‘Supernatural’: Andrew Dabb Reveals What Could Have Been in Original Finale Ending

“There’ll be peace when you are done.” So go the lyrics of Supernatural‘s theme song, Kansas‘ “Carry On Wayward Son” — and there certainly was. Hunter brothers Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) fought long and gave up a lot (including their lives, more than once), so it made sense for the show to end with the two guys in Heaven, finally getting to rest in peace. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and production was shut down with only two episodes left to film, the original planned ending had to be heavily adjusted due to new set protocols.

Previously, showrunner Andrew Dabb, who wrote the finale, directed by Robert Singer, shared the bare bones of that plan. Now, for TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special, he goes in-depth.

After the finale, you revealed that there was originally a different ending. Dean was always going to end up in heaven, and we’d see Sam’s life in flash-forward. But were there any details of those parts that changed when you had to pivot after the shutdown?

Andrew Dabb: There were small details that had to change. It wasn’t a wholesale like, “Oh, we have to blow everything up. We have to blow everything up.” When we — myself and Bob Singer — started to talk about the ending, we really wanted an ending that did two things. We really wanted an ending that celebrated the guys because it doesn’t feel like they’ve ever — I mean, they’ve certainly been celebrated by people they’ve saved week to week — been acknowledged as the world-changing heroes they are.

And then the second thing we wanted to do is give people an ending and not end on “To be continued…” There are certain fans that, I think, love “To be continueds” because then the story just goes on. But I think for a number of people watching for 15 years, we wanted to give an ending. That being said, it could always come back, et cetera, et cetera. Although I think the chances of that now are less than they have been previously because they just don’t make shows like Supernatural anymore. There is no The X-Files. There’s no Grimm. There’s no Supernatural. There’s no genre procedural out there. I don’t know that networks are super in that business. And I think procedurals love them, and they’ve tried to do them a couple of times, including Dead Boy Detectives, as an example, by Steve Yockey who worked on Supernatural. For whatever reason, they just don’t find the traction on streaming. I don’t know why.

We kind of went through the process and what we’d wanted to do with the ending was send Sam and Dean, once they’ve gone up to heaven, to the Roadhouse and have as many people there as we could get, and we were literally going to go out to a bunch of people and “It’s not very much money because there’s so many people, but here’s a plane ticket, come up with us, celebrate this thing.” I was looking forward to going, Bob was going to direct it. Kansas was going to come in and they were going to play, and it was going to be kind of the celebration party we really thought the guys deserved. Unfortunately, when COVID hit, we had to pare that really, really far back. And it ended up being kind of, Bobby was there and Jim Beaver was nice enough to do what you had to do with that. We were the first show back up in August of 2020, so it was, you have to go for two weeks, you have to be hardcore quarantined. It was not easy. Everyone else we grabbed were local Vancouver basically.

And so a lot of people we wanted to invite, obviously it didn’t work out. And while we didn’t get that big celebration moment, which is what I refer to in the book, I think we did get a nice moment with the two brothers together, and that was always the show. So to come back to that and end on that moment, even though it wasn’t what we planned, I thought it still worked really, really well. And I thought Bob really shot it really well and the guys played it really well. And I thought the ending we have is fantastic, but it certainly did change because of the pandemic.

So Dean would’ve ended up in heaven the same way and Sam’s flash forward life still would’ve been the same before the pivot?

It would’ve been, yeah. I think what might’ve changed was the last bad guy they go up against is a character who they last went up against Season 2. We wanted someone to be a blast from the past. And Christine Chatelain luckily was kind of local Vancouver for us, and we could use her. It was just much easier. And then in terms of Sam’s flashforward, obviously there are certain details that — we would’ve liked to include Eileen [Shoshannah Stern] in that, for example. But again, that wasn’t really in the cards travel wise at that point in time. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have done it. They may have. The logistical challenge of bringing a lot of people in, being the first show up during COVID, was just not feasible on our end.

So he was married to Eileen?

I mean, in my mind, that’s what it is. People can fill in whatever they want, and they’re free to. But certainly in my mind, that’s what we were building toward.

That’s what I was kind of thinking, but because we couldn’t see who it was, it was kind of up in the air… 

We wanted someone there, so it wasn’t like there was no female presence at all. But at the same time, do you cast someone totally brand new that the audience will have not seen before? Or do you keep it a little vague and people can imply whatever they want to imply? Because we couldn’t get the actress, we chose the latter.

So, the Roadhouse. Would we have seen any part of what we saw besides that with Bobby greeting Dean and then Dean driving?

What we wanted was a version of Dean driving because that’s the core of the show, and they end up at the Roadhouse and Bobby is there, greets Dean and basically — I have the pages somewhere — is like, “Hey, welcome here,” maybe some talk about Sam, and then had some people waiting. You open the door, there’s everyone we could assemble. So it’s walking through and there’s Charlie [Felicia Day] and whoever else happens to be there. The idea was, at least in one version — because again, you’re doing the intercut — the person Dean meets kind of at the center of the party is Sam. So Sam is there, and after all this kind of stuff, they reunite, the band starts to play, and that’s kind of how you go out.

You mentioned Charlie, and then I know you said that you wanted all of Sam and Dean’s family and friends, so were you trying to get Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith to really have the Winchester family reunion?

The plan was to make essentially offers to everybody. We had a list that was, I think, 20 or 30 names long, understanding that for various reasons, not everybody’s going to be able to do it. We couldn’t really put anything in that was super load-bearing for those characters because you just didn’t know if they were going to be there. And again, COVID shut down when we were filming, I believe, our third to last or second to last episode of the season so we had not really even started the last episode at that point. We wanted to get as many people as we could. We certainly had a bunch of names on a list, but I couldn’t sit here and guarantee you I was like, “Oh, these people were definitely going to be there.” Just hadn’t gotten to that point. My hope is people would have wanted to come and to share that moment. But again, people have life, people have work, everything else.

Did you have a top five people you wanted to have?

Yeah, I think you’ve got Mom and Dad are right up there, Bobby’s up there. And then really I would’ve liked if Jessica [Adrianne Palicki] would’ve been there. There’s some kind of deep cut people that I think would’ve been really interesting just to see their faces. It’s meant to be a culmination of 15 seasons. And again, as much as I like the ending that we have, and it really does work, and it’s a great credit to Bob and Jared and Jensen, I think the ending we had in mind also would’ve been impactful.

Would Dean have woken up in heaven driving then?

We would’ve caught up with him driving. I don’t think we would’ve seen the whole moment where, “I’m in heaven,” because we’ve seen that a billion times.

Were there any other specific locations that you would’ve wanted to show from over the years in heaven?

No, not really. Number one, locations are expensive and we have a budget. But number two is the story I really wanted to focus on, the guys and their journey and the people celebrating them, and having that one central place seemed like the best way to do it.

The finale did have Sam and Dean reuniting. What would we have seen when it comes to the brothers specifically in that reunion moment in this alternate ending, and how did you pivot?

Pretty much the same. Again, just happening in a slightly different context, but the sentiment was the same: “We made it we’re together and that we did good work. Our lives meant something.” For Dean especially but I think for both characters, that’s really what they wanted. They wanted to live a life that made a difference, and they did. They made a difference in a lot of different ways, a lot of different times. And I think that’s kind of the happy ending that they both got.

Was there a plan to see Castiel (Misha Collins)?

We went back and forth on that. At one point we were like, “Well, maybe,” because theoretically Jimmy would be there, and that’s Misha obviously. We talked about a version of that. I’m not sure. I don’t know if we would’ve gone that far. My concern is it might’ve been confusing to the audience. It might’ve required explanation that — you didn’t want to do an exposition dump in the middle of this kind of emotional, hopefully cool moment. But at the same time, it would’ve been great to have Misha there. That was one of those things that was still up in the air when everything came crashing down.

If you’d had Kansas, would it just have been them playing the song or would there have been any dialogue?

Maybe a short intro if we had thought of something fun. They’re awesome. They played for us at San Diego, and they’re very aware of this show and the life the song has had because of the show. So they were super game to do it.

How much dialogue would there have been in that alternate ending scene?

It would have been comparable to what happened on the bridge. It wouldn’t have been significant. It might’ve been a little bit more, but it wouldn’t have been significantly more.

Is that original script something you think you would ever release?

Maybe. I mean, there’s a couple of Easter eggs that we’ve got — Bob Berens and I wrote a whole Wayward Sisters pilot at one point that we’ve never put out there that actually is really good. But yeah, potentially. I mean, no one’s asked to see it, but it is somewhere on my hard drive.

You said that when you opened back up in August, you realized that ending wasn’t realistic. Can you talk about at what point exactly you realized that you had to pivot and how you went about doing so exactly and trying to make everything work?

Things were looking bad in late February, early March, and we got a call from Kansas, actually Kansas’ manager is the first person that was like, “Look, all the members of Kansas are older. They’re all kind of paranoid about traveling.” This was before the lockdowns and everything. “They may not be willing to travel.” We were like, “Oh, interesting.” Because that was the first time it had been brought to that degree. We were still going to the office, everything else. So that was a flag for concern. Then everything kind of shut down, and we really didn’t get back together until officially, I believe, around mid-June, maybe even July, where we were like, “Okay, here’s what we can do.”

Then you have a conversation with your line producers, with your director, what can we do? How can we bring people in? This was all brand new, all the protocols. What’s a version of this that’s really realistic? We were like, look, Dean needs to talk to somebody. We need to have somebody there to greet him. Best person for that is Bobby. So we begged Jim to come, and he luckily did for us. To his credit, Bob went up there early, got everything scouted out, and we got through it.

We still knew what we wanted to go for emotionally. To me, that was the most important thing. The most important thing was that conversation between the brothers, them realizing they had essentially lived a good life basically. Everything else is secondary to that. Doesn’t mean it’s not important, it just means it’s not the most important. Then it became, what can we do that still gives us that moment, but is done in a way that’s producible given all the limitations we have right now? And that’s what ended up being on screen.

Did you change anything for the brothers’ goodbye when Dean was dying?

That speech got rewritten a bunch. I couldn’t tell you if that happened — I’m sure there was a pass done post-COVID. And also obviously Jared and Jensen made it their own as they always do. But I wouldn’t say the speech was significantly rewritten.

What a time to have to pivot though. When you’re ending a series after 15 seasons…

Yeah, we had this giant party plan. It was going to be fantastic. Instead, I’m watching the first cut on my laptop in quarantine in a house in California. So it was not ideal, but I think it speaks to the spirit of the show. Supernatural is a show that was never the highest rated of show on the network. We were on every night of the week, I think every time slot of the week. Whatever got thrown as we rolled with it. And that includes a global pandemic.

Was there anything from the penultimate episode or early on in the finale that you changed because you knew you had to pivot for the ending?

Story-wise, not so much. I think we probably had to make some allowances production wise. It was nothing so big that I sit here and think, “Oh, I wish we could have had it the old way,” or anything like that. I think it was more detailed work.

Would the show always have been building up to this finale whenever it was going to be?

My feeling was that the guys needed this moment, but I can’t guarantee my feeling would’ve been the same a year from when we made that decision. And we may have found a way to give them this moment earlier. We may have moved on to certain things. I mean, the show’s had so many finales that were supposed to be the finale and then weren’t that it’s hard for me to say, “No, this was it.” This was the one that made the most sense at the time. That’s what I’ll say.

The brothers’ bond is so important. I think that’s why the ending works. Even though you did have to pivot, that did hold true.

Yeah, the show was always at its core about Sam and Dean, which is not to say that other characters weren’t super important, Castiel wasn’t super important, but at the end of the day, it started with them and it ended with them and that felt right.

And also there’ll be peace when they’re done because of “Carry On”…

Exactly, the whole ending was telegraphed in the song. It was all from the very beginning. It was all planned out. That’s a complete lie. None of it was planned out. It just happened to work out that way. If you listen to the lyrics of the song, you’re like, “Oh yeah, that does kind of make sense. Oh, let’s use that. Smart.”

For a deep-dive into 20 years of Supernatural, from behind-the-scenes scoop to exclusive cast interviews, photos, and fan stories, pick up a copy of TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special issue, available on newsstands and for order online at Supernatural.TVGM2025.com.