Warning: spoilers abound!
I thought I liked this show. At least enough to watch the whole season through. But the more I thought about it, stewing over the elements that bothered me, from the ableism to a disappointing plot, the more I realized I hated nearly everything about it.
The premise of this show is interesting on the surface. A halo, gifted by an angel, is passed down throughout the centuries to “Warrior Nuns” whose mission is to fight evil. And a secret order of nuns trained for combat led by this Warrior Nun, or halo-bearer, as they’re called, was something I could get behind.
At the start of the series, the halo is temporarily inserted into a corpse which then brings said corpse back to life. This is our main character, Ava. And here comes the first problem with this series. Apparently, in life, Ava was a quadriplegic and, due to the mystical healing powers of the halo, is magically cured after her resurrection.
Why?! Why was this necessary? Aside from the fact that magical disability cures is a shitty trope to begin with, Ava being previously disabled had absolutely no bearing on the plot other than for her to be terrified of going back to that state. If they wanted a disabled main character, they could’ve made it work. And having Ava’s original cause of death basically being a “mercy” kill? Seriously? (On the bright side, they painted the nun that had murdered her as a villain, so take that as you will).
Assuming one can get past that glaring example of ableism, the plot itself is... muddled, at best. We have multiple subplots trying to converge together but a lot of times ends up fizzling out. Ava makes “friends” with a group who squat in rich people houses which lasts maybe three episodes (in a ten episode season) and a love interest that disappears from the story after he witnesses a “demon” attack. That last part is understandable, but I kind of thought the character would be a little more involved. And I’ll get to why “demon” is in quotes soon - I am not happy.
We also have a handful of human characters set up to be potential antagonists only for the show to constantly go back and forth on whether the viewer should be rooting for them. A cardinal appeared to be the true antagonist for a while only for it later to be revealed a priest was the traitor all along (I’ll admit I didn’t see that coming, but that twist in itself was a bit of a letdown for me). Then we have a scientist, Jillian Salvius, who... you know what, I’m still not entirely sure how to describe what she was doing. She was trying to create a portal to another dimension where there was no sickness or death in order to save her ill son (which may or may not be another one for the ableism bingo card, but I’m not 100% sure about that). Jillian’s entire motivation & backstory sounded weak to me, but whatever. Honestly, the whole storyline with Jillian could have easily been cut and hardly affected the show at all.
Anyway, Jillian’s work on this portal seemed to be a central conflict of the story until it wasn’t. Then the conflict became about destroying an angel’s bones (the angel who gifted the halo) so demons would stop coming to the human world which... ok. And now we’re at the part where I explain why “demon” was in quotes earlier.
By about episode 7, there had been a series of less than spectacular reveals which prompted me to write this in my notes: “I swear if it turns out the halo’s actually from hell, I’ll hate this series - flipping things like this is so cliche at this point (I’m gonna lose it if it turns out the demons were angels the whole time because that would literally make no sense)”. Then, at the beginning of the final episode, I made this note: “I’m still gonna be pissed if it turns out all the demons are actually from heaven. I’m gonna be even more pissed if these creatures turn out to just be aliens and have nothing to do with faith.” Guess what happened 🙂
Yep, the angel was not an angel, but another being (a thief, in fact) who tricked humans into thinking he was an angel. And the “demons” that could take physical form? The rightful owners of the halo from another dimension. (There was another type of “demon” but those turned out to be servants of the “angel” 🙄) I hate twists like these! And, yeah, I am thoroughly pissed.
Just to be clear, I’m not offended. You want to butcher the mythology of a historically oppressive religion to tell a story, go right ahead - and I say that as a Christian myself. But don’t spend a majority of your story setting up heaven, hell, angels, and demons as central players only to pull the rug out at the last minute to essentially say, “Lol, pitiful humans misunderstood.” All you manage to do with that is the rare combination of disappointing and infuriating people at once.
Maybe I’m the only one who felt this way by the end, but if you leave the viewer pissed instead of excited for the next season, you’ve failed as a show.
0/10 👎👎👎
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