Supernatural stars using coronavirus break to “refocus” on series finale

Supernatural is currently in the midst of its 15th and final season on the air, although there’s a catch: The CW stopped airing new episodes a couple weeks back, even though it has a few in the can. That’s because the show stopped production on account of the coronavirus, which is happening a lot right now. All told, the team has two episodes left to film — the two-part finale — and when it’s safe enough to go forward, it will.

In the meantime, the cast and crew members are chilling like the rest of us, and using the break to gear up for what will hopefully be a memorable capstone to a historic journey — Supernatural is now the longest-running genre show in the history of broadcast television, so you can’t half-ass the finale. “Obviously it’s a horribly unfortunate situation we’re in, but the silver lining is that it gives us an opportunity to recharge,” star Jensen Ackles told Entertainment Weekly. “We had just finished episode 18, we shot one day of episode 19, and I was reading these two monster scripts thinking, ‘It’s like we’re at the end of a marathon and they want us to sprint for the last two miles.’ I feel like this almost gives us an opportunity to refocus and go into the last two episodes and hit them with everything we got.”

Ackles plays Dean Winchester, one of two brothers who’ve spent their lives criss-crossing the world on the hunt for monsters, demons, the devil and, in this final season, god, who it ends up has a serious malevolent streak. By the sound of it, Ackles and Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester) could have used a break like this at a couple other points in the show’s long history, especially since so much of the series revolves around them. There are other characters, sure, but Sam and Dean it all comes back to these two. “I had many moments of not only questioning, ‘Can I keep this up?’ but an answer of ‘I cannot keep this up,’” said Padalecki. “I borrowed strength from Jensen.”

But it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows for Ackles, either. “The 23-episode seasons were nine and a half months of filming,” he said. “It was a lot of work, but I always came back to: I still enjoy it, I still like telling the story, I still like these characters and the people I work with.”

But despite any hardships, Supernatural gained a reputation over the years but being one of the friendliest sets on the lot, and a cornerstone for The CW — it’s the only show borne on The CW’s predecessor network, The WB, to still be around. The fans, called the #SPNFamily, have helped as well. They’re famously passionate, and care as much about the actors on the show as they do the characters they play.

But it had to come to an end sooner or later. That the stars realized they were reaching the finish line, it came with a lot of mixed emotions. “We had that moment where he and I both realized that we didn’t want it to end,” Padalecki remembered. “It finally got to a point, ironically, where it was like, ‘I never want to leave this. I could do this until the day I die, and then if I get the choice when I’m dead, I’ll re-up!’ But you never want to be the last person at a party. We just knew. That’s not to say there haven’t been vacillations, but we all trust the decision that was made.”

And we will see them cross that finish line…eventually. Although the season has stopped for now, it’ll eventually start up again with the final seven episodes. Effectively, fans are kind of getting a mini-sized season 16. Silver linings are everywhere if you look.

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