With fifteen seasons, it's not surprising that standalone monster-of-the-week Supernatural episodes, but Supernatural eventually developed a complex mythology of monsters, angels, and demons.
As the mythology and lore of Supernatural got more complicated and its universe got bigger, there were bound to be some inconsistencies and minor plot holes. For the most part, Supernatural kept major contradictions to a minimum, and the show had enough going for it that minor discrepancies could ultimately be overlooked. Still, Supernatural reinvented itself more than once throughout its fifteen seasons, and things like time travel, alternate universes, and heavenly interference made things complicated.
8 Demon Lore Changed Throughout Supernatural's Run
Saying "Christo" To Identify Demons Only Lasted One Episode
In Supernatural's fourth episode, "Phantom Traveler," Sam and Dean encounter a demon for the first time. As Sam and Dean research lore which investigating a series of recent plane crashes, Dean remarks that demonic possession is much bigger than their "normal gig." Dean's comment is somewhat ironic, considering how many demons the brothers would face off against over the next fourteen seasons.
This Supernatural Season 1 Episode Shows How Wildly Different Demons Were At The Beginning
Supernatural's "Phantom Traveler" from season 1 showed a very different version of demons, showing how much demons changed in the later seasons.
According to "Phantom Traveler," saying "Christo" in the presence of a demon will make them flinch, but this piece of lore is mostly dropped after this episode. Sam and Dean eventually perform an exorcism, something they will do many times throughout Supernatural's first five seasons. However, they perform fewer exorcisms as the show progresses, resorting to killing the demons directly instead.
7 Vampires Were Extinct & Werewolf Bites Have A Cure?
Monster Lore Shifted & Changed Throughout The Show's Run
Just as demon and angel lore changed throughout Supernatural's run, some of the show's monster lore changed as well. When shapeshifters were first introduced, for example, they had to gruesomely shed their skin to shift into a new form, but later shapeshifters could transform seamlessly. In the season 1 episode, "Dead Man's Blood," John Winchester (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) mentions that he believed vampires had been driven to extinction by hunters.
Despite John's claim, vampires would pop up regularly throughout the show, and the Winchesters encounter hunters who specialize in vampires. Early in Supernatural's run, werewolf bites were said to be irreversible. However, when Claire Novak (Kathryn Newton) is bitten in season 12, it's revealed that the Men of Letters have an experimental cure that has never been mentioned before.
6 Sam And Dean Are Wanted Men
The Winchesters Brothers Had Run-ins With The Police & FBI
Sam and Dean find themselves in trouble with law enforcement, from local cops to the FBI, several times throughout Supernatural's fifteen-season run. Sam and Dean were taken into custody on more than one occasion, meaning their fingerprints and real identities are presumably on file. This raises the question of how the Winchester brothers continue to do what they do, which often includes impersonating police officers and FBI agents, without attracting attention.
Sam and Dean were on the FBI's most wanted list in 2011, but this was due to a killing spree committed by Leviathan clones. After the Winchesters took out the clones, a local sheriff convinced the FBI that the brothers had been killed in a shootout.
After a few minor run-ins with law enforcement over the years, the season 12 episode, "First Blood," finally referenced the Winchesters' criminal past, when they were taken into custody for attempting to assassinate the President of the United States (who was being possessed by Lucifer at the time). They escaped (again), but Supernatural never fully explains why more law enforcement officers don't recognize them.
5 The Trickster Is The Archangel Gabriel & Chuck Is God
Both Of These Reveals Worked Well Even In Hindsight
The Trickster (Richard Speight Jr.) made his debut in Supernatural season 2's "Tall Tales," as what Bobby (Jim Beaver) theorized to be a Trickster demigod. Although Dean appears to kill the Trickster, he returns the following season in the iconic "Mystery Spot," which remains one of Supernatural's funniest episodes. After angels become part of Supernatural's mythology at the start of the fourth season, the Trickster is eventually revealed to be the archangel Gabriel.
One character Supernatural never followed up on is Jesse Turner (Gattlin Griffith), a young boy who appeared in season 5 and was supposedly destined to become the antichrist. Jesse vanishes at the end of "I Believe the Children Are Our Future" and is never seen again.
Chuck Shurley (Rob Benedict) first appeared in Supernatural's fourth season as the author of a series of books following the adventures of Sam and Dean Winchester. Chuck claims the stories of Sam and Dean came to him in dreams, making him a profit. However, the season 11 episode, "Don't Call Me Shurley," reveals that Chuck Shurley is actually God himself, something many fans had speculated since the end of season 5.
4 Supernatural Shattered The Fourth Wall In "The French Mistake"
Supernatural Went Meta With The Genre-Bending Season 6 Episode
Throughout its fifteen-season run, Supernatural played with its own formula in fascinating (and often hilarious) ways. Sometimes, the show went fully meta, bringing the viewers in on the joke. In season 4, for example, Sam and Dean discovered that a series of novels existed that depicted their lives as if they were fiction. These books developed a cult following, eventually leading to a convention and even a school play.
Jared Padalecki's Favorite Supernatural Episode Is One Of The Greatest Hours Of Television I've Ever Seen
The man behind Sam has a lot of love for one of the strangest episodes in the show.
Supernatural did not truly break the fourth wall until the season 6 episode, "The French Mistake." In this episode, Sam and Dean find themselves in a reality where they are actors named Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles who star in a television show called Supernatural. Watching the real Jared and Jensen portray fictionalized versions of themselves is truly hilarious, and "The French Mistake" contains numerous references to people who actually work on the show.
3 Supernatural Unsank The Titanic & Killed Hitler
Also, Samuel Colt & Eliot Ness Were Monster Hunters
In the season 6 episode, "My Heart Will Go On," Castiel (Misha Collins) sends an angel back in time to unsink the Titanic to create more souls to fuel his side in the angelic civil war (although he later reverses this). In a later season 6 episode, "Frontierland," the Winchesters encounter Samuel Colt (Sam Hennings), who turns out to be a monster hunter who crafted a gun that could kill almost any supernatural being.
Season 7's "Time After Time" revealed that Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Nicholas Lea) was also a hunter. Several seasons later, in the season 12 episode "The One You've Been Waiting For," the Winchesters encounter a group of necromancers who resurrect Hitler in the body of their leader, before Dean gets to kill him. Supernatural had a lot of fun reimagining real historical figures and events in the context of a world filled with supernatural beings.
2 Supernatural Brought Mary Winchester Back From The Dead
Mary Winchester's Death Set-Off The Entire Series
As seen in Supernatural's pilot episode, the death of Mary Winchester (Samantha Smith) was the catalyst for nearly everything that happened to the Winchesters. It was her death that prompted John Winchester to begin his search for the yellow-eyed demon, Azazel (Fredric Lehne), who had killed her. John's quest consumed him, and he introduced both Sam and Dean to the world of monster hunting at a very young age.
Mary was a complex character who made some questionable decisions after her resurrection, but she clearly loved her sons dearly.
So when Amara (Emily Swallow) resurrected Mary Winchester at the end of Supernatural season 11, it shook up the dynamic of the show. As Sam was a baby when Mary was killed, he had no memory of his mother, but Dean had to confront the fact that the woman who returned was not exactly the mother he ed. Upon her resurrection, Mary was shocked that her sons had been raised as hunters, and she struggled to adapt to her new life.
1 The Winchesters Rewrote John & Mary Winchester's Story (Or Did It?)
The Winchesters Actually Took Place In An Alternate Reality
Although the minds behind Supernatural attempted multiple spin-offs throughout the show's run, none of them were ordered to series. About a year after Supernatural came to an end, news of The Winchesters broke, and it was described as a prequel series telling the story of how John (Drake Rodger) and Mary (Meg Donnelly) Winchester met and fell in love. Supernatural had already explored some of this story, but when The Winchesters' first trailer dropped, it seemed to contradict much of what had already been established.
2 Years After Supernatural's Finale, The Franchise Retconned Dean's Ending And Made It Better
Dean Winchester was killed in the controversial Supernatural series finale, but the franchise gave him a more fitting epilogue two years later.
In The Winchesters, Mary introduced John to the world of hunting, whereas in Supernatural, he did not start hunting until after her death. The finale of The Winchesters, however, revealed that the versions of John and Mary depicted in the show were actually from an alternate universe. After his death in the Supernatural series finale, Dean searched the multiverse for a world in which his family lived a happy life. This storyline not only allowed Dean to continue saving the world(s) but also added another layer to Supernatural's complex mythology.
Supernatural
- Release Date
- 2005 - 2020
- Network
- The CW
- Showrunner
- Eric Kripke
Cast
Sam Winchester
Dean Winchester
WHERE TO WATCH
- Directors
- Philip Sgriccia, John F. Showalter, Kim Manners, Thomas J. Wright, Charles Beeson, Guy Norman Bee, Richard Speight Jr., Mike Rohl, John Badham, Steve Boyum, Amyn Kaderali, Jensen Ackles, Tim Andrew, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeannot Szwarc, P.J. Pesce, Nina Lopez-Corrado, James L. Conway, amanda tapping, J. Miller Tobin, Stefan Pleszczynski, John MacCarthy, Jerry Wanek, Ben Edlund
- Writers
- Meredith Glynn, Davy Perez, Raelle Tucker, Cathryn Humphris, Brett Matthews, Nancy Won, John Bring, Ben Acker, Daniel Knauf, David Ehrman, James Krieg, Trey Callaway
- Franchise(s)
- Supernatural
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