When Supernatural premiered in 2005, it was riding a wave of teen-oriented fantasy series, including the recently-wrapped Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, and Charmed. Almost 300 episodes later, the series about two brothers who hunt all kinds of supernatural beasts, including the devil himself, has had more staying power than anyone could’ve predicted. With the show about to start its 14th season, Supernatural has outlasted almost all the other series that were on the air when it premiered — and has seen many others come and go.
A lot has changed since fans started welcoming Sam and Dean Winchester into their homes, but Supernatural have remained a constant. Wry, determined, and committed to their mission, Sam and Dean have gone through a lot over the years, including the deaths of friends and family members — and of each other. Through it all, though, the brothers have relied on one another and it’s kept them in the fight to save people from all the demons, vampires, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. Yet, despite the show’s staying power and the continued fan fervor around it, there’s no denying that sometimes Supernatural shows its age. After all, as one college student observed in the 10th season episode “Halt and Catch Fire,” Dean’s “Gen X. Right.” Should Supernatural give up the ghost already or should it continue to grace our screens into Jared Padalecki’s and Jensen Ackles’s golden years? We debate whether the show should go on or if it’s time to let it rest in peace.
20 GIVE UP: ORIGINALLY INTENDED TO LAST 5 SEASONS
Supernatural creator Eric Kripke originally planned a five-season story arc for the show. The title of the season five finale was “Swan Song” based on the expectation that it would be the series’ last episode. Then, Kripke and his team reevaluated that decision and the CW renewed the series for Season 6 — and the renewals never stopped coming.
Yet, when viewed today, the first five seasons make up a tight, on-going story that develops the character’s and the show’s background and revolves around a central mystery. While the show continues to draw on what is now a very deep mythology, since Season 6, individual seasons have been looser and don’t build on each other the same way the first five did.
19 LIVE FOREVER: FANS REALLY KNOW THE CHARACTERS
After spending years with Sam, Dean, Castiel, and the other characters that have populated Supernatural, fans are so familiar with them, they can easily understand their perspectives and contextualize their responses. For example, we know that in order to gain access to information about their latest case, Sam and Dean will present themselves as federal agents with the names of famous rock stars.
This familiarity with the characters lets the show’s writers focus on keeping the storytelling standards high and worry less about character development. Moreover, fans don’t need an explanation to appreciate small character moments. Long-term fans have an intimacy with the characters that would be hard to achieve with characters that were on TV for a shorter time.
18 GIVE UP: HOW MUCH MORE SUPERNATURAL CAN YOU GET?
You would think that on a show about supernatural beings, the alpha and omega of those beings would be God. And when it finally happened, the revelation of God’s identity was shocking, funny, and something the show had been building towards for almost eleven seasons. Yet, when Supernatural finally decided to introduce us to God, it didn’t stop there — it let us spend even more time with his sister, Amara.
Given the show’s interest in Heaven and Hell, the introduction of God would have been a fitting place to end the show. Instead, it’s been a couple years since then and the show continues, just with far fewer mentions of God.
17 LIVE FOREVER: NEW MYTHS TO EXPLORE
While the show could have ended when God came to town, since then, the writers have introduced us to new creatures and realms beyond the ones we encountered in the first decade of the show. In particular, in the last couple seasons, Supernatural gave us Jack, a powerful half-angel/half-human Nephilim, who is still trying to figure out if he’s more like his angel-like human mother or his actual devil father. The characters also made several trips to an apocalyptic alternate universe that had its own supernatural problems.
Furthermore, we saw the resurrection of the Winchesters’ long-lost mother, Mary, which allowed the writers to explore an alienated mother-adult son dynamic that hadn’t previously been part of the show.
16 GIVE UP: FREE THE ACTORS
Given their long-time commitment to Supernatural, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles haven’t appeared in many roles other than Sam and Dean. In fact, outside of a few forgettable horror films, the most substantial roles they’ve had outside of Supernatural came before the series started. Padalecki was known for his role on Gilmore Girls, while Ackles gained notice for his stint on Smallville.
Sam and Dean are great characters and Padalecki and Ackles are great at playing them, but it would also be fun to see them take on something new. They’ve both showed a lot of range on Supernatural that could be a valuable asset to an entirely different kind of story.
15 LIVE FOREVER: THE ACTORS STILL HAVE FUN
Padalecki and Ackles really do seem like brothers after appearing in Supernatural together for all this time, and that camaraderie is one of the things that’s keeps the show fun and interesting — both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Padalecki and Ackles seem to value the job security that comes with their long-term gig and appreciate the relationship they’ve developed with each other, Supernatural’s other actors, and its crew.
Plus, everyone involved with the show seem eager for the show to continue well into the future. Misha Collins told PopSugar that there were no plans for an ending anytime soon, and co-showrunner, Andrew Dabb, Padalecki, and Ackles told TVLine they all agreed they had more Supernatural stories to tell.
14 GIVE UP: A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN
In its very first episode, Supernatural killed off both Sam and Dean’s mother and Sam’s girlfriend. This was the beginning of a long-term issue for the show: its treatment of women. Throughout its run, almost any female character that gets close to the Winchester brothers ends up being dispatched in brutal and tragic ways. Fan backlash was especially strong when hacker Charlie Bradbury was killed off in Season 10.
Since then, Supernatural has added a number of female characters, but they’re rarely Sam and Dean’s contemporaries. Instead, they’re younger women who the brothers want to protect, or older women who function as mother-figures. Either way, none of these women get to be part of Team Winchester the way male characters like Castiel, Kevin, or even Crowley do.
13 LIVE FOREVER: FANTASTIC FEMALE CHARACTERS
The Supernatural universe includes several well-developed and interesting female characters that have recurred on the show for years, including Sheriff Jodie Mills, Donna Hanscum, and Rowena. The show has dedicated full episodes to these characters each season and have introduced several more through the years.
In fact, such a popular group of female characters has been developed over the past several seasons that it led to the Season 13 episode “Wayward Sister,” which was intended to be a backdoor pilot for a Supernatural spin-off focused on these women. Unfortunately, the CW declined to pick the new series up, but we will hopefully continue to see these characters on Supernatural.
12 GIVE UP: THE CHARACTERS DON’T EVOLVE
Sam and Dean encounter new challenges each season, but those challenges don’t lead to much character growth. Sam remains emotionally open and smart with a more nuanced view of good and evil. Meanwhile, Dean is a bit of a man-child who suppresses his emotions and has a more absolute view about what should happen to demons and other creatures. And Castiel is still figuring out human things, although he’s gotten very pop culture savvy in his time on Earth.
Because the characters are stuck in a cycle of “save the world, repeat,” where the only people they spend significant amounts of time with are either already a part of or get drawn into their world, they don’t really have an opportunity to evolve.
11 LIVE FOREVER: CONSEQUENCES
While the Winchesters try to make the best choices they can given the often-sticky circumstances they find themselves in, their choices often have consequences they couldn’t foresee.
For example, when Dean killed Death in season 10 and Castiel killed the Reaper, Billie, in Season 12, Billie became the new Death. Billie was never the biggest fan of Dean, and although her new role has given her a different perspective, she is less likely to be willing to help the brothers in their future endeavors than the previous Death. There are many examples like this where fans of the show are able to see the way the characters’ actions reverberate years into the future —both for the better and worse.
10 GIVE UP: RECYCLED STORY LINES
Supernatural’s long history makes it inevitable that certain plot points and story lines will feel familiar. In the show’s first few seasons, for instance, the demon Lilith possessed little girls to carry out her mission on Earth. This made her extra-creepy when she did terrible things. A similar concept was used several seasons later when the Darkness became a disconcertingly powerful little girl for several episodes.
The 13th season finale took this to an extreme when Dean became the vessel for an alternate world version of the archangel Michael. It mirrored when Sam became Lucifer’s vessel at the end of Season 5. Now that Michael has absconded with Dean’s body, the show appears poised to revisit the Michael troubles it resolved almost a decade earlier.
9 LIVE FOREVER: A GOOD SENSE OF HISTORY
Supernatural has been airing an unnaturally long time, but that hasn’t stopped the writers from referencing things that have happened throughout its run. One example is the character of psychic Missouri Mosely who appeared in the first season episode “Home,” and wasn’t seen again until Season 13. The characters on the show acted as if Missouri had been an integral part of their world for the entire 13 years, whether viewers remembered her or not.
Not only does the show reference past characters and plot points, this has enabled it to get very meta at several points. Especially in the Season 10 episode “Fan Fiction” that not only referenced the show’s history but also some of the fandom’s more popular responses to it throughout that history.
8 GIVE UP: DEATH AND RESURRECTION
It’s no secret that death is far from final on Supernatural. Both Sam and Dean have died and been resurrected more than once, as have a number of other characters. But these resurrections have increasingly less impact the more they happen. While it’s nice when familiar characters return, it lowers Supernatural’s stakes — especially when it breaks its own rules.
Nowhere was this truer than with the death and resurrection of Castiel in late Season 12 and early Season 13. Cas was killed by an angel blade, the only thing viewers were told could kill an angel and keep it dead. Despite that, Cas managed to return from the Empty, essentially by annoying the being responsible for guarding it until it sent him back to Earth.
7 LIVE FOREVER: BELOVED SECONDARY CHARACTERS
The characters’ ability to visit other realms like Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, and other dimensions including alternate Earths, enables the show to bring back beloved characters even after they’ve experienced a final death. Bobby has appeared more than once on the show after taking his final breaths in Season 7. And Bobby and other dearly departed characters, including Kevin and Charlie, appeared in Season 13 as alternate versions of themselves in the Apocalypse World.
It’s exciting for fans to revisit beloved characters they thought were lost forever. While it could be dismissed as fan service, it’s fan service that usually serves a story purpose and gives fans a thrill in the process.
6 GIVE UP: DESTIAL QUEERBAITING
From Castiel’s first appearances on Supernatural in Season 4, the chemistry between him and Dean was undeniable. Many fans picked up this chemistry and detected a romantic subtext beneath it . Thus, the couple Destial was born — if only in fan fiction.
Given how aware Supernatural is of its fandom, the show has frequently hinted at both Dean’s potential bisexuality and a potential romance between Dean and Cas. At the same time, the show clearly has no intention of letting the characters hook up, so the sexual innuendo behind Dean and Cas’ interactions is simply queerbaiting. The queer references, both blatant and subtle, do LGBTQ fans a disservice by using queer relationships as fodder for jokes.
5 LIVE FOREVER: REVISIT AND CORRECT PAST MISTAKES
Although Supernatural remains far from perfect, it has made attempts to correct its past mistakes. It’s increasingly included more female characters in the show and is less inclined to kill them off. It’s made attempts to include more people of color, including Kevin Tran and his mother who recurred frequently for several seasons. It’s also attempted to stop the Destial queerbaiting over the past couple seasons, although the show’s mostly done that by keeping Dean and Cas away from each other.
While the show’s writers and producers can’t make up for everything and often aren’t as successful as fans might like at correcting some of Supernatural’s biggest sins, as the show goes on longer in many ways it also becomes more enlightened.
4 GIVE UP: IT'S NO LONGER SCARY
When the show first started, it’s horror genre sensibilities were a big part of its appeal. And in its earliest seasons, Supernatural included some genuinely scary episodes focusing on horrifying ghosts, frightening demon viruses, and — inevitably — terrifying clowns.
Along the way to becoming a 14-season phenomenon, however, the series’ horror sensibilities shifted. While Sam and Dean still encounter all the demons, ghosts, and various other nightmare creatures you can think of, the show hasn’t been genuinely scary in quite a while. Instead, it has evolved into more of a drama with comedic touches as Sam and Dean tackle the challenges faced when hunting their latest featured creature.
3 LIVE FOREVER: THE BROTHERS
From Supernatural’s pilot the show has centered on the relationship between Sam and Dean. The rapport between the two characters continues to be the heart and soul of the show to this day.
Throughout the series, the brothers have leaned on each other for emotional support and backed each other up in the battles they often find themselves in. In the thirteenth season Sam was Dean’s emotional anchor as he mourned the loss of yet more people he loved, and the brothers worked together to bring some of them back. No matter what’s in store moving forward, one thing fans can count on is the brotherly bond between the two main characters.
2 GIVE UP: TIRED AND UNINSPIRED
While there were dud episodes even in Supernatural’s first season (“Bugs,” anyone?), the number of filler episodes has expanded as the seasons have added up. Sometimes this is because an episode features an uninteresting monster of the week, but sometimes it’s because something that might have been novel in earlier seasons simply isn’t exciting anymore.
There have even been a couple of seasons that have felt like the show is treading water just trying to keep going. With so many episodes of TV already produced and so many more to complete each season, they can’t all be gems, but there are times when Supernatural has a run of episodes that make it feel like Sam and Dean should seriously consider retirement.
1 LIVE FOREVER: LONGEVITY ALLOWS FOR EXPERIMENTATION
In each season of Supernatural, including the most recent ones, there is at least one stand-out episode that completely pays off fans’ investment in the show. These episodes include Season 10’s super-meta musical “Fan Fiction,” Season 11’s “Baby,” which is told from the perspective of Dean’s Chevy Impala, Season 12’s “Regarding Dean,” where Dean loses his memory, and Season 13’s “ScoobyNatural,” the animated Supernatural/Scooby Doo cross-over.
The show’s longevity has allowed the writers to try things that wouldn’t work in newer shows where the premise and characters aren’t as well established. This experimentation has led to outstanding episodes that delight fans and make them hope Supernatural never dies.