After 13 seasons as Supernatural‘s Dean Winchester, Jensen Ackles was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything left to which he couldn’t say, “Been there, played that.” Then his character’s body was taken over by the apocalypse world archangel Michael, and as he told Michael Ausiello during a visit to TVLine’s San Diego Comic-Con video suite, “I realized this was uncharted territory.” TVLine's Exclusive Comic-Con 2018 Portraits

What’s more, the actor had a feeling that he hadn’t had in awhile. “I was a little nervous,” he admitted. Bringing Michael to life has “been almost a daunting challenge. Jared [Padalecki] has had an opportunity to play different characters. He’s gotten to play an angel, hes gotten to play Lucifer… and not just different variations of Sam Winchester, whereas [until now,] Dean has only played different variations of Dean.”

From the sounds of it, he had no reason to be anxious. “The feedback has been good,” he said, adding, “It’s been more feedback than I’ve gotten in the last 13 years.”

As for the series’ shortened Season 14 episode count, Ackles explained that it had everything to do with his and his on-screen sibling’s quality of life. “Shaving a couple of episodes off gives us almost a extra month out of our year, which when you only get about a two-and-half-month hiatus, it goes really quickly.”

Press PLAY on the video above to watch the whole Q&A, then hit the comments with an answer to this Q: What’s on your Supernatural wish list for Season 14?