It’s interesting to me how big a role sexuality plays in Mary’s character throughout the show. When we’re introduced to her, she’s firmly relegated to her role of mother and wife, dressed in white, pure, virginal even, untouched from the same sexualisation every character experiences.
However, when she’s actualised as a character, this includes an ambiguous relationship with a father who forces her to hunt. Her first act of agency (narrative-wise) is her relationship with John through whom she hopes to escape hunting. And the episode ends with a coercive kiss with the demon who ruined their lives, in the body of that father, shattering that previous image of her as pure and untainted.
Images of Mary are conjured by villains or Sam and Dean, with the latter usually following the original madonna image of her whilst villains like Zachariah or Eve sexualise her but it’s not until her resurrection that she finally gains power in her own story.
Mary’s post-resurrection arc is about dismantling her image and showing her to be a very real and whole person and having her sons come to terms with this. She joins the BMOL in hope this will allow her and her sons to live the normal safe life she wanted, but also as an act of agency, to distance herself from traditional hunting because of the baggage it has for her and to rediscover herself in this new world and reassert her selfhood.
This includes a relationship with Ketch, who symbolises Mary’s divide from her sons and is disapproved by the narrative and characters. The relationship ultimately blows up and soon after Mary reconciles with Sam and Dean and accepts these new versions of her sons and her role as their mother.
S13-14 has Mary start a relationship with AU!Bobby. It comes out of left playing field and is badly written…. But all that doesn’t matter because the relationship’s purpose isn’t to be an actual relationship. Bobby/Mary is corrective.
AU!Bobby is a respectable, mature hunter who is the AU version of Sam and Dean’s Father Figure and Mentor. He’s (much, much) older than Mary but that’s not relevant; what matters is that he’s much older than Sam and Dean. Thus he’s seen as a more acceptable romantic interest for Sam and Dean’s mother (who is barely 30 but ultimately still dictated by her role as their mother), in the season where Mary no longer is at odds with Sam and Dean or her role as their mother
It’s also pathway to reintroduce John and Mary relationship. And by the end of the season, Mary’s killed off and sent to Heaven where ‘she’s with John and at peace’ (despite how the show revealed their marriage as imperfect in s5 and how s12 was about dismantling all preconceptions of Mary
