The Cursed Season Supernatural Became a Different Show Altogether

Throughout its 15-season run, Supernatural kept the audience glued to their screens, wondering what's next for the Winchester brothers and what kind of finale the writers had in store for them.

But for all its strengths, the long-running show wasn't always consistent in quality and focus. There had been a few turning points for the project, and one season in particular seemed to have changed the game for the protagonists altogether.

In the first two seasons, the series' creator Eric Kripke was experimenting with his approach to storytelling, which is why the two installments feel so drastically different. Based on urban legends and creepypastas, the episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 have a unique horror vibe and, despite occasional comedic relief, seem darker and more serious in their tone.

This original tone changes in Season 3 and 4 with the introduction of angels and then other primordial entities. The horror-inspired suspense is replaced with pathos, and the story starts to feel more like high fantasy than mysticism, which obviously strikes a completely different chord with the audience.

But the real change came after Season 5 when Eric Kripke decided to leave the project. The creator explained that he said everything he wanted to say with his Supernatural story, so the writers were free to roam around on their own. And it looks like they totally lost their direction.

The early seasons of Supernatural were built as a road movie, with Sam and Dean looking for ways to defeat monsters and make money along the way, eating at diners and hopping from motel to motel. They weren't superheroes fighting angels and vampires with their bare hands — the Winchesters were ordinary people relying on their own strength and wits.

Supernatural's later seasons dropped this gritty, working-class atmosphere and started to look more like a typical sci-fi action series. This becomes especially obvious in the cursed Season 8 with the introduction of the bunker and the brothers being equipped with elaborate gadgets.

'Suddenly they live in a pristine 5000+ square foot underground mansion that is inexplicably always completely clean,' one fan noted.

The bunker serves as a deus ex machina for the protagonists, prompting them to lose their initial resourcefulness and sense of danger.

Season 8 was also a transition between the end of the Purgatory storyline and the beginning of the final arcs. The entire season devalued Bobby's death and presented an inconsequential plotline with Crowley.

However, even the greater scope of supernatural events in the later seasons couldn't save the show. The Cousin Oliver effect kicked in with the introduction of Jack: apparently trying to attract younger viewers, the writers alienated a large portion of older fans, who were hoping for a logical conclusion to the story of Dean, Sam, and Castiel. Instead, we got a change in focus to the young hunter who later became the new God.

Source: Reddit.