‘Supernatural’ Just Pulled Off Its Best Reunion Since the Series Ended

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Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) in the woods in the 'Supernatural' episode

Published Sep 17, 2026, 8:39 AM EDT

Collier Jennings is an entertainment journalist with extensive experience. Collier, or "CJ" to his friends and family, is a dedicated fan of genre films - particularly science fiction, fantasy, and comic book adaptations, not to mention all forms of animation. This stems from a close bond with his father, who introduced him to these genres via copies of X-Men comics and reruns of the original Ultraman series. With his near-encyclopedic knowledge and bottomless love of genre, he's tackled a wide variety of articles.

Supernatural is one of the longest-running television series, spanning 15 seasons and over 300 episodes. That's longer than Smallville, The Vampire Diaries, or any other fantasy/sci-fi show that aired on the CW, and much of what makes the series so engaging isn't the deep mythology or the monsters that pop up each episode. It's the dynamic between the leading men, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean Winchester. Padalecki and Ackles make the Winchesters feel like distinct characters, and their on- and off-screen dynamic feels like watching two brothers interact.

While Supernatural wrapped up its run in 2020, it wasn't long until Padalecki and Ackles reunited on screen for another insanely popular show. This time, it was The Boys, Prime Video's superhero satire based on the Dynamite comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It's no surprise that the duo eventually made it onto the show; Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural, served as showrunner on The Boys and made sure that Padalecki and Ackles portrayed characters who were the complete opposites of the Winchester brothers.

'The Boys' Had Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles Playing Scumbag Superheroes

Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy standing next to Jared Padalecki as Mister Marathon in The Boys Season 5

The reason that The Boys stood out in a sea of superhero-themed shows is that its superheroes are far from heroic. They indulge whatever vices they please, often leaving death and destruction in their wake, and the only reason they get away with it is that they're backed by the full might of the Vought corporation. Jensen Ackles eventually joined the series as the patriotic-themed Soldier Boy, who might be one of the worst "Supes" in the series. Not only is Soldier Boy a walking ode to toxic masculinity, but he turns out to be the father of Homelander (Antony Starr), effectively meaning that he's responsible for a great deal of the horrors that happen in The Boys.

While fans had clamored for Jared Padalecki to join The Boys, his commitment to other projects meant that the long-awaited Supernatural reunion didn't happen until the final season of the series. Eric Kripke lampshaded this during an interview with Variety, saying that he'd been trying to get Padalecki on the show for a long time.

“He’s been busy the last few years, so schedules haven’t worked out...And I feel like I have to complete my game of ‘Supernatural’ Pokémon and I have my one big one — very big one — left to catch.”

Kripke eventually got his wish with the Season 5 episode "One-Shots," In "One-Shots," Soldier Boy and Homelander travel to LA to find out where V1 is, the first incarnation of the drug that empowers superheroes. There, they meet Mister Marathon (Padalecki), a speedster who pretends to help them but wants Soldier Boy's help in killing Homelander. Soldier Boy instead attacks and grievously wounds Marathon, which is a far cry from the brotherly bond Padalecki and Ackles once shared.

Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard

Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.

🐕Wick

🏁Fast

🧨Mission

🎄Die Hard

FIND YOUR FRANCHISE →

How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down.

NEXT QUESTION →

Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

NEXT QUESTION →

It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

NEXT QUESTION →

There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass.

NEXT QUESTION →

Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.

NEXT QUESTION →

When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.

REVEAL MY FRANCHISE →

Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

John Wick

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

Fast & Furious

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.

This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Mission: Impossible

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Die Hard

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles Weren't The Only 'Supernatural' Alums on 'The Boys'

Supernatural fans were excited to see Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles finally reunite on The Boys, but it wasn't the first time that the two series shared stars. Jim Beaver made appearances as politician and hopeful President Robert "Dakota Bob" Singer, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan tormented Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) as his old friend, Joe Kessler. Another shocking Supernatural reunion happened in "One-Shots", as Misha Collins, who previously played the angel Castiel, appears as gas-spewing Supe Malchemical. He meets a brutal end at Soldier Boy's hands, once again serving as a funhouse mirror to the deep bond Dean and Castiel shared on Supernatural.

The Boys recently ended this year, but its connections to Supernatural will continue with Vought Rising, which features Jensen Ackles in a starring role and Eric Kripke as a producer. Since Vought Rising takes place years before The Boys, Jared Padalecki probably won't show up. However, plenty of other Supernatural actors could pop up, especially if the prequel is a success.