USA Today- “'Supernatural' stars reflect on CW's series finale and 15-year legacy: 'We gave it everything'”
(...) On their final day in Vancouver last September filming the series finale (Thursday, 9 ET/PT), when director Robert Singer called it a wrap and everybody else had walked off the set, the actors did something new: They basked in the moment.
“It was like, ‘We did this.’ That was pretty cool,'" Ackles recalls. “I mean, obviously we know that we didn't do it by ourselves, but it was really the first time that he and I looked at each other and (realized) we should be proud of what we've built here. Because it Is something to be proud of.”
Adds Padalecki: “It wasn't like, ‘Hey, look how awesome we are.’ It was like, ‘Hey, man, remember when we cried and we bled and we broke bones – literally? Remember all the alarm clocks when the sun wasn’t up yet?’ However this turns out, however it's received, we gave it everything.” (...) Even without Emmy Awards, "Supernatural" has become a classic show – finding new fans through Netflix binges and TNT reruns – and a survivor, a final holdover from WB (which folded in 2007) that's outlasted many, many shows that have come and gone since its Sept. 13, 2005, premiere. Only a few prime-time network dramas have lasted longer, including "Grey's Anatomy" (which premiered six months earlier), "Law & Order: SVU" (1999) and "NCIS" (2003). (...) The finale, in contrast, tells “a very personal story” centered on the Winchesters and is “really devoted to the relationship and the journey these guys have traveled,” says Singer, an executive producer on the show since its inception.
Singer adds that they eliminated certain ideas early: No “enigmatic" final shot a la “The Sopranos,” for example, or nothing out of left field like the 1988 "St. Elsewhere" finale, when the audience found out a boy with autism had imagined the entire series, visualized in a snow globe.
“We wanted it to feel like the end of a very long novel," Singer says. "It's pretty bold what we did and quite moving.”
Padalecki, 38, finds it “really powerful. And if you're not already crying by the last five or 10 minutes, then you don't have a soul. You don't have a heart.” (...)
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