On September 13th, 2005, Dean Winchester would sneak in through Sam Winchster’s college dorm window, and, after an awkward scuffle before Sam recognized him, would tell his brother the now-famous news: “Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days”. These words would become the start of a 15-season dark fantasy epic that would follow the two brothers across state lines, realms, time travel, friends gained, friends lost, countless deaths, and several changes of species. Supernatural, while beginning as a Monster-Of-The-Week show that followed the Winchester brothers as they traveled America fighting ghosts, monsters, and various spooky entities (often in glorious homage to iconic horror media) while searching for their missing father, would gradually evolve into season-long arcs following conflicts of cosmic proportion.
Over the course of its gargantuan run, Supernatural would also gain a tight-knit, passionate, devoted and deeply creative fandom, whose members would go on to play foundational roles in creating the ecosystem of fanfic-hosting sites we have today, serve as one of the most enduring and stable communities on the beloved 2010s-relic blogging platform that is Tumblr, and engage in everything from custom restoration on real classic cars, to reshoots of the series itself. To gain a fandom like that, a show needs great characters, strong visual aesthetics, complex worldbuilding, an engaging plot, and time — and Supernatural had all of those things in abundance.
Of course, Supernatural was not the first show to apply Monster-Of-The-Week formatting, obscure creatures and cryptids, and MacGyvered spellwork to a modern American setting. Shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed had all done so previously and to great success. Even before things got wild in later seasons, Supernatural changed some things up from the formula of its predecessors, choices which would greatly impact the show’s effect on audiences.
Firstly and perhaps most importantly, rather than being limited to a single home or base and the surrounding area, Supernatural has Sam and Dean traveling all over the United States in their trusty ’67 Chevrolet Impala (and they’ve traveled much further as well— even to different shows!). For the series’ first 7 seasons, the brothers didn’t even have a true home base— while locations such as the Singer Salvage Yard and the Roadhouse would occasionally return as somewhere for the Winchesters to crash, they spent the vast majority of their time in an ever-shifting array of tacky motel rooms, diners and libraries.
This constant impermanence and placement in everyday settings, coupled with the fact that the boys only had as many belongings as could fit in a couple of army bags, gave Supernatural‘s early seasons a sense of accessibility that made it (and still makes it) feel as though it would take almost no effort to slip into the Winchesters’ world. No secret lair or big house or trendy clothes or practical effects needed— walk into any small diner, order a burger, pop your laptop open on the table and pull up a webpage on some obscure demon, and suddenly you may as well be in an episode of Supernatural yourself. While later seasons would abandon some of the aspects that initially made the show feel so tangible to audiences of the mid-2000s, they remained foundational to the show’s aesthetic and thematic DNA.
With this unique take on the dark fantasy genre in place, Supernatural would go on to do the other thing that earned it such overwhelming and lasting adoration: it would grow. While the show originally focused on Sam and Dean hunting monsters and finding their dad, it was always planned to take a turn for higher stakes and arc-spanning conflicts as Sam discovered the truth of his connection to the Yellow-Eyed Demon (and eventually to Lucifer himself), with the show’s initial run planned to end at Season 5, on quite the ominous note.
However, high profits and network pressure led to Supernatural being picked up for a 6th season… and then a 7th… and then an 8th… and then more. A bit miffed at the disregarding of his original vision for the show, creator and executive producer Erik Kripke had stepped away after season five, leaving future Supernatural seasons in the hands of a revolving cast of producers, writers and directors. The introduction of unknowably, apocalyptically powerful figures like Michael and Lucifer that had been intended as the series’ climax, had now become the baseline from which the show’s post-Kripke era had to build.
Between the rapid normalization of conflict with actual biblical angels on what was still often a Monster-Of-The-Week show, and the revolving door of writers, Supernatural began to slip into a spiral of bizarre plots, increasingly outrageous new enemies, and anime-level power scaling as the show was renewed for what seemed to be endless seasons. These circumstances would turn most shows into unwatchable shells of themselves— and it can be argued that it did so for Supernatural— and yet, the show and fanbase thrived. Ironically, the secret to this survival came from the very same cosmic themes and entities that were dragging the show further from its origins.
One of Supernatural‘s most memorable attributes was the sheer length of it. Running for 15 seasons and a one-season prequel, totaling altogether at 340 episodes, the show became such a permanent staple of television programming and fandom conversation alike that its ending in 2020 felt almost unreal (a feeling that would prove more than apt, as will be discussed below). As stated above, this sort of egregious episode count, combined with sharp departures from the show’s original tone and content, would spell doom for most shows. Supernatural managed to avoid this fate, not by distancing itself from its clearly degrading quality, but by leaning into it as hard as they could— in fact, it became the focus of the show’s final major arc.
The character of Chuck Shurley was introduced in Season 4 Episode 18, “The Monster at the End of This Book”, which was itself the first in what would become a longstanding tradition of Supernatural episodes poking gentle (or not-so-gentle) fun at the show’s fanbase. Chuck was introduced as a human prophet who, unaware of his own powers, had been writing Sam and Dean’s lives down in real time and publishing them as a best-selling series of novels that had attracted a massive fandom. While Chuck would remain in the role of the unwitting prophet for another 7 seasons, all the while seeming alarmed that Sam and Dean were real at all (let alone that monsters existed), it would be revealed in Season 11 Episode 20 that Chuck was actually God.
After this point, it wasn’t long before Chuck became the overarching villain of the remainder of the series, as, since he was the one writing Sam and Dean’s lives, every other danger they faced, and every apocalypse they had to rush to prevent for the sake of all humankind, was due entirely to Chuck’s whims. It was the addition of this element that saved the later seasons of Supernatural from themselves.
As Supernatural increasingly suffered the telltale wounds of a show running long past its prime— reused story arcs, undone character growth, visibly tired actors, power creep to the point of absurdity, and an ever-looming sense of pointlessness— it simultaneously became more and more focused on the fact that Sam and Dean, and now their found family of Cas and Jack as well, were trapped in the endless torments of a bored, petty author-god who wanted nothing more than for them to finally give up their attempts at free will and play the roles he was trying to write them into.
Yes, Supernatural was getting worse, but it knew that. The characters knew that, and fought themselves bloody looking for a way out. They would fail, and the show would continue another season, but the important thing was that the characters knew that their story sucked, and the audience knew that the characters knew, which meant that no matter how bad Supernatural itself got, the characters, and the show’s core themes, remained intact— even defiant— in the minds of the fandom. The final season was entirely focused on them breaking out of Chuck’s story for good, and once they succeeded, Supernatural ended— although the inclusion of one more final episode after Chuck’s defeat, coupled with said episode’s stilted, controversial, and tragic nature, have led many fans to speculate that Chuck was not truly stripped of his power after all.
Those theories just may be onto something, as it seems that the power of TV storytelling is not done with the Winchesters quite yet. The monster-hunting family would return for a one-season prequel series in 2023, covering the adventures of Dean Winchester’s parents as they hunted together in the 1970s. While The Winchesters was tragically canceled after one season, talks of further sequels or reboots are still common during cast panels at conventions, and even outside of possible reboots, the actors have found themselves so permanently tied to their Supernatural roles that they consistently reference the show in their post-Supernatural work. It seems certain that, like Sam, Dean and Cas, Supernatural is not something that can be killed for good— as for whether you want to leave out beer, pie, and a salad for it, or salt your windows and lock your doors, that’s up to you.
