Believe it or not, two decades have passed since the first episode of Supernatural aired on September 13, 2005. That’s back when The CW didn’t even exist yet, with a very young Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles debuting as the Winchester brothers on The WB. Both The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had ended in the previous few years, so there was an opening for a new show to take over the spooky genre space on network TV. But would Supernatural be the one to work out?.
By 2025, we certainly have the answer to that question. Supernatural ran for fifteen seasons and 327 episodes. It survived a writers strike, its network changing from The WB to The CW, and the main characters being repeatedly killed off. While I didn’t start Supernatural back in the day until the first few seasons were available on DVD, I rewatched the Supernatural pilot for the first time in years in honor of the 20th anniversary, and I had what Dean definitely qualify as a “chick flick moment.” Here’s why.
The Pilot Was A Great First Episode
Pilots on network television generally aren’t the smoothest episodes, with a lot to set up to try and hook audiences to come back the next week. I’d remembered loving the Supernatural pilot the first time I saw it, but I also wasn’t watching at the time with a critical eye so much as with an eye for a spooky show that could fill the hole that The X-Files left in my heart.
Watching the pilot in 2025 (available streaming with a Netflix subscription), I noted that there are indeed a few minutes of clunky exposition after Sam and Dean reunite. They had to set up the premise of the world being full of monsters while also touching on just how messy the Winchester family has become in the years since Mary was killed by a demon. Supernatural’s pilot stands up as a pretty great episode aside from those few minutes of clunkiness.
Part of that goes down to Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki nailing the brotherly dynamic right off the bat, and I think the show made the right call in starting out with a Monster of the Week rather than getting into the meat of the Yellow-Eyed Demon from the start. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Woman In White, even before Supernatural brought her back in the final season.
I Forgot How Many Iconic Quotes Came From The Pilot
Supernatural had its share of iconic lines across fifteen seasons, and I’d recalled that a fair few of them came from the first season. That said, I totally forgot that so many of the lines that fans can quote en masse were uttered in the very first episode.
We get the first exchange of “jerk” and “bitch” between the brothers, as well as “No chick flick moments” from Dean to stop Sam from getting too emotional. (Spoiler alert: there would be a lot of emotional “chick flick moments” over the next 326 episodes.)
And of course, there was Dean laying down the law of the Impala when Sam was rummaging through his classic rock cassette tape collection: “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.”
There Were A Lot Of Firsts That Continue Later Into The Series
Back in the earliest days of Supernatural, there was no way of knowing how often the Winchester brothers would get into the same sticky situations over and over and over again, but the pilot introduces some plot twists that will definitely be repeated over the fifteen seasons.
The first fistfight between the Winchester brothers was actually their very first interaction after the time jump, although these were definitely not their most brutal fisticuffs of the series. The climax of the episode also included the first crash of the Impala, which Dean took pretty well, all things considered.
The pilot was the first time that Mary died on Supernatural, and while she wouldn’t rack up deaths quite as frequently as her sons on the show, it definitely wasn’t the last time she died on screen. Also – and apologies to the then-future Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star – Adrianne Palicki’s Jess is the first of many WInchester love interests to die a horrible death.
The Series Finale Called Back To The Pilot
The Season 15 premiere memorably called back to the Season 1 premiere by ending on the Winchester brothers standing over the Impala trunk with Sam saying “We’ve got work to do,” but there’s a pilot callback in the series finale that I missed when that final episode aired in 2020. When the brothers were working on the case of the Woman in White, they were wearing the same outfits that they’d be wearing when they reunited in heaven in Supernatural‘s divisive finale ending. Take a look:
While Dean’s jacket in the last scene of the finale isn’t exactly the same as the one he wore in the pilot, they’re pretty dang close, and Supernatural did a great job of matching Jared Padalecki’s Season 15 costume to what he wore in his first episode as Sam. If I wasn’t already having a chick flick moment over seeing the brothers in action before all of the trauma they’d endure over fifteen seasons, I would have definitely had one over seeing the pilot costumes that were recreated for the finale.
I Hate The Music Changes On Netflix
Unfortunately, there was one loss from the first time I watched the pilot to when I rewatched it for the 20th anniversary, and that’s the music. Supernatural was known over the years for Dean’s love of what Sam called “mullet rock.” Arguably one of the most iconic music sequences originally happened in the pilot, with AC/DC’s “Back In Black” blasting after Dean told his brother to shut his cakehole in the car.
This isn’t exclusive to the pilot, either. I also know about the tragic loss of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” from the Season 1 episode called “Faith,” in which a runner is literally fearful while running from a Reaper. The Season 1 finale also lost “Bad Moon Rising” on Netflix. According to executive producer Phil Sgriccia on the Supernatural Then and Now podcast regarding the first season, what happened was that they “only had rights to the music in Year 1 for DVDs and television broadcast, but anything that was streaming and later got redone.”
Fortunately, that doesn’t apply to seasons beyond the first on streaming and digital, so every “Carry On Wayward Son” that Supernatural ever included is still available streaming, which is only right. The Kansas hit is all but synonymous with the Winchester brothers from the Season 2 finale onward.
The pilot missing the music from the original broadcast and DVD release doesn’t mean that it’s not worth revisiting, as I had a lot of fun going back to see the very young Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles in their debuts as Sam and Dean Winchester. It certainly wasn’t one of the stars’ picks for the worst episode of Supernatural! You can find the pilot as well as the other 326 episodes streaming now.