A ‘Supernatural’ Revival? Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles & Misha Collins Pitch Ideas (Exclusive)

It’s the question we’ve been asking since the Winchester boys met up on that damn bridge one last time back on November 19, 2020: When is the Supernatural revival?

And it’s one the guys have been hearing for even longer, because as soon as the end of Supernatural was announced, fans immediately started clamoring for some sort of a comeback. And because Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and Misha Collins are the verified best, they humored us with some of their own ideas of how the show could find new life after 15 seasons.

Ackles, Padalecki and Collins crack up between shots for our special issue (Damian Holbrook)

As reported earlier, we hung out with the trio last month at Creation Entertainment’s “The Road So Far…The Road Ahead” convention stop in New Jersey, where we held an exclusive interview and photo shoot for TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special. (Watch the guys answer the first set of fan questions here.) During the chat, the guys addressed the bittersweet COVID-related circumstances of their finale shoot, the difficulty of saying goodbye to a crew they couldn’t hug, the beauty of their fandom and of course, their takes on a possible revival.

When asked what kind of format they would want it to come back, Collins immediately and classically offered “puppet show,” while Padalecki suggested animatronics or marionettes. “Like Team America,” they all chimed in. Jokes aside, Padalecki explained that 20 years had maybe taken the shine off of doing a full TV season.

“I don’t know if I have 22 episodes of Supernatural in me…I think a limited series would be great. Like a Gilmore Girls-style [revival], four one-and-a half-hour episodes that we can shoot in a couple months.”

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles in the pilot (The WB / Justin Lubin)

And would they want to go grittier, should the show wind up being revived on a streamer or cable? Get the kind of TV-MA action they couldn’t on the ol’ CW? Please, these guys were raised right.

“I thought about this because we’ve gotten that question quite a bit,” says Ackles, who had literally flown in that morning from Toronto where he was wrapping The Boys. “What would the show have looked like had it been on a streamer, right? And it would’ve been different. It would’ve been probably a little more R-rated, but part of me feels like because of what we did for so long and because of what the tone is, I feel like changing that now might be doing it a disservice. So I could see the benefit in keeping it like a broadcast show.”

“That’s where I sit,” Padalecki added, agreeing with his brother. “There’s something magical about [it], it’s the reason we watch sports more often than we watch the circus: There are rules in sports. It’d be fun if you could pick up a soccer ball and go throw it in, but you can’t. So I like the rules that broadcast television, linear TV, put us within because we still played. We still had ‘son of a bitch’ and we…pushed the envelope so much within those boundaries. And so there’s an art to that and I would prefer that.”

Now, SPN Fam…what would you prefer? Let us know in the comments!

For a deep-dive into 20 years of Supernatural, from behind-the-scenes scoop to exclusive cast interviews, photos, and fan stories, pick up a copy of TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special issue, available on newsstands July 25 and for order online at Supernatural.TVGM2025.com.