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- This guide covers all 15 seasons of Supernatural, and the series is complete: the finale, "Carry On," aired on November 19, 2020.
Supernatural Seasons Guide: 15 Seasons Explained, and Where to Jump In
Supernatural lasted 15 seasons on The WB and The CW, from 2005 to 2020, and 327 episodes. The guide goes through what each season is about, how long it runs and which episodes to prioritize.
Supernatural seasons: a guide with every season explained
Supernatural is an American dark fantasy series created by Eric Kripke. Brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, hunt demons, monsters and other supernatural beings. Over time they are drawn into a war between angels and demons that threatens the world. The main cast grows through the years to include Misha Collins, Mark A. Sheppard, Mark Pellegrino and Alexander Calvert. The pilot aired on September 13, 2005, on The WB, and the show moved to The CW when that network launched in 2006.
The reputation of the show rests on its range. It can be a small, scary road story in one episode and a comedy about the making of television in the next. Castiel arrives in season 4, and by the later seasons the cast around Padalecki and Ackles is large enough that the brothers share the frame with a whole family of recurring characters. The result is a show that rewards patience, and the Supernatural seasons reward it in different ways depending on where you are in the run.
The first question is how many seasons there are. Fifteen. The Supernatural seasons add up to 327 episodes. Most seasons have 22 or 23 episodes. The exceptions are season 3 with 16, and seasons 14 and 15 with 20 each. Season 15 aired in two blocks, 13 episodes between October 2019 and March 2020 and the last 7 from October to November 2020. The series finale, "Carry On," was the 20th episode of that season.
Because it ran so long, the show has distinct eras. Kripke ran the first five seasons and stepped down after the fifth. Sera Gamble took over for seasons 6 and 7, Jeremy Carver ran seasons 8 to 11, and Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer ran seasons 12 to 15. Each handover shifted the priorities of the show. The early seasons are road-trip horror with a monster of the week, the middle seasons are about mythology, and the later seasons lean into family and the cast that had accumulated around the two leads.
For a first-time viewer the advice is to start at the beginning. The pilot sets up the brothers and the road, and the early seasons are the ones that the later seasons look back on. At 327 episodes, though, nobody needs to see everything. Rough Cut Review suggests committing to seasons 1 through 5, the stretch under Kripke that ends with "Swan Song," and then deciding whether to continue. The sections below describe every season without revealing how any of them ends.
Seasons at a glance
| Season | Episodes | Aired | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 22 | 2005-2006 | The brothers search for their missing father while hunting on the road |
| Season 2 | 22 | 2006-2007 | They pursue the demon behind their family's tragedies |
| Season 3 | 16 | 2007-2008 | A deal with a demon comes due |
| Season 4 | 22 | 2008-2009 | Castiel joins them as Lucifer's release threatens the world |
| Season 5 | 22 | 2009-2010 | A destined final battle with Lucifer and Michael |
| Season 6 | 22 | 2010-2011 | Purgatory opens and unleashes monsters called Leviathans |
| Season 7 | 23 | 2011-2012 | The brothers battle the Leviathans and their leader |
| Season 8 | 23 | 2012-2013 | Dean returns from Purgatory, and the Gates of Hell are in play |
| Season 9 | 23 | 2013-2014 | Castiel loses his grace, and the angels are cast out of Heaven |
| Season 10 | 23 | 2014-2015 | The Mark of Cain has lasting consequences |
| Season 11 | 23 | 2015-2016 | The family faces the Darkness |
| Season 12 | 23 | 2016-2017 | Jack, a Nephilim, joins the family, and an alternate-universe threat emerges |
| Season 13 | 23 | 2017-2018 | Jack remains central as the family faces new dangers |
| Season 14 | 20 | 2018-2019 | The family continues its fight against cosmic threats |
| Season 15 | 20 | 2019-2020 | The Winchesters rebel against God as reality is threatened |
Episode counts, air years and notable episodes follow the Wikipedia episode list for Supernatural, checked October 2026. The 15 seasons add up to 327 episodes.
The season-by-season guide
Fifteen seasons are too many for a section each, so the guide below groups them by era and takes the seasons in order inside each group. None of the sections reveals how a season ends.
The eras are also very different in size, and that matters for planning. Seasons 1 to 5 add up to 104 episodes, seasons 6 and 7 to 45, seasons 8 to 11 to 92 and seasons 12 to 15 to 86. A viewer working through the Supernatural seasons at one episode a night would spend about three and a half months on the first group alone, so the era breaks are natural places to pause. They are also the places where the show changes showrunner, which makes them the best points to judge whether the tone still suits you.
Seasons 1 to 5: the Kripke run (2005-2010)
Season 1 has 22 episodes and aired from September 13, 2005, to May 4, 2006. Sam and Dean search for their missing father while hunting on the road, and the season closes with "Devil's Trap." Season 2 moved to The CW, ran 22 episodes from September 28, 2006, to May 17, 2007, and follows the brothers as they pursue the demon behind their family's tragedies. If you want to know how many Supernatural seasons it takes before the show finds its own voice, the answer is two, and both are short enough to finish in a few weeks.
Season 3 is the shortest of the run, with 16 episodes from October 4, 2007, to May 15, 2008. Dean's deal with a demon comes due, and the countdown shapes everything. The season includes "Mystery Spot," the eleventh episode, and ends with "No Rest for the Wicked." The season opener is titled "The Magnificent Seven," and it was directed by Kim Manners.
Season 4 brings in Castiel, an angel, as Lucifer's release threatens the world. It has 22 episodes, runs from September 18, 2008, to May 14, 2009, and ends with "Lucifer Rising." Season 5 covers the destined final battle between Lucifer and Michael. It has 22 episodes, aired from September 10, 2009, to May 13, 2010, and closes with "Swan Song." The season includes "Changing Channels" and "Dark Side of the Moon."
The finale titles of the stretch read like a short history of the show: "Devil's Trap" for season 1, "No Rest for the Wicked" for season 3, "Lucifer Rising" for season 4 and "Swan Song" for season 5. Each one closes a season that built toward it, and none of them is meant to be watched on its own.
Rough Cut Review treats these five as one stretch of the show, and Kripke ran all of it. A viewer who stops at "Swan Song" has seen the first full chapter of the series and has not missed its setup.
Seasons 6 and 7: the Gamble years (2010-2012)
Sera Gamble ran seasons 6 and 7. Season 6 has 22 episodes, aired from September 24, 2010, to May 20, 2011, and begins when Purgatory opens and unleashes monsters called Leviathans. The sixth season holds "The French Mistake," its 15th episode, which first aired on February 25, 2011, and was directed by Charles Beeson. In it the angel Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate Vancouver where they are actors playing themselves on a TV show called Supernatural.
Season 7 has 23 episodes, aired from September 23, 2011, to May 18, 2012, and follows the brothers as they battle the Leviathans and their leader. It is the first season of the 23-episode order that the show kept for most of the next six years.
Taken together the two seasons run 45 episodes, less than half of the opening stretch, and they are the quickest era to sample. A reader who wants to know whether the show survives a change of showrunner can find out in under two months of nightly viewing. The episode to start with is "The French Mistake," because it steps outside the story entirely.
A new showrunner meant a new emphasis, and these two seasons are where viewers tend to disagree. Some find the Leviathan arc a step down from the angel and demon war that came before. Others like it for introducing fresh monsters. Either way the seasons are shorter than they feel.
Seasons 8 to 11: the Carver era (2012-2016)
Jeremy Carver ran seasons 8 to 11, which run from October 2012 to May 2016. Season 8 has 23 episodes, from October 3, 2012, to May 15, 2013, and has Dean return from Purgatory while the brothers work to close the Gates of Hell. It ends with "Sacrifice," the 23rd episode. In season 9, aired from October 8, 2013, to May 20, 2014, Castiel loses his grace and the angels are cast out of Heaven.
Season 10 has 23 episodes, from October 7, 2014, to May 20, 2015. The Mark of Cain has lasting consequences for Dean, and an ancient entity is freed. The tenth season holds "Fan Fiction," which aired on November 11, 2014, and is the 200th episode of the series: a school musical based on the brothers' lives turns out to be the work of the goddess Calliope.
Season 11 has 23 episodes, from October 7, 2015, to May 25, 2016, and sees the family face the Darkness, God's sibling conflict. The fourth episode, "Baby," was directed by Thomas J. Wright and first aired on October 28, 2015. It is a bottle episode shown entirely from inside Dean's Impala as Sam and Dean road-trip to hunt a previously undocumented monster, and it is the strongest argument for the show's willingness to try a new format at episode 222 of the run.
Four seasons and 92 episodes make this the middle of the show in every sense, and the era has the most variety of format. A fan-fiction musical, a bottle episode in a car and a long mythology about the Mark of Cain share the same stretch. Rough Cut Review would sample "Fan Fiction" and "Baby" for a quick sense of what the era does well, and then return to the arc.
The Carver years are a mix, with some of the show's most inventive episodes and some of its most crowded story lines. The Mark of Cain and the Darkness give the middle of the series two clear central threats.
Seasons 12 to 15: Dabb, Singer and the end (2016-2020)
Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer ran the last four seasons. Season 12 has 23 episodes, from October 13, 2016, to May 18, 2017. Jack, a Nephilim, joins the family, and an alternate-universe threat emerges. Season 13 has 23 episodes, from October 12, 2017, to May 17, 2018, with Jack still central as the family faces new dangers. The thirteenth season contains "Scoobynatural," the 16th episode, which aired on March 29, 2018, and sends Sam, Dean and Castiel into a 1970 Scooby-Doo episode where they team up with the Scooby Gang to stop a real ghost. Robert Singer directed the live-action portion and Spike Brandt the animation.
Season 14 has 20 episodes, from October 11, 2018, to April 25, 2019, as the family continues its fight against cosmic threats. Season 15 also has 20, from October 10, 2019, to November 19, 2020. The Winchesters rebel against God as reality is threatened. The final episode, "Carry On," ended the series on November 19, 2020. This guide does not describe it.
The last four seasons run 20 or 23 episodes each, so they are the heaviest stretch to commit to. Anyone short on time can stop at season 5 or at season 11 and still have a long run behind them.
The entries that matter when time is short
These eight are the shortlist for anyone who cannot cover all of the series. The titles and numbers are taken from the Wikipedia episode list.
- Season 1, episode 1, "Pilot": the series premiere on September 13, 2005, and the setup for everything that follows.
- Season 1, episode 22, "Devil's Trap": the first-season finale.
- Season 3, episode 11, "Mystery Spot": the eleventh episode of the shortest season.
- Season 5, episode 8, "Changing Channels": the eighth episode of the fifth season.
- Season 5, episode 22, "Swan Song": the fifth-season finale and the last episode under Kripke.
- Season 6, episode 15, "The French Mistake": the brothers land in a world where they are actors, directed by Charles Beeson.
- Season 10, episode 5, "Fan Fiction": the series' 200th episode.
- Season 11, episode 4, "Baby": shot entirely from inside the Impala.
Reading on Supernatural
2 takesThis guide stays at overview level; separate pages go into single seasons and characters.
When Did Supernatural Start? A Look Back at All 15 Seasons
Supernatural premiered on The WB on September 13, 2005, and ran for 15 seasons and 327 episodes, ending on November 19, 2020. This summary walks through each season, the angel-driven peak of seasons 4 and 5, and the way the Winchesters' story ends.Supernatural Last Call Review: Dean, a Marid and What Hunters Deserve
“Last Call” is the seventh episode of Supernatural’s final season, aired on The CW on December 5, 2019, and it sends Dean to Texas to deal with an old friend while Sam’s injury from his link to God nearly kills him again. It is an uneven monster story that earns its place through a strong guest turn by Christian Kane and a sharp argument about reward and obedience.
Frequently asked questions about Supernatural
How many seasons of Supernatural are there?
Fifteen. Supernatural ran from September 13, 2005, to November 19, 2020, and has 327 episodes in total.
How many episodes does each season of Supernatural have?
Seasons 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 have 22 episodes each, and season 3 has 16. Seasons 7 to 13 have 23 each, and seasons 14 and 15 have 20 each. Together that makes 327.
Which network aired Supernatural?
Season 1 aired on The WB. From season 2 in 2006 the show was on The CW, which carried it through to the finale in 2020.
Who created Supernatural?
Eric Kripke created the series and ran the first five seasons. Sera Gamble ran seasons 6 and 7, Jeremy Carver ran seasons 8 to 11, and Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer ran seasons 12 to 15.
Do I have to watch every Supernatural season in order?
For the main story, yes. The show builds on its earlier seasons, and characters such as Castiel and Jack arrive partway through. Monster-of-the-week episodes can stand alone, but the arcs do not.
Where should I start with the Supernatural seasons?
Start with the pilot and watch in broadcast order. Seasons 1 to 5, the Kripke run, are the easiest place to decide whether the show suits you.
Sources
Episode counts, dates and credits on this page follow the reference below; each figure was checked against it in October 2026.
- Supernatural (American TV series), Wikipedia — season and episode tables, release dates and credits