If there’s one show on television that seems like it’s never going to end, that show would have to be Supernatural. While it hasn’t been on longer than every other primetime series currently airing, eleven seasons is more than a respectable run for a show based on a pair of brothers fighting demons and monsters, and it’s already been renewed for a twelfth. In fact, Supernatural is the longest-running show in CW/WB history. But it will end one day, and stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles have some ideas for the grand finale.
Jared Padalecki pitched his idea for the end of Supernatural in a chat with EW:
Part of me, loving Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, always thought it’d be great to see the boys against insurmountable odds and to freeze-frame on them and just hear stuff in the background. You don’t know if they die, you don’t know if they live, but you know that they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory.
Padalecki’s idea for the very end definitely has its appeal. If the eleven seasons so far have proven anything, it’s that the Winchester boys are going to need to die together if they’re going to stay dead. Sam and Dean have gone to some pretty crazy lengths to resurrect and/or protect each other over the years, and there’s no way that Supernatural could feasibly continue without both brothers on board. Besides, they’re not getting any younger. Fresh-faced early-twenties Sam and Dean from Season 1 are now in their mid-thirties; an ending akin to Butch and Sundance would be more fitting than tragic.
Jensen Ackles has an idea of his own that doesn’t seem to be inspired by any movies, but has plenty of merit as well:
If you’d asked me in Season 1, I would’ve thought it would’ve been the apocalypse. But then again, you can’t end the TV show with the worst thing happening. As we’ve evolved, I think that there’s different roads that the show could certainly go down that would be interesting.
Ackles certainly has a point. Fans who have been watching the Winchester boys for more than a decade deserve less of a bummer of an ending to the show than the world ending altogether. Besides, Supernatural technically already did an apocalypse arc back in Seasons 4 and 5. Hopefully, the show can find a way to combine Padalecki’s idea for a blaze of glory with Ackles’ pitch for a road that isn’t too depressing.
The end is somewhat difficult to think about considering that there’s plenty of show still to go, but these wayward sons can’t keep carrying on forever. Surely even Sam and Dean have a limit on how many times they can be resurrected. Whatever witchcraft is being used behind the scenes to keep the show on the air for as long as it has will have to run out eventually.
To catch the rest of what the Winchesters are up to in Season 11, tune in to Supernatural on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW. Personally, I’m still hoping for that Arrow/Supernatural crossover that is totally never going to happen.
