So, forever ago, (or 6 years ago) I wrote a still-a-teenager-and-has-no-professional-freelance-writing-experience article entitled Is there anything Supernatural hasn’t done yet? – The Five Episodes Still Waiting To Be Made. In the article, I listed 5 concepts that the show hadn’t explored, with most of them being crazy or funny ideas for episodes. Reading it back now, it’s nostalgic and cringeworthy, but I do talk about some pretty good concepts for stories which had previously been discussed by fans and the cast.
Bare in mind, at the time, Supernatural was airing Season 10 so there was still 5 years worth of crazy episodes to come, and it was pre-Scoobynatural which, come on, none of us would have guessed would happen anyway. However, even back in 2015, Supernatural was renowned for the weird and the wonderful. I mean, “Fan Fiction” had just aired which was meta turned up to 1000 degrees, and was the show’s stab at doing a musical episode.
It feels strange and sad now that the show has officially ended, but I can confirm that none of the ideas I talked about in the article ended up happening on the show. It’s okay though because we got many other unique and inventive episodes and storylines instead, including bringing back some old faces and the introduction of alternative universes.
So, let’s review some of these missed opportunities (and believe me there ain’t many):
Temporarily Transforming the Impala into a Human
You know what, we can let this one slide because we were given an amazing and highly well-received love letter to Sam and Dean’s 1967 Chevy Impala in Season 11’s “Baby”. In this episode, we are taken on a hunt through the perspective of the car, presenting an up close and personal account of the brother’s lives through very tight shots, using as many angles from the inside and outside of the Impala as possible.
“Baby” is still raved about by both fans and cast members, being the fourth highest rated episode on IMDB, which is something a lot of us didn’t expect. The impala is regarded as a character in her own right and her connection and significance to Dean in particular has been a staple theme on the show for the entire 15 seasons.
However, there was a time when talk about an Impala centered episode would mean talking about the car being transformed into a human, and it’s slightly upsetting that we didn’t get to actually meet the soul and spirit behind such an iconic symbol of the show, including the backdrop of so many boy melodrama scenes, crashes, fights and chases.
Allowing the Impala to have her own voice would have been so interesting and we would have had a chance to find out what she really thought of the brothers. Although, “Baby” does just as good a job at showing what the car gets to experience and see on a daily basis, and it demonstrates just how much Sam and Dean love and depend on her, which, in a way, was a much more beautiful episode.
Sam and Dean Swapping Bodies
As a common episode amongst science fiction shows, it’s almost strange that the show never had a Sam and Dean body swap. This concept probably never happened because the actors, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, are very protective over their characters, having spent the majority of the last 15 years playing them.
Even the magical body swap episode which did air in Season 5, “Swap Meat”, which saw Sam’s soul and mind being swapped into a body of a high school kid, was filmed in a way that had the guest star only play Sam for part of the time when he was looking at his reflection.
Instead of the guest star trying to play Sam, Jared Padalecki had ownership of Sam for most of the episode. Aside from using actors for younger versions of Sam and Dean, Jared and Jensen seemed to have preferred playing possessed or altered versions of their characters rather than have other actors come on the show to play them.
Also in “Swap Meat”, a whole set of scenes were cut out of the episode at some point, which involved Sam and Dean temporarily switching bodies. The show binned the idea because it was thought that it was too much of a highly-anticipated sci-fi stereotype to be squeezed into an already jam-packed episode. Maybe the showrunners also believed that the body swap themed episode had been too overdone in the genre.
As much fun and amazing as an episode where Jared and Jensen got to play each other would have been, it’s obvious the actors became too close and comfortable with their own characters to risk getting nervous trying to play each other and messing it up. (Although, we all know they would have done a stellar job.)
Filming Abroad
This idea is not weird, but it could have been very wonderful. It was also a big budgetary and organisational feat which clearly couldn’t be achieved. Aside from the Pilot, Supernatural filmed everything in Vancouver, Canada, which worked well enough that the showrunners clearly realised that it was not worth the money and time it would take to transport the cast and crew to America or even further, when they could tell the story just as well from Canada.
The cast and crew did film on location for part of the first of the failed spin-offs, the Season 9 episode “Bloodlines”, in Chicago, however it would have been great if that happened more often, although it probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome or success of the show. Even the Season 6 episode “Weekend at Bobby’s”, where Sam and Dean travel to Scotland to retrieve Crowley’s human remains, was filmed entirely in Vancouver.
Despite being a show about brothers that travel all over America, the creative team really pulled off making the locations in Vancouver look genuine and realistic, so suspending our disbelief was very easy. Most of the time, it really looked like Sam and Dean were in a small rural town or a busy cityscape of the states.
What would have pleased fans more would have been if the show filmed in another continent all together. The cast travel all over the world to attend conventions so there are guaranteed fans worldwide, particularly in Europe, China and Australia, and filming on location would have been a great way to try something new and international fans would have loved it.
Sam and Dean Being Turned into Women
In the same way that Jared and Jensen were uncertain about playing each other, they were probably equally as uncertain about having female actors coming in to play them. As the series went on, Sam and Dean became such a constant on the show that this fun idea became less discussed.
It’s no doubt that, had there been an episode where Sam and Dean turned into women, it would have been a comic episode, and Dean definitely would have enjoyed the experience more than Sam. Although, the show needed to cast female actors that could embody the brothers successfully and be believable, which was a risk that could have gone sideways.
We may not have seen Sam and Dean as women, but we did get to see loads of other crazy concepts, like Dean being transformed into his younger and older self, Sam becoming the Impala, and Jack turning into a dog. So, we won a lot more than we lost.
Aliens
Although we can all get into a mindset where it feels like Supernatural covered every monster and mythical creature you can possibly imagine, aliens were always automatically scratched off of the list. This is particularly strange for a science-fiction show with cosmic enemies like angels, The Darkness and God, but maybe the writers were being smart by leaving that particular box closed.
Introducing aliens to the show, in my opinion, would have been hit or miss – a risk similar to that of the showrunners introducing angels into the show in Season 4. Luckily, the angel risk paid off but aliens might have just been a step too far, especially considering the direction the writers decided to go in the later seasons, with the creation of Jack’s character and the alternate universes.
Had Jack’s whole storyline not been written, aliens may have been a great way to reinvent Supernatural instead, propelling the show on for longer if done in an exciting way. The reason the show continued for as long as it did was because of these refreshing turns and changes in the plot. However, aliens also had the potential to completely confuse and ruin the story, and it was clearly a risk the showrunners were not prepared to take.
6 years ago, I did have hope that we would see some form of these concepts on the show, but I guess Supernatural does what it does best – what we least expect. Resurrecting Sam and Dean’s mom, Mary, and bringing back their dad, John, for the 300th episode, were fan favourite moments, as well as confirming Chuck as God, crossing over with Scooby-Doo, and having Sam and Dean meet alternative versions of themselves.
These were ideas and storylines that fans could never have seen coming, which is a big factor in the longevity and success of the show. This means we can graciously accept the loss of seeing the car as a human or Sam and Dean trying to live as women.
Or, we can wait for the green light on a comedic, international reunion movie.
Supernatural Fan No. 12949162 