Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles Cameos as ‘Supernatural’ Actors Explained

The procedural and fantasy genres collided in the Monday, April 13, episode of The Rookie. Alexi Hawley returned for another documentary episode — now working with Abigail (Madeleine Coghlan) — one that explores the world of demons and therefore requires help from two actors who know that area well: Supernatural‘s Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Yes, they appear as themselves on the ABC drama. Warning: Spoilers for The Rookie Season 8 Episode 15 ahead!

What starts as Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Celina (Lisseth Chavez) responding to a 9-1-1 distress call leads to a conspiracy involving multiple people, a direct-to-TV horror movie, and the aforementioned Supernatural cameos. The victim is Rich Rowley, a retired LAPD officer who made the training videos in the mid ’90s until 2015. When Nolan and Celina find him, he’s talking about something inside him that won’t let him die, and he pulls a knife out of his chest. He promptly dies.

Inside Rich’s garage is a coffin containing the victim of an unsolved homicide in 2020, Marcus; he, too, was stabbed in the heart. He also had a tattoo that matched a symbol in Rich’s training videos. That was only one of several hidden messages in those videos, with others pointing to cold cases involving victims found stabbed in the same way — and with a penny, minted in 1930, in or on their person. (Marcus had one in the heel of his foot, while Rich had swallowed close to 50.)

They then find a video of Rich at Area 67, which is said to be the real deal for aliens (while 51 is a distraction). There, they meet Colonel Arthur Grimm (Thomas Lennon), who remembers Rich trespassing, but he’d been looking for him, not aliens, because of his role in Three Hundred Days of Hell, which Angela (Alyssa Diaz) says is the scariest film of the 1990s. (Rich’s girlfriend also starred in it.) That leads both the LAPD and interviewers to a murder cult that believed a demon, Malaphus, has been possessing people across the city, jumping from host to host.

Dr. Francine Barrett (Helen Slater), the Professor of Medieval Religion, gives them the history of Malaphus, including the reasoning for the pennies — killing the host slows him down and forces him to regenerate before finding a new host, and copper is meant to bind the demon. It’s said that the film’s director, Douglas Roberts, insisted the ritual be extremely specific and found a tome that led to actually summoning the demon for real.

That’s when Jared and Jensen come in, via video with the interviewers, because of their 15 seasons playing demon hunters Sam and Dean on Supernatural. Abigail likens them to KPop Demon Hunters, and Jensen insists, “No, not like that,” while Jared concedes, “I mean, kind of like that.” (These two? Still — and probably always will be — great onscreen together.) Rich attended a fan event they did the previous year at MonsterCon, and he was fixated on an episode where they fought Malaphus. He thought they knew more about demon hunting than they said and asked questions like he was testing them. But as Jensen points out, they only did what the writers wrote, and there are no actual demon hunters in real life. It’s short but fun and completely unexpected, and it (surprisingly?) works.

But there is a priest who performed an exorcism that Angela and Tim (Eric Winter) responded to 15 years ago after they finished their rookie years. He’d stabbed a 16-year-old girl in the chest, insisted he had to, and had a penny in his pocket. He was convicted of first-degree murder. Even now, he insists he did what he had to. He then leads them to the cult that seems to have been revived after 60 years. It all leads back to Douglas, who manipulated others into killing people who wronged him in some way.

What did you think of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles’ cameos on The Rookie? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Rookie, Mondays, 10/9c, ABC