Consider it or not, 4 years have passed by since Supernatural aired its divisive sequence finale again on November 19, 2020. The ultimate season was unconventional to say the least, working out of episodes with simply two left to movie when COVID manufacturing shutdowns started in March 2020 and having to make cuts for the finale as a consequence of restrictions. The CW mainstay ended with each lead characters useless and within the afterlife, with Dean (Jensen Ackles) dying in a tragic but mundane manner a long time earlier than Sam (Jared Padalecki) would.
I’ve personally gone forwards and backwards on the finale within the years since, however the four-year anniversary did not actually have me reflecting on Dean’s loss of life by rebar or the previous age make-up on Jared Padalecki. (You possibly can revisit the episode streaming with a Netflix subscription should you’re blanking on what I am referring to.) No, for no matter motive, I began considering again on after I attended the pink carpet for the three hundredth episode celebration again in late 2018 and spoke with members of the Supernatural workforce earlier than their celebration actually began.
I heard from Jared Padalecki about why he “by no means anticipated” Supernatural to final lengthy sufficient to achieve 300 episodes and government producer Brad Buckner about how the episode – known as “Lebanon” – could be totally different from different benchmarks, such because the musical two hundredth episode known as “Fan Fiction.” I additionally spoke with EP/author Eugenie Ross-Leming, and I requested if the writers and producers have any methodology of preserving observe of 300 episodes (and counting, on the time) of continuity. She shared:
We now have folks on workers who know stuff. Like, I am going to write one thing and somebody will say, ‘We won’t say that as a result of in Episode 2 of Season 6, the other was finished.’ When you actually need to do it, it’s important to discover a technique to justify it. You simply cannot really feel.
Supernatural grew to become notorious for often killing off predominant characters after which bringing them again not too lengthy after, with Misha Collins’ Castiel a frequent sufferer. The truth is, he was in a position to decide what he deemed Cas’ greatest loss of life… and that was again in 2017, when the angel nonetheless had one other resurrection and loss of life to go earlier than the tip! He did not have probably the most deaths and resurrections of the sequence, as that honor goes to Dean, however his closing exit to avoid wasting the person he cherished was undoubtedly extra epic than what Dean acquired through rebar.
The finale was nonetheless extra practically two years away after I spoke with the EP on the three hundredth episode pink carpet (seen above), although! “Lebanon” did need to bend Supernatural‘s guidelines to have a Winchester household reunion together with each John and Mary as a part of Season 14. I felt after “Lebanon” that Supernatural nonetheless had life left in it, and I requested Eugenie Ross-Leming on the time for her ideas on what saved folks tuning into Supernatural for therefore a few years. She responded:
A lot as I would wish to say the writing – and I feel the writing is a chunk of it – these characters are simply what the followers like, what they need to see, so long as we hold creating predicaments for his or her characters’ potential to return out. Followers know extra concerning the histories of those characters than we do. They bear in mind issues.
Contemplating that I’ve rattled off all these Supernatural factoids from reminiscence and do not even depend myself among the many most diehards, I might agree with the EP that followers undoubtedly “bear in mind issues” concerning the present! For higher or worse, followers bear in mind.
“Lebanon” was nonetheless months away from airing when Supernatural celebrated the three hundredth episode with a pink carpet and celebration in Vancouver, and I had not but seen it. In wanting again at my interviews on that day, I additionally realized that one remark from EP Brad Buckner concerning the milestone is much more attention-grabbing within the context of how the sequence finale ended virtually two years later:
It is totally different from a number of our benchmark episodes, which are usually the sort of meta episodes and really memorably unusual and wacky episodes. I feel should you hold repeating these sorts of makes an attempt, it is a present that saved redoing itself. Finally you get to the purpose the place you retain having to prime your self in a sure manner.
All in all, I am glad that the four-year anniversary of the finale jogged my memory of that point on the pink carpet after I spoke to members of the Supernatural workforce. Whether or not you like or hate how the present ended for Sam, Dean, and Castiel, it was actually a trip and never many exhibits can boast hitting 300 episodes and persevering with on for an additional 27.
If you wish to revisit “Lebanon,” the finale, or any mixture of the 327 episodes that aired throughout fifteen seasons from September 2005 – November 2020 – lengthy earlier than the 2024 TV schedule and 2025 TV schedule – yow will discover the total run streaming on Netflix now.