The slow-burn monstrous horror of Midnight Mass and its chilling story of angels, demons,
guilt and redemption, leads to an explosive ending that will leave you thinking about
the show long after it's finished.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm explaining everything about
the ending of Midnight Mass, some crucial details you might have missed, and why that
final scene doesn't quite mean what you think it does.
Obviously, spoilers ahead, so take care.
To fully understand the fiery finale, we need to go back to the origin of the miracles and
mysteries that occur on Crockett Island after Father Paul arrives.
Paul, as we discover in the third episode, is actually the island's original priest,
the elderly Monsignor John Pruitt who's been transformed into his younger self after a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
During his trip, one day Pruitt was separated from his group and ended up outside the city,
wandering on the road to Damascus.
As a sandstorm hit, he sought shelter in a cave where he was attacked by a winged vampire
who bit his neck and began to consume his blood.
Before the priest died though, the creature pierced its own skin and fed his blood to
Pruitt.
This is my blood.. ..shed for you and for all so that sins may
be forgiven.
These words are from The Last Supper and are a crucial part of the Catholic Mass and doctrine
which states that the bread and wine offered during communion become the actual body and
blood of Christ.
By saying this about Pruitt receiving the creature's blood, Paul shows that he believes
it's a holy sacrament equivalent to the blood of Christ.
Pruitt believed it was an angel – notice the Halo which he sees form around its head.
Paul calls the wound the creature makes on its wrist a stigmata, referencing the wounds
inflicted on Jesus when he was crucified.
Also notice that the wood carvings illustrating Pruitt's experience are numbered from 1 to
14 in Roman numerals, a nod to the Stations of the Cross, images often found in churches
which depict the events of Jesus's crucifixion and death.
When Pruitt awakened he decided to take the name Paul, in reference to Saul who became
Paul when he experienced a life-changing event on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus that
converted him to one of Christianity's most renowned apostles.
Similar to Saul, Father Paul believes it's his duty to spread the miracle of what happened
to him to the whole world and he begins by smuggling the vampire back to Crockett Island
in a trunk.
On the island, Paul begins to add the creature's blood to the communion wine, and little by
little those who take communion find their physical ailments slipping away.
Riley's mother no longer needs glasses and his father's back gets better.
Even more miraculously, the paralysed Leeza finds she can now walk, while Sarah Gunning's
mother Mildred regains her mental faculties and begins to de-age incredibly.
After a while on the island, Paul starts to feel sick, then suddenly keels over and dies.
A few minutes later, he comes back to life; however, he now discovers that sunlight burns
his skin.
He's also no longer interested in regular food, his body instead craving human blood,
which leads to Joe Collie's death and and Paul's next bloody meal.
Later, Paul discusses with Riley whether he felt any remorse for his part in Joe's death
and justifies his lack of guilt by quoting something Beverley showed him in the Bible.
The graces of the Holy Spirit rained down on me..
..cleansed my conscience, for I had simply done His will.
The priest's appeal to the Bible as justification for his actions shows how misguided he's become
and is a warning about those who use religion as a reason to justify terrible behaviour
and atrocities.
By contrast, Riley demonstrates the ability to avoid giving in to temptation when he goes
out on the boat with Erin.
Riley's resistance here matches his own struggle with alcohol addiction and how he genuinely
felt culpable and remorseful and took responsibility for the death of the girl he killed in the
car accident.
You struggled.. ..with what happened
With what I did.
Paul however twists his religion to suit his own purposes while making out that he's somehow
doing God's will; and together with the wickedly holier-than-thou
Beverley Keane, puts into action a terrible final plan for the Easter Vigil.
At the Midnight Mass, Beverley distributes cups with a lethal poison while Paul urges
everyone to drink so they can die and be reborn.
Let your earthly body die, so that your divine body can awaken.
Anyone who's already taken communion since Paul's arrival on the island will have drunk
some of the Angel's blood and so they will resurrect soon after dying.
In the chaotic events that follow, the reborn vampires attack any still-living humans as
they try to flee the church.
The events of the vigil bring to mind the real-world Jonestown Massacre in 1978 when
members of the Peoples Temple cult committed mass suicide after their leader Jim Jones
exhorted everyone to drink a poison-laced Kool-Aid-like drink.
The bloodbath at the church spills out onto the rest of the island with Bev encouraging
the new-born vampires to kill or convert anyone left.
She orders every building to be burned so there'll be no refuge come sunrise except
for the church and rec centre, and she sets herself up as the moral arbiter of who's worthy
to be allowed in and who should perish in the sunlight.
By this point, Paul has reunited with Mildred who's been reborn after being killed by the
Angel, and he confesses that his real reason for
bringing the Angel to the island was selfish as he wanted a second chance at life with
Mildred and their daughter Sarah.
Millie understands but counters that his wish goes against the natural order of things.
We lived our lives.
She grew up and we faded away, and that's how it's supposed to work.
The cost of his choice is stark as not only have the vampire mob run riot over the island,
but when Paul finds his daughter in the church about to burn it down, she's suddenly shot
by Sturge.
Paul tries to bring her back with his blood before she dies but she spits it out rejecting
the cursed resurrection that would come with it.
Paul fully understands the horror of the unnatural force he unleashed and with Millie burns down
the church.
The rec centre goes up in flames next thanks to Sherriff Hassan and Erin who've doused
it with petrol and, significantly, it's Ali who sets it alight,
as like Ed and Annie Flynn and some of the others who turned into vampires, he's able
to resist the urges that come with it and he does what he can to stop the ghoulish enterprise
even if it means his own death.
Erin in the meantime is attacked by the Angel, but as it feeds on her she steadily slices
the creature's wings tearing large holes into them so it can no longer fly properly,
with the hope that it won't be able to reach the mainland 30 miles away before sunrise.
This moment was foreshadowed during her talk with Riley about how, when Erin was a child,
her mother wanted to clip the wings of a pair of pet doves so they wouldn't fly away.
She said, "Everyone gets their wings clipped at some
point."
With the Rec centre burning, everyone apart from Bev Keane accepts the fate that awaits
them, and Sturge owns up to the horrors he's participated in and asks for forgiveness.
Will you forgive me, kid?
I'll forgive you.
Paul asks Millie for forgiveness and tosses his priest's collar away;
and, as the remaining islanders await the dawn, they sing the hymn "Nearer, My God,
to Thee", a song often associated with funerals and which some have said was played on The
Titanic as it sunk.
Hassan and Ali also pray on the beach until Hassan's overcome by his wounds and his son
burns up.
Bev Keane refuses to give in right to the bitter end as she tries to dig a shelter in
the sand before going up in flames like everyone else.
It's ironic that her second and final death is burning to a crisp given how she decided
to burn down the island and what she quoted from the book of Revelation about how true
sinners would die: "As for the cowardly..
..and all of the liars, their place will be in the lake that burns..
..which is the second death."
Bev, of course, was a huge hypocrite and coward; notice how at the Easter Vigil she didn't
drink the poison herself and hid in the back of the building as the others became vampires.
Unlike the rest of the islanders who find solace together in their final moments, she's
unable to accept responsibility for what's to come and dies screaming in anger.
The only two people left alive by the end are Leeza and Warren, Riley's younger brother.
They escaped the massacre at the church without dying and being resurrected as vampires, so
they're able to survive the sunrise.
The very last words of the finale are Leeza saying she can no longer feel her legs, meaning
the healing effect of the Angel blood has worn off and she's paralyzed again.
Now, initially I assumed this implied the Angel had died in the sunrise;
however, in an interview with The Wrap, the show's creator Mike Flanagan has said that's
not exactly the case, although he seems to acknowledge that it might be a valid interpretation
of the ending.
Flanagan said the reason Leeza was becoming paralysed again was because:
the "concentration in her blood had begun to tip back.."
and that they "didn't want it to confirm about The Angel, in […] that you can never kill
fanaticism, it'll always kind of come back."
What Flanagan is referring to about the concentration in Leeza's blood tipping back is the scientific
explanation that the island's doctor, Sarah Gunning, came up with for what was going on
with the blood tests she carried out.
Sarah discovered that Erin and her mother's blood only had relatively small amounts of
an active substance which she saw burn up whenever it was exposed to sunlight.
And she hypothesised that if the amounts of this substance were small enough in a person's
body and they stopped receiving any more of it, they would eventually excrete it from
their system.
I think when we ingest poison, alcohol, whatever, before a certain point, if we stop taking
it in, maybe our body can push it back out.
This appears to be what happened with Leeza as now that she's gone some time without communion,
the effects of the Angel blood seem to be wearing off hence the return of her paralysis.
By the way, if you want to know why Father Paul was able to wander around in the daylight
for the first two episodes without burning up, it's because he never actually died in
the cave.
The Angel gave him blood to heal his wounds while he was still alive, and because he hadn't
died at that point and been reborn, he was able to move around in the daylight.
According to Flanagan, this was part of the Angel's plan so that Paul could help the creature
get out of the cave.
Flanagan also said that the reason for Paul's death in the third episode was because he'd
"taken in too much of the blood, [and it hit] that critical mass that Sarah talks about".
What I think Flanagan's referring to is Sarah's explanation that the Angel's blood is like
a virus, a parasite or a poison of sorts and that if it accumulates too much it can kill
you.
As a Catholic priest, Paul would be obliged to consume all the leftover communion wine
from every Mass, so he'd likely be drinking more of it than anyone else.
Of course, Flanagan's suggestion that the Angel isn't necessarily dead leaves the potential
for a follow-up second season if we assume that it did reach the mainland and find cover
before the dawn.
As bad as those cuts were, the Angel does have the power of self-healing, so although
it's a horrifying thought, it does leave the opportunity to pick up this story again should
Flanagan want to.
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So, what did you think of Midnight Mass and how it ended?
And do you think it's possible that the Angel survived?
Leave your thoughts and theories in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this, then a thumbs-up and a share are hugely appreciated.
And if you're a Mike Flanagan fan, tap left to check out all the easter eggs and hidden
ghosts in The Haunting of Bly Manor or tap right for something else you're sure to like.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!