out fallen angel joined the group? Or was this a 1 off situation? Well, it will clearly take us a few weeks to find out. When I saw Misha leaving the set I was quite unprepared for it & thus, wasnt exactly ready for him & hastily tried to get a couple photos of the suit covered Castiel. When they left for lunch, I got a few better pics of him as he & Jensen left together. Absent from the carload was Jared, who I saw driving by me a couple minutes later with his wife (guess she came by to pick him up for lunch?)  Genevieve.

I too left. I came back later to see scenes being prepped in an alley behind the Astoria. On the film notice it said "two actors..." and I just assumed Jensen & Jared would be there.

Instead, I got the surprise of Jared being there, but not with Jensen, but with Curtis Armstrong, aka... Metatron.

The body language of Jared in the scenes suggested to me this was a conversation between Metatron & Ezekiel, and not Sam.

Not much to report on the scene. The dialogue seemed to be lengthy, but I clearly had no clue what was being said as you can tell by my shot of how far away I was. Which is also the explanation for why many of the photos look terribly grainy since I was about a block & 1/2 away.

When filming was done, the boys driver drove down the alley, with Jared in the passengers seat. When they got to the end of the alley, the vehicle stopped about 15 feet short of the 3 girls, me and another very passionate fan who had a bike that I am sure some of you have seen. Jared got out of the truck, and came & met with the girls and got his photo on the mans bike. As he passed by me, he gave me a quick playful jab in the ribs & said "I thought you'd be sick of us by now" before he moved on to getting his photo taken with the girls.

Then he asked his driver to take his photo on the bike...which of course, any of you with twitter have since seen in this post.

After that, we congratulated him on his recent accomplishment of a million twitter followers, he said thanks, and was on his way.

THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS NOTABLE CHARACTER SPOILERS FOR A CHARACTER ON "SUPERNATURAL" IN SEASON 9. Do not read the article or view the photos if you don't want to see any spoilers for the 9th season.
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last warning
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With so many productions in Vancouver this year, it seems like I just don't spend much time on SPN this year, but its not true. They just simply havent been around as much where I am willing to go to.

But with the film notice I got a week earlier stating they were going to film about 200 feet from my door, I knew they would be in my area that day...and sure enough they were.

After finding the set the night before at our old Vancouver Police Department HQ & missing both the Winchesters & Castiel in different scenes, I caught them out the next day.

First up, I found Castiel (Misha Collins) looking quite un-Cas like. As some of you already know from reading a blog from another local set bloggers report, Castiel was recently seen sneaking into a Laundromat. He has shed his trademark trenchcoat (at the cleaners?) & is now adapting to being a human after last years finale which saw all the angels fall to earth.

This particular day I found Cas roaming the streets of a Michigan city Chinatown area. Two things that caught my interest in the scene.
1st - seems human Cas now notices girls. He does a double take in the scene of a busty actress who does a walk by before he continues on his walk.
The 2nd scene - one that I tweeted about & many of you loved enough to make it probably my most retweeted post ever (certainly in a long time) as 300+ retweets & 150+ Favorites in less than 48 hours, was a scene where he gives change to a woman sitting on the ground with a cup.

Even down & out and probably broke, the fallen Angel decides to give what little money he probably had to a stranger on the street. This could be an interesting plot twist to the fallen angel storyline, will they learn anything by being humans? We have seen in earlier seasons, some of the angels saw human beings as annoyances. Will they learn compasion or empathy for us now that they see what we have to endure daily? 

Of course, we wont know if/when the Winchesters will cross paths with their friend, but for now, it seems Castiel is all by himself.

The day prior he did scenes that consisted of him looking in garbage (probably for food?) behind a restaurant, and hiding between two garbage cans in the rain. Looks like tough times for the man who used to get places by simply thinking about it.

I will have another set, this one of the Winchester boys doing their thing in a night scene soon.

This past weekend, the largest promotional event for TV, movies & animation happened in San Diego.

Comic-Con took place from Wednesday night thru Sunday evening, as thousands  of people went to San Diego to see new promotional materials of their fave shows, movies & comic franchises. Of course, they also went for the stars. Comic-Con has become a promotional tool, and that means bringing your biggest stars to promote your product.

After an epicly horrid year last year for Vancouver shot shows (mainly because SDCC was earlier than years prior & a later than usual start for a  couple shows) there was very little in the way of seeing the Vancouver based shows & movies going to, or returning from the big event.

This year however, it was the opposite. Every show, wit the exception of 2, that were at SDCC had some or all of their cast that attended go through Vancouver Airport to get to SDCC.

Supernatural sent off 4 of their most notable cast. Misha Collins, who plays angel Castiel, and Mark Sheppard who plays the king of hell Crowley, both went to the event. While we didnt see them going to or coming back, we did catch the shows 2 largest stars returning.

Jensen Ackles (aka - Dean Winchester) was the 1st to return, and took the unfamiliar route of coming down "the row" a long railed off area that most celebs take to get out of the airport. This was possibly the 1st time I can remember him going this way, and clearly if it werent for him having to find his driver that he gets on the Comic-Con dime he likely wouldnt have gone that way.

Jensen stopped to sign for everyone there & was in a really good mood. Certainly better mood than last time I saw him when he refused to sign for me because as he put it I was "on the bucket list" (yes, thats the list I was on apparently) for angering Jim Beaver by breaking his return scoop allegedly (I was contacted by someone from SPN about that blog post saying they were displeased with me posting it.). But new season & the responsiblity of being a dad now, all is forgotten on that 1 off encounter last year, as I expected would be the case. We said we heard about Jareds baby announcement and he replied "ah, oh, thats out there?". I congratulated him on his new child, he  thanked us all for the congrats & went on his way.

About 5 minutes later (oh the joys of a camera that records the time the pics were shot eh?), Jared Padalecki (aka - Sam Winchester) strolled thru. Like Jensen, there was some baby news of his own to congratulate him on since the last time I saw him last season. His wife Genevieve & him had announced during SDCC they were expecting their 2nd child soon. I recall seeing Jared for the 1st time after his 1st child & he was pretty overjoyed at the whole thing. He glowed with that same excitement talking about the 2nd one. I also wished him a happy belated birthday & he thanked me for that too. He then went on his way to find his driver.


As he was leaving, he saw us getting autographs from Colton Haynes from Arrow & was peering over out shoulders to see who we were getting.

A little while later we also saw Lucifer coming into town...but that isn't because Mark Pellegrino is here to resurrect the role, he is on the Vancouver shot "Tomorrow People". As well, saw Jim Michaels returning

 At Comic-Con several things were announced for the show. Most notably.

- Felicia Day will be back this season to play her character Charlie, the geeky lesbian "little sister" type the Winchesters have crossed paths with a few times the last couple seasons. 

- Jim Beaver (this time without trying to sneak in & out for his work) will return this season, but apparently there will be something different about his return. 

- A Supernatural spin-off is being discussed. Will it be Castiel? Or Garth? Or Charlie? Its really the only options I can see, unless they did a back story of Bobby? 

Here are photos of Jensen & Jared returning from SDCC.

Let me start off by saying, my favorite emails I get are delusional hate mails. They truly are fun to read.... Sooo, before I get onto last nights adventure, I thought I would share 1 of these nuggets of wisdom, and my very professional & personable reply to them.

So, last night the cast of Supernatural returned from their Chicago fan convention.

AS EXPECTED (except by the crazies who think the world is a conspiracy theory)all the stars coming to Vancouver came in together. Jared Padalecki (with his wife Genevieve, and son Thomas), Jensen Ackles, with their bodyguard "Clig?" & Misha Collins.

After my encounter, as I usually do, I tweeted about my success & failures. Had a couple questions about it, tred to answer as many as I could before bed. Then woke up & read my "fan mail"

Usually, an email like that would get a snarky reply from me, and no follow up "proof", because I believe in not negotiating with terrorists. They want the pics, so they try to bully them out of you with "pics or it didnt happen" philosophy. A couple times over the years I have posted photos because of such whining, but 90% of the time, I usually let the nutjobs debate my "lies" in their tinfoil hat clubs.

This particular email woulda got the same enthusiastic level of "go fuck yourself, I dont care what you believe", but I did have several people on twitter & email say "I dont care how grainy they are...please, can I see them".  So I uploaded them into my computer & looked to see if anything was salvagable, and was mildly suprised to see that while still shitty, they werent horrendously impossible to identify the persons in them shitty. So I decided, I'll add them.

Now, lots of confusion on several facts that were asked via twitter, and this charming chap or lass above that I'll possibly explain in the actual blog part of this post.

I got to the airport and ran into another autograph hound, who much to my chagrin didnt even have anything for the SPN guys except for Jensen. Wish I had known that sooner, he coulda helped me with my plethora of Jared photos I still have to get done.

Once the flight landed, Jensen came out about 11:55'ish (give or take a couple mins) and was being escorted by their bodyguard. As I saw them approach I realized their driver was going to meet them at the door. The door only opens from the inside, with Clif there, it was no shock, but they let their driver inside & went thru the out door that was right there. I now had a 150-200 ft speed walk around the side to get outside & hurry down towards where the vehicles were waiting. As you can see by my pics, never got really too close. Knowing Jared still had to come, I snapped a couple quick pics, hoped maybe I got something & knowing damn well I probably didnt, and headed back inside.

About 10 or so minutes later, Jared popped up on the screen, with Gen a Porter and a bunch of luggage. Gen had Thomas in 1 of those carry them on the front of you things mothers use, while Jared walked along with her & the porter. As they came around the corner, I snapped a couple pics of them as I knew by the time they got to the door, I might have to run outside. So I didnt even wait to see if they went thru the inside or went right outside, I headed straight outside. Sure enough, thats what happened as well. I made the beeline outside knowing they will be slower with the porter pushing all the stuff & Gen carrying Thomas & I might actually have a chance to get up to them. I made it out there in plenty of time this time. As I waited for them to get to the vehicle, I displayed my photos to Jared & asked if he can sign (contractually, hes not allowed to till Midnight) and was all ready to tell him "but its after midnight" when he took a quick look at his watch and then replied "sure" and proceeded to sign. He then said he hadnt seen me in a while, I told him I was out of town for awhile, he asked where, I told him Toronto, he said "oh, I was just there last month" which of course I knew.

While the driver & porter were loading the vehicle, I broached the question to Jared "can Gen sign right now, or is it a bad ti..." "yeah sure" then he called Gen over, and she signed, while Thomas sat in the contraption I dont know the name of. I said hi to Thomas, and he didnt even say hi back, how rude eh?

Jared & I talked for a few more seconds, I asked him about getting a photo of him & Gen together. He thought for a second about it & replied "maybe another time, when shes not with thomas" & I knew he was basically saying "haha, no.. I know what your trying to do", but he was quite cordial & professional in declining it I thought. I then let them go on their way.

When I got back inside the other autograph hound told me "Mishas over there" & although I had nothing for him, I went to say hi. He was busy trying to figure out where his driver was. Seems his driver wasnt as familiar with what he looks like as he shoulda been. In the drivers defense, Misha was wearing a touque, so he probably did look a bit different. I told Misha, I think that was his driver (with his face almost pressed up against the glass he was so close) looking longingly into the arrival area for his client. He started walking over, and the manager/head driver of the co. was just coming back in from escorting Jared out (I thought he drove him, but appears not), and I told Misha "ask him" & sure enough he summoned the driver against the glass to come over, and Misha was eventually on his way too.

Because these photos are, to be honest, some of the worst ones I've taken, I didnt even tag them. IF you repost them anywhere, please include a link to the source. If people can play by these rules, I'll try to be less intrusive with the tags I put on the better photos in the future.

For all this time, some of you thought it was Sam & Dean, or Dean & Cas that were the couple who might be "too close". Wellll, this bombshell may floor you all.

I recently saw the angel Castiel jumping into the back of a camper van with none other than the "abomination" as hes called him in the past, Sam Winchester.

I know some of you very very inappropriately minded people are going to run with this in a direction you shouldnt go to. I am sure your assumptions are being taken out of context and when we see the episode, this scene will make more sense..... or, the creative team have sold a spin-off show to a cable network & this is them doing a scene of that on the side.

Anyways... here is the said video. SORRY its so dark, I dont really know much about editing videos to make it brighter... I am sure 1 of you tech savvy fans will figure it out and home (and possibly tell me?). Just remember, DO NOT re-post it anywhere, as I will have it taken down. Feel free to post the LINK TO THIS BLOG POST, but taking the video & re-posting it anywhere, including your own sites, tumblr, youtube, livejournal etc etc wont be tolerated. I will post this on youtube when I get around to it. For now, this SHOULD be the only place to see it.

TO BEST VIEW THIS VIDEO - please select full screen option. The video player inside the blog post will cut off the right side of the screen for some reason.