"Absence" Supernatural S14E18 Review

And Mary died. And it's very sad.

I have the same feelings about "Absence" that I noted in my review of"Byzantium". Which also dealt with the death of a secondary character. And the creative team dealt more on the significance of the character when they were dead, then when they were alive.

In that case, we got Jack. In this case, we got Mary. And in both cases it's hard to feel much for them. They've wandered in and out of the series since they were introduced. At least Alexander Calvert is listed as a series star. Samantha Smith hasn't even gotten a Special Guest Star credit, unlike Jim Beaver. And maybe that's the difference. The death of the original Bobby many moons ago felt earned. And the character was pretty well developed. Which made him a fan favorite. Or maybe being a fan favorite meant the creative team developed him.

Mary, and Jack before her, don't feel that well developed. Mary has been with us at least a couple of years, and she still comes across mostly as Sam and Dean's mother. Jack is the naïve son of Lucifer who turns evil-ish. Compare them to other dead recurring characters: not just Bobby but all the others who have come before: Charlie, for instance. Compared to those characters, Jack and Mary just don't seem to be that developed or interesting.

So how does Mary die? As we kinda figured from last week, Jack made an ash out of her. He says he just lost control for a second, maybe he did and maybe he didn't. Regardless, the result is a pile of ash in a big angel-burning blowout. Then Jack goes flying or teleporting around the world, while Sam and Dean slowly put together the pieces. They find the ash, and the blast site, and eventually Castiel tells them he saw Jack kill Felix the snake. Dean blames Castiel for not telling them about it sooner. But eventually Sam and Dean realize they also looked the other way when they figured something was wrong with Jack, but Jack was "family". And Mary was family. Apparently, it doesn't take much to be part of the Winchester family these days.

While this is going on, Jack goes to Rowena and asks her to bring Mary back. She knows a spell from the Book of the Damned, but it isn't a very good one and Jack isn't in the best mental state to be doing necromancy regardless. Jack teleports her back to the blast site, and when Rowena refuses to cast the spell, Jack teleports her back to her place and does it himself.

Sam and Dean arrive at the cabin, wherever the heck it is. Jack does an angel mojo on their car engine, which doesn't accomplish anything because they just walk the remaining 50'. The spell has failed and after various vague warnings from Rowena that Jack would bring back something horrible, he ends up with the shell of Mary's body but no soul.

Where's Mary's soul? It's in Heaven. Castiel goes to the playground portal to Heaven, asks for Naomi, and gets Dumah (Erica Cerra). We don't get to see it until later in flashback, but Dumah takes Castiel to Heaven so he can see that Mary is in her own special Heaven. They couldn't get Jeffrey Dean Morgan, so we just hear Castiel voiceover that Mary is with her husband, John.

During this, Mark Pellegrino has wandered in and out as a representation of Jack's subconscious either Lucifer or Nick. Which makes him either "Lick" or "Luck" or "Nuck", as the case may be. He tells Jack he's just going through the motions as far as his grief and regret go, and now he's a soulless killer, and he can't trust Castiel and the Winchesters because they'll never trust him again.

At the end, Team Winchester gives Mary a Hunter's funeral. Which involves making a big-ass funeral pyre and burning the body. There's two episodes left and now they have to go hunting for a rogue angelic being who is more powerful than any being that they've ever faced. Which was more powerful than any being that they'd ever faced before that being. Which was more powerful than the preceding more powerful being. Turtles all the way down.

Also, throughout this, we've had flashbacks of Mary being Mary-ish. She's a bit scared of Castiel when she first came back but they get along better after he says Sam and Dean are happy to have her back. Mary trains Jack in how to knife fight and covers up the knife marks he left on the bunker floor. She tells Sam that raising kids is hard. When Dean is driving, Mary sleeps on his shoulder. Awww.

So overall "Absence" (referring to the absence of Jack's soul) is okay. But it's pretty paint-by-the-numbers, and like "Unhuman Nature" and "Byzantium" with Jack, it serves mostly to tell us why Mary's death is such a tragedy and how important she was to the main characters. Instead of the creative team showing us in the preceding 17 episodes why it's a tragedy and how she was important to the main characters. It's odd to have her absent from 11 out of 18 episodes this season, and yet have her act like she was some kind of central figure whose death is oh so tragic. Me, I always found the character somewhat of a distraction. Primarily because the creative team treated her like a distraction. They brought her back at the end of season 11 to provide a big cliffhanger, but they never seem to have known what to do with her since then.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?