Supernatural finale story is ‘unchanged,’ despite some tweaks brought on by pandemic delays

The final run of episodes for the last season of Supernatural was delayed due to the shutdown around the COVID-19 pandemic — but that doesn’t mean they made any changes to the long-planned series finale. Though the new health and safety protocols did require a few tweaks along the way.

Co-showrunner Andrew Dabb opened up TV Line about production on the final couple of episodes, which has now wrapped shooting and remains on track to air this fall and winter. The final seven episodes premiere Thursday, Oct. 8 on The CW. The series finale is scheduled for Nov. 19. It will air alongside a retrospective, looking back at the legacy of the long-running series that actually began back when The CW was still called The WB, a decade and a half ago.

That’s right — this show has been on the air since 2005.

As for how the finale plan came together, Dabb said the production hurdles caused a few changes during production that will be reflected on-screen, but nothing that affected the plan for the story itself to wrap up the saga of Sam and Dean Winchester. Put simply: The storyline was “unchanged,” and “nothing is fundamentally different” from the original plan.

“In some cases, we had to simplify the [pathways] to get there,” Dabb explained. “For example, for the finale, we had a big, super extravagant thing planned for that episode, and it wasn’t feasible. But we found an alternative to get to the same place, plot-wise and, more importantly, emotionally, that worked great. So it’s about being adaptable. We had to do some rewriting, but nothing that changed fundamentally what the show is or where it was going.”

Considering just how long this show has run, the stories its told — especially in the decade since its original five-year plan ended — it’s good to hear the creative team is still able to tell the story as intended. Now the pressure is on to actually pull it off.