Like I said, I like the movie, but there's always been one part of it that's bothered me immensely, and that's the fate of Mary in the altered timeline Clarence shows George Bailey. It makes sense that George would want to know what would happen to his wife had he not been born, but it also reveals a kind of huge problem: Mary is kind of underwritten. She serves her purpose in the movie, of course, and considering most of the exposition is Clarence being told George Bailey's personal history, it wouldn't make sense to tell us anything about Mary. However, we get absolutely no glimpse of who she is outside of George Bailey. Every other character who relates to George Bailey we see some sliver of things happening in parts of their lives that don't involve George, but not Mary. Mary exists solely for the romance story.
So what happens to a character who is solely defined by their romantic relationship when their great love is removed from reality? Logically speaking anything could and should be possible, really. As far as we know the only reason she does anything is in an effort to get closer to George, so with all the free time that suddenly becomes available from his non-existence, you'd expect her to do, well... anything.
But as it stands, all we get from Clarence is that she's "an old maid" and that she never married. There's also the insinuation that she works at the library, since he says that she's "closing up."
But this is my weird little thought experiment, my chemicals that I'm screwing around with, so let's assume this isn't the whole story.
In fact, just for the hell of it, I'm going to make a rather radical claim: I think Clarence was hiding something. I like to think that, without George to be the focal point of Mary's life, she accomplished something incredible, something that was of such benefit to the rest of the world and future generations that it kind of outweighed all the other lives that were screwed up by George's absence. After all, Marie Curie discovered radium not too long before the story happened. There were other women doing great things, I'm sure, but I'm writing this on impulse and I don't want to take too long to research anything. Besides, no one's going to read this.
So I like to think Mary did something extraordinary with her life. Right away I'll explain away the closing up the library thing: a highly trusted volunteer perhaps? Giving back to the community? Or, hell, even just working as a librarian, maybe even providing reading materials and information, inspiring some kid who would rise up and take the actions the non-existent George wouldn't have and taken down Potter and brought honor and justice back to Bedford Falls.
But I like to think that she became a scientist and found a cure for cancer. Honestly, that's really the only alternate theory I want to go with. If George Bailey had never existed many citizens of Bedford Falls would have fallen on hard times and Old Man Potter would have become the evil dictator of the town, but Mary would have found a cure for a disease that would eliminate future suffering and death for generations. Who knows, maybe even advance medical knowledge because of it, which could have all sorts of chain reactions.
And now I'm out of ideas, so with that I wish whoever stumbles upon this a Merry Christmas, and invite you to stay tuned for more, actually thought-out ramblings.
