But it also has consequences: it kills Erin's baby in utero, and it will turn anyone who drinks it into a vampire if they die after having ingested it. The blood of the 'angel' has restorative properties: it allows a paralyzed young woman to walk again, it ameliorates one fisherman's aching back, it slowly de-ages almost the entire island. Naturally, he brings the 'angel' with him, believing its power can bring miracles to the struggling island.Īnd for a while, it does.
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Pruitt returns to Crockett Island and calls himself Father Paul, adopting the guise of a temporary replacement for the Monsignor. Believing him to be an angel, he offers his body to him and is drained of his blood – but before he can die, the 'angel' lets him drink his blood, and his youth is restored. Monsignor Pruitt, an elderly man well into senility, encounters a vampire while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Technically, Midnight Mass is a story about vampires. Warning: Spoilers for Midnight Mass’ episode 3 twist below. There is horror in religion and Flanagan takes it a step further, offering us an allegory that might have even the most faithful questioning their faith. Flanagan gives us the zealot (the frustratingly evil Beverly Keane, played to perfection by Samantha Sloyan) and the outsider, the Muslim Sheriff Hassan (brilliantly portrayed by Rahul Kohli), who is constantly misnamed and misunderstood, often with blatant disregard and disdain for his religion and identity. They are the story’s three main pillars and how Flanagan shows different people folding Catholicism into their everyday lives – yet they are far from the only representations of religion in Midnight Mass. Father Paul is the long-standing Monsignor on the small and bizarrely insular Crockett Island Erin is the woman who escaped its confines only to return years later, pregnant and without her husband but seeking the church for salvation and Riley is the former altar boy who reluctantly returns, now a wholehearted skeptic and a recovering alcoholic.
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The character archetypes include the pious, the born-again, and the wretched, represented by Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), and Riley Flynn (Zack Gilford).
#DRACONIAN BATTLE CATS SERIES#
Midnight Mass often makes you uncomfortable, forcing you to watch both an older and a younger man struggle with ostracization and alcohol abuse, or lingering on terse moments between a Muslim and a bigoted Catholic – it’s horrifying well before the "true" horror of the series reveals itself.
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Maybe the seriousness of it all made you uncomfortable: the confession, the kneeling, the solemnity.įlanagan taps into that fear and expands upon it, forcing viewers to ponder their own faith, to question the way we treat marginalized peoples, to think about the validity of religion when used for fear-mongering or hate. Perhaps the imagery in your local church gave you the heebie-jeebies, with so many depictions of a crucified Jesus lining the walls and hanging over the priest's head. The Old Testament can be particularly draconian, with the “Judgment of Solomon” telling of a God who demands a man split his children in two, or the destruction of “Sodom and Gomorrah” regaling us with the tale of a Lord who rains fire and brimstone upon villages. If you, like me, grew up going to a Roman Catholic church, you probably felt uneasy whenever your priest or Catholic school teachers covered certain stories from the Bible.