Supernatural Meets True Blood In NBC's 19-Episode Drama Series

Courtesy of MovieStillsDB Published Sep 27, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT Laura Hurley has been writing about the entertainment industry for more than twelve years, after a decade as a content producer and editor at CinemaBlend after writing for WhatCulture and Examiner. Attending events like SCAD TVfest and San Diego Comic-Con over the course of her career, she has been immersed in the world of network, streaming, and cable TV. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Monsters, mythology, and mayhem can turn TV shows into major hits. The CW's Supernatural and HBO's True Blood had long, successful runs on their respective platforms, turning their cast members into major stars. One network TV show combined the best of both worlds for a two-season run on NBC, but never became the same kind of hit despite being perfect for fans of both paranormal dramas. Midnight, Texas debuted on NBC in 2017, a few years after True Blood ended on HBO and a few years before Supernatural's devastating finale. The cast included Heated Rivalry's François Arnaud, Arielle Kebbel, Peter Mensah, and future Chicago Med star Sarah Ramos. The time was right for a new supernatural drama, as most of NBC's lineup was dominated by crime procedurals and sitcoms. That's admittedly not unlike what's on NBC's official fall 2026 schedule, but the network needed something new and fresh. The show featured an ensemble that included an angel, a half-demon, a witch, a ghost, and a vampire, all problems for a traveling psychic to handle when he arrived in the town of Midnight, Texas. Unfortunately, viewers seemingly weren't ready to make Midnight, Texas a primetime priority, and the show didn't last for too long. Still, it's worth checking out today, even if it only has 19 episodes. Midnight, Texas Was Set In The Same Book Universe As True Blood Courtesy of MovieStillsDB Like True Blood before it, Midnight, Texas was inspired by a book series written by Charlaine Harris. In fact, the 13 books of the True Blood saga (also known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries) are set in the same universe as Midnight, Texas, although Harris' Midnight, Texas saga only spanned three novels. True Blood definitely diverged from the source material as the seasons went on, and the NBC adaptation of the Midnight books wasn't an exact translation from page to screen, but Harris' work was recognizable. That didn't mean the shows shared the same TV universe, however. True Blood finished its seven-season run on HBO in 2014, so the two dramas couldn't have crossed over, even if all the stars aligned for the same characters to appear in both series. Plus, the True Blood adaptation of Harris' novels was much bloodier and more risqué than what NBC could air. Hannibal had briefly pushed the boundary for gore on the network, but was canceled just two years before Midnight, Texas premiered. Characters like True Blood's Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), and Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) didn't have a place on an NBC series, no matter how many vampires appeared on Midnight, Texas. The cast of Midnight, Texas obviously couldn't appear on True Blood, since the HBO offering ended before the NBC project debuted. The connections between Charlaine Harris' books couldn't exist between the two TV adaptations. Why Midnight, Texas Only Lasted Two Seasons Courtesy of MovieStillsDB Ultimately, Midnight, Texas ran for only 19 episodes across two seasons. The short run wasn't necessarily a reflection of the show's quality, however. NBC didn't give the drama much of a fighting chance when it returned for its second season in 2018. While the show was a hit for the network as a summer release in 2017, NBC waited more than a year before bringing it back for the second season. The show moved from its successful summer slot to fall, when the primetime competition was much stiffer. Midnight, Texas was never likely to gain much momentum as a fall TV show after earning its audience in the summer. At the time of cancellation, Deadline confirmed that season 2's average ratings were down from season 1. 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 It didn't help that NBC not only scheduled Midnight, Texas during the Friday night death slot in 2018, but also changed its time slot midway through its second season. Peacock wouldn't exist until 2020, so anybody who wasn't watching Midnight, Texas live on Friday nights likely wasn't watching it at all. The supernatural drama even changed showrunners between season 1 and season 2, and lost two series regulars over the break. If NBC had continued to broadcast Midnight, Texas during the summer break between the biggest network TV shows, it might have lasted much longer than two seasons. True Blood was over, and Supernatural was nearing its end. NBC's biggest summer shows to date are unscripted; Midnight, Texas could have given viewers more to look forward to on the network than just America's Got Talent over summer vacation. Midnight, Texas is streaming on AMC+. Release Date 2017 - 2018-00-00 Network NBC Directors Niels Arden Oplev, David Solomon, Nick Gomez, Rob J. Greenlea, Tim Andrew, Greg Beeman, Milan Cheylov, Neema Barnette, P.J. Pesce, Stacey K. Black, Steve Shill, Kevin Tancharoen, Mairzee Almas Writers Ken Hanes, Katie Lunskis, Even Twohy Cast Anthony De Longis Plantation Master Arielle Kebbel Olivia Charity