Sam and Dean Winchester’s Supernatural adventures may have come to an end on-screen, but their enduring legacy lives on. Supernatural is one of the most popular genre network TV hits ever created. It originated on The WB, survived the network’s transition to The CW, and ran for 15 successful seasons between 2005 and 2020, tapping into American mythology, folk horror, and religious lore in a way few other shows at the time or since have managed.
While Supernatural‘s biggest stars have gone on to star in other major TV hits — Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan all recently appeared in the final season of Supernatural creator Eric Kripke’s satirical superhero drama, The Boys — Sam and Dean have continued to have adventures on the open road in Dean’s iconic Chevy Impala. There’s no better time to relive the magic of the show’s earliest seasons, as the dynamic, bickering duo returns in an all-new story in September this year.
Sam & Dean Will Return This Year In A Brand-New Supernatural Story
Dean and Sam Winchester looking out from behind a curtain in Supernatural
Like many of its genre peers, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, The X-Files, and more recent hits like Stranger Things, Supernatural has evolved past the small screen and continued in comic book form. In October 2025, Dynamite Entertainment launched a new 10-issue series of Supernatural comics, written by noted Marvel and Star Wars writer Greg Pak and artist Eder Messias. The series, set between Supernatural seasons 1 and 2, sees Sam and Dean hunting more monsters in small-town America as they continue the search for the mysterious and brutal demon who killed their mother.
Like the show’s earlier, more grounded episodic format, Dynamite’s Supernatural comic series features a new case per issue, as they come face-to-face with pyromaniac demons (not that one), gambling sirens, dangerous LARPing parties, a haunted library, and more. Supernatural #10 will be published on August 28, 2026, but that won’t be the end of the road for these wayward sons. Dynamite has already announced that Sam and Dean’s on-page adventures will continue in a new one-shot titled Supernatural: Wayward Special #1by Paulina Ganucheau and John Amor, though this time, there’s a catch: something dangerous will cause the Winchester brothers to split up.
Misha Collins’ Castiel made his comics debut in Dynamite’s 40-page Supernatural Special: Castiel #1 by Preeti Chhibber and Pasquale Qualano.
“What horrible, hellish forces could drive these brothers to travel separate roads?” The comic’s official synopsis reads. Per Nick Barucci, Dynamite Entertainment’s owner and CEO, the Wayward Special one-shot will be the launchpad for the “next big event in the franchise” and promises to “take Supernatural to a whole new level” (viaBleeding Cool). The upcoming event will arrive later this year and will likely be revealed around San Diego Comic-Con, which takes place between July 23–26.
From Lawrence to Lebanon · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Supernatural? “Saving people, hunting things — the family business.”
🚗Baby’67 Chevy Impala
🪶The TrenchcoatCastiel, Angel of the Lord
🔪Demon BladeRuby’s knife
📕John’s JournalHunter scripture
🎸Wayward SonThe Road So Far
01
Supernatural premiered on The WB on September 13, 2005, and ran a record-breaking 15 seasons / 327 episodes through November 2020 across The WB and The CW. The series creator and original showrunner — who’d later create NBC’s Timeless and develop Amazon’s The Boys — pitched it as a road-trip horror anthology before two brothers took over the centre of the show. Name him.
✓ Correct! Eric Kripke. He’d originally pitched the show to Warner Bros. as a tabloid-reporter anthology titled “Tape” before reformulating it around two brothers. Kripke ran the show through Season 5 (the original planned ending), then handed off to Sera Gamble, Jeremy Carver, Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer over the next decade. The Boys (2019–) is essentially Kripke processing the same superhero/horror genre concerns at a much higher budget.
✗ Wrong showrunner. The answer is Eric Kripke. Greg Berlanti is the Arrowverse / DC superhero TV mogul (Arrow, The Flash). Joss Whedon was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Firefly creator whose work clearly influenced Supernatural but who has no credit on it. Bryan Fuller did Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Kripke is the one who took the show from a Vancouver pilot to a fifteen-season behemoth.
02
Dean Winchester — the older, classic-rock-loving, demon-blade-wielding brother who introduces himself with “hey, Sammy” and a leather jacket and ends the series in a pickup-bed funeral pyre — was played by an actor whose pre-Supernatural CV included Days of Our Lives (as Eric Brady), Dark Angel (as Alec) and Smallville (as Jason Teague). Name him.
✓ Correct! Jensen Ackles. He’d actually originally auditioned for Sam, the younger brother, before being moved to Dean opposite Jared Padalecki. Ackles directed six episodes of the series himself (his first was Season 6’s “Weekend at Bobby’s”). Post-Supernatural he reunited with Eric Kripke to play Soldier Boy in Season 3 of The Boys, and headlined the short-lived prequel The Winchesters (2022–23) as a narrating older Dean.
✗ Wrong Winchester. The answer is Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is John Winchester — the brothers’ father, who originated the lead-by-a-grizzled-cowboy energy Negan would later inherit. Misha Collins is Castiel. Jared Padalecki is Sam, the younger, taller brother. Ackles plays Dean — the shorter, leather-jacketed, classic-rock-quoting older one.
03
Across all 327 episodes, the brothers’ constant other than each other was their car — a 1967 Chevrolet model affectionately known as “Baby,” inherited from their father John, with army-men in the ashtrays and Sam and Dean’s initials carved in the back seat. Eric Kripke wrote an entire Season 5 episode (“Swan Song”) from the car’s perspective. Name the model.
✓ Correct! 1967 Chevrolet Impala — specifically the four-door Sport Sedan, originally chosen by Kripke because its trunk was big enough to hide a body. The production wore through more than two dozen Impalas across the run, since the car gets demolished, dunked, dropped from cliffs, and possessed regularly. Jensen Ackles bought the “hero” Impala used in the final season after the show wrapped in 2020.
✗ Wrong Chevy. The answer is the 1967 Impala, four-door Sport Sedan. The Camaro is too sporty — Kripke specifically wanted a body-in-the-trunk family sedan. The Chevelle SS is a muscle car, and the Bel Air is closer to ’50s-cool than ’60s-menace. The Impala is “Baby” — chosen because, in Kripke’s words, “it could fit four people and a body in the trunk.”
04
The Winchester brothers grew up on the road after their mother Mary was murdered — pinned to the ceiling and burned alive by the yellow-eyed demon Azazel — in Sam’s nursery on November 2, 1983. The family lived in a Midwestern college town the show returns to repeatedly across the run (most notably in “Home,” S1E9). Name the city.
✓ Correct! Lawrence, Kansas. Kripke chose the town in part because of its Wizard of Oz adjacency and the “Bleeding Kansas” historical resonance — Lawrence was sacked in 1856 during the pre-Civil-War conflict over slavery, an act of evil literally seared into the local geography. Mary Winchester’s nursery fire on November 2, 1983 is the show’s foundational trauma; the date and the ceiling-fire image recur all the way to the finale.
✗ Wrong Midwestern town. The answer is Lawrence, Kansas. Sioux Falls, SD is Bobby Singer’s hometown and salvage yard. Pontiac, IL is where Dean digs himself out of his own grave at the start of Season 4. Lebanon, KS is where the Men of Letters Bunker is hidden — you may want to remember that one. Lawrence is the home of the fire — and the show’s foundational trauma.
05
In the Season 4 premiere “Lazarus Rising,” the show pivoted from monster-of-the-week into Heaven-and-Hell mythology by introducing an angel of the Lord — wearing a beige trenchcoat over the body of a Pontiac, Illinois religious tax accountant named Jimmy Novak — who pulls Dean out of Hell and becomes the brothers’ near-permanent third. Played by Misha Collins, name the angel.
✓ Correct! Castiel — named for Cassiel, the Jewish-mystical angel of solitude and tears. Misha Collins was originally signed for a six-episode arc; Castiel ended up in 145 episodes across twelve seasons, including the controversial Season 15 “Despair” love-confession episode. The trenchcoat (a Burberry knock-off) became so iconic that fans send Collins replicas at conventions, and his on-screen vessel Jimmy Novak became its own minor character.
✗ Wrong angel. The answer is Castiel. Gabriel turns up later as the Trickster (Richard Speight Jr.). Uriel is Cas’s Season 4 angel partner, who gets killed off as a Lucifer sympathiser. Balthazar (Sebastian Roché) is Cas’s snarky friend introduced in Season 6. Castiel is the trenchcoat-wearing tax-accountant-vessel angel who pulls Dean out of Hell — and the show’s third lead from Season 4 onward.
06
Supernatural famously opted not to use a proper title-card theme — instead, every season finale opens with a “The Road So Far” recap montage scored to the same 1976 prog-rock track by an American band who, in a happy coincidence, share their name with the brothers’ home state. Name the song.
✓ Correct! “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas, off 1976’s Leftoverture. Eric Kripke chose it for the Season 1 finale and made it a tradition every finale thereafter. Kansas frontman Steve Walsh said in interviews that Supernatural’s use revived the song so completely it now makes more annual royalties from streaming than the band did from its 1976 release. The song also closes out the series finale “Carry On” (2020).
✗ Wrong classic-rock cue. The answer is “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas. Renegade, More Than a Feeling and Don’t Fear the Reaper are all Supernatural-vibe tracks from the same era and several appear in episodes — but the season-finale ritual is reserved for Kansas’s track. Wayward, Kansas, brothers… Kripke layered every available pun into the show’s signature musical cue.
07
The brothers’ surrogate father — a gruff, trucker-hat-wearing, Sioux Falls salvage-yard owner whose phone line is in every fake FBI agent’s wallet, who calls the boys “idjits,” and who takes a shotgun to a Leviathan in the Season 7 episode that finally kills him — is played by an actor who in HBO’s Deadwood played Whitney Ellsworth, the kindly miner who marries Alma Garret. Name the character.
✓ Correct! Bobby Singer, played by Jim Beaver. Eric Kripke literally named the character after his Supernatural co-executive-producer Robert Singer — in part as a gag, in part as a dare to write a self-aware character around the joke. Bobby dies at the end of Season 7’s “Death’s Door” (E10) but returns repeatedly in flashback, alternate universes, and in the show’s last few seasons as a parallel-Earth Bobby. Beaver’s Deadwood role is Ellsworth, who marries Alma and is shot dead by Hearst’s men.
✗ Wrong hunter. The answer is Bobby Singer. Rufus Turner (Steven Williams) is Bobby’s old-friend rival hunter. Garth Fitzgerald IV (DJ Qualls) is the goofier hunter who later turns out to be a werewolf. Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) is the Sioux Falls sheriff who becomes a found-family figure. Bobby is the salvage-yard idjit-caller, named for Kripke’s own co-EP Robert Singer.
08
In Season 8 (“As Time Goes By,” E12), the brothers discover their grandfather Henry Winchester was part of a secret academic-magic order, and inherit its abandoned base — a 1950s steel-and-concrete bunker hidden under an unassuming Kansas town’s main street that becomes their home for the rest of the series. The town has fewer than 250 people and is geographically near the centre of the contiguous United States. Name it.
✓ Correct! Lebanon, Kansas. Population fluctuates around 218 and a stone marker near town claims it as the geographic centre of the contiguous 48 states — perfect for an organisation hiding from the supernatural. The Men of Letters Bunker becomes the closest thing to a home base the brothers have ever had: kitchen, library, dungeon, garage. The real Lebanon’s Main Street has become a Supernatural pilgrimage site since the show ended in 2020.
✗ Wrong Kansas town. The answer is Lebanon — population 218, near the geographic centre of the contiguous US, perfect for a hidden order’s bunker. Topeka is the state capital. Wichita is the largest city. Manhattan is home to Kansas State University. Lebanon, with its tiny Main Street and middle-of-nowhere geography, is where the Men of Letters Bunker hides — and where the brothers finally have a home.
The Hunt · Family Verdict Your Winchester Standing
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Top hunter — or red-shirt vessel?
Dynamite’s Supernatural series isn’t the first time Supernatural has been translated to this format. However, it is the first time a canon Supernatural comic story has taken place within the show’s timeline, rather than expanding the Winchester family’s backstory. Between 2007 and 2012, DC’s WildStorm imprint published four separate Supernatural series. Each explored the brothers’ origins and their relationship with their father before the events of the show.
What Supernatural’s Stars Have Said About A Revival & Season 16
Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, and Jared Padalecki as Castiel, Dean Winchester, and Sam Winchester in SupernaturalCredit: MovieStillsDB
It’s possible Dynamite’s upcoming Supernatural comic event could be connected to an on-screen revival and the highly-anticipated yet unconfirmed Supernatural season 16. For years, the show’s stars and showrunner have spoken about their willingness to reunite for a revival, with both Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins offering potential story and format ideas. Collins’ idea involves time travel and parallel dimensions. Padalecki stressed that while he’s “dying to do a reboot of Supernatural,” he’d want it structured as a limited series event, similar to Gilmore Girls’ four-episode Year in the Life revival on Netflix in 2016.
Eric Kripke and Jensen Ackles have also confirmed they’d be happy to return to Supernatural, provided they find the right story, though their previous work commitments will make it hard to find the time to shoot. Though The Boys has come to an end, Ackles will reprise his role as Soldier Boy in the show’s prequel series, Vought Rising, which is expected to debut on Prime Video in 2027.
Of course, the definitive nature of Supernatural’s controversial finale, which included Dean’s surprising death and Sam’s life montage, makes it harder to imagine how the story might make a comeback. As depicted in the last episode, Sam and Dean find each other again in the afterlife; the brothers deserve that peace, so it’s anyone’s guess how the show might return beyond the pages of Dynamite’s acclaimed comics series. As Kripke said of Supernatural’s return in an interview with Collider, however, “Where there’s the will, there’s the way.”
