Supernatural co-showrunner, Andrew Dabb, is finally clearing up some mystery surrounding the character, Sam Winchester’s (Jared Padalecki) romantic life.
Swoon magazine reported that Dabb spoke about Sam’s fate on Supernatural, which ran for 15 seasons until 2020, during a July 2025 interview with TV Insider. He noted that following the death of his brother and fellow hunter, Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), Sam had a son with an unidentified woman. After five years of fans’ speculation, Dabb shared he intended Sam’s wife to be hunter, Eileen Leahy, played by Shoshannah Stern. According to Dabb, the show wanted “to include Eileen [Shoshannah Stern]” for the flash-forward scenes of Sam’s family life. However, Stern was unable to film because of COVID restrictions.
When Dabb was asked to confirm that Sam’s wife was supposed to be Eileen, who was introduced in Season 11, he replied, “I mean, in my mind, that’s what it is.”
“People can fill in whatever they want, and they’re free to. But certainly in my mind, that’s what we were building toward … We wanted someone there, so it wasn’t like there was no female presence at all. But at the same time, do you cast someone totally brand new that the audience will have not seen before? Or do you keep it a little vague and people can imply whatever they want to imply? Because we couldn’t get the actress, we chose the latter,” said Dabb during the interview.
Padalecki spoke about the end of Supernatural in a November 2020 interview with Entertainment Weekly. He said he “was absolutely on board” when he found out the fates of his and Ackles’ characters.
“Being a fan of storytelling, and knowing the tropes and the archetypes, that have been around for generations and generations, I heard the story and thought, ‘Oh my god, that’s tragic, like wonderfully tragic and wonderfully optimistic in some shape and form. But this is the way it should be,'” said the actor to the publication.