Supernatural: Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki on their ideal series end

Supernatural isn’t ending anytime soon — especially now that it’s been renewed for a record-breaking 12th season — but that doesn’t mean stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles haven’t thought about how’d they would like the Winchester brothers to say goodbye.

However, just because they’ve thought about it doesn’t mean they have an exact answer. Actually, if they ever had an answer, the lesson is that it will change the longer your show continues.

“If you’d asked me season 1, I would’ve thought that it would’ve been the apocalypse. But then again, you can’t end the TV show with the worst thing happening,” Ackles says. “As we’ve evolved, I think that there’s different roads that the show could certainly go down that would be interesting. I think we’ve taken some really good turns.”

Padalecki adds, “It’s changed a lot over time. Part of me, loving Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, always thought it’d be great to see the boys against insurmountable odds and to freeze-frame on them and just hear stuff in the background. You don’t know if they die, you don’t know if they live, but you know that they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory.”

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But Padalecki realizes that’s not the only viable option. “And then I went back and watched a few of the episodes, I watched through ‘Swan Song’ and the scene of the boys laying on the hood of the Impala. I think that’d be a nice way to go out if we had to — watching the end of the world. Or looking up at us from the trunk and throwing the weapons in and saying we’ve got work to do. All of those kind of leave room for opinion and room for interpretation. I don’t think we should see the boys die or live, we should wonder.”

Regardless of the exact circumstances, Padalecki says there’s one very important rule: “The boys can’t stop fighting. As long as they’re alive, they’re not going to stop fighting. We’re going to have to see them continue to do good together. I think that’s what’s the most important part.”

The key words there? “As long as they’re alive.” And according to Ackles’ thoughts on an ending, both brothers might not make it out of this show alive. “It’s either going to end tragic or it’s going to end not tragic, and I can kind of make an argument for both,” he says. “I don’t really know where it’s going to go. I always thought Dean would make the ultimate sacrifice for his brother. I guess if I had to choose something, that’s probably what I would choose.”

At the end of the day, neither actor knows where the story is going, and quite frankly, neither one seems to want to know. At this point, they’re just along for the ride, and considering there’s still gas in the Impala’s tank, we’ve still got a ways to go.

Supernatural airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.

–Reporting by Natalie Abrams