It’s been 20 years since Supernatural first premiered, and stars Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins are looking back at their time on the iconic horror series. In a September 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly, the trio reflected on memorable — and not-so-memorable — moments from the show, which wrapped up in 2020 after 15 seasons.
When the cast was asked whether the infamous Season 1 episode “Bugs” was truly the worst of the series, Ackles didn’t hesitate to call it out. The 2005 episode centered on a string of mysterious deaths caused by insects, leading to a climactic showdown with a swarm of bees.
“Yes, I think it was, because of what we went through and what it ended up being. Basically, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,” Ackles admitted.
Collins, who joined Supernatural in Season 4 as the angel Castiel, asked if the crew really used live insects during filming. That’s when Padalecki dropped the shocking detail:
“Like 70,000 bees,” he revealed.
According to Ackles, the actors weren’t just pretending to be swarmed. “We were literally being stung by bees,” he said. But the ordeal didn’t even pay off — when the footage was reviewed, the bees weren’t visible on camera. “And then they get to post [production], and the bees didn’t show up on camera so they had to VFX the bees,” Ackles explained.
Padalecki recalled that even before filming, the precautions sounded absurd. “We go meet the bee specialist and it’s a dude with, like, mesh and a big pair of surgical tweezers holding a bee saying, ‘So we’re going to sting you, but it can’t give all of its venom. But we’ll find out if you’re allergic,’” he said.
Things didn’t get easier once the cameras rolled. “They’re like, ‘Listen, there’s no queen bee here, so they’re not gonna bite you. They’re not gonna sting you unless you really piss them off.’ Well, how do you piss them off? ‘If you swat them.’ Wait, the whole scene is about us trying to get rid of bees,” Padalecki laughed. “They’re like, ‘Don’t get rid of the bees, just guide them away. Gently guide them away.’ It was the most absurd thing.”
The Episodes That Truly Scared the Stars
While “Bugs” was the hardest to film, Ackles and Padalecki pointed to different episodes when it came to the ones that genuinely scared them.
Back in an October 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Padalecki admitted that Season 2, Episode 4 (“Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things”) and Season 1, Episode 6 (“Skin”) unsettled him the most. Both involved shape-shifters, which he found deeply unnerving.
“I tend towards episodes where it’s not obvious like, ‘Hey there’s the bad thing. Let’s get it.’ Which I love. But I tend towards like ‘I’m talking to you. But I don’t know if you are really you,’” Padalecki explained.
For Ackles, Season 1, Episode 15 (“The Benders”) and Season 2, Episode 11 (“Playthings”) took the top spots. What creeped him out about “The Benders” wasn’t a monster, but a family of killers.
“It wasn’t a monster. It was real people, humans doing a bad thing,” he said.
And in “Playthings,” it was something simpler that unsettled him: the eerie presence of old dolls. “Playthings” leaned into Ackles’ dislike of vintage toys, making the episode especially chilling for him.