What happened to Henry Winchester in Supernatural?

Gil McKinney is coming back as Henry Winchesters in The Winchesters. What happened to the character in Supernatural, and does this break canon?

Tom Welling coming into The Winchesters as Samuel Campbell is one thing. Now we find out that John’s father is also coming into the series. Gil McKinney is going to reprise his role as John’s father, which leads to a lot of questions.

The Supernatural prequel series has already broken a lot of canon. We learned in the OG series that John didn’t know anything about the supernatural world until after Mary Winchester’s death in 1983. Well, in The Winchesters, he’s learned all about demons and the not-so-natural world in 1972.

So, now we’re focused on another bit of canon. By receiving the letter, John believes his father is dead. In the OG series, he always told Dean and Sam that his father was a deadbeat and just walked out one night, never to return. The Winchesters breaks canon once more. What happened to Henry in Supernatural?

Henry Winchester went to the future in Supernatural

Henry didn’t leave by choice. He was going through the Men of Letters initiation when the demon Abaddon took out the entire chapter. Before one of the elders was killed, he gave Henry the key to the chapter. Henry had it on him when he went through a portal to the future, where he ran into Sam and Dean Winchester.

Sadly, he died while he was in the future and word never got back to John about what had happened. It raises the question as to how Gil McKinney can return.

But then, The Winchesters has completely changed canon. John gets the key that Henry took to the future in a letter. This was from a man who just suddenly disappeared. Is it possible that Sam and Dean found a way to get the key to John? That doesn’t make that much sense when they come across the Men of Letters bunker and use it as a base for the rest of Supernatural.

It does suggest that The Winchesters is set in some sort of alternate universe. The OG series has them. God wrote multiple versions of the Sam and Dean story, and Supernatural was just one of them. Is The Winchesters another one? That’s the only way I could see all this working.

At least the description of Henry for the new series does include a mention of his death on a Men of Letters mission. This suggests Henry’s story of going to the future is going to remain the same.

What do you think of The Winchesters so far? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Winchesters airs on Tuesdays on The CW. Watch Supernatural on Netflix.