There have been 502 characters on “Supernatural.” Only 44 are people of color (POC). And more than half of them are evil. If that isn’t a race problem, I don’t know what is.

The most memorable people of color in “Supernatural” are Missouri Moseley, Cassie, Rufus Turner, Uriel, Raphael, Gordon, Jake Talley, Victor Henricksen, Kevin Tran, and Mrs. Tran. Four of them were evil, four were written off and some of them died.

Gordon and Jake are some of the first people of color in “Supernatural,” following Cassie and Missouri. And they are immediately written as evil before being killed. Jake is a soldier who was stationed in Afghanistan until Azazel transported him to Cold Oak. He was the one who won the fighting that broke out between the eight adults, though in order to do so he stabbed and killed Sam. Afterwards, Jake expresses remorse and guilt over what he did, and outrage at being manipulated. He was then talked into opening a gate inside a large devil’s trap so that demons from Hell could escape by Azazel. This mess is followed by Jake giving in to his demonic side, in which he mind controls Ellen so that he can follow orders before Sam kills him.

Gordon’s story is very different. He’s a hunter who works alone and has a very black and white philosophy. Most of the hunters introduced to the show are complex, and well-rounded, but not Gordon. The distinguishing factor is that he sees his goals with a one-track, short-sighted mind. “Nothing can or will ever waver his determination nor state of being, not having to kill his sister turned vampire without hesitation, nor even eventually being turned into a monster himself -- he represents pure resolution and unhindered self, having no quarrel with (emotionally or otherwise) who or what he is no matter what that may entail” (snreviews in Season 2 Overview, Analysis, and Character Retrospect, Part 2).

As a result, Gordon clashes with the brothers. When he is turned into a vampire (into something he’s stated as hating), he’s killed off the show. Instead of exploring the struggles and shock Gordon might have had, he’s whisked away.

In season four, the audience is introduced to angels. Not only do we meet Uriel and Raphael, we also meet Castiel, Anael, Balthazar, Michael and Gabriel. In the show, many of the angels have well-rounded, deep characterizations. Even Michael, and he is barely on the show. In humanizing the angels, the writers made them more relatable for the audience.

Uriel was an angel that used to serve in the same garrison that Castiel and Anna led. He appeared to be loyal to God and the Archangels but was actually enthralled by Lucifer’s charm and ideas. While he first comes off as mostly obedient to his mission and orders, it turns out that Uriel isn’t what he seems. When Castiel is demoted and put under Uriel’s supervision (because of his growing compassion for humans, especially Dean), it’s revealed that Uriel has been secretly trying to break the seals this entire time so that Lilith can rise from Hell. And honestly? Of course it’s Uriel who’s given the desire to want to lay waste to a lot of humans before being killed, while an angel like Castiel (the attractive white male) is allowed to have an emotional arc.

In later seasons, we find out that angels are programmed to follow and obey orders. They’re supposed to be very, very good soldiers. The angels that have been introduced to the show and held a lot of relevance are angels who have varying degrees of free will despite their programming, if you will. Castiel and Michael are conflicted about what they’re being ordered to do, though Cas is the one who ends up allying himself with humans, not Michael. Anna hated the strict obedience and rigidity enough to rip out her Grace and fall to Earth. Balthazar and Gabriel faked their own deaths and ran off to live their own lives (albeit for different reasons and at different times). Out of all the angels shown to be struggling with free will (or seeking it out on their own) or fighting for power/control, its Raphael, who’s shown to act like a robot.

He is the one who never questions his programming or seems conflicted about. He also doesn’t seem to mind carrying out orders. Later he starts a civil war in Heaven with Cas, but is killed when Cas becomes the new God -- while he, Raphael, is in the vessel of a black female.

The angels who inhabit a person of color are never written as good characters. They’re evil or morally ambiguous before being killed off. This isn’t an okay pattern to set.

Moving on to the good characters. Missouri and Cassie are characters that had significance for one episode before they were sidelined and never written about again. Victor Henrikson and Gordon Walker both showed up for a few episodes before they died.

In season one, we met Missouri and Cassie. Missouri is a psychic who helped John prior to the first season understand how/why Mary died and introduced him to the more supernatural elements in the world. When Sam and Dean meet her, she helps them get rid of a ghost haunting a house that a family was living in (or trying to move into). Because this was season one, Missouri was an almost mother figure. She’s smart and funny and warm. She is a woman who cares about others and is well-rounded for only being in one episode. She also tells the boys to not be strangers--and then promptly gets forgotten about completely by the writers and the brothers. In season four another psychic is introduced to help understand who raised Dean from Hell, which begs the question of the writers introduced a new (and white) psychic when the boys already knew Missouri.

Cassie was wasted in the series. Because she’s black/biracial, and someone who is referred to as the “love of Dean’s life”, the episode Route 666 of course focuses on the fact that she’s black and there’s a racist truck killing black people she knows. It’s like the writers didn’t know how else justify her presence or facilitate it in an episode. Cassie is a journalist in Mississippi, which is interesting enough. To an extent, The way she’s written makes it even more engaging. She’s an inquisitive, confident, outspoken woman who doesn’t seem to make it a priority to find someone to date or lean on a relationship for a lot of emotional support. However, it doesn’t even matter. Her professional and personal life are not explored at all outside of how her life is relevant to Dean, which is sad. The “Supernatural” fandom’s reaction to her was even worse. Cassie supposedly should have believed Dean when he told her what he did for a living, despite the fact that she did what most people would do in that situation: pick her safety over the feelings of her partner and kick him out of her life. The entire problem is that the writers were allowed to check off the box about how they explicitly dealt with racism and black characters -- and then moved on.

In season two the writers introduced Victor Henriksen. He was an FBI agent responsible for arresting Sam and Dean. “He was awesome: tough, ironic, smart. A worthy adversary for the boys. When Henriksen is finally confronted with unequivocal evidence that The Supernatural Is Real And About To Fu*k You Up, he responds with those same qualities that made him such a scary opponent. And then, he dies. Within twenty minutes of his final empowerment as a fully-fledged good character (as opposed to good, but doing bad things mistakenly), Lilith murders him, along with everyone else in the police station. It was a dramatic, breathtaking moment in the context of the show.” (Johnson, An Open Letter to Eric Kripke). Victor was a bit of a different character compared to most of the black characters already on the show. Ultimately, Victor is a good guy who’s just doing his job; he doesn’t know that the brothers are actually trying to save innocent people and the world while getting framed themselves.

But, as pointed out, as soon as Victor learns about the supernatural world, he ends up dying. He was allowed to have about 20 minutes of a complete character and attitude change before being killed by the writers.

In season seven, we were all introduced to Kevin Tran and his mom, Lisa Tran. In the beginning, Kevin is a stereotypical Asian teenager: he’s in all AP classes, so he’s very smart. He’s got a type-A personality, musically talented, nerdy, scared of his own shadow, and bound for Princeton. Things change when his destiny, being a Prophet of the Lord, is awoken accidentally by Sam and Dean. From then on, Kevin is slowly drawn out of his shell, by the unfortunate task of having to translate a demon tablet (and an angel tablet, later on) so that Sam and Dean can figure out how to close the gates of Hell and shut away demons for good.

Mrs. Tran is a fierce mom who cares deeply about Kevin. Once she learns that there are monsters in the world, she takes it in stride and starts to help figure out a game plan so that her life and her son’s life can eventually go back to normal. She doesn’t show up as much in the series, and up until she's kidnapped, the only thing that’s done wrong with her character is the writers referring her as a “tiger mommy."

There’s nothing wrong with having tragically evil characters. However, not all white people are portrayed as evil, whereas the people of color on Supernatural are constantly subjected to this trope. They die because they’re evil or to further guilt a white lead about something, or they’re written out of the story line. Representation is poor enough as it is. There is no reason to continue this pattern almost every single time a black person is introduced. There is no reason to stereotype Asian characters as the highly intelligent, awkwardly social person.

It seems that a person of color can have a story arc within the show, but more often than not it’s a small story arc, and it’s about their own usefulness and relevance to Sam and Dean. If they’re characterized as evil, they die within the episode they show up in, or soon after. The Trans are good characters, but ultimately Kevin dies and Mrs. Tran is kidnapped and tortured for a year before she’s rescued. People of color can’t catch a break on the show because they’re a minority. Tragic, awful things happen to them when they’re onscreen (and off), but unlike the male leads, they’re never given a chance to have their own story arc or narrative fleshed out, because it’s always about the common white man, so POC are defined by their relation to the lead characters.

Ultimately, the non-normative characters that do appear are written off or killed -- and when they are on the show, they are portrayed stereo-typically to a certain extent. One could definitely argue that the deaths in Supernatural have a counterpart. But the problem is that all the leads are normative as hell, and they have been brought back from the dead multiple times. Once a minority character dies, they don’t come back (with the slight exception of Kevin, who appeared as a ghost in a few episodes before moving on). The show is about male leads who are normative and are allowed to take up space. The minorities who have importance or impact are stereotyped to a certain extent and/or aren’t made regular characters.

Imagining a “Supernatural”where women don’t receive this kind of treatment is fun, in a bittersweet, desperately hopeful kind of way. Even though there’s no end in sight for the show, it seems like the writers still can’t figure out how to write a story that both stays and works for a minority within their show.