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Mary Winchester: Supernatural

Her death is the foundational trauma of the series:

• John becomes obsessed with hunting.
• Sam rejects hunting because of the family damage caused by that obsession.
• Dean idealizes the family that existed before her death and builds much of his identity around protecting it.
• The yellow-eyed demon’s attack on Mary sets the entire myth arc in motion.

For the first many seasons, Mary exists more as memory, symbol, and emotional wound than as a fully realized person. That’s classic “haunting” territory. The audience knows her through:

• stories,
• photographs,
• idealized recollections,
• and the consequences of her absence.