Supernatural boss Andrew Dabb discusses the Season 12 return of the Winchester Brothers’ famously deceased mother Mary.
In the world of television, the average show rarely lasts so long that the sacred nature of its inciting incident could be overturned with impunity. However, as The CW’s venerable monster-hunting hit Supernatural continues to prove going into a surreal Season 12, it’s anything but an average show. While the series’ 2005 pilot kicked-off with the series-defining flashback in which Sam and Dean Winchester’s martyred mother Mary met a fiery demonic-dealt demise befitting of a suburban Joan of Arc, a recent bizarre act has essentially undone the definitive moment. Now, its current showrunner discusses the bold move.
In an interview with EW, showrunner Andrew Dabb candidly discusses the details and the logic behind hitting the ultimate “undo” button resurrecting a character in Mary Winchester whose death inspired the monster-hunting exploits of the Winchesters and essentially defined the series itself. While viewers witnessed the initial return of Samantha Smith as Mary in a cliffhanger moment in the Season 11 finale “Alpha and Omega” as a gift from the powerful and repentant primordial force Amara/The Darkness, the context of her returned status was left a mystery. However, Dabb saves us from speculation, stating unequivocally:
“It’s her. She was brought back. There is nothing demonic, nothing angelic. We’re treating her very much as a character and the character who has been a part of Sam and Dean’s story for 11 seasons. This is really her and she’s having a real impact on our boys.”
Yet, going into the rarefied television air of a twelfth season, some might see this act as the point where the show truly decides to “Jump the Shark,” as the title of a Season 4 episode self-effacingly implied in a meta manner. However, Dabb claims that plans to somehow bring Mary back into the fray were hardly an impromptu lark. Dabb explains, the idea had been gestating in the writer’s room for at least two years. However, he states that, “It didn’t feel right until the end of last season.” Yet, when it comes to question of “why?,” Dabb has a more substantive response, explaining:
“At the heart, the dynamic of the show is unchanged in that it’s always going to be about the brothers, it’s always going to be about the family they’ve put together, and Mary doesn’t so much upset that as complement it. When she comes in, it’s family through another lens. She is their origin myth, her death led to everything, so when she comes back, the boys having a mother again which they really haven’t had.”
Mary Winchester will certainly be a wild card in the Season 12 deck. Since her pilot death, she has been seen in numerous ways as a ghost, a malevolent shapeshifted impersonation and was also portrayed in time-traveling flashbacks to the 1970’s as a younger rendition played by Amy Gumenick. However, the Season 12 premiere, appropriately-titled “Keep Calm and Carry On,” has Dean Winchester witnessing the shocking revelation of the resurrection of his mother, played by original actress Smith, reconstituted as she was the day she died back in 1983.
Moreover, we’ve also learned a lot about Mary over the seasons and her place in the larger Supernatural mythology, notably that she was the source of Sam and Dean’s monster-hunting bloodline, having come from a long lineage of Hunters. It was a profound revelation to Sam and Dean, who had already chosen that life. Thus, seeing a not-so-dead Mary fight alongside with her grown children as ass-kicking Hunter peers will be worth the price of admission alone for Season 12. Plus, Dabb also hints at an intriguing friendship she'll form with angel Castiel. However, as with all good things, comes the inevitable rub. As Dabb explains of the brothers’ maternal predicament:
“At first, they’re really excited to have her back, but also aren’t quite sure how she’s going to respond to them because they know the last thing she wanted was for her kids to be hunters and now she’s walking into a world where her kids are hunters. So there’s a little [bit of] feeling each other out through the first part of the season before coming to a place that’s probably a little more settled.”
Consequently, Supernatural will move past a monumental Season 11 in which the Winchesters teamed up with God himself (aka, Chuck Shurley) to fight the angry omnipotent entity The Darkness with an emotionally analogous helping of metaphysically-centric family drama in Season 12. Indeed, if this show has proven anything in the past 11 years, it would have to be its arguably Teflon-like endurance against ennui.
Supernatural Season 12 will make its undead mommy-sporting debut on The CW on October 13.