16 Years Before Supernatural, Crowley's Actor Played An Eerily Similar Villain

Published Sep 5, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT Mads Misasi is a part-time entertainment journalist and full-time marketing content creator. Before joining the ScreenRant team they wrote for TellTaleTV for 9 years working their way up from contributor to Associate Editor. TV has been a passion of theirs since a very young age. Mads typically watches all of the things, especially dramas and sitcoms. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Mark Sheppard was practically born to play Crowley in Supernatural. As the sarcastic, scheming King of Hell, the actor spent six seasons making Supernatural's resident demon one of the show's most memorable characters. Interestingly, Sheppard had already played a remarkably similar supernatural villain years before Crowley ever made his debut. Sixteen years before Mark Sheppard became the King of Hell, he was already playing an almost indestructible supernatural force capable of causing chaos and leaving victims burning in his wake. Revisiting the role makes Crowley's eventual arrival even more entertaining — and his premature exit from Supernatural even more frustrating. The character came in 1993, with The X-Files season 1 episode, "Fire." Sheppard portrayed Cecil L'Ively, a man who can control fire, survive seemingly fatal encounters, and make people spontaneously combust. Obviously, L'Ively is no Crowley, but the similarities are difficult to overlook. Mark Sheppard's The X-Files Character Has A Lot In Common With Crowley One of the most interesting things about Cecil L'Ively is that he was not introduced as someone who has just discovered his abilities. By the time Mulder and Scully became involved, he had already left destruction behind him, including multiple suspicious deaths and even the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle. That history immediately makes L'Ively feel similar to Crowley. When Crowley first appeared on Supernatural, he wasn't some random demon the Winchesters encounter. He already had a reputation, connections, and enough power to make his presence feel important from the beginning. The similarities become even clearer in how difficult both characters were to kill. L'Ively could create fire, but he could also withstand it. He casually set his own arm ablaze, while his confrontation with Mulder left him engulfed in flames. You would think that would be enough to kill someone. For L'Ively, it was not. His body survived, leaving Mulder and Scully with a much bigger problem. Even when he should be finished, L'Ively survived. That sounds an awful lot like Crowley. From Lawrence to Lebanon · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Supernatural? “Saving people, hunting things — the family business.” 🚗Baby'67 Chevy Impala 🪶The TrenchcoatCastiel, Angel of the Lord 🔪Demon BladeRuby's knife 📕John's JournalHunter scripture 🎸Wayward SonThe Road So Far RIDE WITH BABY → 01 Supernatural premiered on The WB on September 13, 2005, and ran a record-breaking 15 seasons / 327 episodes through November 2020 across The WB and The CW. The series creator and original showrunner — who'd later create NBC's Timeless and develop Amazon's The Boys — pitched it as a road-trip horror anthology before two brothers took over the centre of the show. Name him. AGreg Berlanti BEric Kripke CJoss Whedon DBryan Fuller ✓ Correct! Eric Kripke. He'd originally pitched the show to Warner Bros. as a tabloid-reporter anthology titled “Tape” before reformulating it around two brothers. Kripke ran the show through Season 5 (the original planned ending), then handed off to Sera Gamble, Jeremy Carver, Andrew Dabb and Robert Singer over the next decade. The Boys (2019–) is essentially Kripke processing the same superhero/horror genre concerns at a much higher budget. ✗ Wrong showrunner. The answer is Eric Kripke. Greg Berlanti is the Arrowverse / DC superhero TV mogul (Arrow, The Flash). Joss Whedon was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Firefly creator whose work clearly influenced Supernatural but who has no credit on it. Bryan Fuller did Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Kripke is the one who took the show from a Vancouver pilot to a fifteen-season behemoth. NEXT → 02 Dean Winchester — the older, classic-rock-loving, demon-blade-wielding brother who introduces himself with “hey, Sammy” and a leather jacket and ends the series in a pickup-bed funeral pyre — was played by an actor whose pre-Supernatural CV included Days of Our Lives (as Eric Brady), Dark Angel (as Alec) and Smallville (as Jason Teague). Name him. AJeffrey Dean Morgan BMisha Collins CJensen Ackles DJared Padalecki ✓ Correct! Jensen Ackles. He'd actually originally auditioned for Sam, the younger brother, before being moved to Dean opposite Jared Padalecki. Ackles directed six episodes of the series himself (his first was Season 6's “Weekend at Bobby's”). Post-Supernatural he reunited with Eric Kripke to play Soldier Boy in Season 3 of The Boys, and headlined the short-lived prequel The Winchesters (2022–23) as a narrating older Dean. ✗ Wrong Winchester. The answer is Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is John Winchester — the brothers' father, who originated the lead-by-a-grizzled-cowboy energy Negan would later inherit. Misha Collins is Castiel. Jared Padalecki is Sam, the younger, taller brother. Ackles plays Dean — the shorter, leather-jacketed, classic-rock-quoting older one. NEXT → 03 Across all 327 episodes, the brothers' constant other than each other was their car — a 1967 Chevrolet model affectionately known as “Baby,” inherited from their father John, with army-men in the ashtrays and Sam and Dean's initials carved in the back seat. Eric Kripke wrote an entire Season 5 episode (“Swan Song”) from the car's perspective. Name the model. ACamaro BChevelle SS CBel Air DImpala ✓ Correct! 1967 Chevrolet Impala — specifically the four-door Sport Sedan, originally chosen by Kripke because its trunk was big enough to hide a body. The production wore through more than two dozen Impalas across the run, since the car gets demolished, dunked, dropped from cliffs, and possessed regularly. Jensen Ackles bought the “hero” Impala used in the final season after the show wrapped in 2020. ✗ Wrong Chevy. The answer is the 1967 Impala, four-door Sport Sedan. The Camaro is too sporty — Kripke specifically wanted a body-in-the-trunk family sedan. The Chevelle SS is a muscle car, and the Bel Air is closer to '50s-cool than '60s-menace. The Impala is “Baby” — chosen because, in Kripke's words, “it could fit four people and a body in the trunk.” NEXT → 04 The Winchester brothers grew up on the road after their mother Mary was murdered — pinned to the ceiling and burned alive by the yellow-eyed demon Azazel — in Sam's nursery on November 2, 1983. The family lived in a Midwestern college town the show returns to repeatedly across the run (most notably in “Home,” S1E9). Name the city. ASioux Falls, South Dakota BPontiac, Illinois CLawrence, Kansas DLebanon, Kansas ✓ Correct! Lawrence, Kansas. Kripke chose the town in part because of its Wizard of Oz adjacency and the “Bleeding Kansas” historical resonance — Lawrence was sacked in 1856 during the pre-Civil-War conflict over slavery, an act of evil literally seared into the local geography. Mary Winchester's nursery fire on November 2, 1983 is the show's foundational trauma; the date and the ceiling-fire image recur all the way to the finale. ✗ Wrong Midwestern town. The answer is Lawrence, Kansas. Sioux Falls, SD is Bobby Singer's hometown and salvage yard. Pontiac, IL is where Dean digs himself out of his own grave at the start of Season 4. Lebanon, KS is where the Men of Letters Bunker is hidden — you may want to remember that one. Lawrence is the home of the fire — and the show's foundational trauma. NEXT → 05 In the Season 4 premiere “Lazarus Rising,” the show pivoted from monster-of-the-week into Heaven-and-Hell mythology by introducing an angel of the Lord — wearing a beige trenchcoat over the body of a Pontiac, Illinois religious tax accountant named Jimmy Novak — who pulls Dean out of Hell and becomes the brothers' near-permanent third. Played by Misha Collins, name the angel. ACastiel BGabriel CUriel DBalthazar ✓ Correct! Castiel — named for Cassiel, the Jewish-mystical angel of solitude and tears. Misha Collins was originally signed for a six-episode arc; Castiel ended up in 145 episodes across twelve seasons, including the controversial Season 15 “Despair” love-confession episode. The trenchcoat (a Burberry knock-off) became so iconic that fans send Collins replicas at conventions, and his on-screen vessel Jimmy Novak became its own minor character. ✗ Wrong angel. The answer is Castiel. Gabriel turns up later as the Trickster (Richard Speight Jr.). Uriel is Cas's Season 4 angel partner, who gets killed off as a Lucifer sympathiser. Balthazar (Sebastian Roché) is Cas's snarky friend introduced in Season 6. Castiel is the trenchcoat-wearing tax-accountant-vessel angel who pulls Dean out of Hell — and the show's third lead from Season 4 onward. NEXT → 06 Supernatural famously opted not to use a proper title-card theme — instead, every season finale opens with a “The Road So Far” recap montage scored to the same 1976 prog-rock track by an American band who, in a happy coincidence, share their name with the brothers' home state. Name the song. A“Renegade” by Styx B“More Than a Feeling” by Boston C“(Don't Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult D“Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas ✓ Correct! “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas, off 1976's Leftoverture. Eric Kripke chose it for the Season 1 finale and made it a tradition every finale thereafter. Kansas frontman Steve Walsh said in interviews that Supernatural's use revived the song so completely it now makes more annual royalties from streaming than the band did from its 1976 release. The song also closes out the series finale “Carry On” (2020). ✗ Wrong classic-rock cue. The answer is “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas. Renegade, More Than a Feeling and Don't Fear the Reaper are all Supernatural-vibe tracks from the same era and several appear in episodes — but the season-finale ritual is reserved for Kansas's track. Wayward, Kansas, brothers… Kripke layered every available pun into the show's signature musical cue. NEXT → 07 The brothers' surrogate father — a gruff, trucker-hat-wearing, Sioux Falls salvage-yard owner whose phone line is in every fake FBI agent's wallet, who calls the boys “idjits,” and who takes a shotgun to a Leviathan in the Season 7 episode that finally kills him — is played by an actor who in HBO's Deadwood played Whitney Ellsworth, the kindly miner who marries Alma Garret. Name the character. ARufus Turner BGarth Fitzgerald CJody Mills DBobby Singer ✓ Correct! Bobby Singer, played by Jim Beaver. Eric Kripke literally named the character after his Supernatural co-executive-producer Robert Singer — in part as a gag, in part as a dare to write a self-aware character around the joke. Bobby dies at the end of Season 7's “Death's Door” (E10) but returns repeatedly in flashback, alternate universes, and in the show's last few seasons as a parallel-Earth Bobby. Beaver's Deadwood role is Ellsworth, who marries Alma and is shot dead by Hearst's men. ✗ Wrong hunter. The answer is Bobby Singer. Rufus Turner (Steven Williams) is Bobby's old-friend rival hunter. Garth Fitzgerald IV (DJ Qualls) is the goofier hunter who later turns out to be a werewolf. Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) is the Sioux Falls sheriff who becomes a found-family figure. Bobby is the salvage-yard idjit-caller, named for Kripke's own co-EP Robert Singer. NEXT → 08 In Season 8 (“As Time Goes By,” E12), the brothers discover their grandfather Henry Winchester was part of a secret academic-magic order, and inherit its abandoned base — a 1950s steel-and-concrete bunker hidden under an unassuming Kansas town's main street that becomes their home for the rest of the series. The town has fewer than 250 people and is geographically near the centre of the contiguous United States. Name it. ATopeka BLebanon CWichita DManhattan ✓ Correct! Lebanon, Kansas. Population fluctuates around 218 and a stone marker near town claims it as the geographic centre of the contiguous 48 states — perfect for an organisation hiding from the supernatural. The Men of Letters Bunker becomes the closest thing to a home base the brothers have ever had: kitchen, library, dungeon, garage. The real Lebanon's Main Street has become a Supernatural pilgrimage site since the show ended in 2020. ✗ Wrong Kansas town. The answer is Lebanon — population 218, near the geographic centre of the contiguous US, perfect for a hidden order's bunker. Topeka is the state capital. Wichita is the largest city. Manhattan is home to Kansas State University. Lebanon, with its tiny Main Street and middle-of-nowhere geography, is where the Men of Letters Bunker hides — and where the brothers finally have a home. REVEAL MY RATING → The Hunt · Family Verdict Your Winchester Standing 🚗 / 8 Top hunter — or red-shirt vessel? ⤴ ANOTHER ROUND Throughout Supernatural, Crowley repeatedly survived situations that should've ended him. He could be threatened, tortured, betrayed, and put in increasingly impossible positions, yet somehow he kept finding a way to stick around. His ability to escape death became one of the character's defining traits. Then there was the destruction both characters left behind. L'Ively turned ordinary locations into death traps, including setting an entire hallway ablaze during his confrontation with Mulder. Sheppard even had to duck out of the shot because of the intense heat during filming. Crowley may not spend his time setting hallways on fire, but he had his own talent for making bad situations worse. Whether manipulating the Winchesters or making deals that haunt everyone involved, Crowley understood that a little chaos can go a long way. Perhaps the strangest similarity is that both characters could make people go up in flames. Their powers were not identical, but Sheppard going from a fire-wielding supernatural villain to the King of Hell is an amusing coincidence. L'Ively showed an early version of what Sheppard could do; Crowley gave him six seasons to take it further. Supernatural Killed Off Crowley Way Too Soon By Supernatural season 12, Crowley had become much more than the demon who occasionally made life difficult for Sam and Dean. He had been the King of Hell, an enemy, an ally, a reluctant friend, and comic relief. More importantly, his relationships had made him considerably more complicated. His relationship with the Winchesters never became entirely comfortable. Crowley could help the brothers one episode and make a deal that put them directly at odds the next. Even when he seemed to be on their side, another motive was always possible. That unpredictability made him fun to watch. Then there was Rowena. Bringing Crowley's mother into the story gave him another dimension. The King of Hell wasn't just a powerful demon with a sharp tongue. He was also Fergus MacLeod, carrying centuries of complicated feelings about the mother who abandoned him. Season 12 continued finding ways to make Crowley interesting. He had lost his position as King of Hell, wanted revenge against Lucifer, and was forced to confront how his relationship with the Winchesters changed him. That growth made his eventual death even more frustrating. Crowley's sacrifice in "All Along the Watch Tower" is not a bad ending. In fact, it gave him one of the most selfless moments as he sacrificed himself in an attempt to trap Lucifer in an alternate universe, giving the Winchesters one final gift. The problem is that Crowley still had so much left to offer. Supernatural spent years transforming Crowley into an ally, moving him away from being a traditional villain. There were still stories to tell about his family, his relationship with the Winchesters, and what he actually wanted beyond sitting on Hell's throne. Perhaps that is the biggest irony. Sixteen years earlier, L'Ively seemed almost impossible to stop. Then, Supernatural gave Sheppard another shot at the character type, only to actually follow through on killing him. Crowley's death was fitting, but that doesn't mean it was the right time to say goodbye. Supernatural had already proven that Crowley could evolve without losing what made him entertaining. Considering how much more Mark Sheppard could have done with the character, killing off the King of Hell in season 12 still feels like one of the show's biggest missed opportunities. Release Date 2005 - 2020-00-00 Network The WB, The CW Showrunner Eric Kripke Directors Philip Sgriccia, John F. Showalter, Kim Manners, Thomas J. Wright, Charles Beeson, Guy Norman Bee, Richard Speight Jr., Mike Rohl, John Badham, Steve Boyum, Amyn Kaderali, Jensen Ackles, Tim Andrew, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeannot Szwarc, P.J. Pesce, Nina Lopez-Corrado, James L. Conway, Amanda Tapping, J. Miller Tobin, Stefan Pleszczynski, John MacCarthy, Jerry Wanek, Ben Edlund Writers Meredith Glynn, Davy Perez, Raelle Tucker, Cathryn Humphris, Brett Matthews, Nancy Won, John Bring, Ben Acker, Daniel Knauf, David Ehrman, James Krieg, Trey Callaway Franchise(s) Supernatural Creator(s) Eric Kripke