postmodernmulticoloredcloak:

Hey, Mom, it’s me. Sorry to lay this on your voicemail, but, uh… it’s Jack. He… he got sick, um, and he, uh… h-he died… this morning. I would have called you sooner, but, um, it – it happened so fast. And we thought we could fix it, you know, like always. Anyway, Mom, I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you and, uh, to all of us. Anyway, to tell you the truth, it would really be nice to hear your voice. If you could, uh, just call us back.

The episode emphasized the absence of Mary. Dean’s words don’t just inform us that he’s letting Mary know about Jack’s death, but also that “it would really be nice to hear your voice”, meaning she hasn’t really been in touch. Dean misses her. She’s not there. Again and again the narrative tells us in more or less little ways – she has come back to life, but she’s not present in her sons’ lives.

Conversely, Kelly has died, but it feels she’s closer to Jack than Mary, alive, is close to Dean and Sam. She is there without being physically present on earth – she’s left her message to Jack, her parents talk fondly about her, and now she’s actually met Jack in heaven.

Cas picking up Kelly’s picture on Jack’s nightstand reminds me of Amara picking up Mary’s picture from Dean’s nightstand while she was going around the bunker. At the time, she was also a dead mother whose memory and picture Dean had with himself, and who he’d seen through supernatural creatures taking her shape (like Mia the shapeshifter did with Jack, although in her case it was a benevolent action, while Dean had to face Eve, Zachariah’s fake heaven Mary… not exactly pleasant experiences).

In this episode, Dean disparages the “meant to be crap”, and I’m not expecting anything less from Mr Free Will, but some “meant to be crap” is real and subverting it messes up with things (Billie, not coincidentally, was mentioned in the episode…).

Both Mary and Kelly were meant to die. As she chose to have her nephilim child born, Kelly’s fate was to die as she gave birth. Mary was meant to die as the mother of the vessels for the apocalypse archangel showdown. While her death appeared more coincidental than Kelly’s – if she’d not gone into Sam’s nursery that night…? – her death was a fundamental element in the story.

This doesn’t feel right. It’s just not how I thought Jack’s story would end. […] The certainty… of death, even for angels, it’s always felt natural, but this doesn’t. Jack being taken before his time. I mean, taken before me.

While this can be read as the unnaturality of a child dying before their parent (which definitely is what Cas is expressing, I’m not saying it isn’t) it also drops the idea of what feels like a ‘right’ ending of a story. Jack’s story wasn’t supposed to end with his untimely death from some sickness… Conversely, Kelly’s story was always supposed to end with her death to give Jack life. And Mary’s story was always supposed to end with her death. “If she’d not gone into Sam’s nursery that night” is an empty question, because that’s simply not what happened. Mary’s death triggered the course of events that prepared Sam and Dean as vessels (of course, Dean’s stubbornness treasuring free will was the wild card).

Mary’s death was the natural end of her story. Her presence is unnatural. Of course, Dean’s relationship with the natural order has always been extremely complex, so I don’t know whether he’s going to fight this particular piece of destiny and change the nature of Mary’s new presence on earth.

People have been wondering whether it wasn’t a coincidence that the people who spent the most time in the apocalypse world after the rift was opened (Lucifer came back pretty soon) have been Mary and Jack, the latter the one who caused the rift in the first place, and the former an element of unbalance in the world. And now she’s basically retired with one of the humans from the other world. Coincidence…?