The history of television is littered with ‘disappointing’ finales that let fans down.
I’m thinking of shows like Game of Thrones, Lost, and, who could forget, How I Met Your Mother’s woeful ending.
Yet there’s one TV ending I regularly see criticised online, which I don’t think deserves the flak.
No, I’m not about to start waxing on about The Sopranos’ fade to black (Tony died, and it’s pretty obvious when you watch 12 YouTube videos explaining it). I’m talking about a very different kind of show.
Supernatural – which premiered 20 years ago today – also has a very contentious ending, which at least one fan branded the ‘most disappointing finale ever’.
If you never watched it, then the basic premise of the series is that there are two brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), who are hunters.
They don’t shoot deer, though; they hunt supernatural creatures – including vampires, ghosts, and anything else you might find lurking in a nightmare – all of which are extremely hostile to humans.
There’s more to it than that, including a convoluted storyline that reveals Sam and Dean are pawns in God’s (yes, the one from the Bible) plot to bring about armageddon, but that’s the general idea behind the show.
Supernatural was wildly popular in its heyday, running for 15 seasons and hundreds of episodes. It ended, however, on a bit of a bum note with Dean dying on a hunt and Sam retiring from hunting to live a normal life.
The ending’s lack of stakes and drama (they’d just fought God in the episode before) proved divisive in the fandom, and if you look on Reddit, you’ll see people saying how much they hate the ending.
‘I feel intense loss when I watch the ending,’ wrote Seranyti in one thread. I don’t feel peace.’
‘Just popping in to say I also hated the ending,’ added Frostflyer. ‘I don’t have the energy right now to elaborate with the fifteen paragraphs of vitriolic disappointment I had when I watched it initially.’
Meanwhile, Additional-Ear-1996 said: ‘I could write an entire thesis on why that joke of a finale sucked.’
This feeling isn’t isolated to Reddit either. On X, Electromignion wrote how much they despised the ending.
‘[The Supernautal] ending has been a huge middle finger towards the legacy the show had over 15 years, hindering the main character’s development and being a middle finger altogether to the fans.’
‘The real monsters of supernatural were the writers who gave Dean that ending,’ chimed in @deanscinema.
Yeah, it was not a well-received ending to a 15-season saga about the endless war between good and evil.
Yet, I believe the finale was probably the best ending we could have possibly got and is severely underrated.
Why? Well, the show ends with both men dying the way they always wanted to. Dean dies saving children from a vampire’s nest, while Sam gets to settle down, fall in love, and have kids.
Even better, despite them being separated for so many years after Dean comes down with a bad case of rusty metal in his spine, they’re reunited in heaven.
It’s the perfect ending for Sam and Dean that reflects their grand dreams. Dean died a hero, while Sam got the normality he was denied.
Even better, the pair, who forged such a strong bond, get the ultimate happy ending when they’re reunited in heaven with all of their loved ones.
What’s more, the brothers’ mundane deaths reflect the wider themes of the series about destiny and free will.
For years, Dean and Sam have lacked agency, always pulled about by other forces in their life, be they supernatural or mundane.
The ending, then, is a meta refutation of the idea that the brothers had to go out in some grand battle for the fate of humanity. They both died in relatively mundane ways of their own choosing.
The ending, then, isn’t a betrayal; it was the brothers finally getting what they’d always fought for.
I guess what I’m saying is if you’re still upset about the ending, like my friend, you should ‘lay your weary head to rest…don’t you cry no more.’
All 15 seasons of Supernatural are available to watch now on Amazon Prime.
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