We just reached the end of an era: the 15th and final season of “Supernatural,” which became the longest-running genre TV show in America. For me, the striking thing about that incredible run is how unlikely it seemed in the beginning. When Supernatural premiered in 2005, it was a fairly unremarkable “monster of the week” show — not bad (usually), but nothing special either. In those early days, there was nothing to suggest that it would become a phenomenon.
Surprisingly, I can say that I’ve been with Supernatural since the beginning. Not being a fan of the horror genre, I wasn’t the most likely audience for the show, but it aired right after “Smallville” (from which it poached one of its lead actors, Jensen Ackles), so I decided to check it out. I watched about 10 episodes, and I didn’t hate it, but I also felt like the “monster of the week” premise wasn’t for me, so I stopped watching. However, my friend Sina was a fan of the show, and our conversations coaxed me back by the end of the first season. That’s when it really started engage me, mostly because of how it developed and utilized its mythology in clever and surprising ways. (What would happen if a demon possessed a grim reaper? That’s the kind of unasked question that Supernatural tends to answer.)
I stuck with it into the fourth season, by which point I was thoroughly engaged. However, I lost touch with the show again, this time due to things going on in my life. (I lost touch with a lot of other shows around the same time. I still haven’t finished most of them.) This time, I was sucked back in by my friend, Jimmy, and my wife, Kei. The former was a fan and the latter was interested in checking it out, having heard of it by word of mouth. By then, it was 2013, and Supernatural was already in its 8th season! Having expected the show to end around the 5th season, I had marveled at its longevity from afar. It had found an “afterlife” in an unexpected 6th season (and of course, it turned out that the 6th season wasn’t even the halfway point of the show’s amazingly long run).
Kei and I started watching Supernatural together over a lazy Christmas break. It was a tough sell for her at first too, but it helped that we had the free time to watch it marathon-style. (I distinctly remember one occasion that we stayed up until 5am watching “one more episode” several times in a row.) Initially, I was excited to share it with her, and for her to reach the parts that I remembered fondly. Then we reached the 4th season and the show was new to both of us. Eventually, we caught up with the live broadcast, and were able to watch the last few seasons as they aired. (I’m especially glad for that, given some of the unexpected turns the show took in those years.)
I would be lying if I said the show was always good along the way. It definitely had some weak spots – and a particular knack for disappointing me in the season finale – but it was always more about the journey than the destination. Even at times when the plot wasn’t great, the show remained eminently watchable — largely due to the funny and endearing characters, but also because of the endless creativity with which they stretched and explored the premise. Far beyond monsters, the show eventually explored magic, religious mythology, time travel, secret societies, alternate dimensions, and more. This flexibility allowed for some really audacious episodes that would have seemed impossible in the early years of the show.
Many shows start to feel stale after just a few seasons, but some of Supernatural’s best seasons are in its latter half. For that alone, it deserves some recognition. Even after seeming to peak in seasons 5 and 11 (with story arcs that begged the question, “Where do they go from here?”), the show still managed to deliver a 15th season that not only felt justified to exist, but felt – in retrospect – like a necessary reckoning with everything the show had been about. It was one more example of Supernatural beating the odds to become something special. I’m glad I took the journey to discover that.
