Jensen Ackles Reveals Which Of His Fan-Favorite Characters Has The Biggest Daddy Issues

Jensen Ackles' turn as Soldier Boy on Season 3 of "The Boys" was a major highlight of the anti-superhero show. The character, a dark inversion of Captain America, is a hard-drinking, pot-smoking machine of destruction and thinly veiled bigotry. But Ackles is so strikingly charismatic that it's easy to see how people are seduced by his good old boy act.

That same charisma served Ackles well for a whopping 15 seasons on "Supernatural," wherein he played Dean Winchester. While Dean makes his fair share of mistakes, along with his brother, Sam (Jared Padalecki), he's ultimately a hero. As the Winchesters travel the backroads of America in their vintage Chevy Impala, their main goal is to rid the world of paranormal creatures terrorizing small towns. Sure, they may have incidentally caused the biblical apocalypse, but on the bright side, they stopped it, too.

Both series are the brainchildren of showrunner Eric Kripke, and both Soldier Boy and Dean Winchester are written with complicated father figures. Soldier Boy was shipped off to boarding school by his abusive father, who constantly told his son what a disappointment he was. Meanwhile, John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was a monster hunter who pursued a vendetta against the demon who killed his wife, raising his sons to follow in his footsteps.

It's safe to say both Soldier Boy and Dean have an above-average amount of parental baggage. But between his two characters, Ackles knows which one struggles the most with daddy issues.

Speaking with Variety, Jensen Ackles said that between Soldier Boy and Dean Winchester, it's the Vought Supe who has the biggest daddy issues. The actor told the publication, "[Soldier Boy] definitely had the worst father and has more deep-rooted issues because of it." The actor explained that, while Dean looked up to John Winchester, he wasn't as desperate to prove himself to his father as Soldier Boy. In defense of his longest-running character, Ackles said, "I don't think Dean was ever looking, necessarily, for his father's approval in the way Soldier Boy was. He just idolized his father in a way that was unique, given their circumstances, given the fact that they lived in a world that was much, much different than a relationship would be."

Ackles believes John Winchester made more than a few mistakes but is ultimately a better father than Soldier Boy's. "I think John Winchester did truly love his sons," Ackles argued, "and what he did, you could certainly argue that it was the wrong way of going about it, but it was all rooted in love." In contrast, he said that Soldier Boy's father "was just doing the wrong thing the wrong way. He was just wrong across the board."

Of course, Ackles will once again be returning to the role of Dean in the "Supernatural" spin-off, "The Winchesters." The new show will focus on the Winchester parents back when they were teenagers, with Ackles as narrator. Given that premise, it seems Ackles will have plenty of time to reevaluate that father-son relationship once more.