Fifteen years. Two brothers. Angels and demons. A story like no other. And one of the most passionate fan bases of all time. That’s Supernatural. When a show you love ends after changing your life in countless ways, saying goodbye is hard. When characters are as richly written as Sam and Dean and Castiel and … Read more There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done
Wondering where you can find There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done, Family Don’t End With Blood and our other Supernatural books? Here’s all the information you need and links to order! There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural is an emotional look back at the television show … Read more Where To Find It – All Our Books on Supernatural and More!
All too soon, Walker is headed into its mid season hiatus – but boy, did it go out with a bang! Last week’s episode was an emotional roller coaster, which we should have expected since it’s titled “Just Desserts.” That doesn’t just apply to what comes at the end of Thanksgiving dinner either. The opening scene sets up the episode as one that deals with loss and family strife. Abby leaves a message for her brother William, saying she’s here if he wants to talk. Molly Hagan can make me feel so much with just a short little scene.
Cordi and Liam try to cope with everything they’ve been through by starting a new tradition – ranch to table turkey, complete with turkey imitation gobbles (which we also got some behind the scenes iterations of on Instagram thanks to Keegan Allen, lucky fandom that we are).
From Keegan’s IG
Jared does do a pretty authentic turkey imitation…
Stella always said she wanted to “mix things up” and Cordell is really missing his daughter, so he’s also planning Stella’s favorite dessert. Abeline and Bonham point out that Cordell is making grand gestures instead of talking to her instead of avoiding some awkward conversations. He clearly is upset that she’s been “radio silent” for a few weeks – and I find it hard to believe that Abeline hasn’t made sure Cordell realizes he got it wrong about what happened at the SideStep yet. What the hell??
The brothers tell their mom she’s not lifting a finger, assuring her they’ll have everything ready in time for the traditional Circle of Thanks, because they know this is a tough day for her.
They also do some hilarious imitations of their dad, which I’m sure Jared Padalecki and Keegan Allen thoroughly enjoyed regaling Mitch Pileggi with.
They also clearly enjoyed roaring around on ATVs wearing hunting camo gear and trying to outpace their dad – both the characters onscreen and definitely the actors. The whole kill the turkey on Thanksgiving Day and get all dressed up in camo gear and oh we also need to race ATVs didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I don’t think that was the point – it was some indulgent fun that everyone could roll their eyes at a little.
They had just as much fun behind the scenes too…
They find some turkeys just hanging around gobbling and take a shot – which misses.
Liam: I was kinda hoping a Texas Ranger would be a better marksman.
BOYS.
They oddly give up on hunting fairly quickly, perhaps because they ran out of time riding around on their big toys like little boys. Cordell rationalizes.
Last week’s episode of Big Sky was so action packed and full of twists and turns that I could barely live tweet it – there just was no down time! Here’s an update of what happened to our favorite Sheriff, Beau Arlen, last week – and where we leave the rest of our Big Sky inhabitants…
The episode picks up right where we left off, with clueless Luke at first thinking it’s a good thing that he’s run into ex-girlfriend Paige in the woods, but she knows he picked up that rock to kill her – and so does Walter, who “gives him a head start to make it more sporting.” Uh oh, Luke.
Beau finally arrives at the murder camp and Emily throws herself into his arms with “Daddy!” and awwww he finally gets to hold his little girl, reassuring her “I gotcha, I gotcha”.
She’s distraught, telling him how she found Mary and thought she was hurt until she saw her eyes. Poor Emily – at least her dad is here now.
Love seeing this protective Dad side of Sheriff Beau, and Jensen Ackles channels his own protective dad reality to make this scene full of tenderness.
Em tells her dad that she doesn’t think Luke could have killed Mary, but admits that’s just a feeling she has.
It’s been a busy couple of months! It’s almost Thanksgiving as I write this, and I’m finally trying to catch up on Supernatural convention posts – first up, Kansas City Con!
Three days after getting back from the Supernatural convention at Denver, I headed blearily to the airport again on Thursday night to fly to the next one in Kansas City. I’d never been there, and there had never been a convention there, so that was exciting – enough to keep me awake at least. My lovely roommates had a delicious burger and fries waiting for me, so that helped too. So did a good night’s sleep!
I am rarely able to be at a con on Friday morning, so it was a treat to get to see Gabe Tigerman’s panel. Gabe has a chapter in There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done, and he’s also part of our earliest books, both Fangasm Supernatural Fangirls and Fandom AtThe Crossroads, so it made me all kinds of happy to catch up with him. A fan asked what he would do if he had mind control like his character, Andy?
Gabe: I’d do the same thing he did – steal Baby!
Favorite line?
Gabe: I have an evil twin! Though I wish it was identical twins so it could be like me fighting me with a mustache.
Like so many guest actors on the show, Gabe said that Supernatural was his favorite job.
Gabe: As guest actors on that show, we really got to act – and then do these conventions!
He wishes Andy didn’t have to die, because it made so much sense for Sam and Dean to just take Andy’s van and go hunting with him.
I was extra thrilled to hear him tell the infamous 5-legged steer story, about the time he and some buddies went to see the world’s largest groundhog and found it stuffed – and then were chased by a cow with a whole ass extra leg hanging off its side!
He also told the story of him fanboying Michael C Hall at a restaurant, and taking out his Invisalign at the exact moment that Hall walked by and said hello, so that Gabe looked up at him with a spit string attached to his Invisalign hahaha.
Gabe took an informal poll of how many times people in the audience had watched Supernatural start to finish – the winner was 35!!
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Julian Richings too – only in the Supernatural fandom does Death exuberantly take the stage like this!
The fifth episode of ‘The Winchesters’ starts with an unlucky councilman having terrifying nightmares he can’t wake up from, waking up from one into another into another until he finally wakes for real only to fall to the floor screaming and holding his head. Ouch.
And then, we’re at the Winchesters Garage…
Dean Winchester words of wisdom for the day: Spending a lifetime hunting monsters takes its toll. There comes a time when you gotta let out that pain inside you. If you don’t, it’ll eat you alive.
Well, Dean Winchester should know. But easier said than done for most of the characters on OG Supernatural and this prequel!
The episode is mostly about our merry band of young hunters trying to figure out who’s turning people’s brains to mush (surprise, it’s the Akrida) but the more personal story running parallel is John and Mary trying to figure out if they like each other and if they have the courage to talk about it if they do. John’s working on a motorcycle that Millie bought Henry for his birthday – and then he left two weeks later.
Mary: Ouch.
John offers to teach Mary the ropes, which she pretends to go along with until he realizes she already knows, taught by her parents so she “wouldn’t be faced with a starter that won’t catch while escaping a pack of werewolves”.
John says she could work at the garage after she leaves hunting, but Mary confides that she may leave Lawrence too when she leaves hunting, which John doesn’t take all that well – but doesn’t say anything. Millie is glad John’s taking a little break and spending time with Mary, though he insists it’s “not like that” with Mary.
Then Mary finds the councilman’s case in the newspaper (which I love that it’s always in the actual newspaper) and they head to the ‘Clubhouse’ (which I hate because it makes them sound too much like kids playing at something instead of hunters). Anyway, they read about the poor guy who died in the opener, of a massive brain trauma that came from the inside and turned his brain to mush.
Last year on November 19 I wrote a post about the one year anniversary of my favorite show of all time, Supernatural, coming to an end. I was relieved that the fandom had survived the year since the show’s finale, and that there was still a vibrant active fan community – the week leading up to this date was full of celebration, photos, gifs, memes all about the finale and the show. I wrote then that I was so grateful – and that I wondered if that would still be the case a year later, on the two year anniversary of the series finale.
That’s today.
I am still grateful. Grateful that I had 327 episodes of this Show I love so much, and that it got to have its finale even in the midst of a global pandemic that disrupted literally everything. Supernatural has always been about ‘always keep fighting’ and pushing through, no matter how difficult the circumstances, and they did.
Some things don’t change – I am still as in love with the show and the characters as I was two years ago. The fandom has persisted, albeit with less activity (and maybe a little bit less infighting – the one silver lining of less activity). I am so glad that I have so many fandom friends who still love the show as much as I do.
Some things do change, as much as I don’t want them to. There wasn’t the big cross-platform celebration of the show in the week leading up to the anniversary that there was last year. Twitter itself, the platform on which I mostly make my fannish home and spend time with my fellow fans, is teetering on the abyss of ending too, driven into the ground by a new owner who seems determined to ruin what made it so useful, and occasionally wonderful.
Who knows if the Supernatural fandom as it has existed for the past 17 years will ever exist that way again if the platform does disappear, with so many using Twitter as a platform for both fandom and for interacting with the actors who brought Supernatural to life. It feels like we may be at the end of an era – and doesn’t it just make sense that we’re standing on this precipice on the exact anniversary of Supernatural ending. How fitting is that? Supernatural has always been unprecedented, oddly tied to other major shifts in the broader culture. Why would that change now?
Sam and Dean went through alot during those fifteen seasons we were privileged to witness. They grew up alot, and they came a long way. We have all done the same.
The last year has also brought other changes – the most striking one, the launch of the Supernatural prequel, The Winchesters, with executive producers Jensen and Danneel Ackles and former Supernatural writer Robbie Thompson. The series has been a way to keep the SPN universe alive and explore its characters’ history, but it has also been controversial. We still don’t know the full story that The Winchesters is telling, so it remains to be seen how the prequel will impact the fandom or canon or the chances of a reboot of Supernatural itself going forward. For me, it’s a separate show with its own story arcs, very different than OG Supernatural – but I’m enjoying watching it as a separate entity.
Supernatural conventions have continued unchanged for the past year, but the Creation conventions will change next year, no longer “the Official Supernatural Conventions” but “Creation Cons” including Supernatural and “other J & J projects”. It remains to be seen what exactly that will change, but just having them not be official Supernatural conventions feels weirdly like a loss to me, a forever Supernatural fan. Not that having some guests from other projects won’t be fun – I watch Walker and The Boys and Big Sky and Walker Independence already and love them, with Gotham Knights coming up soon – but I still feel like not having “official” Supernatural conventions as we have for the past 14 years is some kind of vague loss. (I hate change, my not-exactly-neurotypical brain just balks, what can I say?)
The past year has also given the actors more chance to reflect on the show and the journeys of their characters, in interviews and at conventions. Misha has talked about how important Castiel’s last scene was to him personally. Jared and Jensen have talked about how much their last scenes meant to them, both the painfully real ‘barn scene’ that gave them the opportunity to do some of the most powerful acting I’ve ever witnessed as well as the deep satisfaction of ‘normal’ life in the bunker for a while and the joyous reunion on the bridge.
Fandom remains divided over loving or hating the finale, and everyone’s personal opinion is valid, but Jared and Jensen and Misha are all happy and very proud of their final episodes.
And that is perhaps the most important thing of all.
If you haven’t read them yet, the Supernatural actors shared their personal thoughts about how the show has changed their lives in the book ‘Family Don’t End With Blood’ and their feelings on their characters and Supernatural’s legacy in ‘There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done’. They’re both on sale at amazon right now, if you want a written remembrance of just how special this show will always be – to both the fandom and the cast. The website to order is below in the banner if you want a tangible way to remember Supernatural and its amazing actors and fans.
I may have to do a little rewatching of my favorite show of all time this weekend too, which I will never ever get tired of. And I’m hoping Twitter is still around for me to enjoy other fans’ celebrating there and on Tumblr and everywhere else we all gather today.
I’m so grateful to still have something I love so much, even if it hurt alot to lose it – hopefully temporarily! (That’s what Jensen says in ‘There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done’ so who am I not to listen to him??)
Happy Two Year Anniversary, Supernatural Series Finale!
