So I binged all nine and a half seasons of Supernatural over the last nine or so months, and now I’m catching up on all the meta. But in all my reading, there’s one thing I haven’t seen mentioned at all. I don’t know if it’s just because I missed it, or if I’m the only one geeky enough (or who binged fast enough) to notice. But I want to give a massive shout-out to the SPN VFX team for how they handle demon eyes.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s take a look:

Yellow Eyes

First, you have Azazel (the Yellow-Eyed Demon), whose eyes are by far the most unusual and distinctive.

He’s the only demon for whom I can’t find an instance of his eyes changing color on-screen. Either they’re already yellow when he shows up, or (when he’s possessing John) he looks away during the transition.



Either way, aside from color, his eyes are remarkable for a few things: they don’t cover the sclera completely, they have that odd lightning bolt/vein pattern, and they allow for a bit of visible pupil. They also seem to glow on occasion, although this may be a trick of the light rather than any innate element. Besides tying into his fire motif, the veined yellow eyes are extremely creepy and unsettling, establishing Azazel as someone to be feared.

(Honestly, Azazel’s unusual eyes are probably more a result of being designed early in Season 1, before the demon lore had been solidified in the show, and likely before it was decided that “the yellow-eyed man” even was a demon. But let’s ignore that, because who cares. :) )

Black Eyes

Next, you have the “common” demons of the show, the ones with black eyes. They often blink while transitioning eye color, hiding the actual change:

Even when they don’t, the change often happens too quickly to get a good look at what’s going on, but looking closely you can see that black eyes start in the pupils and bleed outward:



The same thing happens when Sam goes briefly demon while killing Lilith:

…and when Dean becomes a demon:

What’s particularly fascinating about the black eyes, though, is that they disappear from the inside out:

It almost looks like some kind of membrane or dual inner eyelid:

Completely black eyes are a pretty straightforward sign of evil. They mark demons as bad guys, but fairly generic ones.

Red Eyes

Crossroads demons’ eyes appear to just be red versions of the common demons’ black eyes. Crowley, wearing Mrs. Tran, has unremarkable red eyes:

However, at least one crossroads demon’s eyes are a little different:

Notice how her eyes have spotty black holes over the pupil? I could blame needing to see out the contacts, but this is VFX, not contacts. So at least some red-eyed demons have spotted pupils. (I don’t know who this demon is or which episode she comes from, though, so any information here would be welcome!)

The other unusual thing about red eyes is that they come from the outside in, for both Crowley and our mystery demon, rather than inside out like black eyes.

Blue Eyes

I’m including this one for completeness. In the tie-in novel “Bobby Singer’s Guide to Hunting”, Bobby describes Samhain (from S4E07, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”) as being the only known demon with blue eyes. I checked the episode, and the teacher’s eyes are a light blue-grey to begin with:

After he’s possessed by Samhain they appear paler:

After Sam exorcises Samhain, the body’s eyes noticeably change back to a darker blue-grey.

However, Samhain’s eyes don’t look like any other type of demon eyes: in particular, he keeps his white sclera and pupils like Azazel, but doesn’t have the same color or vein patterning. Which means that like Azazel, he’s probably special in some way, especially since his raising is one of the 66 Seals. Whatever the case, he’s an unusual demon with unusual eyes that reflect his unusual status.

White Eyes

Finally, we have my personal favorite. Lilith and Alastair are the only white-eyed demons we see, and they’re noticeably more powerful than all the rest. What makes them interesting, though, is the fact that their eyes roll to white rather than fill with color:

It’s particularly unsettling when they roll forward again:

Eyes rolling back like that is usually a Bad Sign in media, plus it’s not a natural motion - some people can roll their eyes pretty far back, but not to the same degree as the white-eyed demons. Yet the fact that for the first second it looks like something a human could do makes it all the more eerie, by putting the white-eyed demons squarely in the uncanny valley.

I love how attentive Supernatural is to its monsters. Yes, you’ve got the weird ones and the rubber-forehead aliens on occasion. But for integral creatures like demons, it’s clear that a great deal of thought has gone into how they’re depicted, and what effect those depictions have on the audience. I love that they’re internally consistent: white eyes always roll back, black eyes always fill outward from the pupil. I love how something as small as changing eye color can mean so much. I love that the show cares enough to get this right.