How Supernatural Did In The Ratings With Divisive Series Finale

Supernatural Dean Winchester Jensen Ackles The CW
(Image credit: Cristian Cretu / The CW)

Warning: Spoilers for Supernatural’s series finale are mentioned below.

After fifteen seasons, Supernatural bid us farewell this past week with a relatively divisive series finale. Considering how things panned out, many are probably wondering how many viewers tuned in to see how Sam and Dean Winchester’s story ended. Well, the ratings for the veteran horror drama’s final bow are in, and they're pretty fascinating.

Supernatural went out with a bang. The show’s series finale drew in 1.38 million viewers and a 0.3 rating in the prized 18-49 demo, per The Hollywood Reporter. Those numbers easily marked Supernatural’s largest-watched same-day audience in nearly two years. The last time ratings were that high was in April 2019 during the final episodes of Season 14. And the series finale wasn't the only Supernatural-related episode to draw an audience.

A lot of Supernatural fans wanted to head down memory lane ahead of the finale. The preceding retrospective special, Supernatural: The Long Way Home, garnered a healthy 1.2 million viewers while maintaining the series finale’s 0.3 demo rating. The highly anticipated series finale was Initially set to end earlier this year in May 2020, but it was ultimately delayed due to the industry-wide production shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Supernatural ran out of new episodes in March, with showrunner Andrew Dabb making the official announcement in a social media message. It was a bittersweet development that did give fans a bit more time before they had to say goodbye to the show. Jensen Ackles also thought the filming hiatus wasn't an entirely bad thing, as it gave the cast time to refresh before heading into the series’ final installments.

The CW drama closed out with an emotional penultimate episode before kicking it old school for the conclusion. In it, Cas turned out not to be the latest death that Supernatural would suffer. But in heartbreaking development, Dean was killed in the series finale. He made it to Heaven, though, and Sam (who went onto have a son named Dean) would eventually join him there in his old age.

The divisive conclusion has since led to lots of thoughts and feelings across the fanbase. It was a finale that was fifteen years and countless emotions in the making, after all. Supernatural had braced fans for whether they would witness Sam and Dean finding peace and, in the end, they found that peace in the afterlife.

On the bright side, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki will be back on TV sooner than later. Ackles has The Boys Season 3 coming up in which he will star as Soldier Boy, and Jared Padalecki will be headlining The CW’s Walker, Texas Ranger reboot. For fans, it will undoubtedly be weird to see the actors no longer working together.

However you felt about it, Supernatural has ended, which is a sad thing by its nature, but you mend your broken heart with 2021’s winter/spring schedule. In the meantime, you can relive the past fourteen seasons of Sam and Dean Winchester’s wild ride by streaming Supernatural on Netflix alongside plenty of new 2020 content. Also, let us know how you felt about the series finale in the poll below!

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Britt Lawrence

Like a contented Hallmark movie character, Britt happily lives in the same city she grew up in. Along with movies and television, she is passionate about competitive figure skating. She has been writing about entertainment for 5 years, and as you may suspect, still finds it as entertaining to do as when she began.