Mary Winchester (née Campbell) was a retired hunter, the daughter of Samuel and Deanna Campbell, the wife of John Winchester, and the mother of Dean and Sam Winchester. She was killed by the demon Azazel exactly six months after Sam was born, which spurred John into becoming a hunter to kill Azazel in revenge. This unfortunately led to John raising their sons as hunters as well, because the last thing she wanted was to raise her family in the life. Contents |
|
Mary was born in 1954 to supernatural hunter couple Samuel and Deanna, who had not planned for her birth but regarded her as a "blessing" regardless. The family lived in Lawrence, Kansas. (Unforgiven)
Mary hated hunting; she sought to have a normal life so that she could be safe and raise a family. This caused tension between her and her father. When she fell in love with John Winchester, Samuel did not approve of their relationship because he believed John to be a naïve civilian. She did not tell John about the supernatural, which caused her some guilt. (In the Beginning)
Unbeknown to her, Mary met the future version of her firstborn son, Dean, in In The Beginning. She noticed him following her and John on a date, and violently confronted him before he revealed that he was also a supernatural hunter. She then took him back to her house, where he had dinner with her family despite Samuel's distrust of him.
A reluctant Mary worked a case with her father and Dean. They learned that Charlie Whitshire had unwittingly made a deal with a demon in order to protect his father from abusing his mother. From Charlie's description, Dean realized that the demon in question was Azazel, who had killed Mary in the future. Dean made her promise not to leave her bed on November 2, 1983--the night she was supposed to die. When she learned that Azazel was targeting a friend of hers named Liddy Walsh, Mary and Samuel intervened, in the process inadvertently drawing Azazel's attention to Mary due to her skills and courage.
Mary was terrified by the demon's interest in her. She spent time with John to try to clear her head. While he was in the middle of proposing to her, Samuel interrupted, possessed by Azazel. He killed John then revealed that he had also killed her parents, devastating Mary. He then pressured her into making a deal for John's resurrection and her having a normal life; in exchange, she granted permission for him to enter her house in ten years. Dean arrived too late to stop her, and was returned to his own time by the angel Castiel.
Mary married John and retired from hunting. The couple lived together at 485 Robintree, Lawrence, Kansas. (The Song Remains the Same)
Mary became pregnant with Dean.
In The Song Remains the Same, Mary's future sons arrived to prevent Anna Milton from killing John, thus preventing the birth of her youngest child, Sam, and the onset of the Apocalypse. She was vehemently against their presence because the last time she'd seen Dean, her parents were murdered. She also didn't want them getting her involved with hunting again.
Mary fended Anna off to protect John and distract Anna while Sam banished the angel with a sigil. During this fight, Mary exposed her hunting background to John, and was forced to reveal the truth about herself to him. John was upset that she hadn't told him earlier, as well as being angry at her parents for endangering her life by raising her like that.
Mary led the rest of the Winchesters to a house her family had owned and kept stocked with weapons and measures against the supernatural for years. Sam taught her how to use holy oil against angels, while Dean taught John about the angel banishing sigil.
While preparing to fight Anna, Mary demanded an explanation from Dean as to why an angel wanted to kill her. Dean eventually revealed that the truth about himself and Sam to her. She was stricken with guilt and horror at the thought of raising them as hunters, but Dean revealed that she had been killed by Azazel and John trained them as hunters instead while seeking vengeance. Dean suggested that she try to flee with Sam before the demon came for them, but Sam himself stated that she should just leave John. While shocked by her sons' words, Mary remained steadfast that she could not leave John.
Anna and fellow angel Uriel attacked after removing all the defenses the Winchesters had set up. Mary witnessed Sam's death at Anna's hands. When Anna turned to her, Michael possessed John, killed Anna, and sent Uriel back to Heaven. Michael modified Mary's memories to remove her memory of meeting her sons, as well as of the warning they gave her, to ensure she would die as intended. Michael also modified John's memories to give Mary what she most longed for - a normal life.
As seen in the teaser of Pilot, Mary awoke on November 2, 1983 due to the sounds of Sam crying over the baby monitor. She entered his nursery to find Azazel leaning over the infant's crib. She mistook him for John and decided to let him soothe Sam so she could return to bed. However, Mary noticed a light flickering in the hallway and a television still on downstairs. She discovered John asleep in the living room. Much to her horror, she realized that the person upstairs was an intruder and rushed back to Sam's nursery, interrupting Azazel as he fed her son his blood--this is what Mary had given him permission for in 1973 without realizing it. She recognized him, saying, "You!" (All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 1)) Azazel used telekinesis to drag Mary up the wall and pin her to the ceiling, at which point he slit her stomach. She screamed briefly, alerting John, who ran into the nursery. She could not speak to warn him and stared helplessly at her husband and her youngest son before John noticed her blood dripping onto Sam and looked up; she was then set aflame, burning her alive.
In lieu of her body, Mary's uncle put up a headstone to commemorate her in Greenville, Illinois, where he presumably lived. Sam and Dean never met her uncle. Sam visited her headstone in Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, to bury John's dog tags with Mary.
After Mary's death, Azazel killed all of her remaining family, friends, and even acquaintances, such as her doctor, to hide his deal with her. (The Kids Are Alright) Because her family and anyone associated with them died, Sam and Dean did not learn that their mother used to be a hunter until In the Beginning.
The memory of Mary and her death drove the remaining Winchester family to become hunters in order to track down and kill Azazel to avenge her. John continued to grieve for her even decades later, confessing in Salvation that he wanted her back. In Bloodlust, Sam reminds Dean that Dad did the best he could to teach them to hunt after Mom's death. Dean's wish in What Is And What Should Never Be is for Mary to have never died, but he chooses to wake himself up from his dream when he realizes that a djinn has poisoned him in order to feed off of him until he dies. Dean avenged her at the end of the All Hell Breaks Loose (Part 2) when he killed Azazel with the Colt, telling the dead demon, "That was for our mom, you son of a bitch". When undergoing demon blood detox in When the Levee Breaks, a feverish Sam hallucinates her reassuring him that he is doing the right thing in drinking blood to kill Lilith.
Photos bring comfort, as a photo that Dean has of Mary and himself as a young child is shown in Trial and Error when Dean places it next to the lamp on the desk when he claims his room in the bunker. Sam sees this photo when he looks over Dean's room. Both Sam and Dean, albeit separately, see this same photo in Soul Survivor, again bringing comfort. In Brother's Keeper, Sam pulls out two photos - one of Mary and Dean, the same one seen in the earlier episodes, and another one of Mary, baby Sammy, and Dean - telling Dean to "take these, let them be your guide. They can help you remember what it was to be good, what is was to love."
Enemies of the Winchesters have been known to use the family's love and grief for Mary against them. Besides the example of the djinn above, Zachariah used an illusion of Mary to make her sons suffer by manipulating their emotions in Dark Side of the Moon. Crowley used Samuel's love for his daughter to force him into working for the King of Hell, to bring Alphas to Crowley for him to torture in exchange for a promise to bring Mary back to life. This was revealed in Caged Heat. This caused an irreparable rift between Dean and Samuel, for Dean wanted Samuel to choose to save Sam's soul but Samuel could not abandon Mary, stating that the boys knew how to live without her but that he couldn't. In Mommy Dearest, Eve assumed her shape to make a point about her love for her monstrous children. A witch used Mary's memories against Dean in Man's Best Friend with Benefits. Demon Dean taunts Sam in Soul Survivor by saying his mother would still be alive if it wasn't for Sam.
For years after Mary's death, her ghost haunted the house she'd died in. Her death and Azazel's temporary presence drew a powerful, violent poltergeist to the house.
Mary's last chronological appearance as herself was in the Season 1 episode Home, in which Sam's premonition led her sons back to their childhood home to hunt the poltergeist terrorizing the family currently living in the home. When the poltergeist tried to kill Sam, her ghost manifested, first as a flaming humanoid figure that walked out of the closet of the room that used to be Sam's nursery. She apologized to him, although Sam did not understand it at that time, for allowing Azazel to feed him blood. She confronted the poltergeist, telling it to leave her house and let go of her son, before she sacrificed herself to banish it from the house. What became of her soul afterward is unknown: the psychic Missouri Moseley believed that she ceased to exist and Ash later tells Sam and Dean that he had not found her in Heaven. However it has recently revealed that destroyed ghosts do in fact still move on somewhere and perhaps Mary and John simply do not want to be found.
At the end of Alpha and Omega, Amara promises to give Dean what he needs most, since he gave her what she needed most. A short while later, Dean comes across Mary in the woods, alive and in the nightgown she died in.
When Mary was young, she was an attractive petite blonde with just-below-the shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, but underneath Mary had a body firm with hunter's muscles. Later, after she married, she grew her hair out, but there was a peace about her because she left the hunter lifestyle.
Mary's personality attracted Azazel to her in the first place, commenting on how feisty she was. She was sweet, thought of others first, and longed for normalcy. She never gave up on what she believed in, and was tenacious with an argument.
Mary, as a hunter, wore a charm bracelet that included an anti-possession charm, a cross, and some kind of human figurine, as well as the symbol for Men of Letters.
She had a wicked knife, about 6" long, that she knew how to fight with, although she was also good in just hand-to-hand fighting. She also knew how to clean guns, although it is not clear if she owned any outright.
Mary has been shown to have the general skills possessed by hunters. She was a very good observer, and immediately recognized when she and John were being followed by Dean. She has shown capabilities in hand-to-hand combat, even holding her own temporarily against an angel. She also appeared to be a fast learner, as she learned about the existence of angels and their weaknesses.
Mary's spirit lingered in their house in Kansas, where she canceled out a particularly nasty poltergeist that not only proved difficult to purge, but also attempted to kill Sam. Her spirit appeared to be able to summon flames, reminiscent of her manner of death.
Azazel caught wind of young Mary when she arrived with her father to fight the demon. Instead, Azazel possessed Samuel, killed both of Mary's parents, and killed her boyfriend John. He made a deal to show up in Mary's house in 10 years in exchange for John's life. Ten years later, as Azazel dripped demon blood into baby Sam's mouth, Mary interrupted him and he killed her.
Deana Campbell was Mary's mother, who helped raise her in the hunting lifestyle.
Samuel Campbell was Mary's father, who raised her in the hunting lifestyle. He did not understand her need for a normal life, nor her choice in John as her boyfriend. Azazel possessed Samuel, and killed him to force Mary to make a deal. Years later, after Samuel was resurrected, he claimed that all he was doing was to bring Mary back; he could not live without her.
John Winchester was Mary's boyfriend who was killed by Azazel to force her to make a deal. Mary agreed for Azazel to come by her home in 10 years in exchange for John's life. John and Mary married and settled into a normal life. She never told John about her hunter past, except when the angels got involved with time traveling. Michael erased both of their memories to keep their normal lives. They had two sons, Dean and Sam. When Mary interrupted Azazel in Sam's nursery, John was the one who found her and saw her die. John spent the rest of his life as a hunter to avenge her death, also training the boys as well.
Dean Winchester was Mary's oldest son, by John. When he was sick she would make him tomato and rice soup. For a lullaby, she would sing Hey Jude. Every night she would tell him angels were watching over him. He was 4 when she was killed, and trained up in the hunter lifestyle to avenge her death. Dean went back in time to when Mary was a teenager, before she married John, and encouraged her to be with John. They tried to fight a demon together. In the end, Dean saw Mary choose to make a demon deal. Later, Dean went back in time with Sam to save their parents. When Amara brought Mary back from the dead, it was because Dean needed his mom the most.
Sam Winchester was Mary's youngest son. Because of Mary's deal with Azazel, he was able to come into her home to drip demon blood into Sam's mouth. Mary caught Azazel in Sam's nursery and died trying to save him. Sam was 6 months old. Later on, as a ghost, Mary apologized to Sam for what happened to him, before she fought a poltergeist to save her son.
| Season 1 |
Season 2
|
Season 3
|
Season 4
|
Season 5
|
Season 6
|
Season 8
|
Season 10
|
Season 11 |
Mary's maiden name is Campbell; however, written on Sam's birth certificate on the wall of the Men of Letters London Chapter in Alpha and Omega, Mary's last name is listed as Howard.