Emily Swallow reflects on Amara’s Supernatural story so far at Copenhagen Comic-Con.
Supernatural season 11 introduced a powerful new enemy: The Darkness, older than God himself, who was later revealed to be God’s sister Amara.
At Copenhagen Comic-Con 2016, Hypable spoke to Emily Swallow about her experience on Supernatural, and — presuming she returns, as showrunner Andrew Dabb has hinted she will — what she’d like to see happen next.
Swallow jokingly shares her hope that Amara and God have formed a band and are playing in the background of all the places Sam and Dean visit, but she also addresses the question of Dean and Amara’s unfinished business, and whether Amara might return to “clean up the mess” of Mary Winchester’s return.
Watch the interview below:
Amara made it very clear in season 11 that she believed she and Dean belonged together, and even left Dean with a pretty spectacular parting gift: A resurrected Mary Winchester.
Swallow admits that while fans “probably wouldn’t be happy” if Amara and Dean ended up together, “so I don’t hope for that. But I hope they can be friends at least … I don’t think they need to be boyfriend/girlfriend or anything.”
“There is this deeper connection that they both have, that neither of them fully understands,” she explains. “And I think that they’ll continue to find… I mean, Sam and Dean are always gonna need help, and I think that if he ever calls on Amara again, she’d be there to help him.”
We also asked Swallow if she believed that Amara’s act of restoring Mary Winchester’s life might have some hidden consequences.
Related: Supernatural’s Samantha Smith and Andrew Dabb preview a season of “strong female ass-kickerage”
“I think it’s one of the most well-intentioned and awkward gifts ever, and I love that she’s like, ‘I’m gonna give you back your dead mother,’ and then she just disappears,” says Swallow. “I don’t think that’s gonna be a no-strings-attached thing. I don’t mean that she put conditions on it, but it’s not a simple gift. There’s gonna be a lot of complications that come from that. He’s gonna have a lot to deal with, for sure.”
Swallow also admits that she was surprised by the resolution to Amara’s arc in the season 11 finale, because it seemed to wrap up so easily after a season of strife. But, as she explains, “the idea that they had written God and God’s opposite as, at essence, these two siblings who needs each other and just had to figure out how to get along, that was so simple and beautiful to me. And thinking of it in the context of the show and Sam and Dean was really helpful in understanding that that’s how the story could resolve.”
She goes on to address the powerful bond between Supernatural and its fans, and why she believes that the brothers’ story connects so strongly with its audience. “I think a lot of people have found this relief in being able to connect to these characters and connect to what happens on the show,” she says, adding that these fans “bring that joy to the conventions … and they bring these stories of heartache and trouble, and they share them with us and with each other, and they find a community. And I love that. I love that the show carries on far beyond what we shoot and shows on the TV screen, that there is this whole community and this family that gets to benefit from that.”
Supernatural returns October 13 for the first episode of season 12, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Emily Swallow can next be seen in the web series Adoptable by Scott Lowell, which is loosely based on his own search for his biological parents in the late ’90s. The series also stars Noah Wyle, Jim O’Heir and Linda Park.
This interview was done in collaboration with the Danish entertainment site Kulturbunkeren. Hypable’s resident Supernatural writer Natalie Fisher also contributed some of the questions. Thanks to Copenhagen Comic-Con for making it possible!