Presences, absences. Rowena, Mary, Eileen, Amara in 15x06
The protagonists of 15x06 Golden Time are all women, some physically present in the narrative, some physically absent but there in their absence.
On the level of the plot, the narrative plays with how the two ghost women, first the dead witch and then Eileen, appear in the fight and take their opponents by surprise: two seemingly absent figures that are in fact key players, but thereâs more than that.
The episode opens with the witch Jacinda breaking in Rowenaâs apartment, and, while the apartment is apparently empty except for the intruder, Rowena is the protagonist of the scene. The young witch is counterposed to Rowenaâs portrait: Jacinda is disorderly, chaotic, increasingly frustrated. Rowenaâs figure is still, composed, collected. While Jacinda is seemingly being the one in a position of power as she trashes Rowenaâs stuff and shatters things, itâs actually Rowena who has full control of the situation. An intruder trashing through her apartment was a situation she perfectly accounted for, and the visible part of the apartment was just a stage, constructed to deceive and punish looters.
Reality and illusion is a strong theme this season, where you donât know âwhatâs God and what isnâtâ, where Dean and Sam have been put in front of the fact that the world around them is a stage where God moves his pieces from behind the scenes. This episode even contains a Djinn, the creature that most of all messes with your perception of reality. Nothing is what it seems: the young woman isnât a concerned neighbor, Rowenaâs apartment isnât the abandoned space any witch can come in and steal from, the visible part of the apartment isnât all there is and is in fact carefully constructed for appearances, the moving truck isnât a moving truck, the sheriff isnât humanâand Cas isnât eitherâ, the fight isnât two against two and isnât two against three either, Sam isnât the ignorant nobody Rowenaâs legacy would be wasted on.
But letâs get back on track. Rowena is physically absent, but she is the director behind the scenes: she hexed the apartment so that an intruder would die, and set things so that Sam could have access and take what he needed, and she left journals so that her successor could learn from her and use her magic. Rowenaâs ingredients and spells save Sam and Dean and bring Eileen back to life. Rowena isnât physically there, but her legacy and forethought save the day and allow Eileen to come back as a fully living person.
The other woman who isnât there but whose presence runs through the episode is Mary. Mary has been a âabsent presenceâ since Jack did the thing. The episode that followed her (supposed) death, aptly titled Absence, was all about her presence in her disappearance, and her absence has never stopped existing in the narrative. Itâs in Absence, in fact, that Rowena researches the spell that Sam ends up using for Eileen, and the events from that episode are repeatedly referenced by Sam and Dean. The conflict between Dean and Cas, while it has its roots in âstructuralâ issues between them, has arisen from Maryâs death. Maryâs absence still informs the narrative, and silent storytelling techniques also add to making her âpresentâ, such as Deanâs appetite for meat.
@drsilverfishâ has been suggesting that Mary might not be dead, but âmisplacedâ either mistakenly by Jack (possibly in another universe, as Jack has obviously been a force that messed up with universes since before he was even born), or deliberately by Chuck in a scheme where everyone would assume that Jack had killed Mary, thus putting the âMoriahâ storyline in motion.
The hints are indeed there, and this episode is just the culmination. The circumstances of Maryâs disappearance and her supposedly being in heaven are repeatedly referenced (in an episode where Cas, the one who saw her in heaven, goes against a Djinn, the monster that makes you perceive a fake, fabricated realityâŚ), Dean expresses his regret that they couldnât bring her back (but the spell brings back a woman from water, after a series of multiple episodes rich in symbology revolving water and fire, fire being the element that notably killed Mary).
Even the villains of the episode are a mother with her two children, although one may argue that the witch mother was more of a John parallel than Mary, but even as a contrasting mirror it plays into it. In the other storyline of the episode, we have a mother who is looking for her child. In this case, the presence-absence axis is swapped; itâs the child whose absence moves the plot, but, again, itâs the woman, Melly, who is the âdirectorâ of the events in that storyline, as sheâs the one who gives Cas the elements to run the case and asks for his help.
So, Rowena is the director of the witch storyline (the mother witch thinks she is, even looking through mirrors like a director looking at the screens where footage is being played, but sheâs mistaken), while Melly is the director of the Djinn storyline (although the absence that puts it in motion is her sonâs, while itâs Rowenaâs own absence that puts the witch storyline in motion).
And Mary? She has never been the âdirectorâ of anything, quite the opposite, her entire life being manipulated by God with the one exception of Amara going against her brotherâs plan for her. And yet her absence has been a driving force for so long, the force who drove her husbandâs and sonsâ entire lifeâJohnâs revenge quest, Dean and Samâs upbringing in the world of monsters and hunters. The biggest clue that thereâs more to her (supposed) death than it meets the eye is that itâs just history repeating. Mary dies, her absence drives the story: Deanâs revenge quest against Jack (the failure of which really pissed Chuck off), the cleft between Dean and Cas.
The theme of this episode is indeed women who are in the middle between life and death. Eileen and Jacinda are ghosts, existing in the veil between earth and the afterlife, neither one or the other, as both Sam and Jacindaâs mother plan to take advantage of a âloopholeâ in the order of Death.
Rowena is not there and yet she is, though her preparations is case something happened to her. Mary is not there but she is constantly evoked, and the circumstances of her death are affecting her family. Are they going to be Eileen or Jacinda? Is their metaphorical ghost going to be banished once and for all, or are they going to be restored to corporeity and full presence?
Eileen is reborn from water in a clear metaphor for a motherâs womb. Rowena drew the spirits into her belly in a reverse-birth imagery. Mother and child were the main civilians they helped in 15x01, mother and child are helped by Cas in 15x06âŚ
I want to conclude this with two other women who are not present in this episode, and yet their presence, in different ways, can be felt.
One is Death, mentioned by the witch mother in the foreshadowing-smelling line âshow Death a loophole, and she closes itâ. And the other is the figure that represented the banished feminine returning, Amara. Eileen was killed by Ketch when his role in the narrative was exactly to be the toxic masculinity dark mirror to Mary and Dean, and now she is brought back in a win against the repressive masculine (also, the witch mother, who tries to oppose Samâs plan to bring her back, despite appearances, is primarily a mirror for John and Chuck, representing abusive parenting - the older sister might have abused the younger but the implicit enabler of that abuse is the parent, who probably encouraged Jacindaâs spells and made Emily feel inferior and all - and manipulation that mirrors Chuckâs).
Eileen falls in a pattern of figures of femininity and healthy interpersonal relationships harmed by figures of toxic masculinity and abusive dynamics. She is brought back thanks to Rowenaâs magic, so I wonder if weâre supposed to read an EileenâMary RowenaâAmara parallel. If not really Rowena, then magic/witchcraft.
No one remembers it, but I had massive feels/expectations of a connection between the Darkness and witchcraft, and if the show is actually doing the thing, my heart is probably going to burst and Iâm going to die on the spot, Iâm warning you.
Anyway. Amara is the cosmic feminine principle who was banished and brought back, and that is implicitly evoked by Eileenâs comeback. And Mary is the narrative feminine principle that was fridged for the plot and Amara brought back. Now magic (the feminine principle that the Men of Letters attempted to banish, remember? We were all expecting Sam embracing magic because it was the perfect âsupernaturalâ parallel to Deanâs embracing of âhumanâ feminine side) brings Eileen back.
And beyond all of this, the woman that the poetic fabric of the cosmos brought back upgraded after she was killed as the consequence of the vicious circle of self-sacrifice in season 12, the same as Eileen. Speaking of vicious circles⌠whatâs round and bad-tempered?
Now to the actual conclusion of the postâthereâs another âabsenceâ in the episode, although in a different sense. Dean takes a step back from things, taking refuge in ways to soothe the shock of the latest revelation about Chuck and his newfound nihilism. While Sam drives (figuratively and literally), Dean chooses to be absent from the case of helping Eileen. But then, of course, he intervenes when heâs needed, and in fact kills the two siblings, dark mirrors for him and Sam (unlike the werewolf brothers, itâs Dean and Sam who actively destroy the dark mirrors for the Winchester family in this episode, so who knows if Chuck was behind that.)
Genders are swapped here, Dean and Sam are aligned to Rowena and Eileen, while the witches represent abusive and codependent family dynamics (that one sister chooses not to break despite being given an opportunity to) with the mother, as I mentioned before, paralleling John and Chuck, and the sisters an apparent parallel to Dean and Sam, as Sam tries to connect with Emily, before we realize that their experiences with the respective siblings are on totally different levels.
In particular, Dean burns the body of the older sister. Again, fire and water in contrast, with the figure of abuse burning and the figure of healthy interpersonal relationship and femininity banished by toxic masculinity is reborn from water. Sam does the latter, Dean does the former, two movements that are opposite yet complementary. The negative is destroyed in fire, what killed Mary, the feminine principle of the narrative, in the first place; the positive rises from water, an allegorical womb.
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