Jensen Ackles shares Supernatural season 12 finale set photo: What's next for Sam, Dean and Castiel?

Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean Winchester on The CW show Supernatural, took to Instagram to share a behind the set photo from the season 12 finale. The episode will air on 18 May at 8pm EST on The CW Network.

The set image features Ackles sitting beside the banks of a water body with partially snow-capped mountains in the background. He captioned the image, "Backdrop for our season finale. Not shabby at all. #spnfamily".

With the finale being just a few episodes away, executive producer Andrew Dabb teased what is next in store for Sam, Dean, and Castiel. Speaking about the Winchester's relationship with British Men of Letters, the EP told TV Line, "It's obviously a little strained. [The British Men of Letters] want everybody dead. But as they are a massive organization and very corporate in their own way, they're going about it in a very organizational, methodical way. In Episode 20 [and] 21 into our end run, they start to make those moves and, to be a little vague, people that Sam and Dean know and love pay the price."

Speaking about the finale, he teased that the brothers become "generals" and explained, "It's a way to take this organization and bring the fight home for Sam and Dean and force them to take a role, which they haven't done that much. Outside of a few friends, they don't have a lot of contact with the wider hunter community. So it forces our guys into a leadership role.

"They've been soldiers for a long time — and not that they don't do their fair share of fighting — but toward the end of the season, they're becoming generals. They're taking a much stronger role in the wider hunter community as the Brits take the fight to them."

On Castiel's stand, Dabb said, "When Cas comes back [on 27 April's episode], we're going to get a lot of clarity in terms of not only why he's been in Heaven for so long, but his own point of view on why he went."

Supernatural season 12 is currently on hiatus and will return with a new episode on Thursday (27 April) on The CW.