Female Characters on 'Supernatural' Have It Rough From the Start

are definitely the roughest for its female characters (and that says a lot because it doesn’t really get much better). For starters, there are barely any female characters that aren't love interests. It makes sense to an extent.

This was back before the show's demographics had shifted so heavily in the teen girl direction, so it was still leaning more into male-wish-fulfillment territory. And we get characters like Jo (Alona Tal) and Ellen (Samantha Farris) who actually get to be involved in demon hunting and the plot, but they still meet the most common fate for any character: they die. The same with Sam’s () love interest, the demon Ruby (Genevieve Padalecki) who similarly gets to hang out and do plot things for a little bit before biting the dust. Of the few memorable women from the first 5 years of the show, all of them are dead.

As reached its middle years, it struggled with a lot of growing pains. , but when it kept going, they had to keep thinking of new plots and new characters to fill it with. By this point, it was leaning more into the family and adventure aspects than the horror that had defined the early seasons.

Here we start to meet and get to know characters like Meg Masters (Rachel Miner) or Charlie (Felicia Day). Meg's mostly there as a potential love interest for Castiel. Charlie was a runaway fan favorite for her nerdy tendencies and easy banter with the boys (and the fact she couldn’t be a potential love interest didn’t hurt). Meg still dies and Charlie still dies, but they got a bit more of their own personalities and stories before they met an untimely end.

The article is not finished. Click on the next page to continue.