The end of an era is coming to The CW in the 2019-2020 TV season thanks to the grand finale of Supernatural. The show will have run for 15 seasons by the time the credits roll for the last time next year, and Season 14 ended on a cliffhanger proving that the guys of Team Free Will are facing some major challenges -- including God as the Big Bad -- in their final batch of episodes. So how will the series end for the Winchester brothers and their allies?
Misha Collins, who plays the angel Castiel on Supernatural, shared some details about what to expect from the end of the show, and his words suggest that fans may want to prepare themselves for an emotional journey when Season 15 kicks off. Speaking with CinemaBlend's TV Editor Nick Venable at the TCA 2019 Summer Press Tour, Collins shared this when asked how Season 15 begins:
Yeah, we are picking up where we left off. So, sort of zombie apocalypse closing in on us. Having to deal with that problem, and having to deal with the death of Jack, which is really hard for all of us. You know, Dean is still mad at Cas, because Dean still thinks Cas is responsible for his mother's death, and there's just a lot of tension going into the final season. And it's not gonna really let up. I can tell you that it's not a real conventional happily-ever-after ending on this show.
Season 14 ended with God seriously upset with the Winchesters and Castiel after Sam and Dean stopped playing his games for his entertainment. Also, Sam shot God, which is the kind of sentence I'm going to miss writing when Supernatural is done for good. So, God opened Hell and unleashed the souls back up to the Earth, including some of the monsters the Winchesters had killed over the years.
The final scene of the season -- set to "God Was Never on Your Side," naturally -- saw Sam, Dean, and Castiel surrounded by zombies in a graveyard. Misha Collins revealed that Season 15 won't pick up after a time jump, as seasons have in the past, and the stage will be set for a tense final season that doesn't culminate with a happily-ever-after.
Why Misha Collins Doesn't Think Supernatural Would Have Gotten On The Air Today
As Misha Collins noted, it's not like the brothers were on the best terms with Cas before God revealed himself as a villain. Although Jack technically is the one who killed Mary Winchester, Dean believes Castiel could have prevented it by revealing the troubling things he was seeing from Jack before Jack crossed that line. Has too much happened for any happiness at the end?
Well, Jensen Ackles revealed that he had "so much trouble" with the series finale ending when he learned what the writers and producers had in mind, and it wasn't until he reached out to an old friend for some clarity that he ended up "pumped" about it. According to Ackles, the ending is going to be very emotional, and that doesn't necessarily mean happy.
Working With The Supernatural Cast Again Would 'Be Like Coming Home' For Jensen Ackles
Jared Padalecki also chatted about the end of the series, and his words were a little bit more promising for some substantial light at the end of the Supernatural tunnel. Padalecki explained that he's comfortable with the "version of peace" that the show ends with for Sam and Dean. He was once a proponent of a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-esque kind of ending for the Winchesters, which would have been fitting but also kind of a bummer.
Will the brothers survive, or are they doomed? Death may rarely be permanent for the key players on Supernatural, but Season 15 is the actual end of the series. Whatever happens to the characters is going to have to stick this time, and Misha Collins' comments suggest that the Supernatural version of a white picket fence and happily-ever-after for the extended Winchester family may not be in the books.
While of course Misha Collins wasn't going to start dropping major details about Supernatural's final season before the season even premieres, he did share some of what's in store for Castiel:
It's getting increasingly personal and emotional for Cas, and I'm hopeful that that's how it ends for him, too. You know, I don't think Cas is going to die rescuing children from a burning building. I think it's gonna be more emotional and heart stuff. Not that children in a burning building is not emotional.
Although Castiel technically didn't arrive on the scene until Dean needed to be yanked out of Hell in Season 4, he became such a key part of the series that it's almost difficult to remember what the show was like without him. As befits a major character on Supernatural, Castiel has been killed off several times already, only to be brought back to the point that Cas once declared it was a "punishment resurrection," as it got worse every time. Oh, Castiel...
Judging by Misha Collins' comments, Castiel's arc in the final season will be quite emotional, and I'm guessing at least some of that will stem from the tension between Cas and Dean. For all that Castiel (and Jack) grew to become part of the Winchester family, Dean and Cas have had the -- to quote Castiel himself -- "more profound bond," and Castiel doesn't always handle it well when he's in Dean's bad books. Throw in the Hell literally unleashed on Earth, and emotions could be running very high.
Will Castiel be killed off yet again, and have it stick this time? I'd be very surprised if Castiel wasn't still alive until at least almost the very end of the series, even if the final scene could well be reserved for just Sam and Dean. Supernatural killing off Cas ahead of the end of the series would qualify as not giving the show a conventional happily-ever-after, I would say! Besides, as Supernatural has shown many, many times in the past, there are plenty of ways to kill off Cas that don't involve children in a burning building.
Find out how Supernatural spins God as the Big Bad of the final season, brings back Jack, and handles the tension between the Winchesters and Castiel when the show returns to the airwaves this fall. It's one of many shows hitting the airwaves in the not-too-distant future, and it's not even the only long-running series ending on The CW in the 2019-2020 TV season.
