Supernatural Fans Still Want to See This Forgotten Spinoff (2024)

For 15 years, Supernatural was arguably one of the biggest brands that The CW had to offer. While the network excelled with teen dramas such as Gossip Girl and Riverdale and had a vampire dynasty under The Vampire Diaries umbrella, no series was as long-running or popular. Supernatural first premiered in 2005, casting television heartthrobs Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki as monster hunter brothers, Dean and Sam Winchester, respectively. Due to its humor, emotional resonance, and mythological lore, Supernatural became a cult classic.

This is why it is perplexing that so many spinoffs blew up all over the launch pad. The most successful occurred after the series finale of Supernatural. Titled The Winchesters, the show was a period series about Dean and Sam’s parents. The Winchesters only lasted a season before cancelation. Though it was not the first spinoff attempted, it was the only one that got a season order. One Supernatural spinoff, in particular, still weighs on the minds of fans because of all the possibilities.

Wayward Sisters Was Introduced In a Back Door Pilot

Out of all of the Supernatural spinoffs, Wayward Sisters had the most promise. A play on "Carry On My Wayward Son," the song by Kansas that plays at the end of each season, the series would have taken Dean and Sam’s prime directive and pass it on to another batch of characters. Leading the charge would have been Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes), one of the few female characters on Supernatural who survived her tenure.

Jody is first introduced in the Season 5 episode, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” The season depicts Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) trying to find a purchase on Earth to start the Apocalypse. One of these symptoms is when the dead start rising from the grave. The brothers travel to their father figure, Bobby’s (Jim Beaver) home in Sioux Falls, to take care of the epidemic. Jody Mills is the sheriff of the town who has become apprised of monsters in their world. After that, she is a recurring character who helps the boys from time to time, which supports the idea of a spinoff series. Wayward Sisters was introduced in a backdoor pilot in Season 13.

At that point, Jody had become a surrogate mother to women who had lost loved ones because of monsters. Kathryn Newton plays Claire Novak, the daughter of Jimmy Novak, who is Castiel’s (Misha Collins) willing host. The backdoor pilot in Season 13 showed Jody had made connections with many women who, in the episode, rescued Sam and Dean. Wayward Sisters was the exact sort of story that should have worked. It contains the well-known mythology of Sam and Dean’s world but gives it a different perspective. All the women in the potential series were wounded by tragedy, just like the Winchesters. But their sorority of monster fighters would offer something different as well, which was tragically never meant to be.

The Network Didn’t Go Ahead With Wayward Sisters

The CW dropping a Supernatural spinoff isn’t unheard of. The same fate befell an earlier spinoff attempt, entitled Bloodlines. This potential series also had a backdoor pilot, which portrayed the underground world of warring monster factions in Chicago. While a fascinating and an untapped story, The CW did not move ahead with the show. The same thing happened with Wayward Sisters. Despite the strength of its concept, the network instead chose a different spinoff to move forward with.

“We are big fans of the characters and the women who played those characters… We hope they continue on as guest stars on Supernatural,” The CW president, Mark Pedowitz said at upfronts at the time (according to TV Line per Den of Geek). “But we did not feel creatively that the show was where we wanted it to be. And we felt we had a better shot with [Originals spinoff] Legacies.”

• Wayward Sisters was the second attempt at a Supernatural spinoff.
• Legacies was the second spinoff of The Vampire Diaries.
• Both Wayward Sisters and Legacies revolved around women in a supernatural world.

Fans will never know what wasn’t working with the series, but it still is a perplexing decision to go with Legacies. Though The Vampire Diaries had long been a strong brand for the network, Legacies is no question the weakest in the franchise. Following original hybrid Klaus Mikaelson’s (Joseph Morgan) singular daughter, Hope (Danielle Rose Russell), while she’s at her supernatural boarding school, the series lacked the seriousness of The Originals and the engaging characters of The Vampire Diaries. Legacies was more of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer copy, if anything, and did not have quite the longevity as its predecessors. Legacies would be canceled after four seasons in 2022. The Vampire Diaries had its time in the sun, and Legacies gave the impression that the series was running out of ideas. If there was one thing that Supernatural never faltered with, it was ideas. Wayward Sisters would also have profited from a demographic underrepresented in the flagship series.

Supernatural Needed a Female Perspective

Supernatural had many strengths. Brotherly love, terrifying monsters, and compelling drama are only some of what made the series great. If there was one thing that was lacking, however, it was a female perspective. When Eric Kripke first created the series in the mid-'00s, the cultural conversation wasn’t as advanced as it is now. It was acceptable to show female characters half-naked with no defining characteristic other than being romantically attached to the male lead. Jess Moore’s (Adrianne Palicki) fate may have been devastating, but that does, in a sense, describe her entire arc in the first episode.

This trend would continue throughout the series. Women are either killed or referred to in a derogatory manner in Supernatural. The demon Ruby was one of the more compelling female characters of the series but was only written to get in the way of Sam and Dean’s epic bond. First portrayed by Katie Cassidy in Season 3, Genevieve Padalecki (neé Cortese) would take on the role in later seasons as she progressively gets more villainously arch. Women tend not to have the greatest development in the series, and Wayward Sisters could have rectified that. Jody had escaped the Supernatural curse for some time and throughout her seasons on the series, gathered a collection of like-minded women to her cause. Women had been demon hunters before in the series, but the most notable, Jo Harvelle (Alona Tal), was killed alongside her mother after rejecting Dean’s romantic advances. These aren’t the stories that age very well with time.

Wayward Sisters would be able to avoid these pitfalls because it wouldn’t be connected to the Winchester’s story. Jody would be nurturing this new batch of women in demon-hunting skills and not have to adhere to fans who simply want to get back to the Sam and Dean Show. Wayward Sisters would forge its own path and, because it was so densely populated with female characters, wouldn’t have to suffer too much if a couple of them got knocked off. This could prove that the Supernatural brand didn’t fridge absolutely every woman in the series, and many of them could have the same shelf life as the Winchester brothers. Instead, The CW seemed to have filled its quota with supernatural women in the Legacies series.

There Is No Good Reason Why Wayward Sisters Was Axed

While it may be unfair to assume that Wayward Sisters never came to fruition because of gender, it’s hard not to see the connection. Supernatural always struggled with supporting women on the series, and a fully female cast may not have appealed to the brand it had set up. Canceling the series is also baffling because it defies the numbers supporting the series. Den of Geek reported that the fandom received the backdoor pilot well. This fact was further supported by the petition to save the series that had garnered over 70,000 signatures. These types of petitions don’t usually impress networks but showed how fans responded to the series. It has only been a short time since this decision was made, but the potential for such a series looks more bleak than ever.

The CW recently did a culling of its content, getting rid of many of its genre shows like Charmed, Roswell, New Mexico, and the aforementioned Legacies. The CW, as fans once knew it, was letting out its dying breath. Perhaps this means that there wouldn’t have been a place for Wayward Sisters to land anyway. The ending of Supernatural failed on many creative levels, killing Dean in the most unheroic way and not featuring Cas in the afterlife. The Winchesters has withered away, and Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have moved on to greener pastures. Genre television on network channels is a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean viewers should stop pushing for what they love. Kathryn Newton has only gotten more popular with time, and though streaming is the most popular way of watching television, Supernatural fans would return to a familiar world. The disappointing end for Supernatural could mean fans are ready for something new, no matter if it appears on streamingland or on one of the last vestiges of cable television and the world is ready for female monster hunters now more than ever.

Supernatural

Action

Adventure

Mystery

Two brothers follow their father's footsteps as hunters, fighting evil supernatural beings of many kinds, including monsters, demons, and gods that roam the earth.

Where to Watch

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*Availability in US

Release Date

September 13, 2005

Cast

Jensen Ackles , Misha Collins , Jim Beaver , Jared Padalecki , Katie Cassidy , Lauren Cohan , Mark A. Sheppard , Mark Pellegrino , Alexander Calvert

Rating

Creator

Seasons

15

Production Company

Story By

Eric Kripke

Writers

Eric Kripke , Andrew Dabb , Robert Berens

Number of Episodes

Network

The WB , The CW

Franchise(s)

Supernatural

Directors

Philip Sgriccia , John F. Showalter , Robert Singer

Showrunner

Eric Kripke