Believe it or not, four years have gone by since Supernatural aired its divisive series finale back on November 19, 2020. The final season was unconventional to say the least, running out of episodes with just two left to film when COVID production shutdowns began in March 2020 and having to make cuts for the finale due to restrictions. The CW mainstay ended with both lead characters dead and in the afterlife, with Dean (Jensen Ackles) dying in a tragic yet mundane way decades before Sam (Jared Padalecki) would.
I've personally gone back and forth on the finale in the years since, but the four-year anniversary didn't really have me reflecting on Dean's death by rebar or the old age makeup on Jared Padalecki. (You can revisit the episode streaming with a Netflix subscription if you're blanking on what I'm referring to.) No, for whatever reason, I started thinking back on when I attended the red carpet for the 300th episode celebration back in late 2018 and spoke with members of the Supernatural team before their party really started.
I heard from Jared Padalecki about why he "never expected" Supernatural to last long enough to reach 300 episodes and executive producer Brad Buckner about how the episode – called "Lebanon" – would be different from other benchmarks, such as the musical 200th episode called "Fan Fiction." I also spoke with EP/writer Eugenie Ross-Leming, and I asked if the writers and producers have any method of keeping track of 300 episodes (and counting, at the time) of continuity. She shared:
We have people on staff who know stuff. Like, I'll write something and someone will say, 'We can't say that because in Episode 2 of Season 6, the opposite was done.' If you really want to do it, you have to find a way to justify it. You just can't feel.
Supernatural became infamous for frequently killing off main characters and then bringing them back not too long after, with Misha Collins' Castiel a frequent victim. In fact, he was able to pick what he deemed Cas' best death... and that was back in 2017, when the angel still had another resurrection and death to go before the end! He didn't have the most deaths and resurrections of the series, as that honor goes to Dean, but his final exit to save the man he loved was definitely more epic than what Dean got via rebar.
The finale was still more nearly two years away when I spoke with the EP on the 300th episode red carpet (seen above), though! "Lebanon" did have to bend Supernatural's rules to have a Winchester family reunion including both John and Mary as part of Season 14. I felt after "Lebanon" that Supernatural still had life left in it, and I asked Eugenie Ross-Leming at the time for her thoughts on what kept people tuning into Supernatural for so many years. She responded:
Much as I'd like to say the writing – and I think the writing is a piece of it – these characters are just what the fans like, what they want to see, as long as we keep creating predicaments for their characters' potential to come out. Fans know more about the histories of these characters than we do. They remember things.
Considering that I've rattled off all these Supernatural factoids from memory and don't even count myself among the most diehards, I would agree with the EP that fans definitely "remember things" about the show! For better or worse, fans remember.
"Lebanon" was still months away from airing when Supernatural celebrated the 300th episode with a red carpet and party in Vancouver, and I had not yet seen it. In looking back at my interviews on that day, I also realized that one comment from EP Brad Buckner about the milestone is even more interesting in the context of how the series finale ended almost two years later:
It's different from a lot of our benchmark episodes, which tend to be the kind of meta episodes and very memorably strange and wacky episodes. I think if you keep repeating those kinds of attempts, it's a show that kept redoing itself. Eventually you get to the point where you keep having to top yourself in a certain way.
All in all, I'm glad that the four-year anniversary of the finale reminded me of that time on the red carpet when I spoke to members of the Supernatural team. Whether you love or hate how the show ended for Sam, Dean, and Castiel, it was certainly a ride and not many shows can boast hitting 300 episodes and continuing on for another 27.
If you want to revisit "Lebanon," the finale, or any combination of the 327 episodes that aired across fifteen seasons from September 2005 - November 2020 – long before the 2024 TV schedule and 2025 TV schedule – you can find the full run streaming on Netflix now.
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