‘Supernatural’ Lifespan: How long can Jared Padalecki – Jensen Ackles series really go?
We’ve spotlighted many a long-running series so far through the month of July with our Lifespan feature, but discussing “Supernatural” is a particularly interesting one. After all, this is a cast and crew that has already devoted at least a decent amount of time in interviews to discussing the future.
Anytime the question is asked about whether or not season X is going to be the last, the answer always comes back to Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles: So long as they want to keep making episodes, the show will continue to do so. The ratings justify it, and with its success in syndication and around the world, pumping the brakes on it now would feel like a mistake.
Creatively, you can of course question if there is a time to end things, but the funny thing is that we would have considered it more in season 6 than after season 11. Really, the entire Jeremy Carver era was great fun for the most part; there were dud episodes here and there, but the overall stories had some creativity and real stakes for the brothers. We have Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer taking over as showrunners moving forward, and we’d be a little more worried were it not for the fact that they’ve already been doing this for a long time.
Ideally, we’d love to see the show make it to a milestone like season 15. Having a season 20 would be crazy, incredible, and really unprecedented in this genre, but that’s still so far away that even hoping for it feels like. If the show did last for that long, we feel almost like one of the right moves would be to have some significant evolution in the lives of Sam and Dean aside from hunting. I know this is a difficult life that often prohibits outside relationships, but this would be a long time to continue to do the same thing with interruption. We say that both in terms of the characters, but also on a meta level for many of the cast and crew.
Tell us: How long do you see “Supernatural” lasting? Vote in the attached poll, and head over here to score some other TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: The CW.)