Supernatural is in the business of saving people (Editorial)

Supernatural may be coming to an end next season, but the series and its family will carry on forever.

Fifteen seasons. Fifteen years. Fifteen years. That’s how long Supernatural will have been on the air when the final season wraps up next year. Where were you fifteen years ago? Who were you fifteen years ago? The premiere, the pilot episode – which aired on September 13, 2005 – feels like a lifetime ago, yet I remember it vividly.

Like the show, its characters and every one of its fans, my life was different back then. I was different back then. I was fourteen years old, sitting on one of the three beds in the crowded back room of my family’s eighth house. Our eighth pit stop. We never stayed in one place for long, and that would eventually become a connection.

In that room, I was surrounded by my two younger brothers, each occupying their own bed and hoping that the rabbit-eared antenna would hold a strong enough signal for us to watch a new horror-themed show on The WB before going to sleep. Supernatural. Like the siblings at the center of the show, our parents weren’t around. Our mom, who is still alive but was dead to us at the time, had abandoned us for another life only a few months prior, and our father, though not exactly missing, was off battling his own demons.

That was the first connection, and man, were we hooked. Growing up as horror fans, that element of Supernatural was always going to appeal to us, but we never expected such an immediate bond between ourselves and these fictional characters. It truly felt as though Eric Kripke was watching our lives through a crystal ball and decided to create a series just for us, tailor made and comfortable.

Supernatural–Courtesy of The CW

Life was rough for my brothers, our younger sister (who quickly fell for the series as well) and myself. Our world constantly found new ways to crumble, but our bond – much like the bond of Sam and Dean Winchester – kept us going. It has always kept us going.

In my impressionable teenage years, Dean’s unwavering love and loyalty to his family turned me into a better brother. Into a better protector. Like Dean, I, too, had grown weary of the constant hell that my family and I were forced to go through, but the existence of my siblings would never allow me to give up. Perhaps I needed them even more than they needed me.

We grew with Supernatural, but the comparisons between our lives and the lives of the Winchesters never really seemed to waver throughout the first five seasons of the series. There were times in which it felt like our world was literally ending, times when addiction threatened our bond, and times where we decided that if we were going down, we were going down together. But somehow, no matter how impossible our scenarios felt in the moment, everything ended up okay. We ended up okay.