Mary Winchester has been in and out of Supernatural’s 13th season, mostly because she’s been living in an alternate world for the past nine months. After the season 12 finale saw Lucifer drag her into the Apocalypse World, she’s been fighting to survive against Michael and his angelic soldiers. But now that Mary’s boys have all the ingredients necessary to open the rift, a season apart could finally be coming to an end.

With only three episodes left, EW hopped on the phone with Samantha Smith, who plays Mary, to talk about Mary’s journey and how no one will be able to anticipate what comes next.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How do you feel Mary’s time in Apocalypse World has affected or changed her?

SAMANTHA SMITH: Starting in season 12, Mary went through about 15 varieties of how she was approaching the world, and every time I, as the person playing her, felt like, “Okay I get it now,” it would evolve. I felt like Mary had finally gotten a grip on things: She had found her place, she had found her equilibrium in her relationship with her kids — we were going to start over with forgiveness for misunderstandings — and then she fell into the alternate universe with Lucifer, and everything had to start over. The survivor in her took over, and I think by the time we found her last episode, she had evolved into General Mary. She was all business, and yet she even said that Jack has become like family. We likened it to he’s the king and she’s the general: He can do whatever he wants, but she tries to advise him. And yet I think she has developed feelings for him as another son. It’s her only attachment in that world, and so for me it became very clear that Mary has to be singular of purpose, and that is surviving and helping the people she has grown to care about to survive, which was a broader version of hunting to save people in our world.

What’s going on with Mary in these final episodes?

Over the next hour and the final two weeks afterward, the boys are trying to find Mary and Jack in this vast world. It’s like trying to find someone in our world — it would take a minute, and they don’t have the benefit of vehicles or the internet or angel radio or any of the stuff they would ordinarily use. At the same time, I think Mary has given up on trying to get back to our world for the time being, and her purpose has become defeating Michael and saving the people there. There are many ways this could go because the danger in Apocalypse World is immediate and fatal. Michael is no slouch, and he doesn’t play.

Does Mary at all feel a sense of wanting revenge on Michael for what he did to her?

That isn’t something that I have registered. I think she would very much like to see him go, but I don’t think that that is her driving force. She would like to see him die on general principle, but I don’t think she’s taking it personally. It’s like being mad at the devil. He’s the devil. He just is, and it’s not personal. I’m sure she’s not fond of him, but her primary goal is to keep everyone else alive and away from the angels.

If she’s in General Mary mode at the moment, how will having her boys in that world affect her?

She doesn’t want her boys in this world — not because she doesn’t want to see them, but because it’s not safe. I think she has reconciled the fact that she will probably never see them again and Jack is now filling that place in her life. It’s fair to say that the boys, their priority is to get us and leave, and it’s possible that having grown so attached to people and felt so responsible for Bobby and all the remaining humans that she’s going to have to make a choice: Does she want to just escape, given the opportunity, or does she feel a responsibility to finish what she started in the Apocalypse World? There is a possibility that there will be a conflict there for her.

How do you feel like the final episodes of this season compare to other Supernatural finales?

I think that this is going to be one of the more interesting endings of a season. In previous seasons we’ve seen it coming to its culmination, and even though you could never guess what exactly is going to happen — no one saw Lucifer and Mary being trapped in Apocalypse World, or Castiel dying — but we sort of knew that Jack was going to be born and that he was going to be an issue, and we saw the direction it was going. I don’t think anyone is going to see any of what’s coming in the next three episodes. There are so many surprises and it’s so packed with characters. There’s going to be multiple shocks per episode for everybody.