It’s been eight years since Mary Winchester returned on Supernatural Season 12.
As a thank you for helping her fix her relationship with her brother, Amara gifted Dean something that he never thought possible.
She brought Mary Winchester back to life, but it was clear there was a huge catch.
Mary came from just before the fire, meaning that the last 30 years had passed, and she had no idea what had happened.
It’s because of this that I defend her actions, though I must admit the writing grew poor over time.
They Weren’t Her Sons
One reason so many Supernatural fans hate on Mary Winchester is that she didn’t immediately jump into “Mom Mode.”
Supernatural wrote her as a woman who had jumped forward in time by 30 years, and she routinely said that the Dean and Sam she left behind were just children.
The two men in front of her weren’t her children.
Okay, sure, to us and to Dean and Sam they were, but to Mary, not at all.
I often try to put myself in the characters’ positions. In this case, I imagined what it would be like for two adult women to walk into my life claiming to be my daughters.
Guess what, I’d have no connection to them!
They could tell me all they wanted that they were my children, but that doesn’t mean I’d feel differently toward them.
Plenty of TV shows have offered a look at this.
What is it like to have adult versions of people you know coming into your life?
Mary was never going to immediately accept these two grown men as her children, especially considering they went into the family business, which she never wanted for them.
You Go 30 Years In the Future
On top of that, the world had changed for Mary in Supernatural.
She went from 1983 to 2016.
Could you imagine jumping forward more than 30 years into the future?
Be realistic and tell me that you’d immediately accept everything that was happening around you.
Tell me honestly that you’d accept the people in your life telling you that they’re your sons when you’ve seen demons, shifters, and other monsters take the form of people you love or possess them.
Mary had a lot to work out and not enough time to do it.
Her sons pushed her to have a relationship with them, rather than giving her the space she needed to figure out this new life — a life she didn’t ask for.
At no point did Amara ask Mary for her consent to bring her back to life, and Dean certainly didn’t ask if Mary was even happy that she was now alive, trying to figure out what had happened over the course of 30 years.
Let’s not overlook the fact that she had made the deal with the Yellow-Eyed Demon in the first place and now found out that she’d broken the rules that led to her own death.
She needed to get out of the Men of Letters bunker, and she needed to see what the world had become in her own time.
Did it make her a bad mom? Not really.
Again, I go back to the fact that the grown Dean and Sam were not her Dean and Sam.
They weren’t the children she left behind.
Had she done it to the younger versions of the characters, then yes, I’d say she was the worst mother on Supernatural.
However, how can you be a bad mom when you don’t see your children standing in front of you, and instead, see two strangers?
The Writing Failed Mary on Supernatural
After a season or so, we should have seen Mary change and grow.
The writing of Supernatural failed her, as she wasn’t able to grow to accept the world around her or understand who the Winchester brothers were.
Over time, she should have seen what her sons had become without her, especially when Dean went into her mind to tell her just how much he hated and loved her at the same time.
Amara could also have helped by recognizing the error in her own way, offering Mary a glimpse of the last 30 years she had missed, so she could see how her sons grew up and what John had put them through.
However, that was poor writing, not Mary being a bad mom.
A lot of Supernatural fans had romanticized Mary Winchester thanks to the memories that Dean had from before the Supernatural pilot, but in the end, she was brought back in the wrong way, and she coped the best she could under the circumstances.
If you’re enjoying revisiting Supernatural, you should also check out Grimm if you missed it the first time.
There are big similarities between the two shows.
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There are plenty of Mary Winchester haters out there, but eight years after her return to Supernatural, I continue to defend her actions.
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