"Cause Supposedly Time Heals All Wounds..." - Some Thoughts on Reunions
With Mary Winchester back among the living after 33 years and her difficulties with finding her footing in a world that’s so very different from everything she has known before including meeting her two grown up sons, who live the life she spent all her life distancing herself from, I have been pondering lately how a reunion between Mary and John would turn out.
We know from 5x16 “Dark Side of the Moon” that their “marriage wasn’t perfect until after Mary died” according to Dean’s memories and of course differences in opinions and arguments are perfectly normal. Both obviously cared tremendously about each other, even if their view on the other for sure was idealized in hindsight and was all but incomplete due to the missing pieces of their past they didn’t share with one another.
Mary’s reaction in S12 with being overwhelmed by emotions when learning about her husband’s death and needing time for herself is understandable, yet I wonder - since I seem to recall the writers had intended to maybe resurrect both parental figures, but decided against it (maybe also due to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s involvement in “The Walking Dead”) - if both of them would get to know each other or would get each other back after all these years and everything that happened to them, shaped and changed them in the mean time would truly make them feel about each other the same way again as they had in the 70s.
I think it is unlikely they’d get along perfectly tbh. Obviously I think both would still feel deeply about the other, but just like for Dean and Sam there is much to be revised and corrected about their “memory” or rather image of their mother that was shaped over decades into an almost saint-like figure, so both - John and Mary - would have to face the reality of who they are now and how little they may truly have known about each other.
Mary was horrified by learning that her death had set her husband and her kids on the path of hunting when that was the very thing she wanted to escape from, but didn’t seem to resent or judge John for going down that road. Sure, she was disappointed to learn about how he raised Sam and Dean in the life (and really she couldn’t really “call him out on it” for lack of a better word since she never told John everything about her past, much like Sam never did with Jessica), but her grief about his death sure was much bigger than any anger. Still, if we consider Mary (though we learnt that she kept hunting even after getting married and having a kid) to stick to her opinion on how she views the hunting community as a whole and compare that to the reason she fell in love with John - “because he was so different” - it seems inevitable that these two would have their fair share of issues with one another. After all John would learn too about the deal Mary made, about her hunting and about her not being honest with him. In the end, both of them could find out that all they thought they knew in parts was build on lies and on all but shaky ground.
I personally would be curious to know how a reunion between them would play out, because there is no going back to before. Things have changed, their stories have changed. Could they put everything aside? It would probably take a good chunk of time for them to warm up to one another. And in this regard I kind of had to think about Amara and Chuck reuniting and their story. Chuck, who locked his sister away to write his own “big story” in which Amara was the “bad guy”, when really, one may consider him a bad guy just as much or even more for his actions. These two siblings were separated for millenia, harbored grudges - some more rightfully, some less - lied and betrayed each other. Now, Mary and John of course were lovers and not siblings, but I think one can still compare them. Especially when thinking about who and how the Darkness and God were reunited: through their shared love for humanity (with Dean serving as the symbol for that, for being the firewall, the connecting piece between them). Would their love for their kids be the one thing that could make them grow closer again? Could they forgive each other? Or would the way their children were forced to grow up be the one thing to make any reunion impossible?
I don’t think I have an answer, it could go either way. In any case I’d find it an interesting topic to explore. After all, time may supposedly heal all wounds, but it can't ever erase or undo the scars of the past...
