Okay, she's purty. I may have to dig out my SPN season one DVD and watch finally.

L&O picks up second actor from Kidnapped.

From tvsquad re: Supernatural:

Rumors are circulating that Jensen Ackles' Supernatural character could have a kid, as he'll soon be meeting the eight-year-old son of a woman he had a fling with roughly nine years ago.

That would be in episode two - which is about Changelings.

The first episodes has something to do with the 7 deadly sins.

From E! News piece about the casting of Supergirl:

Two new thesps have also signed on to join the cast of Supernatural, premiering a week later.
Katie Cassidy, the daughter of '70s idol David and the Dallas remake's would-be Lucy Ewing, will star as Ruby, joining the Winchester brothers' two-strong squad of demon hunters as they continue the search for the Hell-sprung spirits who were released in the series' second season finale.
Pretty young Casanova thing Lauren Cohan, meanwhile, joins the cast a little later in the season as Bela, a mercenary who tries to profit from the supernatural world.
"Ruby and Bela, each in their own unique way, are dangerous, ruthless, more bad than good; and they'll each prove big trouble for Sam and Dean," series creator Eric Kripke said. "We were excited to find both Katie and Lauren; they just popped off the screen for us, and they bring charisma and intelligence to their roles."
The Supernatural season premiere airs on the CW Oct. 4.

(OCTOBER 4TH -- that's TOOO long.)

So charisma and intelligence were the lack they were looking to fill when they decided not to bring Samantha Ferris back? Good thing these actresses are gifted with so much more of those qualities than she. @@ ∞

A friend of mine came up with an angle that, if it is what they intend, makes at least one of the new female characters seem more interesting: perhaps one of them is the daughter of Steve Wandell - -the hunter that Sam killed when he was possessed by Meg. It would be nice continuity and I would guess that we wouldn't find out the information until later in the season.

Kripke talks about the new characters.

Whew: recurring not regular.

I liked his answers, he didn't insult the fans when he was talking about the worry and he gave nice definitive answers about the characters and was honest about the possiblity of love interests/chemistry. I'd rather him be upfront about that than be kinda coy and leading to more freaking out.

One of the kerfuffles I read was that the CW is trying to undermine Supernatural by changing the date of the premiere and using Smallville as a lead in for a rerun of the Reaper pilot. Although I've seen people point out that a lot of big shows are premiering at the same time and it might be better for SPN to show up on a different night.

The main accusation on CW seems to be they want SPN to tank and Reaper is their new darling and instead of cancelling SPN out right they are going to let it languish and die.

CW really seems to dislike nearly all of its shows from UPN or WB. It's like the almost want to discard all that was about WB and UPN.

I guess they still like Smallville, but that might be about it. If they get rid of SPN, I'm not watching the channel any more - I don't think I have a reason to.