#here to state my truth:this show was afraid of mothers/motherhood

[ananke-xiii]

Amara’s resurrection of Mary interests me for two reasons: because it’s a gift and because it’s a symbol. It’s a symbolic gift in the form an “actual person” and this is both sooo creepy and sooo cool (I’m talking about fiction so, of course, it’s only cool from a fictional pov, I mean, it should go without saying that I’m not talking about an actual person without quote-unquote, but let’s say it anyway).

The thing that I like about Mary Winchester (and I would argue about other women in the show who can never just be themselves because they have to mean something else to either Sam or Dean and this “something” is almost-always the-world-as-it’s-imagined-to-be outside of the Impala/motels/bunker) is that she exemplifies a little fixation of mine, that is the struggle between archetypes and representation in fiction. Carver era was all about, I think, bringing the Soul back, what was sacrificed at the altar of the story because it was common, unquestioned praxis. Mary and Jessica must die for us to enjoy a story. I’m using the word “Soul” because it both pertains to my ramblings about resurrection and because of my qualms with anything labeled as “masculine” and “feminine”. However, this choice of mine is far from perfect and doesn’t fully solve said fixation.

The thing is that Mary is both a myth and a “real” woman and I don’t think that, after her introduction, the show really knew what to make of her. Hence my claim that “Mary Winchester is complete” is bullshit, but I’ll talk more about that when I finally publish my post about Mary and her impossible resurrection.

She’s a myth because, in the story, she represents some aspects of the Mother archetype. I know people won’t like what I just wrote but bear with me. What I’m trying to say is that Mary represents aspects such as nurture, comfort, unconditional love and… a sense of home. These aspects are real (Mary did love her kids and did try to provide them with a sense of home and comfort) but they're also mostly imagined (The Winchester's household was, like all families, far from perfect).

In this regard the story that was told in S1 cannot be changed and a part of Mary will always be a bit "mythical" in nature: Sam and Dean lost their mother to Azazel who brutally killed her. The idea of an Alternate Universe where Mary didn’t deal with the Prince of Hell is, therefore, wobbly from the outset because what’s central in her story is the theme of separation/abandonment and how it relates to both main characters. Who are Mary's sons. Therefore her story is a story about the separation of a mother from her sons (and, if we're going to be honest, of a daughter from her parents but Supernatural really did try and erase everything that happened in Gamble era so I guess they forgot about Samuel Campbell arc and how Sam killed Mary's resurrected-then-turned-monster father, lol, good times!).

I’ve stressed “both” because it’s not enough that Mary and Dean got to close their arc, so to speak. In my personal opinion, we also needed to see the growth and resolution of her other two relationships: with Sam (I don’t care how their story was paralleled to Mary, Jack, Nick/Lucifer/Michael/A random monster of the week. Jack wasn’t Sam, it was never going to be the same and it was never going to be satisfying) and with John (not John as in the physical sense but in the sense that Mary should have had the possibility to fully come to terms with what happened to her husband, for whom she had to sacrifice everything basically, and how he acted towards their children and no, no AU could fix that because, again, it had happened). In this respect, Mary Winchester, as a character, is far from complete.

Having said that, the story couldn’t be changed but it could be rebooted and this is exactly what happened with Mary’s resurrection: it’s a sort of game over but you’re given another token for another round. I know that there are many people that didn’t like it but, frankly, I love it! What happens if the Mother/Soul is back on the board? How will the characters react? Can the story heal? Can they all heal their separation wound? It’s a move that brings up so many interesting questions! But here’s the problems that, I think, the show wasn’t able to solve: once Mother is back, alive and well… she wasn’t going to be “just a mom”. First of all because yes, thank you, that was never the point, the point being the dispelling the myth surrounding the Dead Parent who’s always the Good Parent by virtue of its being dead. If Mary had never died that fateful day, Dean would’ve never idolized her the same way he did. And it wouldn’t even be about John, because the way Mary is described and the way Dean had been described until S11 meant that they would end up in some kind of conflict. For sure. My point is proven by the fact that, indeed, they were in conflict for a lot of S12.

Secondly, she wasn’t going to be just “Mother” because representation. One thing is narrative themes and archetypes that, by definition, don’t exist in reality. Another is having a character whose sole trait is having been/being pregnant (Hello to my girl Kelly Kline! I guess sexism and misogyny were okay for her, I guess). Because, as far as representation goes, that kinda sucks? So Mary as a representation of a woman was portrayed as "complicated", an adjective that, in my personal experience, is used when either you don’t know/understand the other person or you can’t really be bothered to deal with them.

Full disclosure: I know I sound harsh but I’m not totally opposed to how Mary was portrayed specifically in S12. Obviously we need time to discover this "new"character as she re-acquainted herself with life. My “issue”, I guess, is that she never moved from there, she never really grew as a character, she had her moment with Dean and then sort of stayed there until it was high time for her to go back in the fridge. I didn’t like that.

This may sound shocking to some but to me, personally, I would’ve preferred if they had explored her “mom” side. Which, OF COURSE, doesn’t mean that Mary had to cook meals and clean the bunker, I mean, hello??? The fact that they had to convey the idea that Mary wasn't the perfect mother by making her buy dinner instead of making it from scratch was very... let's say "old-fashioned" but okay, I get what they meant by that.

When I say her “mom” side I mean her relationship with Sam and Dean and yes, sure, she’s not just a mother but this is the Sam and Dean’s show and in this show she’s their mother. You can’t change that, no matter how you retell and reboot and parallel and mirror their story. Mary is not “just a mom” but she is THE mother of the two main characters and I think it would’ve been more respectful to her character if they had delved into that instead of exclusively going the girlboss/badass hunter way (funnily enough, I think John had the reverse treatment: he’s not “just a man”, he’s THE father and exclusively treated as such).

So as I’ve said, Mary is a gift and a symbol. As a symbol, she’s the mother, as a gift she’s a woman. Yeah, I also said it was creepy because even if I like the narrative meaning of the de-fridging of Mary Winchester, as per the “not just a mom” we’ve discussed above, Mary is, surprise!, a woman with her own body, her own life, her own soul and her own right to be/do as she pleases. However, in order for her to be back in the story she’s reintroduced as… trade goods.

Dean gave something to Amara and Amara wanted to do the same. Of course, Amara is a clever cosmic entity but she’s still a cosmic entity who thinks that eating souls is okay. What I’m saying is that, again, human morality in the show is contrasted with non-human morality and the two things do NOT go hand in hand. Exchange a person in a trade is… I don’t know how to put this but… can we all agree that it’s not a good thing? As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite of a good thing, it’s very, very bad. Not to mention that Dean didn’t even ask for any gift, let alone this one (and let’s not even go into the underlying theme of imprisoned women in S10-11… Heaven was indeed a prison in SPN, no matter how they spun it, lol).

So Mary Winchester interests me because, right from the moment of her resurrection, she posed very difficult questions and I think the show was aware of a good chunk of them but simply decided to ignore them and choose an easier way to deal with the mess they had put themselves into. But if I compare Mary and Kelly I can clearly see how there never were good intentions towards her character to the point that her final death is SO final that we don’t even see her body (more on this later). She gets completely effaced and we’re told that she’s complete? Nah, I reject the message you’re sending, thank you!

When Amara and Dean have this dialogue in S15…

AMARA: I told you, Dean, he's my– DEAN: No, no. No. Why did you bring her back? You said that you wanted to show me something, that you wanted to, uh to teach me something. I don't know if you were following along, but your little experiment, it came to a not-so-happy ending. My mom is dead. So what exactly did you want to show me? What was the point? AMARA: I wanted two things for you, Dean. I wanted you to see that your mother was just a person, that the myth you'd held onto for so long of a better life, a life where she lived, was just that, a myth. I wanted you to see that the real, complicated Mary was better than your childhood dream because she was real. That now is always better than then. That you could finally start to accept your life. DEAN: And the second thing? AMARA: I thought having her back would release you, put that fire out. Your anger. But I guess we both know I failed at that. DEAN: You're damn right. Look at you. Just another cosmic dick rigging the game. You're just like your brother. AMARA: It was a gift, Dean, not a trial. DEAN: I'm not angry, Amara. I'm furious. To know that all my life, I've been nothing but a hamster in a wheel, stuck in a story. And you know whose fault that is? Chuck's. And it ain't just me. We're all trapped. Sam and Cas and Jack and even you. And you want to talk about the people that he's killing right now.

 … I always think that the real hamster in a wheel, stuck in a story is… Mary (although I deeply agree with the “the now is always better than the then”, that’s a good line).

Mary was gift, not a trial. Now, I love the usage of this word and the reference to “little experiment” and to failure. Because “trial” can mean different things and here it seems to suggest that Mary was not a “consumer trial” because she was a gift. There is no exchange or return policy if the trial doesn’t satisfy you because it’s a gift and I’ve lost the receipt. Mary is treated like goods here because she was resurrected for Dean, Amara wanted Dean to understand and to be released. Not Mary to be free but Dean to be freed from Mary's myth.

So Mary was not “just a mom” in theory ‘cause in practice, aka in the intention of the narrative, she was very much just that and, more precisely, she was Dean’s mother who was supposed to make him enjoy life and deconstruct the myth he had in his head. Mary could’ve released Dean’s anger but how was she supposed to do that? I mean, this is deeply unfair to Mary but it also proves my point, even if it’s in a sad sort of way: Mary as a character would’ve been better off if her position as THE mother was further explored in the show. Because, and I am not saying this, I think the show is implicitly saying this here, there wasn’t real space in the show for a Mary who was “not just a mom”.