10 Best Supernatural Episodes

Though the show spent its first few years fighting to stay on air, Supernatural is now the show that refuses to end. For fans that's great, as they get to watch the series hit one milestone after another, while the show-runners throw everything at the wall to see what sticks (including an animated episode where the characters meet Scooby Doo and the rest of Mystery Inc. No, seriously).

On the other hand it's meant that trying to break down and collect the best episodes the show has produced is no easy task. With nearly 300 of them, most of which are damn good (bar the majority of season 7 anyway, which was essentially one long dick joke) and representative of completely different eras, nailing a top 10 has been more difficult than getting Sam and Dean to sit down and have a heart to heart.

In honour of the Season 14 premiere though, it only seemed right to look back at the greats the new eps have to beat.

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10. Abandon All Hope

Eric Kripke and co. did a pretty good job of selling the fact that the end of the world was imminent in Season 5 (despite the obvious budget limitations), but it took until Abandon All Hope for the writing team to really solidify big bad Lucifer as an active threat.

The mid-season finale sees Sam and Dean going after the Devil himself for the very first time, calling in all the help they can get by drafting Castiel, a wheelchair-bound Bobby and even Ellen and Jo, who had only just reappeared after last showing up in Season 2, into the fight.

It was an emotional reunion for sure (not least because the botched mission ends in the latter two sacrificing themselves to save the rest of the team), and the group's desperation was perfectly encapsulated every step of the way, particularly in a haunting "last night on Earth" photo.

The character work was amazing, but it was also a pivotal episode in the overarching mythology, reestablishing the colt, introducing Crowley, and giving viewers a far grander insight into Lucifer's twisted plans.