The conclusion of Mike Flanagan’s latest horror series is something of a bloodbath.
The Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan is back with another new horror series for Netflix – this time a wholly original work titled Midnight Mass.
The seven episode limited series follows events on the fictional Crockett Island after an enigmatic new priest arrives and appears to perform miracles, eventually building to a truly unhinged finale that will live long in the memory of all who watch it.
If you’ve already made your way through the series and are a little stumped by the events of those final chapters, we’ve unpacked the ending below – read on for everything you need to know about the finale of Midnight Mass.
*Spoilers ahead for Midnight Mass!*
When Father Paul first appears on Crockett Island, strange things begin to appear straight away – for example, hundreds of dead cats are found washed up on the shore, pregnancies are mysteriously terminated, children regain the ability to walk and so on. All of these events are initially unexplained, but it soon becomes apparent that they are strongly connected.
The first important reveal occurs towards the middle of the series, when the real identity of Father Paul is made clear. It turns out the story he’s been telling – that Monsignor Pruitt had fallen ill on his travels and was resting on the mainland – had been a lie. Father Paul actually is Monsignor Pruitt, he died and was brought back to life by an angel as his much younger self, and wants to achieve the same for the rest of Crockett Island. The first people to learn of this information react in wildly different ways: Bev Keane fiercely pledges her devotion to Pruitt, for example, while Joe Collie is killed after confronting the priest.
Now, much of the series’ later episodes rely on an interesting – and perhaps unlikely – parallel between Christians and vampires, based on the fact that both are associated with the drinking of blood (the Blood of Christ in the case of the former). It appears that Pruitt’s transformation has essentially turned him into a vampire – he is unable to go outside in the sun without being toasted, and has a strong hankering to suck blood from people’s necks.
When Riley Flynn discovers that the priest has been lying to him, he confronts him – but makes the mistake of arriving when Pruitt is in the company of the rather terrifying angel, and finds himself turned into a vampire-like creature in the same way that the priest was himself. After waking and hearing of Pruitt’s plan, Riley decides he wants to have nothing to do with it, and allows himself to be burned alive by going out on a boat during sunrise. His last act is to warn Erin and tell her to fight against Pruitt’s plan.
Erin tells Dr. Sarah Gunning, and this is when Gunning reveals her own research – which she started carrying out when her mother Mildred began to make an incredible recovery. It turns out that she has discovered that samples of Mildred’s blood also catch fire when they are put in the sun. She puts forward a theory that something has been ingested by people on the island – presumably through communion – that would account for the miracles that have happened (such as Leeza regaining the ability to walk and Mildred making an astonishing recovery) but also lead to the aforementioned side effects. In most people, this thing is only present in trace amounts, but for the likes of Riley, after his encounter with the angel, his blood was dominated by it, which explains why he caught fire.
Anyway, it appears the end game is for the whole island to end up like Pruitt – and in a rather crazed sermon at the titular Midnight Mass he invites everyone to drink from a special cup that will kill them, before being brought back to life by the angel. This is where things go really off the rails for Crockett Island – some people naturally voice opposition to the plan, while others are fervently in favour, and a bloodbath soon occurs, which continues into most of the final episode. More and more of the islanders are turned into vampires while Erin, Sarah, and co. work to stop the takeover.
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Bev works to burn down all the other buildings apart from the church – turning the church into a ‘Noah’s Ark’ for all those who have been saved (i.e. resurrected as the vampire-like creatures) while leaving everyone else to die. However, Sarah and Erin have other plans: Sarah burns down the church, meaning there is no refuge from being burned alive when the sun rises, and Erin cuts the wings of the angel, stopping its progress and ensuring that the spread cannot continue into the mainland. Their actions are encouraged by Pruitt – who is also revealed to be Sarah’s father and concedes that he was wrong and that Bev’s methods are not what he had envisioned for the island.
Eventually, as day breaks with no shelter from the sun available, just about everyone on the island is burnt alive. They react in very different ways in their final moments: some reconcile with their families, while Bev desperately tries to bury herself in the sand. Teenagers Leeza and Warren are virtually the only two to survive, having escaped to a boat and not been infected, and watch on as a huge fire rages on the island.