Now here’s some pilot news that I’m completely comfortable reporting, because we KNOW we’ll see at least the pilot, even if it isn’t picked up to series. We’ve reported periodically about what the TV industry refers to as “backdoor pilots”; they appear as an episode of an existing series, and if they do well, they’re picked up as a spinoff series. Most recently we’ve seen that with The Originals, which was introduced as an episode of The Vampire Diaries.
The CW, who shows more of Our Kind of Shows than any other network, is becoming rather expert at the spinoff/backdoor pilot game, as they are planning another to air next month. Entitled Supernatural: Bloodlines (until recently it was going to be Supernatural: Tribes), it will air as the April 29th episode of Supernatural.
It is described as a “sweeping drama about the various mafia-esque monster families that, unknowingly to humans, run the underbelly of Chicago and who are being tracked by a newly minted Hunter who’s trying to stop them and rid Chicago of anything or anyone supernatural.”
The cast is made up of a lot of guest cast from other CW shows. And here they are:
Melissa Roxburgh, formerly Blake on Arrow, Talia on The Tomorrow People, and Lila Taylor on last year’s “Time After Time” episode of Supernatural, will be playing Violet. According to Deadline, Violet is a member of the powerful werewolf pack who hides her true nature because of her forbidden love for family rival David. Speaking of whom…
Nathaniel Buzolic, familiar to fans of The Vampire Diaries as original vampire Kol, will be playing David Hayden, per Deadline a shapeshifter from one of Chicago’s ruling monster families who has been living as a human, having given up the monster life years ago. His family is despised by the Durants, like…
Sean Faris, who was on The Vampire Diaries in its first season as Ben McKittrick (and yes PLL fans, he’s Gabriel), will be playing Julian Durant, the “savagely handsome werewolf son of a wealthy family of lycanthropes who has no love for the shapeshifting Hayden family” according to Deadline. Because I don’t use phrases like “savagely handsome”.
Although Danielle Savre hasn’t been on a CW show before, she still has tangential Our Kind of Show cred since she was cheerleader Claire’s frenemy Jackie on Heroes (and also played one of Hayden Panetierre’s former cheer squad mates on Bring it On: All or Nothing). She’ll be earning that cred in full after this backdoor pilot as she plays Margo Hayden, the acting head of the leading shapeshifter family, an ex-punk rocker-turned-corporate professional who feels threatened only by the return of her prodigal brother David (see above) into the family.
On the hunter side of things, we’ll have Brit Lucien Laviscount playing Ennis Roth, a police academy trainee who learns of the supernatural world when his fiancee is killed in the crossfire of a monster battle.
And back to previous CW actors, as Stephen Martines, Frederick on The Vampire Diaries, will be playing Detective Freddie Costa, a Chicago cop who serves as a mentor to Ennis (above) but also is secretly on the payroll of one of the powerful monster families. Not sure which one, and not sure if he’s only a detective mentor or a hunter mentor. We’ll see.
And there you have it, all the cast we know about for the Supernatural: Bloodlines backdoor pilot. Here’s hoping it’s great and that it gets picked up to series.
The “Bloodlines” episode of Supernatural airs on April 29 on The CW.
