Hello friends and welcome back to TV Tuesday! This week I’ll be talking about the limited series on Netflix, Midnight Mass.

I decided to watch Midnight Mass because it’s the same creator/director of The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor –­ I loved both ­­­­­­so why not check this out?

So my first thoughts are that I’m not 100% invested just yet. After the first episode I’m just like, okay. It’s slow and we get to learn about the town, which is good set-up but there isn’t anything very special about this coastal town (yet). In fact, this town is very small minded in and stuck in its ways and very, very religious. I don’t even have a character I like because they all seem so boring… I’m hoping things look up.

The show starts with a car accident, a woman is dead and a man who probably crashed into her car, is alive. I believe we’re led to believe it was a drunk driving accident and he goes to prison and does his time. Cut to four years later.

I guess our main character, Riley, the man from prison was away from this small town before the accident and is now coming home to do his patrol.

Obviously the town is all talk because I don’t think there’s anything else to do there besides pray and fish.

This mysterious new priest who shows up intrigues me though. I feel like he doesn’t know what kind of town he’s stepping into. The old priest is apparently sick, but he’s also been seen roaming around in the middle of the night, okay more intrigue.

Apparently their sheriff is new to the town too… and not much of the town like him either… I feel this has to do with race.

What also intrigues me… the cats… the island is full of them then after a storm they all wash up cut up and dead.

Alright, so we’re getting to know more of the town and since the priest is new we’re finding out all this information through him.

All of these characters have a background, which gives them depth, but they’re very typical of a small town. You have, Joe, the town drunk, Bev, the town gossip, Riley the town outcast.

The priest, Father Paul, spends a lot of time with a paralyzed girl, Lisa. We find out that Joe accidently shot her on one of his hunting trips leaving her without the use of her legs. Yet come one Sunday during Lent and Father Paul just knows that she can use her legs? He makes her walk for communion… and she does?! I think we’re supposed to believe it’s a miracle… I don’t think it is, and I have a feeling he doesn’t either.

Bev drives me UP THE WALL! OMG someone take her out. She pretty much runs the town and the sad part is everyone in the town knows it, but they do NOTHING to stop her. UGH!

First of all, she’s been carrying around rat poison and I feel like that might have something to do with the cat deaths. Then Joe’s dog dies from poison… I have no doubt it was Bev. Even the new Sherriff isn’t dumb, he’s a smart man, he knows what she’s capable of.  

Next, she has this religious break down when the Sherriff, who is a practising Muslim, wants to know why, in a public school, the kids are being forced to read scripture. He tries to tell her, what if he forced her to read the Koran and she goes in circles about the Bible and oh my I couldn’t stand it. She kept completely missing the point.

We are now being introduced to exposition of Father Paul in a confessional and it’s like he knew what was going to happen before it happened. Now, something is happening to him, he passed out at mass and he’s having coughing spells… interesting. Damn, he has this crazy episode and we truly think he’s dead because he’s spurting blood… but after this interlude where I’m not even entirely sure it means because he talks about being sent to the island to save them from evil. We see him enter a tomb, fight this weird bird (demon?) thing then leave the tomb… and then he awakens. Is he supposed to be Jesus?!?!? 

Ok, definitely NOT Jesus… he’s a freakin’ vampire.

After he’s been brought back from wherever he was, brought back by an angel, he burns in the sun.

Then after Joe has a good day where he doesn’t drink because he’s on the road to recovery he goes to Father Paul to just have a talk. Father says he’s proud of him; they embrace and Father doesn’t let go… when Joe tries to break free he bashes his head against a shelf and bleeds out. Instead of trying to save him… Father Paul drinks and eats his blood/brains.

The fact that Bev is so quick to defend Father Paul after she finds him with Joe is weird. There is also a side jab that he has an uncanny resemblance to the priest before him, Father Pruitt… that he could be his son. 

Then, Erin a girl who grew up with Riley and has just recently returned to the island too, she was pregnant, but now all of a sudden her body is showing that she’s never been pregnant at all. Super strange.

This is becoming a theme, a tall skeleton-like man, wearing a long coat and top hat, shows up in all of these anthologies. This time he’s the one who brought Father Paul back, and is feeding his vampire ass… maybe he was always a vampire… maybe he’s the one who killed all those cats so Father Paul could drink?!?

And now they’ve got Riley!!!

I have to say that shot when that creature flies to Riley was hella spooky, very effective.   

So Riley has become one of those vampire things, great. Once he wakes up he has a talk with Father Paul and that’s when we find out that he is really Father Pruitt, the previous priest. I figured it out just a little bit before that scene (which is a loooong exposition scene, ugh).

Sarah, the town doctor, her mother has been frail, losing her memory and can’t get out of bed, but with each passing episode she’s been getting better and better, now at this point when she goes to midnight mass (which it makes sense why they have mass at midnight… he can’t go out in the day) she runs out saying ‘that’s not the man I know’ speaking of the priest… it got me thinking what if Father Paul is Father Pruitt.

I also got that thought because she drank the blood of Christ when Father Paul would go to give her a private mass. After she drank that she kept getting younger, and that’s when I realized that happened to Father Pruitt.

I still don’t how Bev plays a role in all this? Like she just accepts this vampire way of life as if it’s part of the Bible.

When it becomes dark he takes Erin out on a boat in the middle of the water to tell her everything that has happened to him. She thinks he’s having some sort of break and doesn’t believe him. It’s then when the sun comes up that he freakin’ burns to a crisp… so now what?

Easter Mass is upon us and something is about to go down because Bev, Father Paul and two others they have recruited to keep in on this secret have stopped people from leaving the island, and turning off the power and cell service… these people are trapped!

So I was right with my theory, whatever is in that ‘wine’ is doing something to everyone who has drank it (I didn’t realize so many did drink it).

Everyone is pretty much forced to midnight mass and guess who shows up… that ‘angel’ vampire/bat thing. They are all going to die, we see those cups and the rat poison.

Oh my they aren’t dead, they become vampires! Now they’re trying to eat each other holy shit! Sarah’s mother shoots Father Paul and that vampire thing takes her away.

Everyone who didn’t drink it find Bev and they shoot her and flee.

The end is near. Everyone who hasn’t drank the Kool-Aid pretty much, have to run for their lives, trying to burn down all the buildings on the island so that when the sun comes up these vampire things won’t have anywhere to hide.

I get now why Bev has been so okay with all this… she gets to be one to choose who lives or dies… her greatest pleasure. I love what Riley’s mother says to her, that she’s not a good person and that God doesn’t love her any more than anyone else and it bothers and upsets Bev to think God loves Riley the same as her.

Sarah’s mother comes back, from being taken away by that flying archangel. We find out then that she and Father Paul (who she calls John) love each other and that he’s really Sarah’s father. You can see how this has sat with him all these years. When Bev figures it out because she thinks he is the one to help her choose who will be saved, she is disgusted with him and turns on him so fast.

He then tells everyone to find sanctuary in the church as God loves everyone equally and shouldn’t be chosen, that’s when he comes face-to-face with Sarah. He tells her he’s proud of her and wished he’d gotten to know her; it’s a sweet moment, but only lasts a second because she’s shot. He wants to save her, but she refuses.

Her parents take he to her favourite place and they help burn the church down.   

As soon as the last building has been burned the town starts to snap out of this daze they’ve been living under and Bev is beside herself because doesn’t know what to do; people who were with her are deserting her.

Watching her try to dig a hole as the sun comes up was hilarious; it was satisfying to watch her burn though.

It was sad to see the rest of the town burn; it was really bittersweet because you saw so many people who love each other hold each other as they go, so it was sweet in that sense.

It looks like only the sheriff, his son, Riley’s brother and Lisa are the only ones who made it out.

The way it ended with Lisa saying she couldn’t feel her legs anymore was actually really good because we now know that whatever power this thing had over the island has been broken and things will go back to normal… or well as normal as it can be now that their home is completely destroyed.

This show was interesting; it was slow but it was also left me hanging every episode. It was also a good seven episodes long so it didn’t drag out; it set out what it accomplished. It was highly religious, but also really spooky and dealt with the questions about the afterlife that we still can’t answer. But it did a really good job of pointing out that God doesn’t pick and choose who he loves, which I thought was a good lesson to take out of it.