5 reasons to watch Salem on Amazon Prime

4. Mary Sibley is a force to be reckoned with.

Mary Sibley, played with tremendous grace and daring by Janet Montgomery, is reason enough alone to watch Salem. For starters, or a majority of the season, she’s technically an antagonist. She’s certainly not your typical heroine. Ultimately, you root for Mary to win, but she’s trying to bring the Devil to Earth, not exactly the makings of your regular protagonist.

It’s always refreshing to see female characters with depth, nuance, and a grey morality scale. Women can be antiheroes in the same way men can.

When we first meet Mary, she’s an innocent ingenue in love with John Alden, and the witch trials are only beginning. Then John is forced to go to war.

Despite his promises to one day return to Mary, she is left alone with the thought he died. To harden herself in the hard years to come, Mary makes a deal with the dark lord. She exchanges the unborn life of her and John’s son for a channel to dark magic.

When John makes his return, he finds Mary a far more jaded, powerful, woman than the girl he left behind. Salem charts Mary’s long, painful journey to becoming one of the most legendary Essex witches of all time.