Warning: This article contains FULL SPOILERS for the ending of the series. Midnight Mass is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Now that you've (hopefully!) made your way through all of Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass, let's unpack the final episode — "Book VII: Revelation" — and the series' ending as a whole to see where the story landed.
And if you haven't yet, feel free to check out IGN's Midnight Mass review here!
The penultimate chapter, "Book VI: Act of The Apostles," capped things off with a harrowing Easter service bloodbath, as Monsignor Pruitt (Hamish Linklater) introduced the "Angel" to his congregation, encouraging everyone to take poison so that they may be resurrected in eternal life – aka as vampires (though vampirism is never said outright).
While this truly horrific scene occurs, with families watching each other painfully die and come back to life, Mildred (Alex Essoe) shoots Pruitt "dead," allowing Bev (Samantha Sloyan) her chance to take the reins on this awful operation. A few escape the massacre un-vampired, but Bev then orders Sturge (Matt Biedel) to open the doors, damning the rest of the residents of Crockett Island to the cravings of the St. Patrick's horde.
Pruitt, coming back to life, weakly objects, knowing this wasn't the plan, but Bev is unstoppable now. "Let God sort them out," she cruelly says, knowing that those left on the aisle who weren't attending church and taking communion wouldn't get resurrected.
For creator/writer/director Mike Flanagan, the thematic ties between religion and vampire lore have fascinated him for a long while. In an interview with IGN, he spoke about his preoccupation with "what happens when we die."
"Somewhere around 2008 or 2009, the idea of vampire blood being in communion wine took root for me and how — if people experienced the benefits of vampire blood that I'm familiar with from their expressions in the genre — that they would believe them to be miraculous. I thought that that was just a really irresistible idea."
"Being that weirdo, who was already a burgeoning horror fan, who looked around when they said this is the blood of Christ and if you drink it you'll live forever. Looked around and said, 'Does anyone else think this Vampiric?' And being told by parents and teachers to please stop bringing that up."
Let God Sort Them Out
The finale, "Book VII: Revelation," tracks the newly-christened vampires, released from St. Patrick's as they devour the stragglers, the dozens still left out on the island, while Erin, Sheriff Hassan, Sarah, Warren, Leeza, and Annie do their best to survive (and sabotage Bev's plans to spread this "gospel" to the mainland by burning the boats).
With a bloodlust that all but Ed (Henry Thomas) find too irresistible to manage, the vampires ransack the island, killing the rest of the citizens, most of whom perished in the carnage. After Warren (Igby Rigney) and Leeza (Annarah Cymone) discover the Angel feeding on a poor woman — in a type of feeding trance that consumes all of its attention — they try to light it on fire. When Bev sees the house burning, she decides that the entire island can burn, as long as the church and the recreation center stand as shelters for them during the daylight hours.
Monsignor Pruitt, Mildred, and Sarah
Mildred, having been attacked directly by the Angel, wakes up as a vampire, in the form of her "best self," a much younger version (like Pruitt), and finding Pruitt inside the church. It's here that he confesses his real motivations for bringing the Angel to the island. The heart of his plan was to share this "gift" with Mildred so that the two of them could have a second chance to be together, and then even reveal to Sarah that he was her real father.
Though it was his plan to (kill and) resurrect this island on Easter, a scheme born of his love for Mildred ("even out of blackness, love rises again"), it wasn't his idea to unleash his congregation on people who couldn't be brought back to life. He wanted the church doors closed and locked for when they all woke up so that he could explain to them what had happened, much like he had done with Riley. But now Bev had taken over and Pruitt was defeated. While the island burned, he chose to spend time with Mildred.
In the climax of the episode, Pruitt, disgusted by Bev and what his congregation had become, found Sarah (Annabeth Gish) inside St. Patrick's spreading gasoline around. Realizing his daughter — to whom he'd never gotten to tell the truth — was doing the right thing, he told her to escape out the back. But right then, Sarah was gunned down by Sturge. Dying in her parents' arms, Pruitt attempted to feed her his blood so that she could be brought back to life. But Sarah, with the strength she had left, spit out the blood, refusing to become a vampire. In the end, Pruitt and Mildred carried Sarah's body to her favorite bridge and waited for the sun to rise.
Ed and Annie
Ed didn't make it out of the church like Annie (Kristin Lehman) did, but while others of his vampiric ilk ran roughshod over Crockett Island, killing everyone they saw, Ed was able to see things with a clear mind and not blackout like the rest of them. Later, reunited with Annie (who had taken her own life in order to distract Bev and Sturge), he explained that it was possible to not become a murderous monster and that the Angel's blood, and subsequent resurrection, revealed people's true violent selves.
After Sarah, Erin, and Hassan burned the church and rec center, the remaining congregation, now all vampires, realized there was nowhere to go when the sun came up. With most now realizing all the horrors they'd committed during the night, even having killed their own loved ones, they joined together in song. Led by Ed and Annie, the town sang the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" (a song reportedly played by the Titanic's string ensemble as the ship sank), echoing Monsignor Pruitt's sermon from the second episode when he more or less subtweeted his entire plan, saying with fervor "that's what it means to have faith, that in the darkness, in the worst of it, in the absence of light and hope, we sing."
So they sang, rejoicing, before the sunlight burned them all away, removing their blighted existences from the world.
Sheriff Hassan and Ali Hassan
Though Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli) and Ali (Rahul Abburi) were not spared a tragic ending, they were at least able to come together and reunite in love and Muslim prayer, as father and son, during their final moments. With Hassan shot down during his attempt to burn the rec center, Ali was able to snap out of his vampiric daze and see the actual evil he'd become a part of. Like Ed, Ali was able to stray from the pack. The sight of his mortally wounded father allowed him to take control and ignite the rec center himself, finishing the job that Erin and Hassan couldn't.
At the shore, with the sun rising. Hassan and Ali were able to perform the Salah (prayer) before Hassan succumbed to his gunshot wound and a vampiric Ali burned up in the light.
Erin (and is the Creature a Vampire or Angel?)
"So what do you think happens when we die, Erin?"
Erin (Kate Siegel) was killed by the Angel, who flew in and tackled her while she was trying to help Hassan burn down the rec center. While the Angel fed on her, taking its time, and in a state of crimson stupor, Erin used a knife to slice holes in the membrane of its wings. This ultimately led to the Angel flying poorly, as opposed to its normal speed (which was pretty damn fast and precise), and probably dying in its attempt to make it 30 miles to the mainland for shelter before the sun could incinerate it (more on that in a bit…).
Erin herself, however, died. During her remaining time, with her body's cells dying but the neurons in her brain firing, she remembered her cosmic beginnings and realized that "we are the cosmos dreaming of itself."
"It's simply a dream that I think is my life. Every time."
Erin's life would be the last life, presumedly, that the Angel would take. Flanagan noted that his idea for the killer Angel came from 1995's The Prophecy, starring Christopher Walken, and the line in the film that says if you look through the Bible and you see, whenever God wants this horrible thing done, he sends an angel. "The idea that we could take a classic vampire story and reframe it through a biblical angel, in a case of really unfortunate mistaken identity was also really, just kind of fun," he told IGN. "The creature that you see in the show, I think the biggest influence that we gave it was to take, to take biblical descriptions of angels and combine them with Klaus Kinski from Werner Herzog's Nosferatu."
Bev
Bev doesn't get her full comeuppance until the end. With her plans up in literal flames, given that both the church and rec centers had been burned up (and the rest of the island torched thanks to her own malicious machinations), she was forced to accept death in the face of sanctifying sunlight. But unlike the rest of Crockett Island, who met their fiery fate with grace, song, and prayer, she ran from it like a coward: screaming, crying, and digging into the sand in a last-ditch effort to find shelter.
Leeza and Warren (and What Does the Ending Mean?)
Leeza and Warren managed to find their way to The Uppards during the chaos, and then row their way off of Crockett Island using a boat. Safe from the violence out in the open water, watching the flames rise into the sky, they notice the Angel flying off the island in desperation. They question its ability to make it to the mainland, given the distance and the time before sunrise.
Leeza and Warren, having never died and come back to life, were safe from the sunlight. Never becoming full vampires, they were the only two survivors of Crockett Island. So why did Leeza then lose the feeling in her legs again? Well, that could have been a strong hint that the Angel didn't make it across the waters.
Aside from the fact that the entire plague of righteous violence was over, and that the contained madness unknowingly unleashed by Pruitt had gone up in flames, signaling a symbolic break from the miraculous hope it all briefly delivered, the "head" vampire dying usually means an instant signal break from its subjects. In popular vampire lore, the lead vampire's demise frees those controlled by its blood. For Leeza though, that would mean the end of her restorative gift. The ability to walk that she was granted by the Angel's blood was now gone and she was returned to her paralyzed state. While it's a sad ending for Leeza (though maybe not as sad as Warren and Leeza losing their entire families), it's good news for the world overall, right?
There's a reason, however, the Angel's fate and Leeza's regression aren't made more clear, as Flanagan wanted a bit of ambiguity to linger at the end. "The Angel, the creature itself, really was just a stand-in for the idea of fanaticism and fundamentalism," he said. "That isn't something that we, as human beings, are going to be able to kill. We may be able to win battles. We may be able to even chase it out of our community in pieces, but we feel like it always comes back. And so we wanted them to at least have the victory of banishing corrupting influence from Crockett, but we thought it would be dishonest to show the audience it dies."
What did you think of Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass? Let us know in the comments section below.