Supernatural has long been a staple on Channel 10 and now its digital offshoot 11, since it first hit screens in 2005. With a team comprising of a large chunk of the production and writing crew behind The X-Files and a “supernatural” storyline base it was sure to sweep up the fans of the aforementioned show’s audience, but it was never expected to match its predecessor for longevity. Strangely enough, Supernatural is now about to launch into Season 9 (The X-Files reached this same milestone) and it’s still going strongly, we recap the journey thus far and look at the first episode of Season 9.
For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of this show, two brothers Dean and Sam Winchester (Jensen Ackles ( My Bloody Valentine), Jared Padalecki (House Of Wax) respectively) are hunters, they track and kill all the things that go bump in the night. The first 3 seasons of the show basically revolved around monster of the week style episodes with the occasional over-arching storyline that tied the whole season together. It’s a fairly procedural style of showrunning, and it generally works well for maintaining audiences. From Seasons 4 to present we were basically thrown into a religious angels VS demons genre. One of the driving forces was the introduction of Castiel (Misha Collins (24)) as a recurring character, an angel using a human vessel sent to assist Dean with his quest of ridding the world of evil. As a character who was never meant to stick around, Castiel won the hearts of the fandom and despite the writers torturing Castiel both literally and metaphorically, he still manages to survive. As we reach Season 9 we come to a point where Castiel now has all of heaven and its fallen angels seeking vengeance on him and the Winchesters in grave peril and needing to fix things fast.
In the first episode back we’re treated to lots of action but interestingly it’s the moral dilemma faced by Sam Winchester who is currently in a coma limbo and trying to decide whether to live or die that is the crux. The brothers have seen their fair share of death; both have themselves, died multiple times in the show and been resurrected and managed to live on to fight another day, with one of the show’s mantras being that “nobody ever really dies in Supernatural”. As the episode progresses we switch between the plight of the brothers, to Castiel, stranded on earth minus his grace and trying to get his way back to the boys but wanting to help his fellow fallen angels only to discover they’re not so friendly since he was the cause of them being kicked out of heaven.
It almost seems coincidental that this series commences with the notion of fighting for survival both from within and without. There has been an ongoing moral and ethical dilemma that our protagonists have to face, how many times do they have to keep fighting to save the world? When will it be OK for them to choose to give up or will this be their constant burden to bear? Unlike in the past seasons where the antagonists or villains were demons and monsters, they had a tangible feel and a means of being destroyed using a weapon or a spell. This time the challenges come from having to make difficult, painful decisions which are not so easily vanquished and this is something that as viewers we can relate to. It will be interesting to see where this season takes us, whether the spiritual journey of the show mimics its own reality.
Supernatural airs on 11 at 8:30pm Monday nights
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