One year ago today, Deadline broke the news that Supernatural was planning a backdoor pilot in season 13 for a show called Wayward Sisters.
One year ago.
It’s absolutely insane to look back on this date and see everything that’s happened in the last year.
Arguably the biggest accomplishment was the pilot being made at all. It aired on January 18, 2018, as the tenth episode of the thirteenth season, and was aptly titled “Wayward Sisters.” Several new characters were introduced in the episodes leading up to “Wayward Sisters,” including Patience Turner (Clark Backo), who is the teenage granddaughter of Missouri Moseley (Loretta Devine), who had one prior appearance in Supernatural, dating all the way back to season one, and had remained a fan favorite ever since. Kaia Nieves (Yadira Guevara-Prip) was also introduced in episode nine, “The Bad Place,” and is the dreamwalker Jack (Alexander Calvert) was trying to work with in order to get to the alternate universe to save Mary Winchester (Samantha Smith).
Unfortunately that backfires, and ultimately sets up the plot for Wayward Sisters. Close friend of Sam and Dean, and a well-loved character in the Supernatural world, Sheriff Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) spearheads the rescue mission to find Sam and Dean by calling another hunter and Jimmy Novak’s daughter, Claire (Kathryn Newton), home to help. When Claire returns to Jody’s, she finds Alex Jones (Katherine Ramdeen) still living there. The two of them rescue Kaia from the hospital and Patience shows up after having a dream involving Claire, and so with the help of Sheriff Donna Hanscum (Briana Buckmaster), the six women work together to rescue Sam and Dean from where they were lost in an alternate universe.
Fans of Supernatural showed their support big time by tuning into the pilot. Wayward Sisters brought in 1.87 million viewers, which was up from the previous episode’s 1.74 million. The episode was loved by many, and currently holds a 10/10 rating on IMBD.
With the ratings and reviews so high, fans everywhere were shocked beyond belief when The CW announced that Wayward Sisters was not going to series on May 11th. Hearts were broken, tears were shed, and a movement began. The movement where fans came together to prove that not only do we deserve Wayward Sisters, but that we will do whatever it takes to show our support.
In less than four days, a petition started by Georgia Heapy on change.org had already collected more than 50,000 signatures. Today, over a month since its inception, there are more than 81,000 signatures, and new people are still signing daily. The fans had Wayward Sisters trending nationally while doing a re-watch to show support for the show, and once Netflix was suggested as another potential host for our show, they started aiming their attention in that direction.
The fans must have been doing something right, because just last week, Hot Topic unveiled a new Wayward Sisters shirt featuring the names of all six characters.
So in exactly one year, fans of Wayward Sisters have cried tears of joy, we’ve sat slack-jawed as “We Are The Fire” opened the episode “Wayward Sisters,” and we cursed a blue streak when the CW didn’t pick it up.
But this isn’t over.
Who knows where we might be this time next year? Like Kim Rhodes said:
“We got this far without a television show. I’m not going anywhere. You’ve made it shatteringly, abundantly clear you aren’t going anywhere. If you want to, we might have a chance to make it happen. Sign. Write. Yell. It might work. Because I know this in my wayward f–king soul: even if it doesn’t turn out like we think we want it to, we aren’t done.”
We’re not done. We have 364 days until this day comes around again next year, and I can’t wait to see what we have to report about it when the day comes.
So until then, I’ll leave you with a sentiment we feel strongly about at Nerds and Beyond: Kick it in the ass, Wayward fandom.