‘Supernatural’ season 8 spoilers: Jared Padalecki defends Sam’s actions

Not long after the season premiere of “Supernatural” first aired, there was a good bit of speculation circling around one thing: Sam’s decision to really go off the grid rather than to track down Dean after he was taken to purgatory. We heard form many a fan who personally felt that this was something that the character would never do, mostly because they have spent such a great stretch of time fighting for each other over the past seven years only to see him suddenly give up.

So what caused Sam change things up? Speaking to Zap2It in a new interview, Jared Padalecki defended the move by saying something that makes quite a bit of sense: it’s not like Sam can just magically show up in purgatory one day to help his brother out, and eventually he did have to make the decision to move on with his own life to the best of his ability. In addition to that, he also said that he really likes seeing this side of Sam where he is forced to be a little bit more independent:

“The way I kind of had to work it out — A, it was nice to have something different, after [around 150 episodes] it was nice to come in and show that different side. I’ve been saying this from the beginning, I love seeing the brothers when they’re not around each other. Sam and Dean are great and I love Jensen [Ackles] and filming with him, and I love the relationship between the brothers, but I love exploring the other sides.”

One of the other changes for this season is that you are seeing a little bit less of a workload on the two characters, and this is in many ways a deliberate move so that they can have a little more time off. (After also, Jared is now a dad!) The upside of this is that we do get some creative episodes, including the “found footage” hour we are going to see Wednesday night.

What do you think about what Padalecki has to say here?