u/structure47

I'm on yet another rewatch of Supernatural, and like many people, I always thought of S1-5 as the Golden Age of Supernatural, a.k.a. the Kripke seasons. That's still true, but I'm pleasantly surprised by how strong Season 6 was creatively. Personally, I'd now consider S1-6 to be the Golden Age.

There are so many strong episodes: Weekend at Bobby's, Caged Heat, Appointment in Samarra, The French Mistake, And Then There Were None, Frontierland, The Man Who Would Be King, The Man Who Knew Too much, and more.

I really appreciated what Gamble was trying to do this season by flipping the Dean-Sam dynamic. Dean's now the one who has a normal life while Sam's been a hunter in the meantime, working with a Winchester patriarch. The reversal of S1 is pretty fun to see unfold. Soulless Sam is a great idea, pulled off convincingly by Jared.

I get that some people thought S6 had too many plotlines, but after rewatching it, everything felt very intentional and carefully structured. The numerous plotlines and distractions were precisely meant to set up the Castiel twist. The point wasn't to top Lucifer by fighting Eve, the Mother of All Monsters or whatever, but to distract the brothers (and the audience) from what Castiel has been cooking in the background. The last four episodes functioned excellently in this regard.

I suspect S6 would be held in a lot higher regard by most people today had S7 followed up on God-Castiel in a more sustained fashion, like making it a season-long story, rather than switching gears immediately into Leviathan, corporate offices, real estate, etc. The tone and story are just way more consistent between S5 and S6 than between S6 and S7.

Also, am I the only one who completely forgot that Kripke wrote the S6 finale!? Even though he wasn't the showrunner, I'm guessing he was still involved enough in order to help smoothen out the transition to Gamble. If I were to rewatch S1-6 without any knowledge of the behind-the-scenes, I honestly might not have noticed a change in showrunner.