As one of the longest-running American television shows, Supernatural explored a wide variety of religions and spiritual practices. The overarching religion on the show, however, was Christianity. The Winchester brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles), spent a fair amount of their time exercising demons, making deals with the King of Hell, and fighting against the idea of fate. When facing any heavenly or hellish entity, Sam and Dean reacted in an authentic way that other television shows have yet to explore.
Yet, even with the authenticity Supernatural, many embellishments are made to move the story along. For example, the average person doesn’t make a deal with the King of Hell only to be torn apart by invisible hellhounds. Or that angels can possess humans as much as demons do. Of course, the joys of fiction, particularly for Supernatural, are the embellishments and how they are confronted. Sam and Dean consistently facing spiritual entities and learning how to accept fate is why Christianity could be featured in a fictional yet almost realistic way. Ahead of Supernatural's highly anticipated prequel, The Winchesters, ere are several Christian elements in The CW series.
The Apocalypse
When Sam and Dean aren’t fighting demons, vampires, or ghosts, they are trying to stop the inevitable apocalypse. The thing about inevitable events is that they find a way to happen even when they’re stalled. Lucifer succeeds in starting the apocalypse by releasing the Four Horseman from their bonds. The quartet are the first of seven seals broken that jumpstart the apocalypse. The horsemen, as they appear in Supernatural, are War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Each horseman wears a ring that contains their powers and, if removed, will take away their human forms, except for Death (Julian Richings). As the final horseman audiences meet in the series, Death is often eating cheap food like pizza or burgers and fries while calmly discussing fate, human arrogance, and God with Dean. Each horseman is terrifying, but Death is quite lovable, even if he has the ability to take your life away.
God AKA Chuck the Author
In holy texts, God transcends all physical form, human emotion, and universal knowledge. They even transcend gender as the Episcopal Church has revised their prayer book to align with the variety of pronouns used to describe God in the languages the Bible was written in, as The Conversation details. Considering that Supernatural introduced audiences to Lucifer, angels, and demons, it would be appropriate to introduce God as one of the ultimate players. Yet, upon first meeting God, he is concealed as a prophet and author named Chuck Shurley. Immediately upon meeting Chuck, Dean is irked and for good reason. When God reveals that Chuck was an alter-ego, so he could be in his own story, Sam reacts in awe as Dean rolls his eyes.
This juxtaposition of reactions wasn’t simply for realism, but when Dean has a bad feeling, it’s usually on par with the following events. By his own admission, Chuck/God reveals that he got bored and created hundreds of worlds with variations of Dean, Sam, and Castiel (played by Misha Collins). Of course, when the trio don’t want to follow God’s game plan, he goes on a rampage, destroying each world he created. Instead of embracing the God of love from the New Testament in the Bible, the writers and creators of Supernatural chose to write the original God: the God of wrath from the Old Testament. The Book of Exodus describes a God who sent seven plagues upon Egypt eventually killing the firstborn of each family.
Monsters in Limbo
Purgatory is defined as a purification after the initial judgment when someone dies. While purgatory isn’t necessarily a place like Heaven or Hell, it’s a space of limbo for lost souls. Of all the non-Earth realms Sam and/or Dean travel to in Supernatural, Purgatory and Hell are visited most often, as getting into Heaven has strict rules upon entrance. Dean, in particular, is more familiar with Purgatory’s landscape after spending a full year there. In Supernatural, Purgatory was created by God as a place for all the monsters to go when they died. Yet, for Dean, a human, to be in Purgatory with the monsters he and his family hunted on earth, he had to rely on those hunter skills to survive. When Dean left Purgatory, he brought back Benny, a vampire, who helped him survive. One aspect about the non-earthly realms on Supernatural is that each of them have different filters. Heaven is bright and resembles a modernized office space with white walls, floors, and ceilings. Hell is dark, dank and gloomy, the exact opposite of Heaven. Purgatory has a sepia-grayish filter and is like an endless forest.
The Defiant Angel
There are four types of angels in Christianity, except for archangels. Supernatural expands on these four types by breaking them down into managers, supervisors, and worker bees because Heaven is a business. Their mission is to let the apocalypse unfold no matter what. Just as the archangels are the closest to God in the Bible, the same remains in Supernatural. The creators of the show even used an archangel as inspiration for a certain angel on the show. Indeed, Castiel is based on the archangel Cassiel. Unlike his siblings, Castiel is not completely sold on the entire mission to end humanity so that God can complete his story. A reason behind his change in programming, so to speak, is the amount of time he spends with Dean and Sam saving people. He even defies God/Chuck to his omnipotent face. Castiel is unlike his siblings in many ways because he has the one thing they don't: curiosity.