Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season Blu-ray Movie Review

A Baker's Dozen for 'Supernatural.'

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 3, 2018

When it comes to television longevity, Supernatural may not be the first show to come to mind. Instead, TV audiences might rightly consider ongoing shows like The Simpsons or CSI or retired shows like Lassie or ER. Yet Supernatural has run for thirteen seasons and its fourteenth is set to air just a little over a month from this review's publication date. At 14 seasons, it's run as long as Bonanza and Dallas. That's elite TV company. A show doesn't hold on this long if there aren't eyes on the screen, if Internet forums aren't lit up with chatter (in these days, anyway), if there isn't at least a semblance of a compelling story to tell after all these many years. With Supernatural, the wheels keep spinning, the Brothers Winchester continue to battle the forces of evil, and those forces have matured from garden-variety ghouls and goblins to the big guy, Lucifer himself, and the literal spawn of Satan, a teenage boy named Jack.

Note: Warner Brothers has released all previous twelve seasons of 'Supernatural' to Blu-ray. It is highly recommended that newcomers go back and start at the beginning. For convenience, below is a link to each individual season listing.

• Season One
• Season Two
• Season Three
• Season Four
• Season Five
• Season Six
• Season Seven
• Season Eight
• Season Nine
• Season Ten
• Season Eleven
• Season Twelve

Official synopsis: Most families celebrate the miraculous arrival of a bundle of joy. But for brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, a newborn babe in their world is no cause for celebration. Not when the child is Jack, son of Lucifer. The young Nephilim roams the world with no idea of who or what he is and what havoc he can wreak, causing no small amount of tension between the bothers as they try to figure out what to do with him. Unfortunately, Castiel is out of reach and their mom, Mary, is trapped in an apocalyptic world with Lucifer. The guys will need more than a miracle to reunite their family...and to save the world from Lucifer again.

Supernatural’s 13th season draws the Winchester brothers to the apocalypse world, an alternate reality Earth where the world is barren and locked in a long-standing war between Heaven and Hell, the ultimate battle of good and evil and for the control of mankind. It’s a world in which, essentially, nothing from the previous twelve seasons has happened. The Winchesters have not been there to save it, and it’s a grim, hopeless world locked in a seemingly endless conflict that has left only death and destruction and hopelessness in its wake. Even as the show has been all about, superficially, anyway, the brothers’ battles with various unsavory creatures, the show’s gradual graduation to pitting them against not just the forces of hell but the power throne within it has give it a much more intense and dangerous foundation that keeps the formula the same but raises the stakes by a significant amount. The season ends on another brilliant cliffhanger that portends another high quality season of much more than just demon slaying in season 14, and it’s also home to perhaps the series’ most unique episode, “Scoobynatural,” in which the Winchesters find themselves in the animated world of Scooby, Shaggy, and the gang.

The following episodes comprise season 13. Summaries are courtesy of an insert included with the set. Spoilers follow.

Disc One:

• Lost and Found: Sam and Dean Winchester face the loss of their mother, Mary; the death of Castiel; and the birth of Lucifer's son, Jack.
• The Rising Sons: While Sam and Dean begin to explore what Jack is capable of, a new Prince of Hell, Asmodeus, sets his sights on Jack.
• Patience: Psychic Missouri Mosley enlists help from Dean and Jody Mills to protect her psychic granddaughter, Patience Turner, from a wraith.
• The Big Empty: When multiple patients of a grief counselor turn up dead, Sam, Dean and Jack investigate and must deal with unresolved grief of their own.
• Advanced Thanatology: While working on a case involving the ghost of a demented doctor, Sam and Dean get assistance from an unexpected source: Reaper Billie.
• Tombstone: Reunited with Jack, Castiel heads with Sam and Dean to a sleepy Western town, where Dean lives out his boyhood fantasy of confronting a gun-slinging outlaw.

Disc Two:

• War of the Worlds: With Asmodeus hot on their trail, Sam and Dean continue their search for Jack and stumble across a familiar foe.
• The Scorpion and the Frog: The Winchesters agree to steal a mysterious trunk belonging to a demon in exchange for a locator spell to track down Jack.
• The Bad Place: Desperate to prove himself to Sam and Dean, Jack enlists a dreamwalker name Kaia Nieves to help him find Mary Winchester in the alternate universe.
• The Wayward Sisters: Jody unites Claire Novak, Alex Jones, Patience, Kaia, and Donna Hanscun to find Sam and Dean.
• Breakdown: When Donna's niece Wendy goes missing, Sam, Dean, and Donna discover she's been kidnapped by a man who sells human parts to monsters.
• Various & Sundry Villains: When two witch sisters steal a powerful book of spells, Sam and Dean get help from Rowena, who's back from the dead.

Disc Three:

• Devil's Bargain: Sam, Dean and Castiel search for Lucifer, who bargains with faith healer Sister Jo. Meanwhile, Asmodeus inches closer to finding Jack.
• Good Intentions: While Sam, Dean and Castiel try to open the rift, Jack and Mary manage to escape Michael and find an ally in the apocalypse world: Bobby Singer.
• A Most Holy Man: Close to opening the rift and rescuing Mary and Jack, Sam and Dean search for a missing ingredient at a black market for religious relics.
• Scooynatural: Zoinks! Sam, Dean and Castiel are transported into the animated world of Scooby-Doo!, where they join forces with the Mystery Inc. gang to solve a ghostly mystery.
• The Thing: While collecting objects to open the rift to the other world, Sam and Dean find a Men of Letters bunker from the 1920s and a hungry god from another dimension.
• Bring 'em Back Alive: While Lucifer rules over Heaven with Sister Jo, Dean gets closer to finding Mary and Jack; Sam and Castiel are perplexed by Gabriel's return.

Disc Four:

• Funeralia: While Sam and Dean try to stop Rowena from her deadly mission, Castiel looks to Heaven to recruit angels for an impending invasion.
• Unfinished Business: Gabriel is back, dragging Sam and Dean into his plot for revenge on the demigods who sold him to Asmodeus.
• Beat the Devil: While Sam, Dean, Castiel and Gabriel work together to bring Mary and Jack home, Rowena's encounter with Lucifer may change things forever.
• Exodus: While Jack wrestles with the consequences of his decisions, Sam and Dean devise a plan that will save innocent lives.
• Let the Good Times Roll: As Sam and Dean continue to battle for good against evil in the season finale, one impulsive decision could alter their lives forever.

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season features a 1080p transfer that presents the digitally photographed source material with highly impressive detailing and color reproduction. The image is routinely crisp and reveling. It's sharp from corner to corner and edge to edge. Facial textures -- scruff, pores, wrinkles -- push the 1080p format's limits in terms of overall clarity and image density. Clothing and environments follow suit, presenting everything with a crispness and attention to detail that might not wow in the age of UHD and no shortage of reference Blu-rays, but still more than satisfies the requirements for a plus-plus viewing experience. Colors are firm and natural, never appearing dull and washed out or grossly oversaturated. Contrast always appears neutrally dialed in. Noise is fairly light but somewhat constant. Banding can be significant in places. Neither are particularly debilitating save for the most extreme examples, which are relatively rare. Overall, the show impresses a great deal in its scene-to-scene 1080p delivery.

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack does not want for volume and intensity at normal listening levels. It's the anti-Disney track in some ways, when right from the beginning the "then" flashback, blaring a Metallica song with high yield volume, front-dominant width, and balanced bass, immediately draws listeners into the track's examples of unabashed potency. Action effects are prodigious, pushing through the stage with high end intensity, aggressive volume, and powerful bass. Basically, everything but light atmospherics and dialogue are charged up and spit out with impressive bellicosity. Ambient effects are balanced, occasionally ever so slightly boomy (as dialogue can be), and offer nice, filling detail even in relatively quiet scenes featuring characters simply speaking back and forth. Essential dialogue is almost always well prioritized and front-center positioned. The only real escape from that natural location comes by necessity when voices appear discretely to a side or reverberation is necessarily prominent.

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season contains extras on all four discs. A digital copy code is included with purchase. The release ships in a glossy slip box.

Disc One:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Two scenes from episode three, "Patience" (1:18).

Disc Two:

• Audio Commentary: For "Wayward Sisters:" Director Phil Sgriccia, Actor Kim Rhodes, and Co-Writer and Co-Creator Bob Berens.
• Into the Apocalypse: A World Without the Winchesters (1080p, 9:33): Cast and crew discuss the look and feel of the show's alternate, Biblically hellish reality. Includes how the world fits into the story, shooting locations, costumes and props, digital effects, and more.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Scenes from episode seven, "War of the Worlds" (0:43), episode eight, "The Scorpion and the Frog" (0:53), episode 10, "Wayward Sisters" (1:01), episode 11, "Breakdown" (0:59), and episode 12, "Various & Sundry Villains" (0:54).

Disc Three:

• Audio Commentary: For "Devil's Bargain:" Actor Jensen Ackles and his wife Danneel Ackles.
• Mystery Mash-Up: The Making of Scoobynatural (1080p, 22:12): An inside look at the season's most innovative episode in which the Winchesters find themselves mixed up in the world of Scooby-Doo.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Scenes from episode 14, "Good Intentions" (0:30), episode 15, "A Most Holy Man" (0:37), episode 16, "Scoobynatural" (0:45), and episode 18, "Bring 'em Back Alive" (1:40).

Disc Four:

• The Winchester Mythology: Nature vs. Nurture (1080p, 19:33): A look at the question of "nature vs. nurture" as it's depicted in the season and the show, as it pertains to the Winchester brothers and the new character, Jack.
• Kansas - Carry on Wayward Son: Performance at 2017 San Diego Comic-Con (1080p, 8:55): The band performs the hit song to an enthusiastic crowd, sandwiched around some interview snippets.
• Supernatural: 2017 Comic-Con Panel (1080i, 41:52): Richard Speight, Jr., Rob Benedict, Executive Producers Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer, and Actors Misha Collins, Jared Padalecki, and Jensen Ackles come together on the stage for a light and fun gathering of the key talent that makes the show tick.
• Gag Reel (1080p, 10:32).

Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Despite the longevity, there's not much argument to be made that Supernatural is some sort of all-time great television show, even as it shares company with some of the bonafide classics. What it is, though, is a quick, enjoyable, and ever-evolving entertainer that's managed a satisfying balance between familiarity and story and world evolution. The characters are well written, the acting is top-notch, the visuals aren't at all bad, and the story, even through 13 seasons, holds serve even as it grows ever more absurd, at least on the surface. Season 13 is a perfectly fun outing that captures the series' essence and promises a rip-roaring 14th. Supernatural: The Complete Thirteenth Season's Blu-ray release delivers, as usual, good quality video and audio alongside a decent allotment of extras across all four discs. Recommended.