4. NOT BRINGING BACK CERTAIN CHARACTERS
Supernatural is one show where nobody remains dead forever. The show always brought back the characters from the grave. Sam, Dean, and Castiel are among the few characters who have died numerous times and yet returned back to the land of the living. However, there are certain characters who were promising, had meaningful story arcs, and were significant additions to the show.
Characters such as Crowley, Jo, Balthazar, Bela, were great supporting characters. Characters such as Bela and Crowley started off as antagonists, but when the viewers got to experience their backstory, reason for their motivations, the fans sympathized with them. It was a sort of an injustice that Crowley was written off in such a bad fashion which even enraged the actor Mark Sheppard who portrayed Crowley. Even the character of ‘Death’, the OG who was terrifying and menacing, his presence stole every scene. The demise of certain characters didn’t make sense and there was lots of story to be told, but the writers failed to capitalize on such characters.
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3. FAN APPEASEMENT OVER FIXING THE PROBLEMS
Fans are the heart and soul of a show. Without fans, the show has no existence. But it becomes a problem when the show goes out of his way to appeal to a portion of the audiences. Supernatural is a show that has been seen by people of all ages and genders, and all across the world. This is an undeniable fact that the show went in a completely difference direction since Season 5.
New showrunners took over and experimented with the show. While there were some hits, but there were plenty of misses. While episodes such as ‘Fan Fiction’ is ranked among the most entertaining Supernatural episodes of all time and contains numerous references and nods to the fan fiction ships and pairings. If you remember Season 10, it started with the Demon Dean storyline which abruptly ended only after a couple of episodes. The storyline had so much potential and the writers could have gone through entire Season 10 with the plot, but they chose to truncate it and went into several directions without arriving at a destination. It might be an unpopular opinion, but the more the show gravitated in a direction to please the fans, the more distant it became. Once ‘Monster of the Week’ was something terrifying like a Wendigo which was later reduced to a scarecrow who is easily taken care of by some teenage girls. Earlier, the characters had motivations and personalities, but the later seasons reduced them to mere stereotypes.
2. FAILURE TO BUILD A UNIVERSE
Supernatural has more than 300 episodes under its belt, a big library of monsters, creatures, and species, and numerous characters who could have a spin-off of their own. But Supernatural has a tough luck when it comes to spin-offs. Several brilliant spin-off ideas have been pitched, some even saw the light of the day before being surprisingly cancelled by the Network. If you look at other shows such as Vampire Diaries, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Arrow, all of these created an extensive universe comprising of spin-offs which proved to be a success. But in its 15 Seasons, Supernatural failed to develop a single spin-off that has lasted a single season.
There was a plan of a spin-off focusing on the Samuel Colt, but it never came to fruition. Wayward Sisters was another promising spin-off, introduced through a perfect backdoor pilot and the entire season was planned with amazing storylines, but the Network axed it saying it didn’t live up to their expectations creatively. Bloodlines is another great spin-off set in Chicago exploring the Supernatural families who are at war. But sadly, it also didn’t get the green signal. Currently, there’s a prequel series titled ‘The Winchesters’ produced by Jensen Ackles’ company which will explore the lives of John & Mary.
1. TO END OR NOT TO END?
One of the toughest decisions a showrunner ever faces is when to end a show. Eric Kripke once said that Supernatural is like a baby, a child to him. After he completed his story arc with Season 5, he believed the child grew up and it was time for him to move away. Every fan has their personal opinion about the ending of Supernatural. Some believe the right time to end would have been after Season 5 while some believe it should have ended at Season 11. Some feel Supernatural went on for too long, it was out of the storylines and content, it lost its specialty. There is no denying that the show suffered greatly in quality in the later seasons. While some feel the show ended at the right time. There are various conflicting opinions over the Season 15 finale episode. There are fans who feel that the show didn’t deliver and it was underwhelming.