The first half of the Season 2 finale is remembered for being the first instance of one of the Winchesters dying, but it's when all hell breaks loose - to borrow from the episode's title - in the second hour that Supernatural revealed what it was truly capable of.
Michael Courtney/The CW "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2" (Season 2, Episode 22) Supernatural's Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles Look Back on the Little Occult Show That Could Season 2 It's this chilling legacy that not only makes "The Benders" one of the scariest episodes of the show, but one of the best and most memorable as well. When confronted with the knowledge that men and women are just as capable of committing heinous evil acts as the monsters and demons the Winchesters usually face, we (and they) are forced to acknowledge an unfortunate truth about humanity while realizing our world is terrifying enough on its own without the addition of the supernatural. The episode plays with traditional horror themes, but it also flips our preconceived notions about the genre on its head as a young female child is found to be a willing participant in the family's bloodlust and not another victim. When it first debuted, Supernatural leaned hard into its horror roots, and the scariest episode of the show's entire run is this Season 1 episode in which the baddies of the week turn out not to be of the supernatural variety at all, but bloodthirsty humans who capture and hunt other humans for sport. Sergei Bachlakov/The CW "The Benders" (Season 1, Episode 15) (Note: Due to licensing, Netflix's version doesn't include the song, so just throw it out the window.) – Tim Surette The mystery of the investigation penned by Sera Gamble and Raelle Tucker was bolstered by a real eerie atmosphere created by director Allan Kroeker, and "Faith" features TV's greatest on-the-nose song selection in a pitch-perfect montage to Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," continuing creator Eric Kripke's track record of knowing how and when to rock. Naturally, the boys investigate and find that a controlled Reaper is involved, and naturally, the Reaper gets set loose and tries to kill everyone. With no other options, Sam brought Dean to a traveling faith healer to cure him of his death sentence, where he was magically cured. One of the great early episodes to establish the believer-and-skeptic dynamic between Sam and Dean, "Faith" explored the idea of spirituality after Dean was nearly killed by a Rawhead and was given weeks to live.
These are the best episodes of Supernatural each season.Ĭelebrate the Supernatural Series Finale With Winchester Week Season 1 But we feel confident that each episode chosen represents some of the show's very best work, whether it's a creative adventure that reveals the show's ability to think outside the box, a standalone hour that delivers the laughs, or a mythology-heavy episode that pushes the story forward. The list has been limited to three episodes per season, which proved to be difficult, as the early seasons had far too many great episodes, while some of the latter had too few.
Now, as we prepare to say goodbye to Sam and Dean Winchester ( Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) for good, TV Guide is remembering the best episodes of the long-running show. But throughout this wild ride, the series has continued to tell interesting, unexpected, and emotional stories. First, the show's excellent third season was dramatically shortened by the 2007-08 writers' strike, and then its fifteenth and final season was forced to halt production in March as the coronavirus swept across the world.
Supernatural has been on TV long enough that it's one of a few currently airing scripted shows whose productions have twice been affected by real world events.