Twenty years later, and fans still love Supernatural, maybe even more than they did when it first premiered on September 13, 2005. To celebrate the anniversary, TV Guide Magazine put together the Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special issue, and when we spoke with showrunner Andrew Dabb to get details about the series finale ending that was originally planned before COVID forced a major pivot, we asked him about the show’s legacy and what he hopes people will continue to take away and remember.
“I think especially as the show has finished and then aged in the way it’s going to age, you have a lot of people still discovering it. You have a lot of people that use it as kind of comfort food, which is incredibly flattering. The message of the show was always — and not to be super cloying or anything — anybody can be a hero, not that it’s going to inspire people to go out and fight crime, but I think that’s a really valuable message, especially, I mean, I was going to say right now, but truthfully anytime,” Dabb said. “You’ve got these two guys that are incredibly competent going out and doing things and helping people. And I think it gives people comfort in a way that is really great.”
He continued, “Supernatural, we never won an Emmy, we were never one of those shows. But I think that show, especially for the people that are watching it now and for the people that watched it when it was going, it really does seem to have wound its way into people’s DNA, which to me is the best legacy of the show you can have.”
Dabb pointed to the bond between brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean’s (Jensen Ackles) as a contributing factor to why people still love the show. “You don’t see a lot of shows about male bonds in that way,” he explained. “Most shows, you put two characters together, they’re meant to be at odds, right? And Sam and Dean, they were at odds. They had differences of opinion, everything like that, but at the end of the day, they still loved each other. And I think that’s what allowed it to cut through everything.”
He also credited Padalecki and Ackles for their performances. “They started out when they were really young, and they threw themselves into it,” he said. “And then I think we got really lucky in that we had a lot of writers come through that show that were incredibly talented and could come in and do episodes and make the episodes their own and make them feel like, the best cases, these really well-crafted stories that people can go back to and that do stand up, that do kind of hold up in a way that frankly, in my opinion, it’s rare for shows to hold up as well as Supernatural holds up — not to say everything holds up, not to say the politics are always perfect because they’re definitely not. But I think in terms of the storytelling and the enjoyment of it, hopefully that holds up for some people.”
Why do you still love Supernatural? Let us know in the comments section below.
For a deep dive into 20 years of Supernatural, from behind-the-scenes scoop to exclusive cast interviews, photos, and fan stories, pick up a copy of TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special issue, available on newsstands and for order online at Supernatural.TVGM2025.com.