Gender in Supernatural

Supernatural, a show that has been long-running for 8 years, has a huge problem with gender representation. While a large number of fans identify themselves as female, the four major recurring characters in season 8 are male. The show has attempted to diversify itself by adding a villainous female character to the recurring cast and reviving a demoness who has long had a rather complicated relationship with the protagonists.

The plot of Supernatural revolves around the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, who fight monsters because their father got them into the business at a young age after their mother was killed off by a demon. The mother, Mary Winchester (formerly Campbell), is not an active player for four seasons; in the fourth season, there is opportunity to see that Mary Campbell was an active player in a monster hunting family while the father, John Winchester, was a Vietnam veteran who knew nothing of that world. Mary actively abandons the relatively feminist lifestyle she had hunting monsters in order to experience a “typical” life with John. She tries to become a housewife and mother, in contrast to her former role as a monster hunter, and John is unaware of Mary's world until she is killed by the demon.

Instead of an active player, Mary becomes an object of why John Winchester wants revenge. He does everything for her and subjects his sons to a brutal childhood of fighting monsters so that he can find the demon that murdered Mary. Dean is four when Mary dies, and Sam is only a baby, so Dean has idealized memories of his mother while Sam doesn't remember her at all. Because of this, Supernatural falls into the trap of an idealized, conventionally feminine, female character being killed off and used as the driving force for male characters.

Ellen and Jo Harvelle are two major recurring female characters up until episode 10 of season 5. During this episode, Jo is attacked by hellhounds and sets up bombs made so that she can destroy them. She commits suicide instead of deciding to set up the bombs and escape. Her mother, Ellen, chooses to stay with Jo and hold her hand instead of helping Jo escape. Prior to this, they have helped fight off Horseman of the Apocalypse War and hunted monsters both off and on screen. Despite Jo's hellhound inflicted injuries, she still had a chance of escaping and getting to the hospital. Ellen could have taken her, but the two set off the bombs, and neither had any chance of survival.

Anna is an angel who had a one-night stand with Dean before realizing who she was. After that, Anna became dedicated to her job, and even attempted to prevent John and Mary from having children by traveling back in time. She thought the best thing to do was kill them, and died herself in that episode. She was originally intended to show up in more than six episodes, but she was eclipsed in popularity by male angel Castiel and thus killed off to appease the fans.

Ruby is a demoness who has a rather complicated relationship with the Winchester brothers. She gets Sam addicted to drinking her blood, and then the two essentially sneak around behind Dean's back to continue the relationship. Her role was fairly major as a symbol of temptation concerning Sam over their time in the series, and she was killed off once before being brought back in episode 17 of season 8.

Lisa is Dean's former girlfriend, and the mother of Ben. Dean lived with Lisa and Ben for a year, and the three of them attempted to be a family. Dean had told Lisa about what he hunted, and while Dean thought Sam was dead, he attempted to live a normal life with her. They soon broke things off after Dean kept having to choose between hunting and Lisa. He couldn't have both—or, rather, the fans wouldn't let him have both due to a perceived threat from Lisa. In one of the later episodes of season 6, Lisa got kidnapped by demons and then her memory and Ben's were altered so that they didn't remember the Winchesters or anything about hunting monsters.

Amelia is Sam's former girlfriend, who Sam had to leave during season 8 to hunt with Dean. She was the source of many “bros before hos” type of arguments between the two, and Sam soon had to abandon Amelia to continue hunting monsters. He couldn't settle down with her and be happy, nor could he hunt monsters while being her boyfriend.

Naomi is an angel who is one of Heaven's higher-ups. She brainwashed Castiel, a major recurring angel character, and manipulated him so that he would try to kill Dean. In this way, Supernatural has represented a woman in a position of power as being power-hungry and vicious, willing to not only do whatever it takes, but resort to unethical business practices and hurt her employees. She nearly manipulates Castiel to kill Sam and Dean in episode 17, particularly Dean due to Castiel and Dean having formed a friendship of sorts.

The most recent episode of Supernatural showed two young women and a young man whose parents were killed by the same vampire. They are manipulated by Victor, a monster hunter and the “master” of said vampire, and Victor uses them to kill new vampires so that the three are his pawns. He tells them lies about who killed their parents and points Chrissie, Josephine, and Aidan onto the path of hunting the wrong monster. He teaches them that hunting monsters is morally right because monsters are always the enemy.

While there are many things wrong with Victor's approach, gender representation in this episode is less problematic. Chrissie is a white girl who has appeared once before, when she was looking for her father and needed Dean to help her. Josephine is a black girl who is the oldest of the three and doesn't always have her temper under control; she doesn't think before she acts. Aidan, who is the most focused on their technology, is a white boy and flirts with Chrissie, who turns him down and acts more in solidarity with Josephine than Aidan.  None of the three teenage monster hunters is killed off in the episode. Rather, the three are given some help to gain a normal life, and the Winchester brothers leave them to the care of Josephine and recurring character Garth.

In general, the male characters are given more leeway to screw up without being killed. Dean and Sam have come back from the dead and Purgatory a multitude of times. Castiel's been a fallen angel, and he's also nearly destroyed Heaven due to his brief time as God after he attempted to act on his free will without realizing what he did was wrong. However, when the female characters screw up, they're usually permanently dead or written out of the story, and don't have any excuse that can amount for them being less than perfect.

Supernatural has a tendency to acknowledge the fan base, and the fact that many fans are female-identified could have something to do with the radically different ways that male and female characters are portrayed on the show.