Casting The third season introduced two new series regulars, both of whom were credited as starring in select episodes.
Katie Cassidy portrayed the demon
Ruby, who was created to change the perception of demons into more of a
grey area, rather than the "black and white", "They're evil, we're good" approach previously used in the series. In response to fan concerns about the characters, series creator
Eric Kripke stated, "[Ruby and Bela are] there for important plot elements, but it's not the Ruby and Bela show, nor is it about the four of them cruising around in the
Impala together. It's about the guys." Budgetary reasons brought about the replacement of Cassidy for the fourth season, while the character of Bela was removed due to the negative fan reaction. While there were new faces for the third season, much of the cast carried over from the previous year. Actor
Jim Beaver returned as hunter
Bobby Singer, and felt the character had grown into a surrogate father for Sam and Dean over time.
Richard Speight Jr. returned as
the Trickster in "Mystery Spot", as did
Travis Wester and
A. J. Buckley in "Ghostfacers" as
Harry Spangler and Ed Zeddmore. Portraying "bumbling versions" of the Winchesters, Wester and Buckley improvised many of their lines. The writers also considered bringing back
Charles Malik Whitfield for a recurring role, with his character,
FBI Agent Victor Henriksen, continues his hunt for the brothers throughout the season. Whitfield stated his willingness to relocate to Vancouver, but the writers ultimately went a different direction. Because the threat of being captured by Henriksen looms over the Winchesters all season, the writers wanted to bring the plotline to a close in "Jus in Bello". Kripke suggested that Gamble develop and deepen his character, "give him a great send off, and then kill him...or at least...mostly kill him". With the character last seen being confronted by the demon Lilith, Gamble noted that Agent Henriksen's fate was left ambiguous, and that she herself was uncertain. Filming for the movie
Watchmen prevented
Jeffrey Dean Morgan from returning in a dream sequence as
John Winchester in "Dream a Little Dream of Me", but the actor was able to provide his voice for the episode "Long Distance Call". The
2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike forced the writers to scrap an episode featuring the return of
Samantha Ferris as
Ellen Harvelle in the middle of the season, and failed negotiations prevented an appearance in the finale. Some casting choices were influenced by affiliations with the actors and crew.
Sandra McCoy, who played a host to the
Crossroads Demon in "Bedtimes Stories", began dating Padalecki after working with him on the 2005 film
Cry Wolf. Before her appearance on the series she had auditioned for the roles of
Jessica Moore, Sam's girlfriend in the pilot episode; Sarah, a love interest for Sam in the first-season episode "Provenance"; and Carmen, Dean's girlfriend in the second-season alternate-reality episode "What Is and What Should Never Be". She believed that, due to her relationship with Padalecki, the production staff were waiting until the "perfect role" arrived before casting her. The role of the immortal Doc Benton was reserved for actor
Billy Drago, whom executive producer
Kim Manners had previously worked with on the television series
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.. A fan of
Frankenstein-actor
Boris Karloff, Drago said of the role, "This was an opportunity to play both
Dr. Frankenstein and
his creation simultaneously. Instead of creating some immortal monster, he makes
himself immortal. This was my chance to pay homage to what I consider one of the great actors of our time". Due to the time required to apply the extensive make-up and prosthetics for the role, Drago ended up with a minimum of 20-hour work days. However, he felt that the sleep deprivation improved his performance because "Benton's immortal and [moving] all the time". Manners also selected his assistant, Kelley Cleaver, to play one of Doc Benton's victims.
Writing '' by
John Collier, 1887. The demon
Lilith, "a combination of all myths concerning Lilith", was introduced to refocus the demon mythology. For the third season, Kripke and the writing staff tried to mix the style of the "simple, pure, emotional" first season mythology with the "intensity" of the second season's self-enclosed episodes. Kripke noted that Dean's demonic deal of the previous season provided the writers with "a lot of effective emotional context to play with". The writing for Sam focused on the character growing up in order to support Dean, making the character more independent as he begins to realize that Dean will not be around forever; Dean, however, acts immaturely to hide his fear of going to Hell, and eventually learns for himself that he is worth saving. With the demon Azazel—the main antagonist of the first two seasons—dying in the second-season finale,
demons as a whole became the primary villains of the third season. This excited the writers because the mythology became "just about all of these different demons and all the different things demons do". A reflection of
terrorist cells, the demonic war against humanity is mainly depicted in the third season through small groups of demons working independently. On this aspect, Kripke commented, "They were not necessarily organized, and there was a danger in that, that they could be everywhere. Each one has a different motive." The studio voiced its belief that the series was "suffocating" because it had "just these two guys and these creepy little rooms", and suggested that the writers "open up the scope of the story and make things more epic" With this in mind, the writers decided to depict the war as large-scale. Kripke noted that this had ramifications for the season, and commented, "All season we've been promising this demon war, but due to the fact that we don't have $20 million an episode, we really have to pick and choose when we're going to show the battles of that war." To stabilize the demon storyline, the writers introduced a new lead villain, with Kripke finding it "refreshing to get back on firm ground where you knew there was a bad guy and you knew there was a plan". They were uncertain for a while as to who the new demon leader would be, and gave the character the
working title of
Zarqawi during the planning stages. Gamble insisted that the demon be female, and suggested that she be the mythological
Lilith. The debate then shifted to whether Lilith should be a woman or little girl, with the writers eventually settling on the latter because they found it creepier. Regarding the final four episodes before the hiatus, Kripke noted, "We were just getting to a point in our storyline when we were really starting to ramp up the mythology and really ramp up both the pace and the size, the story events that happened, both in terms of the mythology and in terms of the lives of the characters. We started rolling with that, and you'll see the increased momentum and increased intensity in these four episodes." A major deviation occurred with the development of Sam's demonic abilities. The writers intended for him to save Dean from Hell, possibly even before the season finale, by giving into his demonic powers and becoming "this fully operational dark force" who would then want to go after Lilith. However, the strike prevented the writers from fleshing out his evolving abilities, and the story arc was pushed back into the fourth season. Despite this, Kripke felt the strike's effects ended up making the series "meaner, leaner, and more concise", as they were able to focus the remaining episodes onto "the storyline [they] needed to pay off"—Dean's demonic pact. He also pointed out that the strike gave the writers and actors a much-needed break, reenergizing them for the final episodes and
subsequent season. Many episodes featured independent stories, which attain closure at the end of each episode and add little to the overarching storylines. Certain aspects of these were inspired by real-life events. According to Gamble, the birth of Kripke's child caused the writing staff to start "thinking about how creepy babies are". This led to the decision to base an episode around
changelings—infant creatures who are exchanged with human babies. The writers chose the deviate from folklore, making the changelings older in "The Kids Are Alright" to avoid having Sam and Dean blowtorching babies. The title of the episode "Malleus Maleficarum" references the
Middle Ages treatise of the same name detailing how to deal with witches; this decision stemmed from the intended plot of the episode, which involved a small town initiating a witch hunt. In the end, a demon would have been revealed to be framing the women in order to create chaos. However, the writers felt the story was too similar to "Sin City", and instead had the demon Tammi
turn a group of women into witches. The episode's sequence in which a character finds maggots in his hamburger was inspired by Kripke's "horrific" discovery of a maggot-covered possum in his garbage can. The concept of the curse box—a container for the rabbit's foot that "magically [cuts] off the cursed items from the rest of the continuum"—was based on
Pandora's Box. The episode "Sin City" was originally only meant to be written by Jeremy Carver, who pitched a concept similar to the film
Enemy Mine—Dean would be trapped with a demon in a wine cellar. However, he realized that the second half would mainly feature a conversation between Dean and the demon and would deeply delve into demon mythology. Carver sought help, and Robert Singer agreed to write the scenes for him. Singer enjoyed humanizing demons and presenting their point of view. For "Mystery Spot", the story development fell into place during the writing process. It started off as a
Groundhog Day-concept—the same day repeating for a character—which was then expanded into repeatedly killing Dean. The decision to make it into another
Trickster episode brought it all together.
Filming Principal photography took place in Vancouver,
British Columbia. Because the series uses few standing sets, set designer Jerry Wanek often constructed entirely new sets for each episode. He often followed specific themes, especially with the Winchesters' lodging. For example, the Spanish-looking motel room of "Malleus Maleficarum" was inspired by the
Procol Harum song "
Conquistador". At times, however, Wanek was able to reuse old sets, such as with the refurbishment of "The Magnificent Seven"s bar for "Sin City". Not all scenes could take place in the studio, and some were instead shot
on location. Parts of "Sin City" were shot in
Langley, British Columbia; production was only given control over part of the main street, so traffic was driving by during filming. Both "Red Sky at Morning" and "Bedtime Stories" used
Burnaby's Heritage Park; it functioned as a cemetery for the former, while the latter used it as the site of a
giant gingerbread house. Unfortunately for McCoy, the crossroads scenes of "Bedtime Stories" were filmed at night in the freezing cold. The actress' wardrobe consisted only of an "almost nonexistent" dress, which made her "miserable". Though she found the experience to be "a lot of fun", McCoy had a serious case of stage fright working with Padalecki. She was too emotional to run her scenes beforehand with him, and even at one point during filming had to excuse herself to
craft service to "eat and cry like the emotional girl [she] was that night". Some aspects of the storylines were conceived on set during filming. Lisa's kiss with Dean at the end of "The Kids Are Alright" was unscripted; director Phil Sgriccia convinced actress
Cindy Sampson to do so because he wanted to see how Ackles would react. Sgriccia also added in similarities between Dean and his possible son Ben, such as having them both look down at same moment after being scolded, and both checking out the "hot mom and the hot little girl" in unison. This was to make them appear to be, as Kripke noted, of "similar mind and body". To the production staff's chagrin, the network requested a "more colorful look" for the third season. Director of photography Serge Ladouceur commented, "I went along with it and made it work. The dark scenes were still shot dark, so we were cautious in keeping the direction of our show." While the new lighting became normal for the season, other methods atypical to the series were also used. The knife-fight sequence that introduces Ruby in "The Magnificent Seven" was shot at 120 frames per second. This high rate allowed for the scene to be sped up or slowed down during post-production. Filming for the reality-show themed episode "Ghostfacers" featured no crews on the set; the actors instead carried their own cameras and lighting. Padalecki found it "pretty liberating" because he did not have to worry about finding his marks or making sure not to block people from the camera. Other wardrobe designs were influenced by episode themes, with the villains of "A Very Supernatural Christmas" wearing "very campy" Christmas sweaters. For the costumes of "Sin City", Widas noted that "passion colors—purples and oranges and reds—were brought into the mix to create that 'anything goes' feeling".
Effects To depict the supernatural aspects of the show, the series makes use of visual, special, and make-up effects, as well as stuntwork. Visual effects is an in-house department, and is supervised by Ivan Hayden. The opening scene of "The Magnificent Seven" featured the most demons clouds of the first three seasons; Hayden noted that the army cloud consisted of hundreds of individual demons. The episode "Mystery Spot" heavily relied on visual effects for Dean's various death sequences by making use of a computer-generated 3D model of Ackles. For the changelings in "The Kids Are Alright", Kripke merely instructed Hayden to make the children's faces pale and have dark circles beneath their eyes. Hayden, however, felt they could do more, and modeled the appearance after a
lamprey. They also attempted to base the design in reality by applying real-world evolution. With a flat face, they reasoned that its nose would have retracted and its eyes would have receded for protection, eventually shriveling up and disappearing over time. A separate plate used exploding water balloons shot at 1,000 frames per second; this high frame rate allowed for the use of slow motion. The layers were then composited into a single sequence, with the elements transitioning into 3D models of the characters and water after the initial collision. Special effects were also a major aspect of production. For example, hydraulics were used in "The Magnificent Seven" to break the devil's trap on the ceiling, and required two takes to film. When the ceiling did not fully crack the first time, it took 45 minutes to take out the ceiling and replace the hydraulics. The same episode also depicts a car crashing into a
bar. The department cabled the car to a large decelerator—a "big shock absorber"—so that they could drive the car fast but not worry about hitting the cameraman. Costs, however, sometimes hindered the use of effects, such as in "Red Sky at Morning". The spirit's first victim would have drowned after her shower fills with water, and a later scene would have depicted a similar death in a car. When production determined that they could not afford these set pieces, the writers reduced the ghost's ability to merely drowning his victims through touch. The spirit attacks Bela in the episode's climax, which made use of a contraption built by special effects makeup artist Tony Lindala; a tube connected to a denture on the off-camera side of Cohan pumped out large amounts of water, creating the illusion that she is vomiting it out.
Music The mostly synthesized orchestral score of the season was composed by
Christopher Lennertz and
Jay Gruska. The pair try to base the music on the visuals of each episode, with about a third of each episode's score being newly written for the supernatural legend. As part of Ruby's introduction in the same episode, he scraped a quarter against a
cymbal to create a scraping metal sound that was "a little otherworldly". Unusual for the series, co-executive producer Ben Edlund contributed to the music of "Ghostfacers". The writer of the episode, Edlund penned the reality show's theme song before he even pitched the concept to Kripke. Lennertz and Edlund sang the theme song and played guitars, intending to make it the "silliest theme song [they] could come up with". The score was treated like it was a reality show, so Lennertz used "really cheesy synthesizers" to mimic reality show music, and made it "sound lame on purpose". Rock songs are also usually featured in "The Road So Far" montages at the beginning of select episodes that recap previous events. The premiere used
AC/DC's "
Hells Bells", while the finale recapped the entire season to
Kansas' "
Carry On Wayward Son". ==Reception==