Midnight Mass

0:00:04.2 Landry Ayres: Welcome to Pop & Locke. I’m Landry Ayres.

0:00:06.7 Natalie Dowzicky: And I’m Natalie Dowzicky. Mike Flanagan has spooked us before at Hill House and Bly Manor, but his most personal and horrifying story takes place roughly an hour from the mainland on Crockett Island. The small fishing town of 127 people experiences miraculous events and frightening omens after the arrival of a charismatic, yet mysterious, young priest. And here to chat with us today about Midnight Mass is libertarianism.org’s own host of Building Tomorrow, Paul Matzko.

0:00:36.3 Paul Matzko: Thank you for having me.

0:00:38.1 Natalie Dowzicky: And criminal justice reform activist and crochet extraordinaire, Zuri Davis.

0:00:42.9 Zuri Davis: Hi, thank you for having me.

0:00:46.1 Landry Ayres: So this series, this story, just like the sacred text that it owes a lot of its plot beats and themes to is, I think, and I think a lot of people would assume, ostensibly a story about forgiveness. What do you think it is actually saying about that theme? Is it enough? Is it too much? Is it misunderstood? Where does it end up by the end?

0:01:15.6 Paul Matzko: It’s interesting, right? There’s a number of really crucial themes that are brilliantly weaved throughout the story. So there is a theme of forgiveness, it opens with… Spoiler alerts here, I guess it is the opening scene. So, a spoiler…

[chuckle]

0:01:29.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Our whole show is about spoilers at this point.

0:01:32.5 Paul Matzko: The whole, it’s all spoilers. [laughter] But it opens with Riley, our ostensible protagonist, at least for a while. He’s been in a drunk driving incident. He’s killed a girl because of his bad decisions and his addiction, and so it opens with his need for forgiveness. He’s haunted by her specter when he goes to sleep. And then arguably in the end, when he dies, in episode five, he finds that forgiveness. He sees her face in the seconds before her death. And so there is that theme, but it’s interesting, ’cause it’s not necessarily quite as straightforward as, this is just the story about forgiveness. There is an arc for his character, but I’m not sure Erin Greene’s arc is about forgiveness. It’s about self-​sacrifice. She is a Christ-​type in the story that she cradles the vampire, but we’re really just throwing all the spoilers out right here at the beginning.

[chuckle]

0:02:35.7 Paul Matzko: She cradles the vampire like a lover to distract it as she slices its wings in order to save, well, the world potentially, everyone in the mainland, from the vampire flying. And she doesn’t try to flee. Riley wants her to flee, to take the canoe and go, and she stays explicitly like, “We’re… This is probably gonna kill us, but we’re gonna try to save the island and save the world.” So yeah, there is a forgiveness through line in some of the arcs, but I wouldn’t say the whole thing is necessarily about forgiveness.

0:03:08.2 Zuri Davis: Pretty much echoing what Paul said, I think probably the larger story, is how we rectify the bad things that happen in life with our faith. So one thing I really appreciated, was when Sheriff Hassan, who’s the Muslim sheriff on an island full of Catholics, he’s telling his son like, “Miracles don’t work that way. It’s not like God preferring some people over your mother, who was a very devout Muslim, and prayed until the day she died, and still unfortunately passed away from cancer.” But it’s very much so that’s like them trying to rectify the bad things that happen. So I forget the character, but he’s the guy who lives in the trailer. All I know, is that he…

0:04:01.2 Landry Ayres: Joe.

0:04:01.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Joe.

0:04:01.4 Paul Matzko: Joe.

0:04:01.4 Zuri Davis: Had a beautiful Cane Corso, Joe, I cared so much about the dog.

0:04:06.2 Natalie Dowzicky: I know.

0:04:06.5 Zuri Davis: I was so ready to fight.

0:04:07.3 S?: Oh, don’t bring it up.

0:04:08.3 Zuri Davis: I was so upset.

0:04:08.3 Natalie Dowzicky: They always kill the dog first, guys. In every movie.

0:04:13.6 Zuri Davis: I was so mad.

0:04:14.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Every TV show. [chuckle]

0:04:15.1 Zuri Davis: No, and it was really disrespectful too. I was like, “I’m turning this off.”

[chuckle]

0:04:19.4 Zuri Davis: But just like Joe’s, the accident that led to, golly, all of these character names…

0:04:26.1 Natalie Dowzicky: There’s so many.

0:04:26.4 Zuri Davis: Are escaping me. The accident…

0:04:27.3 S?: Leeza.

0:04:27.4 Zuri Davis: That led to her paralyzation, and just pretty much everyone’s dealing with serious… They’re dealing with life, and it’s really hard sometimes when you are religious, because it is like, “Okay, God, where are you? Aren’t you gonna swoop in? Aren’t you gonna make this all better?” But as we learn, and as I personally believe, God doesn’t work that way, and just rectifying the bad things that happen, and how your faith comforts you, or provides answers in those moments.

0:05:08.5 Paul Matzko: Well, and to your point, Erin Greene loses her baby, and she’s dealing with the trauma of that in, what I think is the pivotal scene in the show, the couch conversation between her and Riley. That’s her trying to process like, “What does this mean? Is there… ” Or when Riley sits down with Father Paul for an AA meeting and is like Father… Well, Father Paul says, “What do you want me to say? Is it that everything works for your good ultimately? That’s kind of hollow-​sounding.” So it… The show wants to dispel the easy simple answers to why life sucks, right?

0:05:44.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Right. [chuckle]

0:05:44.8 Paul Matzko: Everyone’s going through something really terrible in their life, like traumatic, terrifying, horrible. And they’re all in their own way trying to grapple with that. And so yeah, I think that’s definite, that to me is, that’s a through line that runs through almost every story. And some of them aren’t capable of grappling with it. Bev isn’t, ultimately. She can’t handle that.

0:06:08.2 Landry Ayres: Right. Oh, my gosh, we’ll talk about that.

[chuckle]

0:06:12.2 Landry Ayres: But it just makes me curious, and I don’t wanna say like, “It’s just about forgiveness,” because that is reducted right there.

0:06:18.2 Paul Matzko: But it is in there. You’re right, you’re right.

0:06:18.8 Landry Ayres: But there is… Right, it’s in there, but I… And I think part of it is less about… It’s about forgiving the self, and it doesn’t really grapple as much with institutions, which I think is partially just because it doesn’t seem Flanagan is really interested in that. And that’s fine. I think we get a lot of that type of criticism specifically of the Catholic Church from other types of media. So I was shocked that there wasn’t a little bit of it at least, and so I was a little bit wondering if that was gonna come in, but there’s a turn at the very, very end when we get Erin Greene’s monologue as she is dying…

0:07:04.8 Natalie Dowzicky: So many monologues.

0:07:06.0 Landry Ayres: Having just been… [laughter] We’ll talk about how many monologues there are.

0:07:09.0 Zuri Davis: Too many, too many.

0:07:09.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh, my God.

0:07:10.1 Landry Ayres: I was… Oh, man. I haven’t heard that many Bible verses [laughter] in a row in many years.

0:07:19.6 Zuri Davis: You don’t watch Pure Flix movies, obviously. [laughter] I’m very obsessed. I… Just a quick asterisk. I grew up Evangelical, at Church of Christ, wasn’t anything for a couple of years, then converted to Catholicism and…

0:07:36.4 Landry Ayres: Whoa!

0:07:36.7 Zuri Davis: I have such an obsession with Evangelical movies. You have no idea. They’re so bad and corny, it’s like sci-​fi movies. [laughter]

0:07:46.3 Landry Ayres: When I tell you, Zuri that Paul on this very call has been pitching Pure Flix films to us…

0:07:53.2 Paul Matzko: I do.

0:07:53.3 Zuri Davis: Yes.

0:07:53.2 Landry Ayres: For this show…

0:07:53.3 Natalie Dowzicky: For so long.

0:07:56.1 Landry Ayres: For a year at least.

0:07:57.3 Zuri Davis: Oh, yes.

0:07:57.4 Landry Ayres: You have just made his day. And he’s… [laughter]

0:08:00.1 Zuri Davis: We need to do the God’s Not Dead one.

0:08:01.7 Paul Matzko: Yes, I keep telling them to. [laughter] They need to.

0:08:03.2 Zuri Davis: The second one, oh my god. That’s like my favorite.

0:08:06.8 Landry Ayres: Well, now we have the guests for it.

0:08:08.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Great.

0:08:09.0 Landry Ayres: So you can make it happen.

0:08:09.1 Paul Matzko: Well and it’s…

0:08:09.2 Zuri Davis: Yeah, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, Paul.

0:08:11.7 Paul Matzko: There has been that like the Pure Flixification of Netflix. So one of the interesting things about the success of the show is that it doesn’t get made in a pre-​streaming era. ‘Cause it doesn’t work as a film, he tried to make it a film and then…

0:08:25.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Right, he did.

0:08:25.7 Paul Matzko: It’s like 150 pages in by episode two, and he’s like, “This doesn’t work.” But there’s no way someone spends this kind of money on a religious mini-​series, horror vampire film. But now there’s such a demand for content and you can find a global audience that used to be niche, but now it’s big enough that anything flies. I mean South Korean child horror, dystopian future squid game, to troll hunters in Norway, you can find an audience somewhere. And so this gets made, but what’s interesting is Netflix is putting lots of bets down on underserved religious audiences. There’s that camp movie that came out earlier this year. It’s not very good, but they sing.

0:09:12.4 Landry Ayres: It’s got Steven Curtis Chapman in it. [laughter] I’m diving in.

0:09:16.6 Zuri Davis: Also Greenleaf.

0:09:17.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh yeah.

0:09:18.8 Zuri Davis: But I wanna push back before it gets like… I wanna push back and say that, save for a couple of parts, this is one of my favorite religious pieces of entertainment in a long time. So much so that by the end of it, by the last episode, I was just like, “I need to re-​watch Silence.” That is my favorite Christian movie of life, and this is very much… It’s very on the nose, obviously in a lot of places, but I think the conversations that it starts, it’s very much on that Silence level for me, and I want to separate this. [laughter]

0:10:00.4 Landry Ayres: Yeah, sure. And I don’t think anyone who comes to it, save for a very, a small group of people would come away with the same type of vibe. It’s not… It’s on the nose, but it’s not preachy, especially like I said when you get to the end with Erin Greene’s revelation about what death is and what life is, and you get this… It’s an interesting Pantheistic cosmology take. Especially from two people, who I think it’s safe to say, are probably a little bit more religious than Natalie and I, what did you make…

0:10:38.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I’m not religious, so this is… [laughter]

0:10:39.5 Landry Ayres: Of that turn? I was not expecting that, of all the things.

0:10:45.8 Paul Matzko: Well, I suppose the way I process it, ’cause I’m an Evangelical, and I think is that it’s… So one of the things, one of the silver linings of growing up as someone who didn’t feel very well-​represented in film and cinema, and I still don’t feel… Pure Flix doesn’t represent what I feel like either ’cause it’s all this simplistic pablum. It’s just this hollow like, “Oh, the good triumphs and the wicked… ” It’s like the God’s Not Dead movie, where anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus gets killed, hit by a truck literally, or gets cancer. [laughter]

0:11:22.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh my God. That’s terrible.

0:11:23.0 Zuri Davis: It’s like American Christian martyr complex, when there are real Christian martyrs in other countries.

0:11:29.0 Paul Matzko: Yeah, exactly. [laughter] That’s right. Yeah. And so that doesn’t feel representative either, but you grow up watching movies in which faith, especially Christian faith, but not just Christian faith. It’s true for, I think Jews and Muslims too, is represented as this thin artifice, this window dressing, and it’s just like, “Oh, we need a bad guy, how do we make them just immediately read as bad? We’ll make them like a religious zealot.” And it never goes… It’s never more than skin deep, and they don’t feel real. I mean they make religious people bad. They do in Midnight Mass. Bev Keane is a horrible person. She’s our main antagonist. She’s worse than the vampire in some ways. Even Father Paul is… He’s this complicated… Has a redemptive turn at the end or whatever, a sympathetic turn, but he’s this complicated… They all feel very real and deep and robust and human.

0:12:28.0 Paul Matzko: But here’s the silver lining of not feeling represented in film and TV, is that you get really good at reading between the lines and that extracting value from things even though you don’t see yourself in them. And not everyone gets that experience. Like there was one film critic who wrote for Vox where she’s like, “I don’t feel represented in this movie,” and it’s like, not every movie you have to feel represented in in order for you to extract meaning in something of interest and value from it. So it doesn’t bother me at all that no one in this show is… I don’t know an Evangelical Protestant like I grew up with, but that’s fine. There’s people… [laughter] And there are people of faith from across traditions.

0:13:12.2 Paul Matzko: Arguably our most traditionally religious person, the sheriff, he’s Muslim, and he’s this deeply sympathetic character, and that was… That resonated with me. You have authentic people of faith represented, and that’s plenty. So it didn’t bother me at all. I don’t know about you, Zuri.

0:13:28.4 Zuri Davis: Yeah, so I will say the… Nothing bothered me in the show up until the last monologue, [chuckle] because… The reason why it bothered me was because it came from Erin, and one, it was extremely out of character for the way that she reacted to losing the baby because of the vampire’s blood and the way she spoke with Riley. It was just so like… It was such like a hard left turn, of like, “Okay, you… ” If Riley said that when he died, it would have made sense but for her to say it, I was just like, “Okay, come on.” But one thing… I think maybe the reason why it maybe it doesn’t bother me, it just saddens me a little bit, ’cause I know that Mike Flanagan, he has a very complicated relationship with Catholicism, and I guarantee for the reasons I stopped being Church of Christ. Had I grown up Catholic, like I probably would’ve been in Mike Flanagan’s shoes, and you can see where he misses church tradition, like him giving such reverence to the mass in every single episode.

0:14:45.7 Zuri Davis: And him being true to the mass up until the Easter Vigil and purposefully going out of his way to show that it’s disordered [chuckle] by changing up the vigil and what’s supposed to happen. You can tell that he really misses that part of himself, but I went through one of the things that he wrote about the show and just like to give some background. He was a altar server, went to mass all the time, and then in college started asking questions, started to realize he really didn’t know as much about his faith as he thought. He… It wasn’t his faith, it was just something that he grew up with, which is understandable, and everyone should go through that. That should be encouraged. But the problem is, I think that Mike thinks that some of his beliefs are really antithetical to Catholicism, and save for that last monologue, which is kind of antithetical, some of the other things he believes are not… The church also teaches those. So I think maybe the last monologue made me sad in that I feel like Mike thinks that he’s very divorced from the church and that the church won’t accept him for who he is. Which is understandable, ’cause a lot of Catholics are awful people. You just have to be on Catholic Twitter for two seconds to realize how annoying so many of us are.

[laughter]

0:16:19.2 Zuri Davis: But the tradition of the saints in church teaching, I feel like they really back up more of what Mike believes. One of the things I wanted to point out was when he does talk about… Or when Sheriff Hassan talks about miracles and he’s like, “God doesn’t… God’s not like a magician,” pretty much. In the article that Mike wrote about Midnight Mass, he was talking about his personal beliefs about miracles, and he said he doesn’t believe in the way miracles are described in the Bible. They’re not these big transformative things. They’re like everyday things. So he talks about miracles of parenthood, miracles of creation, of growth, of forgiveness, and it’s just like, “Mike, there is a whole saint… Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower, who believes in the same thing. So I included one of her quotes in the show notes, but she has one quote that’s like, “Everything is grace.” And just her whole… The whole reason why she became a saint was because she very much found the good in doing small things, not these big transformative… She wasn’t a Saint Joan of Arc character, where she was like fighting in the military for Jesus and all that. [chuckle]

0:17:40.7 Zuri Davis: She was doing small, little things to show love and to be love, and it’s just I wish someone had taken Mike aside and been like, “Hey, you’re not weird for thinking that. You’re still Catholic and it’s fine.” So I don’t know. If he’s listening to this podcast, [chuckle] which he may, I don’t know, but Mike you have a Catholic group that believes you [chuckle] and will accept you for who you are, and you don’t have to feel like… I don’t know, it just… You could really see… I promise I’m wrapping this up.

0:18:19.1 Natalie Dowzicky: No, you’re fine.

0:18:19.9 Zuri Davis: I’m talking forever. You can really see his personal disagreements and discomforts in certain parts of the show, but it’s just like “Mike, you’re fine. Your idea… ”

[laughter]

0:18:32.4 Natalie Dowzicky: You’re doing great, buddy.

0:18:34.1 Zuri Davis: “You’re okay. You don’t have to feel bad.”

0:18:37.0 Paul Matzko: It’s interesting ’cause I had a very different reaction hearing the final monologue. And part of it’s that you’re right, it does feel a bit of a left turn, if you just look at the character, Erin Greene’s character and its development. It comes out of nowhere, but as a autobiographical, Mike Flanagan’s autobiographical exploration of doubt in faith and whatnot, it makes a lot of sense. So on the couch, and they actually literally replay the couch conversation as part of it, she sits down as she’s dying with Riley a second time. But on the couch, they both have this different conception of what death and passage into the afterlife is like. And notably, this is, I think if there is a core message, a religious message for Flanagan, it’s a line from Erin where she says, “What happens to us when we die?” And Riley says, “I don’t know, and I don’t trust anyone who tells us they do.” So it comes from this place of this is unknowable, but Flanagan expresses a combined hope that one or the other or both, or whatever, are correct. And so one is a theistic view, it’s initially Erin that… And it’s not a literal puffy clouds and angel cherubs floating around. But that it’s this connection…

0:19:50.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Or angels that are not vampires you mean?

0:19:52.9 Paul Matzko: Angels are not vampires, non-​vampiric angels. But it’s this feeling of love, this presence, this connection with the divine with each other. That more theistic vision, with a pantheist or pantheistic vision from Riley we’re all… We combine back to the universe in which we came and this thing we call God is just the universal connection. And so they both have this expression of hope that death isn’t the end, that it’s not meaningless that it’s just all done and gone, but that there’s a connection to something greater beyond it. But then what’s fascinating is that it switches them, right? So when he dies, he gets a vision of connection, forgiveness, redemption, in the five heartbeats between death and life on the boat as the sun rises. So he gets her hoped for ending and she gets his and she almost directly restates some of the bits from what he said in the couch before and I think that’s cool because it’s him saying he’s not taking a side. He’s not saying I’m a theist, I’m a pantheist and the pantheist thing is very much like Carl Sagan.

0:21:04.4 Paul Matzko: Our Blue Planet, it’s not a… Where it’s like this hope for connection, being part of something greater, but not expressed in traditional religious terms, but he flips them. I think that’s brilliant because it shows, first of all it signals that his uncertainty as a director, he’s not taking sides in this conversation. But he represents both faithfully and authentically and then sympathetically. So I thought that was… You’re right, it does not make sense if you just look at her character development, it does come out of left field. It also doesn’t make sense from a… If you were trying to read this as a declaration of doctrine or something, it doesn’t make sense either because one or the other, in theory, is supposed to be correct, right? In theory, both can’t both be correct and we got a peek into both of them passing to the other side and they just flipped and that’s a logical contradiction, but that’s not the point of the passage. So it’s funny I read that and I love it. Something else you mentioned that triggered a thought, which was actually, I think you said this earlier Landry, is that it’s a movie that’s deeply spiritual and equally deeply anti-​religious. So think of the characters in here who look the best, it’s all the religious outsiders…

0:22:21.6 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s what I was gonna say.

0:22:22.5 Paul Matzko: The people with different forms of deep faith, whether it’s Sheriff Hassan, whether it’s the doctor who is not religious at all, but she has a deep personal conviction in the power of reason and science. So you have all these different outsiders who… Or even Erin Greene, who has been not be welcome in your traditional Orthodox Christian circles ’cause she had a child out of…

0:22:49.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Wedlock.

0:22:49.8 Paul Matzko: Was it out of wedlock? Out of wedlock. She’s kind of a Mary Magdalene type character in this story, so she’s been expelled, she would not be welcome in a traditional… Okay, yeah, so she would not be welcome in the traditional religious circles, but she’s still a woman of deep, personal, powerful faith that propels her forward. So those are our sympathetic, the people outside of religious establishment, but people with personal, religious, spiritual faith. Whereas, yeah, organized church here… Man, the Catholic church as an institution does not come across so great in Midnight Mass.

0:23:25.3 Zuri Davis: Also on the point of the religious outsiders, so I appreciated that as a revert because I do very much value… Personally, I really care about what people who have left the church and what people who are outside of the church have to say about us because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what we think about ourselves, it matters how society sees us and it’s important to get their feedback to say, “Hey, there are some serious pitfalls here, you needed to work on this.” So I really appreciated the outsiders, I appreciated that little group, but also I did appreciate how they also weren’t the only group that had a good ending. It was really nice to see their endings, but it was also nice to see how the parishioners, save for Bev, like you could really tell how for Bev, her faith was just a weapon that she used to keep everyone around her in line and she was just a holy roller like holier than thou type of person. So her faith is not actually authentic, it’s just a weapon for her. But you see how the parishioners, they accepted their fate at the end and they sing a song that was comforting… Or they sang a hymn that was comforting. And it was also nice to see how just that difference in they weren’t… Their authenticity was on display and I appreciated that they were able to find comfort in that.

0:25:08.2 Paul Matzko: Could I do a riff on the song?

0:25:09.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Isn’t it Titanic? Isn’t it the Titanic song?

0:25:11.2 Paul Matzko: So, that Nearer…

0:25:11.2 Landry Ayres: You have been holding in this thing about Nearer, My God, to Thee. He’s been talking about this since he watched the show. So I have purposely not asked about it, I say let’s wind him up and let him go.

0:25:26.3 Paul Matzko: I even sing it in the, or the first bit of it in a team meeting the other day.

[laughter]

0:25:32.5 Landry Ayres: It’s true.

0:25:33.9 Paul Matzko: So I’ve had it on repeat on my speaker, just playing Nearer, My God, to Thee. So you can tell, and Flanagan has said that he grew up singing hymns and he appreciated that, that’s one of the things he missed when he left the church and…

0:25:46.4 Zuri Davis: Catholic hymns are trash though. [laughter]

0:25:47.9 Paul Matzko: But notably, Nearer, My God, to Thee is not a Catholic hymn, it’s actually a Unitarian, Protestant hymn. But you’re not wrong. One of my advisors, he was Episcopalian simply because it was more Catholic than the Catholic church in town because the Catholic church used all post-​Vatican II praise and worship songs, which he hated. So he wanted to go somewhere where they actually sang hymns. Anyway, that’s a whole… But, so Nearer, My God, to Thee is this… So it is fitting on every fricking level, just the perfect song. So it’s a real song, I sang it growing up in church, you might have as well. Zuri, I don’t know if in the Church of Christ if they sing, Nearer, My God, to Thee, but it was a great…

0:26:29.9 Zuri Davis: Oh, it’s very hymn heavy and you definitely hit that one.

0:26:33.6 Paul Matzko: And it’s a big funeral hymn, they used to sing at funerals of Presidents, when McKinley was shot and died in 1901, they played it at his. They actually arrange that every… They would have all the churches around the country at the same time all sing that song while his funeral procession was happening. So, it was a big… It’s what Amazing Grace is today, that even people who aren’t religious know the song, that was Nearer, My God, to Thee, back 100 years ago. The reason why most people know about it is because of the Titanic.

0:27:07.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Yes.

0:27:07.4 Paul Matzko: The band played on as the Titanic sinks.

0:27:08.2 Natalie Dowzicky: This is my Titanic moment. Ah much, much…

0:27:08.4 Paul Matzko: Yeah, they play it. And it’s this really moving moment, because in the face of death… You know all these people are gonna die, they’re playing the song Nearer, My God, to Thee to comfort and calm and find solace…

0:27:23.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Jack could fit on the door. Jack could fit on the door.

[chuckle]

0:27:25.3 Paul Matzko: Jack could fit on the door, but the door wouldn’t be buoyant enough, so they’d both be underwater.

0:27:30.9 Zuri Davis: Yeah, they should’ve put the life jacket underneath the door. I’ve watched Mythbusters’ episode.

[laughter]

0:27:37.2 Paul Matzko: And then they both could’ve survived the thing.

0:27:38.2 Natalie Dowzicky: I didn’t know there was a Mythbusters’ episode. Wow! I’m gonna go back and watch that. I’m writing it down.

0:27:44.5 Zuri Davis: Yes. Yeah.

0:27:44.6 Landry Ayres: We’re pivoting the episode to Mythbusters.

0:27:45.7 Paul Matzko: To Titanic Mythbusters, that’s what’s coming. So, on that level, so it’s a reference. They literally play it while he is getting scorched in the sun and not… So, there’s a boat tied, a very literal boat tied to the Titanic, but the story, the message of it, if you actually go and read the lyrics… So, here’s the second verse: “Though like the Wanderer, the sun gone down, darkness be over me, my rest a stone, yet in my dreams, I’d be Nearer, My God, to Thee.” So, we have all the core themes of the show. Like darkness and light, sundown, vampires, right? The sun’s gone down, darkness is over me, my rest a stone. So, in my dreams, I’d be nearer, my God, to thee dreaming. This show is all about dreams. It’s just… Yeah, dreams all the way down in this show.

0:28:41.1 Paul Matzko: So, we have Riley, this song is playing in his final confession. We have a lost man who’s wandering through life, yet in his dreams, haunted by the girl he killed in the car crash and then, finds redemption in the five heartbeats before his consciousness fades as he draws nearer to God in this story. So, it’s fitting on a thematic level. And the reference level it’s fitting on a message level. But what’s also interesting is it’s, I don’t think Flanagan or the Newton brother’s responsible for the sound track were thinking about this, but the author of Nearer, My God, to Thee, Sarah Flower Adams, was a Unitarian, a feminist, a pacifist, and a proto-​libertarian. She wrote pamphlets for the Anti-​Corn Law League. And it’s not an accident, because all those things: Feminist, Unitarian, pacifist, proto-​libertarian, Corn Law, they were all tied together.

0:29:34.9 Paul Matzko: They were all criticisms of corrupt institutional power, patriarchy, established church, which meant the Anglican church back then. It meant the war-​mongering of the British Empire, the economic powers that choked off the economy and starved people for profit. All those things were tied together. In fact, the Anglican church, the Unitarians, part of the Anti-​Corn Law tie was them saying that the Anglican church, had gotten fat and happy and was corrupt. And they were… They wanted to keep bread prices high because the church owned so many lands that were farmed, like tenant lands in the UK, that high bread prices were good for the church’s coffers.

0:30:19.8 Paul Matzko: So, in other words, her critique, Sarah Flower Adams, the critique in Nearer, My God, to Thee, it was a critique of the established church in the 19th Century being used in the movie that in many ways is a critique of… To use, I think this is Riley’s phrase, churches spreading like ticks, in one of his talks. Today, it’s the same critique. And so, it’s very… It’s anti-​establishmentarian. Well think about Nearer, My God, to Thee, it’s this personal relationship, unmediated by institutional church or even by clergy, between an individual believer and their God, whoever that may be. And so, the song is, it just… On every freaking level, it’s the best use of hymnody in a TV show I think I’ve ever seen. Bar none. So there you go.

[chuckle]

0:31:03.9 Zuri Davis: The only use of… I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

0:31:07.0 Paul Matzko: Well, every now and again, they’ll do that. Have you… It’s always a pet peeve of mine where they’ll take a hymn and slow it down and then play it over a creepy horror movie trailer.

0:31:19.1 Landry Ayres: And it’s a bunch of kids.

0:31:20.0 Paul Matzko: Be thou my vision. It’s like a creepy serial killer looking at… Yeah.

[laughter]

0:31:23.1 Landry Ayres: You know, I will say, I will hand it to the people that did the score for this. There is Power in the Blood would have been too on the nose. [laughter] I was waiting for it. I was waiting for it. I was like, “It’s gonna come, you just watch.” And then, it never did. And I was like, “Okay. Okay. I’ll give it to them.”

0:31:43.0 Zuri Davis: [0:31:43.4] ____.

0:31:47.0 Paul Matzko: I mean there was the use of another song they bring back a couple of times: Were You There When They Crucified My Lord, plays during Erin Greene’s death, which again is fitting ’cause it’s this self-​sacrificing moment where she gives her life and her blood very literally, in order to save humanity from the vampire spread. So again, it’s… I’m not sure. You don’t have to know the songs to appreciate the story, but if you know and you grew up singing those songs, it’s like, “Oh, that’s perfect.” It gives an extra layer.

0:32:23.8 Natalie Dowzicky: So, I have a very important vampire-​related question. Do you guys think this, the vampire works in this film as the monster? I’ll expose myself here. I grew up on the vampire dramas that of the late, early, or no, late 2000s.

0:32:44.8 Paul Matzko: Just say Twilight, just say it Natalie.

[laughter]

0:32:47.7 Natalie Dowzicky: [laughter] I did not say Twilight. I was a Vampire Diaries gal. [laughter] Anyway, the vampire… Okay, first of all, you couldn’t think that was an angel, right? No one in their right mind was like, “Oh yeah, this is an angel.” Right? I mean, yes, do we know what angels look like, okay? But the angel in my dreams does not look like that, okay?

0:33:11.3 Zuri Davis: Also angels are scary as… [laughter] And I, every single time, they’re like, “There are gonna be angels in heaven,” and I’m just like, “Do they have to be there?”

0:33:19.2 Landry Ayres: Especially ’cause they’re even scarier than what they’re, as they’re depicted in sacred texts. They’re way scarier than what was in this show. They’re like Lovecraftian…

0:33:30.6 Zuri Davis: They look like spiders with wings and I’m like… [laughter]

0:33:34.3 Landry Ayres: Yeah. The whole point is that, like we said, they’re filled with fear when you notice them because they’re somewhat incomprehensible to us. So there is a weird…

0:33:45.1 Natalie Dowzicky: So, was it true to the text?

0:33:47.8 Paul Matzko: Well, on the poster for the movie, it says the only lettering or besides Midnight Mass is, “Be not afraid.” Which is what the angels literally have to say to the shepherds. That’s our Biblical… That’s a verse that when they appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Christ, they have to say “Be not afraid,” because these guys are all f-​ing afraid. They’re all like, “Ah, what the… Ah. Ah.” They’re freaking out and they have to be like, “No, hey guys, be not afraid. It’s okay, we’ve come bearing glad tidings of great joy.” ‘Cause they’re not sure. They could be about to be smote. They’re expecting smiting and they… Or yeah, to your point, Landry, it’s like the descriptions of angelic beings in Revelation, man, these are some weird, weird combinations of beasts and humans and thousands of eyes, and they’re freaky. They’re not like cherubs. So a lot of this is Touched by an Angel disease. I blame Roma Downey. They’re like, “Angels are just like people with Irish accents who come along and like… Ah, I’m all cozy and cuddly,” and that’s not…

0:34:49.4 Zuri Davis: I will say I do think the archangels look normal. So, there are different types of angels. Ooh, wow. [laughter] This is… There are different types of angels. I think the archangels look normal, but I don’t wanna mess this up on the conference, so if this is wrong, you can blame my poor Catechism, Catechesis, whatever. Apparently, there are only a handful of archangels though. So the cool looking angels, there’s only a handful and the rest is like creepy. So yeah. [laughter]

0:35:18.8 Paul Matzko: Well, to your point, Natalie, I think it’s… So it’s interesting what’s going… First of all, we can note Father Paul, when he encounters the angel is in severe late stage dementia or Alzheimer’s.

0:35:31.2 Natalie Dowzicky: I made that assumption, yeah.

0:35:32.4 Paul Matzko: So, it’s easy. And then he wants to believe it. He’s motivated, and there’s a commentary in here about people believe what they wanna believe, and they use religious texts to parse out the little bits that let them believe what they wanna believe. And that’s how faith is corrupted, I think is one of the themes of the show. So he does that very actively, but in terms of… The cool thing about the angel is that it is… So Christians just historically Catholic, Protestant, whatever, they love to think about typology. Looking for Christ types and anti-​Christ types throughout Christian history. And so we have here a Pauline story and it’s very explicit. This is right on the surface. Where does Father Paul get lost? I mean they called him Father Paul, and he used to have a previous name. Well, Paul was Saul and then became Paul after he had a vision of an angel. Where? On the road to Damascus. Where does he encounter this tomb? It says it in the show.

0:36:27.7 Natalie Dowzicky: On the road to Damascus.

0:36:28.4 Paul Matzko: On the road to Damascus. So it’s like…

0:36:31.4 Landry Ayres: And he’s blinded by the storm. He can’t see. It’s all…

0:36:34.6 Paul Matzko: He can’t see like Paul. It’s all there.

0:36:37.6 Landry Ayres: Exactly.

0:36:37.9 Zuri Davis: Oh, I missed all of that. [laughter]

0:36:38.0 Paul Matzko: And where does he go to find this being, this angelic being? It’s a tomb, but the tomb isn’t empty. The tomb is filled. Which is…

0:36:49.3 Landry Ayres: And he talks about the stone being rolled away so that he can go inside.

0:36:53.6 Paul Matzko: Oh man, it’s all there. So again, you get Mike Flanagan, he knows this. He grew up with it. He… It’s impressive in terms of it just shows his deep knowledge of the material. So some of it too is not meant to be taken super literally, but more as metaphor. I mean he’s playing on the level of… As far as the angel itself, it’s like… I think it’s interesting that our vampire angel… At first, I thought it was just gonna be like magical realism. It doesn’t… We don’t know whether it’s supernatural or just some creature that existed that people thought that is the source of legends about angels or something. But it’s besides the point, ’cause the real villains in our show… As far as a villain, the angels in the background, most of the time. The real villains are us. It’s Bev Keane. It’s Father Paul. It’s their parishioners who do horrible things. We’re the real villains of this. The antagonists of this show, and I think that’s fun.

0:37:51.0 Landry Ayres: Yeah, so the vampire acts more like an animal more than anything. He attacks Father Paul because he basically goes into his den in the desert and then he saves him or whatever. I don’t know if we can talk to his intentions as a vampire, skip to that. [laughter] But then, I don’t think, as far as I know, that he was gonna go with Father Paul. He didn’t convince Father Paul to take him back. Father Paul shoved him in a trunk [laughter] and dragged him from the cave. First of all, did the vampire come with him and then was like, “Put me in the trunk,” and walked with him to his hotel.

0:38:28.4 Natalie Dowzicky: And they got on American Airlines.

0:38:28.5 Landry Ayres: And checked out of the Best Western with him.

0:38:30.7 Zuri Davis: Another elf for TSA. [laughter]

0:38:37.7 Landry Ayres: And then was like, “Don’t worry, I’ll ride in the trunk when we get there.” Or what, did he have to fight this vampire and be like, “Get in the box.” It just… I don’t get that.

0:38:47.7 Paul Matzko: Yeah, and then he does everything he’s asked.

0:38:48.3 Landry Ayres: But he’s acting like an animal. Yeah, so he’s literally just lashing out and he’s bestial in the way that he interacts with everyone. Everyone else with intentions takes that as an excuse to do things as they see. Bev goes to her logical apocalyptic death cult, Jim Jones and…

0:39:09.8 Zuri Davis: Literally?

0:39:10.7 Landry Ayres: Yeah. And Father Paul, you can see he was… He wanted to bring this gift to people, but he wasn’t quite sure how, but Bev’s wheels are, they’re always spinning and stuff like that. So like Paul was saying, people are taking their intentions and using this as an excuse to justify their means.

0:39:37.4 Zuri Davis: So, I wanna say, very much, one thing I appreciated about… When you watch it, you’re just like, “Okay, clearly that’s a vampire.” Everyone should be able to see, but one thing I appreciated was, that was a very… It was a very obvious version of some of the smaller ways they were doing that, and one thing this show reminded me of, was how people quote 1 Corinthians 10:13. So I’m just gonna try to summarize it real quick, not gonna like put y’all through Sunday school. But basically, it’s a verse about temptation, it’s basically saying God will always provide a way out of temptation. No temptation is new and won’t overtake you.

0:40:27.9 Zuri Davis: But for a lot of times, one conversation I’ve been having with a lot of people recently was how a lot of Christians think that verse is about suffering. So any time someone’s going… The loss of a child, a spouse, a serious mental health issues, just something that’s really, really big and hard to comprehend, a lot of… At least here in America, a lot of Christians are just like, “Oh well, God will never put you through anything that you can’t handle and He’ll always provide a way,” and this like there’s always gonna be meaning for things. But it’s like, “Well, kind of not really.” Sometimes things just happen and they just are as they are, and our relationship with God is not so that… Well He’s probably not gonna swoop in and be like, “Oh, here’s a miracle.” You’ll just get out of it.

0:41:24.3 Zuri Davis: Some people suffer for life, and that’s just a reality. And our relationship with God is not for Him to prevent us from suffering. It’s not a lack of like, “Oh, you didn’t pray enough, you didn’t have enough faith, that’s why you’re going through this bad thing now.” It just is and every single time they were talking about the miracles, the healing and all that stuff, I just kept on thinking about that verse, and how American Christians are just like, “Oh well, if I’m faithful enough, God’s gonna save me from suffering.” And just like, “No, that’s about temptation. Suffering is a very different thing.” And I appreciated how there’s just like when people are clearly assigning this meaning to the vampire, it was just like that was a very much larger version of the small ways that we twist scripture just to make ourselves feel comfortable. Which is obviously very dangerous, because if that’s not how God works, then it ruins our faith when God doesn’t perform in the ways that we expect him to.

0:42:32.4 Paul Matzko: And there’s this… ‘Cause they do that at… Mike Flanagan shows that in every level. On that level, you’re talking about Zuri but then also that whole conversation about… He actually literally talks about, there’s a new covenant. So Father Paul’s up there preaching and he says, “Look, it’s been Ash Wednesday, now it’s gonna be Easter Sunday… ” And there’s this whole conversation about wearing the proper vestments that he wears. He wears the golden chasuble on the wrong day.

0:43:01.8 Natalie Dowzicky: I had to look this up because I was like, “What is this dude referring to?”

0:43:06.0 Paul Matzko: Which you’re gonna… Yeah, tell us what that means, Zuri.

0:43:09.0 Zuri Davis: I’ve since heard… Okay, so liturgical colors, love them. Liturgical colors are a big deal. Side note, I really wanna meet the Pope one day because I’m like, I just really wanna wear a black veil and then teach everyone about the difference between black veils and white veils. So an audience with the Pope is a whole thing. Anyway, liturgical colors, they’re very important. For ordinary time, you wear green. So he was supposed to be wearing green, then when Lent starts, they are different colors, and then each Sunday has different colors. So there are three Purple Sundays, and then there’s one Gaudete Sunday, it’s pink, but priests will be like, “No, it’s gaudete.” Because Catholics are extra like that. But basically, it was a big deal that he had the wrong colors, but I have since confirmed with several seminarians, you can wear gold if a green is not available. So it was technically the wrong vestment for the show’s purposes, but apparently that’s allowed in Catholicism.

0:44:20.5 Paul Matzko: Okay, so that’s interesting, but to me. It ends, the climax of it, is Father Paul, and so that’s interesting ’cause as a Protestant unpacking the particulars of the mass and what’s going on there was beyond me. So I’m interested to hear you talk more about that but…

0:44:36.9 Zuri Davis: Oh no, it’s super, super… I was just like, “Am I watching a livestream mass?” Some of these episodes…

0:44:44.3 Natalie Dowzicky: It’s very on the nose.

0:44:44.4 Zuri Davis: I was like, “This is going on.” Yeah, it was like, “It’s 10 minutes of mass, I already did this on Sunday.”

0:44:48.9 Landry Ayres: Well, it certainly wasn’t a Baptist church, ’cause they would have been passing that tray like a Bolla chicks at a Tex-​Mex restaurant and they weren’t doing that. It was much more structured than that, so we do a casual.

0:45:00.9 Paul Matzko: Where’s my little cup? And they pull out and they put the empty cup in there.

0:45:03.8 Landry Ayres: Yeah, where’s my Welch’s at?

0:45:05.3 Paul Matzko: Yeah, that’s right.

0:45:07.4 Zuri Davis: With the little bread on top, yeah.

0:45:08.5 Paul Matzko: Yeah, no one’s mistaking Welch’s for blood.

0:45:11.4 Natalie Dowzicky: No.

0:45:12.1 Paul Matzko: You couldn’t slip in the vampire blood that way in a Baptist church. Baptist’s are immune from vampiric angels.

0:45:16.6 Zuri Davis: Catholic wine is really fruity. Well, it depends. Each church gets to choose their own wine, but all the wines I’ve tasted tend to be a little sweet. So I’m just saying…

0:45:27.0 Landry Ayres: They get to choose the house red.

[laughter]

0:45:31.5 Paul Matzko: That’s awesome.

0:45:32.2 Landry Ayres: I’m gonna get in trouble for that.

0:45:33.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I am curious where we were going with the vests, because I wasn’t sure what the significance was. That went right over my head.

0:45:41.8 Paul Matzko: All of that is fueling. Even though I don’t know the particulars, it matters on Easter, which is the big day Christ is risen. The faith is real. It’s the culmination from death to life. Ash Wednesday is lamentations and sorrow over sin. Easter is rejoice, for the Lord is risen. He declares a new covenant, so this is maybe a little in the weeds here, is that, there are two covenants; a covenants of work, a covenant of faith, and we’re supposed to… Christians believe we’re still in the second covenant right now. We’re waiting for a third covenant, which will be the return of Christ. That’s the new era. When you hear covenant, that’s a very particular thing, not worth unpacking here, but think of new era.

0:46:23.9 Zuri Davis: I have to say, this turned into a Scott Hahn discussion real quick.

[laughter]

0:46:28.5 Paul Matzko: So when he says it is a new covenant, it is like he is saying the Lord has returned. He is this Messianic figure in that moment, and we have a return of a divine being bringing a new word. And so it matters that all the mass gets disordered or re-​ordered, depending on whether it’s a good or a bad thing. Gets re-​ordered there, it’s a declaration of the third covenant. It’s like saying, “This is a new age for religious people and for the church,” and so it’s a big deal. It’s like a moment… He’s actually declaring heresy, I guess, supposed from a traditional Catholic perspective, but it’s all done so cleverly, like using the actual elements of the mass and the vestments to signal that change. Man, that’s some profound insider knowledge stuff going on there.

0:47:10.4 Zuri Davis: No. I just wanna say, that actually was my favorite part. So the Easter Vigil is my favorite service. Excuse me, it’s my favorite mass of the entire year. Oh my gosh, I can’t even describe. It is so beautiful. One year, I got to spend it with a bunch of nuns and they have this special thing. They’ll walk into the church in dark robes and then at the Gloria, they’ll take them off and reveal their white robes underneath. And then what laypeople do, we process into a dark church with candles and then at the Gloria, the candles go out, the lights come on. It’s like Christ is risen and all that stuff.

0:47:51.9 Zuri Davis: So one thing I really appreciated was, in the beginning, I was just like, “Why is this so detailed? Why are we watching a whole mass and why are they focusing on all of the different elements of mass, of which there are many elements?” But then when you get to the Easter Vigil, it’s something simple that they do. So they process, which is proper, but then after the procession, they don’t do any of the Glorias.

0:48:18.0 Zuri Davis: They don’t do the Gloria, they don’t do any of the readings, which there are seven readings, ’cause you have to go back to in the beginning one. It’s all like the big church readings. They don’t do any of the readings, they go straight to the homily and they didn’t do that in any of the other episodes. And I remember watching that and being like, “How dare they mess up the Easter Vigil? You were so faithful to everything and you’re messing up Easter Vigil.” But then when you watch the end of the episode, it’s just like, “Oh.” [chuckle] You see with that tiny detail, they messed it up because it’s essentially like… It’s Father Paul is leading it. It’s no longer Catholic Mass, it’s whatever Father Paul and Bev, and this vampire are trying to do. So I thought that… When it happened, I was just like, “Oh, that was amazing.”

[music]

0:49:09.6 Landry Ayres: I just have to ask, what did everybody else think of this terrible age makeup that they put that moment in?

0:49:16.8 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh my god, it was so bad.

0:49:19.0 Landry Ayres: Okay, ’cause I’m watching this and I’m seeing this woman, first scene and I’m like, “That’s a young lady, why did they do this?” So I was like, “She’s gonna get younger or something like that. Or they’re gonna flashback a lot or something like that.” I didn’t know the intention but I was like, “That’s a young person and they’re gonna… ”

0:49:37.6 Natalie Dowzicky: It was like Mrs. Doubtfire. That’s what it felt like.

0:49:38.4 Landry Ayres: Right. It was… Absolutely. And I’m like, “Why,” this whole time, but I hadn’t caught on to it until we get to the Monsignor in the Holy Land and he’s doing his whole thing, and he gets revealed to be Father Paul. And I was like, “Oh, he was the… ” ‘Cause I saw his makeup looking really bad too and I was like, “This is messy. What are you doing Midnight Mass?” And then they removed it and I was like, “Okay, so she’s also young. Why?” ‘Cause the thing is, was the actor who played the Monsignor the same actor who played Father Paul or was it a different person?

0:50:18.9 Paul Matzko: I believe so.

0:50:19.5 Landry Ayres: Okay, ’cause if he was the same, why was Bev’s different. Because if they’re gonna use the same actress or actor to play this father and daughter and the same person, but then why not just cast older actors and actresses and you’re just gonna justify it textually anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.

[laughter]

0:50:42.8 Zuri Davis: So we all wear glasses, I can see that. Maybe my prescription is messed up because I didn’t even notice it was makeup. I thought it was two different actresses. I have a crappy TV and I have terrible vision.

0:50:56.2 Landry Ayres: I actually think the women are definitely different actresses. I thought that it might’ve been the same one at first but I think they are the same. I don’t know about the Monsignor because his was, I think… We just didn’t get as good of a look at him. But either way, why would they…

0:51:09.9 Natalie Dowzicky: It was so bad.

0:51:11.5 Landry Ayres: If it was the same one, I get it but they obviously it wasn’t and then if it was different actors and actresses, why would you even do that? Just get someone older.

0:51:20.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Just get an old person. [chuckle]

0:51:21.3 Landry Ayres: I don’t get it.

0:51:22.7 Natalie Dowzicky: It was really bad.

0:51:23.7 Landry Ayres: I’m sorry, I’m gonna rant about this. It wasn’t even a question.

0:51:26.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Wait, I have a question though.

0:51:28.8 Landry Ayres: I just wanted validation, I just wanted people to be like, “Yeah, you’re right. [chuckle]

0:51:32.8 Paul Matzko: You’re right, Landry.”

0:51:32.8 Natalie Dowzicky: This a good question to end on. You’re right, Landry. Always right.

0:51:35.3 Landry Ayres: That’s not true. Don’t ever give me that.

[laughter]

0:51:38.3 Natalie Dowzicky: No, I know. And I’m still trying to figure this out, what did we think of the ending? I think the ending ruined a little bit of the show for me ’cause I thought it was too happy, if that makes sense.

0:51:55.1 Paul Matzko: Everyone dying is happy? [chuckle] Except for two kids?

0:51:57.9 Natalie Dowzicky: No, but it was like… From my perspective, the assumption is that the vampire is dead and he’s not gonna fly to the mainland and go infect other people.

0:52:07.9 Zuri Davis: ‘Cause the girl loses feeling in her legs.

0:52:08.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Right, ’cause the girl loses feeling in her legs. But I felt like there’s a lot more you could’ve done with that ending than just having them drift off in a boat to the sunrise.

0:52:20.5 Landry Ayres: Yeah, also, I like… Leeza is a really interesting character and I like that when they go to Joe’s trailer, she gets the gun and is like, “Come on,” and Warren is the one that she’s dragging along with her. It’s this very subtle subversion of they could’ve very easily had him be the masculine, I’m-​gonna-​save-​everybody trope, but she’s like, “No, I’m the one that is gonna do this.” And he’s like, “Is everybody gonna be okay?” And she’s like, “Let’s just go.” But why Warren? You get barely anything from him as a character. He’s one of the characters we start with and then he’s forgotten until the very end.

0:53:00.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, pretty much.

0:53:01.1 Zuri Davis: Maybe…

0:53:01.3 Landry Ayres: So that was the thing I had an issue with.

0:53:04.6 Zuri Davis: Not to sound like an English teacher about this. But maybe it’s like an Adam and Eve type of thing where it’s like they can start over. Do things… Take the lessons that they learn there and start differently.

0:53:18.3 Landry Ayres: I think that’s a totally interesting and valid interpretation, for sure.

0:53:21.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, I didn’t think about that either.

0:53:24.0 Paul Matzko: So it’s interesting, I mean, Leeza in general, it’s again, talking about the Christian typology. What happens when a new Messiah comes? He does miracles, and then the Revelation talks about your old men and young people will prophesy. And so we have that literally here, we have the Monsignor and then we have the young people who are the first to believe. Monsignors the first to believe. And then… But who also early believes, Leeza. She’s declaring, prophesizing. So you take that Christological anticipation and turn into an anti-​Christological interpretation. Same thing is there. So there’s a element which her… So the signs and wonders are going on, she can walk. It’s the first big miracle. Of course, the actual Jesus was… Well, if you believe it, was doing miracles like causing the lame to walk again and the blind to see. So it’s all part of that typology thing going on, but then what’s fascinating is one big takeaway Mike Flanagan wants to leave you with, he wants you to be skeptical of organized religion, but at least filled with uncertainty about the value of faith itself. But the other thing is that he wants you to be suspicious of signs and wonders. Be wary of the empires coming bringing miracles. And so what’s… And he actually literally has someone say something about that. My faith isn’t about… I don’t believe in miracles and that kind of BS. It’s something else.

0:54:51.2 Paul Matzko: Yeah, and so at the end, what’s fascinating is that she says, “I can’t walk,” or, “I can’t feel my legs,” or that final line, and kinda smiles. So it’s an inversion of what you’d expect, which is like, “Oh, wasn’t the miracle the good thing?” No, the removal of this false miracle, that’s the good thing. And so there’s a commentary there I think about our expectations, our desire for signs and wonders, which lead us astray because it leads us to not question the source, the vampire in this case. Or not question the cost, or not question what it’s gonna do to my community, or to my family or whatever. And so, Flanagan wants us to be a little bit… And so he ends on that note, which is cool. But I think I like this Adam and Eve idea, that they’re gonna repopulated the land.

0:55:39.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, I didn’t think about that either. Interesting.

0:55:41.0 Zuri Davis: It’s also possible that the actual kid is Mike Flanagan, because again, Mike Flanagan grew up as an altar boy, and all these things are happening around him, and he’s just an observer. And he didn’t get… He wasn’t critical about his faith until he was much, much older. So it is very possible that he sees himself as like, I’m just on the side, watching these things happen, and then I’ll take whatever lessons I need to.

0:56:09.8 Natalie Dowzicky: I also thought it was worth noting that they’re both young, they’re both children. I thought it would’ve been odd if it was like a parent-​child duo, if the Sheriff and his son made it or I feel that would’ve been a little bit odder. Also that they were both heavily involved in the church. Had someone, like we were talking about, from the others made it, it would’ve been… I think their story arcs wouldn’t have made as much sense.

0:56:38.8 Paul Matzko: And one show that… I agree with that. It would be a little bit weird if it wasn’t the kids. But the one… The final note. So you’ve noticed they sing Nearer, My God, to Thee, and they end on a, nearer, and then it just hangs. They don’t say, “To thee.” Which again fits with the theme of Mike Flanagan’s not… He’s not saying theism’s correct, he’s not saying pantheism’s correct. He leaves that ambiguous. Just like the message of the movie, for you to make of it what you will. Nearer to something and we don’t know what. So that’s how he has them end, which is again, every fricking detail.

0:57:16.0 Zuri Davis: I just want to asterisk really quick and say that one thing that I think I… I appreciate a lot of things about my faith, and I’m happy to be Catholic now. But one thing I appreciated was when I was growing up in the Church of Christ tradition, it’s very much if you die as anything other than Church of Christ, you’re going to hell period. There’s no, “We don’t know, maybe God will take mercy on their soul.” They’re just like, “No, if you’re not Church of Christ, that’s it. You’re not saved.” And one thing I appreciate about Catholicism is that it is very much understood that there are different paths to Heaven. Catholicism, Catholics believe that’s the best path, but perhaps it’s not the only one.

0:58:01.3 Zuri Davis: There are different types of baptism. So for example, there’s a baptism by blood, which is martyrs who aren’t baptized but died for a cause for Jesus. But there’s so many different things of, this is what we believe, and this is our faith about the afterlife. But we also believe that we don’t know, and it’s very possible that God calls people in different ways, and maybe that way is not Catholicism. My RCIA teacher actually told that to me one time. He was just like, “Hey, if you go through RCIA and you think God is calling you to be… To serve him as a Lutheran, that’s fine. This is just to teach you what Catholics believe.” And there’s one little part. I promise, this is the last thing I’m gonna say, there’s one little part of the Chronicles of Narnia that I really appreciate from CS Lewis.

0:59:00.7 Natalie Dowzicky: And our last pivot. Chronicles of Narnia.

0:59:02.3 Zuri Davis: Oh yeah. [laughter] So, CS Lewis, he never made the jump to Catholicism, but he was… You can tell where he’s very inspired by Catholicism, despite still being Anglican I believe? And there’s one little part, at the end in the last book, where one of the Telmarines make… Oh my gosh. I feel like I messed it up. One of the Telmarines [laughter] makes it to Heaven and the kids are like, “Aslan, what is up? This guy, why is he here?” And Aslan’s like, “Well he serves his religion well and he serves his beliefs well. So he made it.” And it was just like I love… That’s so baffling and I love it so much, and I just really enjoyed like Sheriff Hassan just so much because maybe this is a little Unitarian in tune with me. But I really appreciate him being faithful until the end in his religion, and I just appreciated the understanding of the different paths of understanding. So that just made me really happy to see all of that.

[music]

1:00:23.3 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always, the best way to keep in touch with us and get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter. You can find us at the handle @PopnLockePod. That’s Pop, the letter N, Locke with an E, like the philosopher Pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We look forward to unraveling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is produced by me, Landry Ayres and is co-​hosted by Natalie Dowzicky, for our project of lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. To learn more, visit us on the web at www​.lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.