Written by Katie Nohr

The CW’s Supernatural took home two People’s Choice Awards this winter: Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Show and Best Network Drama. The second of these is quite the accomplishment for a genre show in an unfavourable time slot on a network whose shows are often not considered serious drama. Another thing worth noting about Supernatural is that many of its fans expected it to last five seasons, but it is now mid-way through its seventh. The reason Supernatural was thought by some to be ending after season five is because the show had a five season story arc that was being wrapped up. Supernatural is not like Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the world is saved every couple of seasons. There was one apocalypse to avert, and five seasons that built up to it.

Season one of Supernatural follows the Winchester brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), as they try to find their father (Jeffery Dean Morgan) who went missing while hunting the demon who killed their mother. There is also some tension between the brothers because Sam had left the hunting lifestyle for a few years to go to college and Dean feels like that was a betrayal. Still, there are very few episodes in season one totally devoted to the plot. Although there is often mention of following a lead they think will lead them to their dad, the show is fairly episodic. In fact, it is almost procedural in that Sam and Dean will visit crime scenes, usually posing as cops, and investigate. They figure out what the "monster of the week" is through both physical evidence and talking to locals who might have useful information, and then they figure out how to kill it. The early seasons are best described with a line from Dean, “Saving people. Hunting things. The family business.”

This "monster of the week" format continues into season two, and there are many episodes that can almost stand alone, but we start to have more to keep track of. There are more reoccurring peripheral characters in this season, whereas in season one there were only a couple reoccurring villains and their father. The brothers now have friends and allies, including father figure and fellow hunter Bobby (Jim Beaver) who they called Uncle Bobby when they were children. There is also a season-long arc about Sam as he develops odd powers, which usually involves visions of people’s deaths. One such vision was mentioned, but not explored, in season one and in season two they start happening more frequently. We find out at the end of the season that this has been caused by the Yellow Eyed Demon, the one who killed their mother. He has given powers to a number of people by feeding them his blood while they were infants. He did this as part of a search for a General, someone to free his demon army from hell and lead them on earth. Sam, of course, refuses to participate in his plot and is as a result killed by one of the other candidates. As Sam is one of only two main characters in a fantasy series so there is little question that he will be brought back. The interesting thing is how he is revived. Dean makes a deal with a demon to resurrect him, in exchange for his soul. As part of the deal he is given one year to live.

This is the plot of season three. Dean is going to die, and Sam wants to stop it. Dean seems resigned to his choice, however, which is frustrating to his younger brother. Between the looming loss of his brother and the ever present feeling that there is something wrong with him (which he always had, but which was brought out more in season two with the revelation of where his powers came from), Sam is under a lot of pressure in this season. Of course Dean is as well since he’s the one going to hell and trying to convince Sam that he can’t save him, but Sam is the one striving to do the impossible. Sam is in a vulnerable state in season three, which is what makes it easier for the demon Ruby (Katie Cassidy) to earn his trust. She fights alongside the boys multiple times throughout the season and, while Dean is extremely wary of her, Sam considers her an asset. He’s not that quick to trust her either, because she is a demon and demons lie, but she tells him she thinks she can save Dean and he’s desperate enough to believe her. It turns out that there is no saving Dean, however, and he is ripped to shreds by hellhounds at the end of season three.

Dean spends the time in-between seasons in hell and while it is only a few months on earth it feels like decades to him. While he is there, Ruby (who has switched hosts and is now played by Genevieve Cortese) becomes closer to Sam. They have started sleeping together, and he has started drinking her blood. Drinking demon blood allows Sam to access the powers given to him by the yellow eyed demon, and not just the visions he was having in season two. He can now kill demons with the power of his mind in such a way that the host is usually able to survive. He had been trying to find a way to resurrect Dean, but no demons would make deals with him.

It turns out that Dean is resurrected in the first episode of season four by the angel Castiel (Misha Collins). He says that heaven has work for Dean. Before this, Sam and Dean were hunters because that is how they were raised by their father, and neither of them was any sort of ‘chosen one’. The first episode of season four is when that changes. It is in season four that almost every episode becomes connected to the overall plot and the ‘monster of the week’ format is mostly set aside. Another development in season four is that the show starts including more elements of metafiction than it had previously. The Winchester brothers discover a book series based on their adventures, the author of which had no idea it was real people he’d been having visions of. This is one of the more blatantly meta aspects the writers have done, but there have been more subtle (and even more blatant) things as well.  Supernatural seems to delve into metafiction for the sake of poking fun at itself, as well as its fanbase.

Through this the show is in conversation with its fans. The Supernatural fanbase is strong. There are roughly fifteen Supernatural conventions a year in various locations. In 2012 there will be conventions in Toronto and Vancouver (where the show is filmed), as well as multiple cities in the U.S and all around the world. Germany, France, Poland, Australia and the U.K will all have conventions this year attended by various combinations of stars and guest stars from the show. The online fandom is also large. Lots of shows have fans writing fan fiction or drawing fan art for them, but Supernatural has entire sub-fandoms devoted to things like Team Free Will 2.0, a fan-spawned idea that various child characters in the show should grow up and take over for Sam and Dean.

Getting back to the plot of season four, the demon Lilith is attempting to set the devil loose on earth so he can bring about the apocalypse. To do this she needs to break 66 seals, the seals being various conditions that need to be met for Lucifer to be set free. There are more than 66 and so the angels do not know which ones she will go after. The only seals that cannot be substituted for others are the first and last. The first seal was ‘a righteous man spills blood in hell’, which Dean broke when he graduated from tortured soul to torturer during his time there. The last seal is unknown aside from it having to do with Lilith, who was the first of the demons. Sometimes Sam and Dean will stop a seal from being broken, or deal with the fallout of one being broken, but a lot of the battle over the seals is fought by angels off screen. However, Castiel insists that heaven has important plans for Dean and that he will be the one to stop the end from coming.

Meanwhile, Sam is still secretly seeing Ruby and drinking her blood. He has become an addict, both metaphorically and literally. He is addicted to the power, but he also has a physical dependence on the blood. At one point Dean finds out and Sam is locked up in Bobby’s house to detox. By the end of the season Sam, not in his right mind due to the effects of the demon blood, decides that he should be the one to kill Lilith because Dean is too weak. He has a fight with Dean that is brutal both in what they say and in the degree of violence Sam uses. Afterwards he heads off with Ruby to find Lilith and end her plot, while Dean talks with Castiel and agrees to serve heaven. Dean finds out while meeting with Castiel and his superior, Zachariah (Kurt Fuller), that the final seal is killing Lilith and that Sam is going to unwittingly break it. Two things are revealed by this. One, this has been Ruby’s plan for Sam since she first approached them in season three.  Two, the angels always knew this and have not tried to stop it. Furthermore, they will not let Dean go find Sam and stop him. Heaven has always secretly wanted Lucifer to rise, so that they can have their final battle with him and achieve paradise after the world has ended. Dean is eventually able to convince Castiel, who he has developed a friendship with, to rebel against the other angels and help him get to Sam. Castiel dies doing this, and Dean arrives where Sam is too late to stop him. Sam realizes he was wrong and the two of them kill Ruby, but they still end up trapped in the room where Satan is rising. It is possibly the cruelest cliffhanger the writers have left us with over the summer.

At the very beginning of season five, Sam and Dean find themselves safe and sound on an airplane. Castiel is also inexplicably alive. Cass, as the boys call him, thinks that both of these things are the work of God and goes on a season-long search for the deity. Misha Collins became a series regular in season five, so Cass if often featured throughout. Bobby is also around a lot, although Jim Beaver remains a guest star. Sam and Dean are still the central characters, but Bobby and Cass achieve something like main character status during seasons four and five.

Early in season five we find out exactly what heaven’s plan for Dean was. Angels, like demons, need to possess a human in order to move freely around the earth. However, unlike demons, they cannot simply choose any host they want. An angel has certain vessels that are compatible with him or her, usually people of a certain bloodline, and they must have the vessel’s permission in order to possess them. Dean is the true vessel of Michael, the angel who is to destroy Lucifer in the final battle, and Sam is the true vessel of Lucifer. Neither Dean nor Sam is willing to say ‘yes’ to Michael or Lucifer since their battle is what ends the world. Lucifer is still present throughout the season, however, in a substitute vessel. He is played by Mark Pellegrino.

The brothers Winchester spend season five fighting various end-of-days enemies, such as the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and trying to find a way to stop the end from coming. Eventually Michael is able to find a suitable vessel besides Dean, the boys’ illegitimate (and dead since the season four episode he was introduced in) half-brother Adam (Jake Abel). In this season Sam is haunted by the guilt of what he did in season four and that, combined with there genuinely being no other way, contributes to his decision about how to solve things. At one point in the season the boys had learned how to open the door to the cage Lucifer had previously been confined in. Sam decides that he needs to say ‘yes’ to Lucifer then take back control and jump in, trapping them both. Although it is not easy, he succeeds. Season five ends with Sam jumping into hell and taking Lucifer, Michael and Adam with him. Cass goes back to heaven. Dean is left alone, with the promise he made to Sam that he would not try to resurrect him again and would instead seek out an old girlfriend of his (and her son who she says is not Dean’s, although there is some question about that) and attempt to live a normal life. Dean does this.

This is the point at which many fans thought the series would end. The series started off episodic and added a bit more plot every season. There was also a very well paced escalation of the content. In the early seasons the boys hunt monsters and ghosts that are causing fairly isolated damage to families or towns, and by season five they have taken on the devil and saved the world. Given that the series had always been building up towards that final, all-important, conflict it was hard to imagine where they would go from there. What can you have them do that’s bigger than saving the world? What villain can you give them that’s more terrible than Satan?

Season six was a big change for the series because it no longer had that same direction. Also, the show’s creator Eric Kripke relinquished his position of showrunner to executive producer Sera Gamble, although he remains on board as an executive producer. Gamble did not try to create bigger and more significant adventures for the boys. Rather, the show took a step back. Though it did not become as episodic as it was in season one, the ‘monster of the week’ format started to return. There are still season-long plots, however. Sam came back from hell without his soul, causing him to become something of a sociopath. Dean had to find a way to fix that, and figure out how to deal with the family he’d become involved with in Sam’s absence. Whether he could return to hunting and remain close to Lisa (Cindy Sampson) and her son Ben (Nicholas Elia) weighed on his mind. He decides by the end of the season that it’s too dangerous for them. There was also a plot to do with the origins of monsters, and although Sam and Dean did not become involved in it, a civil war had started in heaven over how it should be run now that Michael was gone. Cass was the leader of one side of this war, and his desperation for a way to win caused him to enter into a partnership with the demon Crowley (Mark Sheppard). Cass hides this, as well as many of his activities, from the Winchesters and eventually his goals clash with theirs resulting in his betraying them. The end of season six sees Castiel taking on a power that is beyond himself and blindly (perhaps even drunkenly) declaring himself the new God.

Castiel’s reign as “God” lasts for a few months. He realises his mistake in the first episode of season seven, but by that time one of the forces inside him he had drawn power from is able to kill him. So far season seven has been all about taking away anything that Sam and Dean have relied on. Their friend Cass is the first to go. Other things that have been constants in the lives of the Winchesters are;  the 1967 Chevrolet Impala that Dean calls his baby, Bobby’s house (which, aside from the Impala, is the closest thing they have to a home), and Bobby himself who has always been there to provide advice and assistance to the boys. Shortly into season seven Bobby’s house burnt down. Then shape-shifting monsters posed as Sam and Dean and went on a killing spree, using the same car. Now they can no longer use any of their old aliases and have had to give up driving the Impala. Lastly, in the episode before winter hiatus, Bobby died. Supernatural has not yet been renewed for an eighth season, but I sincerely hope it will be. While the tone of the series does not seem to allow the possibility of a totally happy ending, spending the very last season taking away everything Sam and Dean care about seems a bit too dark.

There are theories circulating that Bobby and Cass might not be gone for good. Misha Collins is actually confirmed to be returning to the show later this season, though it is not clear if he will be playing Castiel or, if he is, if that Cass will be the same person who was pretty much Dean’s best friend. The episode in which Bobby died was one of the most moving in the entire series, however, and it will cheapen it if his death is not permanent.

The current state of affairs for the series is that Sam and Dean have little left to lose. All they have now is each other, and an enemy who – while not the actual devil – has taken away the two people closest to them. There is no way to escalate the importance of the boys’ actions to the world as a whole after they have stopped the apocalypse, but that is not necessary when the stakes for them personally remain just as high. The core of the story has always been the relationship between Sam and Dean, and it continues to be so. Also, setting aside for a moment what direction the plot has, is, or may go; Supernatural is still an entertaining show. Although it can be quite dark at times most episodes are well balanced. You can be cringing over something gory in one scene (Supernatural has always had an aptitude for cringe-worthy gore) and laughing at Dean lip-syncing to Air Supply in the next. You’ll also probably find yourself feeling touched at some point because while this is a fantasy series about ghost hunting, it is also a drama about family and surviving in the world. There’s a reason this show has a widespread and devoted enough fanbase to win two People’s Choice Awards, in both the sci-fi or fantasy and more general drama categories.