Supernatural is now on its fourteenth season. Things will certainly take a turn for the unfamiliar. Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), currently possessed by an alternate version of the Archangel Michael, will be conspicuously absent for several episodes. Even though Dean is out, we don’t think that he’ll be down for long. The fact that Michael makes him wear jaunty newsboy caps alone will probably have Dean Winchester fighting for his freedom from the possession.
Let’s be honest, though, possession by an archangel isn’t the strangest thing that happened to Dean. Over the seasons, Dean Winchester has been the veritable ringer from transformations to fairy abductions to his famous stint in Hell. He’s helped end Apocalypses in various forms and dealt with increasingly strange resurrections. At this point, things may be getting a little ridiculous for the poor guy. Still he’s a Winchester and Winchesters are survivors, even more than they are hunters.
Even though Dean doesn’t have any sort of supernatural powers of his own. His body has been through a lot of stuff over the years. We honestly won’t be surprised if it turns out from all these near misses that if he turned out not to be entirely human anymore. It’s a time to look way back and keep a tally through the bizarre amount of punishment that Dean Winchester went through over the years. They definitely, for better or for worse, have left their mark on him.
Here are the 20 Weirdest Things About Dean Winchester’s Body.
Anti-Possession Tattoo and Angel Rib-Carvings
To be fair, this one does feel like a freebie. Even the most casual viewer of Supernatural knows what the anti-possession tattoo looks like. Resting on his chest, the anti-possession tattoo makes sure that demons cannot possess his body.
Dean and Sam both acquired anti-possession charms at the end of “Born Under A Bad Sign”, which they later got tattooed.
Post-Hell, the tattoo had vanished and Dean needed to get it reapplied, though we don’t know exactly when that happened.
In season five, Dean and Sam also got special angel sigils carved onto their ribs.
Thanks to Castiel, Angels could not find their physical bodies. Though since then, angels have definitely gotten around that.
High Pain Tolerance
Even before he was on Alistair’s rack, Dean Winchester showed an almost scary high tolerance for pain. Beaten, bruised, even near the end, nothing seemed to keep the Winchester down for long in earlier seasons.
Add in forty years in Hell and Dean definitely appears to have learned how to power through the pain as needed. Just take the ending of season five, he was beaten badly by two archangels yet he still kept trying to fight. Or the fact that he survived monsters in Purgatory for a year mostly on his own.
Short of a broken neck, Dean apparently can handle almost any pain that the world throws at him. Given his line of work, it makes sense that a higher than average pain tolerance would come in handy.
He Could Talk To Animals
While Dean definitely didn’t have to deal with possessions before Michael, he did go through his share of weird experiences. Usually, they were side effects from monsters or magic spells.
Remember when he was cursed to become progressively more terrified in “Yellow Fever”?
Magic does strange things to a man.
In the season nine episode, “Dog Dean Afternoon”, he willingly let a spell be placed on him in order to talk to the only witness they had: a dog.
During the course of the episode, Dean also started exhibiting traits of a dog from riding with his head out the window to growling at a cat. Definitely weird, but no lingering effects since.
He almost turned Into A Vampire
Season six was a bit of a weird one for Supernatural. Somehow, there was an episode in which Dean slowly turned into a vampire after receiving a bite.
“Live Free or Twihard” is definitely a weird episode in the grand scheme of things. In the uneven sixth season, it’s honestly a hilarious episode. After Dean gets bitten by a vampire, he begins the transformation process into one. He grows the second set of teeth, gets the increased strength and agility, and stares at Lisa (Cindy Simpson) like a giant creep.
The Campbells used an old family cure in order to save Dean, who needed to keep himself from drinking blood for it to work. Luckily, it did.
Teleportation Sickness
If the travel does not involve driving in a muscle car, then Dean pretty much hates it. Though, to be honest, we’re not entirely sure which he hates more: airplane travel or teleportation. The big distinction between the two is that teleporting makes him sick after.
He’ll only use teleportation as a last resort.
As he tells Castiel (Misha Collin) in season five’s “Free to Be You and Me”, “Last time you zapped me, I didn’t poop for a week.” Other times, he mentioned feeling ill and queasy. The sickness also affects him when he time travels. It hasn’t really gotten better over the years.
Dream Walking
Dean can only use this is ability thanks African dream root, like in season three’s “Dreams a Little Dream of Me”. Unlike Sam, he can’t overly manipulate the landscape in these dreams.
Using Dean’s dreams as a way for private meetings, however, remains popular with angels. Dean often has meetings with Castiel in his dreams.
Dean has also had out of body experiences beforehand as well, such as in the season two premiere “In My Time Of Dying”, when he interacted with the reaper Tessa (Lindsey Johnson McKeon).
Others can also enter dreams as a way to get around the Enochian markings that hide Dean from angels, such as Anna.
He Absorbed Souls Into His body
How do you defeat God’s sister? That’s definitely the number one question in season 11 as Sam and Dean face down Amara (Emily Swallow) aka The Darkness. In order to defeat her, they decide to try to make a soul bomb. Dean underwent a ritual that allowed him to absorb 200,000 souls into himself with the help of Rowena (Ruth Connell) and Billie (Lisa Berry).
Arguably the most destructive weapon ever created, Dean only had an hour before it exploded on its own, destroying him.
God (Rob Benedict) removed the soul bomb after restoring his relationship with his sister. Dean also absorbed a monster soul into his arm in Purgatory.
He's time traveled multiple times
In addition to jumping between dimensions and between Heaven and Hell, Dean Winchester conquered time travel. Most angels have this ability. From season four on, there have been eleven instances of time travel.
Dean personally has been involved in six of those instances. He went back to the past in “In The Beginning” and “The Song Remains The Same” where he met younger versions of his parents. He went to the future in “The End”, although that was an alternate future. He was also sent back to the past in “Fronteirland”, “Time After Time”, and “The Vessel”.
It’s safe to say that Dean has probably time-traveled the most out of anyone on the show.
He turned into an old man
Dean learned a pretty important lesson about gambling in the season five episode “The Curious Case of Dean Winchester”. During a magical poker game where players bet years of their lives instead of money, Dean lost almost hilariously badly. The end result turned him into an old man (Chad Everett), where his lifestyle choices pretty much caught up with him immediately.
Seriously, his lifelong diet of greasy fast food would've destroyed him in the end-- if Sam hadn’t won back Dean’s years.
The only positive thing that we can say about the experience is that Dean got to see what it was like to be old.
As much as it pains us to say, we don’t know if he’s going to experience it naturally.
He turned back into a teenager
Yes, Dean has experience rapid aging and rapid de-aging. You’d think at least one of these things would have happened to Sam instead.
In the season 10 episode “About A Boy”, Dean went from grown man to teenage boy (Dylan Everett). Let’s be real, no should have to go through puberty again. No one. The age regression was part of an evil witch’s plan to eat teenagers. Apparently, Hansel and Gretel was an actual thing that happened in the Supernatural universe.
Unlike his elderly self, Dean actually did consider staying a teenager. Since this was season ten, he was dealing with bearing the Mark of Cain and trying to find a cure for it. He ultimately went back to being an adult, but he was seriously tempted.
Bearer of the Mark of Cain
Speaking of the Mark of Cain, Dean ends up taking the Mark from Cain (Timothy Omundson) in order to wield the First Blade to destroy he Demon Knight Abaddon.
While Cain did warn Dean about the terrible price the mark bears, he still took it in order to finish off the demon. Cain definitely was understating those side-effects. The Mark made Dean hyper-aggressive and needed to eliminate others to survive.
Dean eventually destroyed Cain and almost succumbed to the Mark’s influence.
It caused him to let people die and almost annihilate Castiel. The main plot for season ten and a good part of season nine was freeing Dean from the Mark.
Turned Into A Demon
In the finale of the ninth season “Do You Believe In Miracles?”, Dean was pretty much on the edge. The Mark had exerted considerable influence over him to the point where Castiel and Sam locked him away.
Dean was able to convince Crowley to let him out. He went looking Metatron (Curtis Armstrong) and was fatally wounded during the confrontation. When Crowley places the First Blade in the hand of Dean’s body, he becomes a demon.
Dean’s not a very good demon, though. In “Black”, the tenth season premiere, Dean just pretty annoys people and sings terrible, terrible karaoke. To be honest, it could have been a lot worse given what he went through in Hell.
He's Been Played By Seven Different Actors
We’ve already mentioned three actors who have played Dean Winchester over the course of the list: Chad Everett as Old Dean, Dylan Everett as 14-year-old Dean, and, naturally, Jensen Ackles. Dean was also played by four other actors during the series.
Given the show's longevity, it’s unsurprising that some actors, especially the younger ones, were swapped out as they grew up.
The other four were Hunter Brochu as toddler Dean in the “Pilot”; Ridge Canipe, played child Dean in “Something Wicked” and “A Very Supernatural Christmas”; Nicolai Lawton-Giustra as preteen Dean in “Death’s Door”; and, finally, Brock Kelly as older teen Dean in “After School Special”. At this point, we’re definitely wondering if any of these Deans will appear in the show again.
Dean’s Multiple Resurrections
People perish on Supernatural. This remains one of those unchanging facts of the show. Some characters, however, tend to be in a cycle of passing on and resurrecting-- and Dean is definitely one of them.
Dean went to Hell at the end of season three, went out in hilarious wacky ways in “Mystery Spot”, was shot by hunters in “Dark Side of the Moon”, stabbed by Metatron in the season nine finale, astrally projected in “Death Takes a Holiday”, received an lethal injection in “Appointment in Samarra”, and was sent to Purgatory.
According to TV Guide, Dean has passed on 111 times to Sam’s six. No wonder the Reaper Billie isn’t thrilled with him.
Castiel’s Disappearing Handprint
As many fans can probably quote verbatim, Castiel is responsible from raising Dean from Perdition. Needless to say, you don’t drag someone from Hell without leaving some kind of mark of them.
Castiel left a handprint on Dean’s shoulder where it looked to be burned into his flesh.
The scar of this have appeared several times over the course of the series outside of that first time in “Lazarus Rising”: season four’s “Heaven and Hell” and season seven’s “The Slice Girls”.
There have been times when the Castiel scar has not appeared, though. In the season six episode “The Third Man”, Dean is shown sans scar. While that is a dream sequence, it’s also not visible in season nine’s “Meta Fiction” and season ten premiere “Black”.
Castiel Healed Dean’s Body When He Resurrected Him
Before Dean was resurrected by Castiel, his body was a collection of scars that pointed to growing up as a hunter. Post-Castiel, however, his body has been one hundred percent totally healed. There are no scars, no burns, and no old wounds on his body. Sure, in the almost ten seasons since then, Dean has recollected his fair share of injuries. At the time, however, it was like starting fresh for Dean.
Granted, Dean’s body had been in the ground for four months since the hellhounds came to collect his soul. It’s not that surprising that Castiel felt the need to restore Dean’s body. Zombie Dean sounds cool in theory, but probably a lot grosser in practice.
It Took 13 Seasons For Dean To Get Possessed
Whenever something weird happens to the Winchesters, it tends to break down like this: Dean usually gets transformed and Sam usually gets possessed.
We've definitely established Dean’s transformation credentials on this list. Sam, meanwhile, has been possessed by Meg, Lucifer, Gadreel, that kid from the body swap episode, etc. Dean, however, hadn’t been possessed once until he had Alternate Universe Michael possess him so that he could end Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) for good.
Given the Winchesters line of work and the dangerous opponents they deal with on the regular, the fact that it took 13 seasons for Dean to get possessed is surprising.
It’s probably the biggest miracle in the show’s entire run.
Of course, now the streak has broken in a big and bad way.
He's Michael’s Perfect Vessel
From what we understand about angelic possession, there are usually a couple requirements. The angel has to be specifically given permission to possess a body and the body tends to come from required bloodlines tailored made to that angel.
For Dean and Sam, the mixing of the Campbell and Winchester blood (descended from Cain and Abel) allows them to be the perfect vessels for the archangels Michael and Lucifer. Dean, in particular, is given the moniker "the Michael Sword" as Michael possessing his body would make him the perfect weapon.
The fact that Michael is currently in possession of Dean’s body is definitely bad-- maybe even worse than when Lucifer was in Sam’s in season five’s “Swan Song”.
He's actually really smart
Dean Winchester is well-known for his hand-to-hand prowess and his marksmanship abilities. One thing that gets often overlooked with Dean, however, is his smarts. To be fair, he seems more than happy to let Sam (Jared Padalecki) handle the research.
This is a guy who built his own EMF reader from an old Walkman.
Dean has shown to be a keen strategist and a tactical mind. He rebuilt the entire Impala from scratch.
Dean does hide his brains in order to keep up his image. Even so, he can still read old languages and figure out how to handle opponents on the fly.
Jensen Ackles Does A Lot Of His Own Stunts
Supernatural is a very action heavy show. While they don’t have the huge action set pieces of say 9-1-1 or something, the stunts are pretty amazing. As Dean Winchester, Jensen Ackles has done a lot of his own stunts.
As stunt coordinator, Lou Bollo, said of Ackles and Padalecki in the Supernatural: The Official Companion Season 4, “Working with Jared and Jensen is like paradise... they have a lot of athletic ability, they're really good listeners and they're extremely intelligent, so when you tell them the parameters of something, that's what they do.”
It’s frankly amazing that after ten-plus years of doing the show, Ackles has done so much as Dean. Since Supernatural shows no signs of slowing down, it looks like there's a lot more in his future too.
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Did we miss any weird facets of Dean Winchester's body in Supernatural? Let us know in the comments!