MIDNIGHT MASS Ending Explained! Twists and Big Questions Answered

oh no do you hear that you know whenever they start playing that song it's not going to end well so i just finished mike flanagan's latest netflix horror midnight mass and now i need to explain to my mom why there's a bunch of used tissues next to my computer i think this might help me in this video but my dad grandfather and great grandfather were all ministers so please show them i made the right career choice by hitting that like and subscribe button because in this video there's a ton to unpack like why do some people resurrect and others do not is the angel actually an angel and what happened to it i'll also be pinpointing some cool easter eggs like did you catch this shot of the jew bear home jhuber was the villain in mike plan against gerald's game based on the book by stephen king and yes we are going to be diving into some pretty heavy subject matter breaking down flanagan's interpretation of what heaven god and the afterlife really is because let's be real the first time i listened to aaron's speech i nearly spontaneously combusted it's a lot to take in so grab a couple glasses of communion wine and indulge in the body of christ because we're about to embark on a wild ride the final episode is titled revelation in fact every episode is named after a book in the bible revelation is fitting not only because it's the final book but that it depicts the rapture or end of the world and that's exactly what the inhabitants of crockett island are facing we open on saint patrick's catholic church on easter sunday this is a quite interesting patron saint as he is known as the patron saint of carrying the cross and banishing both serpents and demons as you can see this easter service has gone about as well as the time i brought my ex-girlfriend back to meet my parents what occurred here is nothing more than a midnight mass occur a botched event that was supposed to see god's new covenant for the world a covenant which would see bloodthirsty vampires take over as the dominant species on earth a world where there is no more death god still has a plan and death isn't part of it anymore not for all of us but father paul the church's leader hides a terrible secret that's not his name at all the big reveal in episode 3 is that father paul is the 80 year old monsignor john pruitt who supposedly fell ill while visiting the holy land also i think this is director mike flanagan in a brief cameo sorry mike that's not you a semi-dementia ridden pruitt which for those of you who are curious the name pruitt means brave little one got lost while on the road to damascus and stumbled into the desert a sandstorm forced him to seek refuge in an ancient ruin which he describes as being a church however whether it's a church for god or something else isn't entirely confirmed there he uncovers what he calls an angel an angel who attacks him feeds off him then miraculously brings paul back to life and de-aging him about 40 plus years now i don't know about you guys but i never remember reading about bloodsucking angels in sunday school to keep this miracle a secret pruitt decides to lock the angel in a trunk and travel back to crockett island posing as the fictitious father paul paul is a fitting name for him since that was the name saul took when he went on the road to damascus and he later became one of jesus's apostles like saul pruitt became paul for reasons of clarity for the rest of the video i'll be referring to him as paul since that's what he's called for the majority of his screen time paul ends up locking the angel in a trunk and bringing him to the island never explain how he's able to get the angel into the trunk especially considering how strong we'll see the angel is but it's entirely possible the angel wanted to be taken from his confines in the ruins and as we'll see throughout the series paul and the angels seem to have an understanding with one another with the angel successfully on crockett island it's only a matter of time before some strange things occur dozens of dead cats wash ashore after a storm these cats were actually killed by the angel who paul has let out at night to feed their bodies have washed ashore after a brutal storm there are even brief moments scattered throughout the early episodes where characters hear the angel land on their rooftops but then a miracles start to happen the first one with wheelchair-bound lisa who's suddenly able to walk lisa was accidentally shot by town drunk joe collier paralyzing her from the waist down but the miracles keep on coming mildred an elderly woman suffering from alzheimer's becomes younger and her disease disappears other characters de-age as well take a look at this comparison of annie flynn here from the first to last episode her eyesight has gotten better and her husband ed's back no longer has pain allowing him to dance with her for the first time in ages this sudden uptick in miracles has been what resident bible thumper beverly keane calls a full-blown religious revival it seems like everything is going well on crockett but as we'll soon find out all good things must come to an end these quote-unquote miracles are the result of the angel blood which father paul has been secretly putting into the communion wine this is why some characters never experience a miracle or resurrect after being killed they never partake in communion like riley or joe collier and for those wondering yes we will get into riley in a bit in episode 6 most of the town has joined the church for midnight mass even the sheriff's son who was a devout muslim has seemingly converted because he believes the miracles to be of the christian god which as the sheriff states earlier in the season is silly because muslims jews and christians all share the same god they just refer to him or her by different names allah yahweh god paul along with a few others who know his secret of actually being father pruitt intend to lock off the island so they can transform all the believers into these vampiric beings ones that can never die paul believes many things first that these miracles can only come from god so by giving people these miracles he's doing god's work second he believes that god's will can change we see how god's will has changed from the old testament to jesus's covenant also known as the new testament and now we have a third covenant what's happening on this island tonight is the birth of god's new vision for the world just like he had a new vision for it with the creation of adam and eve and a newer one with the birth of christ he calls on his congregation to be the first soldiers in god's army to create a world where there are no borders or flags where we are all one so it is a war and there will be casualties and we must be soldiers there's just one caveat in order to become this immortal being you have to make a sacrifice you have to die the final transformation will not be yours unless you let your earthly body die so that your divine body can awaken i guess father paul forgot suicide as a sin in the catholic religion but again that just points to my theory that the angel isn't an angel at all i want to briefly describe how this angel blood process works because it can get confusing on who has powers who doesn't and why some people resurrect and others do not angel blood is the key to everything when father pruitt is attacked by the angel the angel gives to him his blood in return this allows him to heal at a rapid rate but paul hasn't gone through the final transformation yet death he didn't die in those ruins his death doesn't happen until the end of episode 3. this is why he's able to attend the church potluck and the sun while later on he'll die if the sun's rays touch him you see the one weakness of both the angel and the vampires is that they burn in sunlight what allows one to resurrect from a death is the angel's blood the same blood he's been spiking the communion wine with so those who didn't partake in communion will die for good if they are killed those who've been coming to church taking communion they have nothing to fear tonight as for the rest of them let god sort them out but even if you haven't received the blood through communion there is another way to resurrect such is the case of howard hobbs whose sturge fed off and then gave him his own blood so he could resurrect this resulted in poor howard killing his wife and children when he awoke in a state of bloodlust but because they didn't have the angel blood in them and he didn't know about giving them blood they died for good speaking of blood sarah gunning the town doctor finds that some of her patients blood samples burst into flames while in sunlight so she does some of her own research in episode 6 she discovers a blood disorder called erythropoietic protoporphyria or epp for short a disorder which causes its infected to become anemic and photosensitive anemia just means a deficiency in red blood cells which is why we see father paul collapse a bunch and why he needs blood to sustain himself blood is high in iron which is used to create the protein hemoglobin found in those red blood cells sarah suggests that this epp or at least something like it has been given to the townsfolk it could even have been what caused aaron's baby to disappear in her womb causing the body to basically destroy it so now aaron has a personal vendetta against father paul for killing the thing that she said saved her life aaron ran away from crockett at the age of 16. she had an abusive mother and wound up marrying a man just like her mom a drunk and abuser so when she found out she was pregnant she ran back to crockett she wasn't going to go through the hell of raising a child with a man who espoused the same characteristics of her evil mother she says this pregnancy saved her life she saved me and now she's just gone and aaron's story gets at the core of one of midnight mass's main themes what is our purpose why do things happen the way they do cause and effect and there is no better character that encapsulates this than riley flynn riley was a rich guy in the startup business who one night in an alcoholic stupor gets in a car crash and kills an innocent young girl tara beth by the way the actress who voices the judge in the scene here is none other than flanagan fave carla gagino riley ends up spending the next four years in jail and moves back with his family on crockett where he tells aaron his life is meaningless because he has no purpose no money no prospects i just i just exist that's it i have absolutely no purpose at all but that's where riley is wrong everything and everyone has a purpose he just hasn't realized this yet god can take that pain and turn it into something good something with purpose if riley never killed that poor girl he never would have made it back to crockett if he never made it back to crockett he never would have been killed by the angel and turned into a vampire just like father paul and if he never turned into a vampire he'd never sacrifice himself burning up in front of aaron prompting her to destroy the religious vampires thus saving the world oh that's a lot to take in this all points back to aaron's story if she was never pregnant she too would have never made it back to crockett it points at some master hand guiding these characters along which leads to some of the more weightier themes of the season in the final episode all of erin's choices have led her to the moment where she burns down the rec center the final place of refuge for the vampires to hide before the sun rises the vampires idiotically have gone and burned the entire town down in an attempt to kill the non-believers beverly equating it to the fourth bowl of revelation in which the world is consumed by fire the fourth angel poured his bowl upon the sun and it was allowed to scorch men with fire this would be their downfall as aaron and the sheriff burn the rec center leaving nowhere for them to hide from the sunlight the angel ends up attacking aaron and feeding off her blood but what the angel doesn't realize is that aaron is cutting holes through its wings severely limiting its ability to fly we saw earlier in the episode that while the angel feeds it's almost impossible to break him out of his bloodlust lisa even shoots it while feeding it and it barely acknowledges her but as aaron slowly dies we get this contemplative monologue from her through voiceover which tackles such heavy questions as what is god where do we go when we die and what is heaven let's try to tackle these one by one what is heaven in traditional christian theology heaven is a place where the souls of the good live for eternity but for aaron there is no heaven and there is no hell heaven and hell are what we make them on earth and that's what we mean when we say heaven no mansions no rivers of diamonds or fluffy clouds or angel wings you are loved and you aren't alone that is god that is heaven but what does that mean if we die where do we go quite simply we go back to earth as dust to feed the great cosmos in a never-ending cycle of life and death to be repeated over and over again aaron remember you are dust and to dust you shall return it's fitting that the final shot of the series is of the dust of the townsfolk literally falling back to earth riley understood this this is why his letter to paul after he dies reads remember you are dust and to dust you shall return it flies in the face of paul's belief of the afterlife so if we're all just dust then what is life aaron equates our fleeting moment here on earth as a dream life is a dream aaron says we never remember our dreams thus when we die we won't remember our time here we are merely in an infinite cycle of life and death birth and rebirth strung together by infinite dreams and that's what we're talking about when we say god the cosmos and its infinite dreams we are the cosmos dreaming of itself it's simply a dream that i think is my life we always forget our dreams and we will forget our lives but it will repeat again dreams play an important part in the series perhaps for none more so than riley who tells aaron in his dream he can never see past the horizon this is because he never makes it past this moment he burns into flames for him his dream ends here paul even says in episode 4 about life maybe it is a dream but if it is we're all having it in the final episode paul turns his back on what he believed was god's plan and exclaims that he was wrong he has seen the town's people turn into ravenous bloodsuckers and the violence and pain it has caused this is why when he catches his daughter dousing the church in gasoline he helps her years ago father paul had an affair with mildred and they had sarah but they kept this a secret this is why sarah talks about how paul always strangely looks at her it's not because she's a lesbian and he looks down on her it's because he's a father who has to live with the hell of watching his daughter grow up without being her father sturge one of the devout followers shoots sarah as she plans to light the church on fire and paul goes to her side giving her his blood so that she may live but sarah denies it she would rather die than turn into a vampire paul's arc ends when he himself burns the church choosing to die alongside his two loves mildred and his daughter ali and the sheriff worked their way to the beach to pray in the traditional muslim fashion facing mecca ali has turned back to islam after witnessing the horror of what his new religion has brought bev arguably the most evil of all the characters awaits her death for a person who so strongly wants to make it to heaven she sure doesn't want to go even clawing away at the sand making any statement a few hours earlier extra fitting we all say there's a heaven then we claw fight and beg for a few more minutes at the end and as all the vampires await their death by sunrise we get one of the final themes of the series forgiveness forgiveness is something many of the characters yearn for joe collier is forgiven by lisa but also needs to learn to forgive himself father paul asks mildred for her forgiveness sturge so longing for forgiveness from anyone for the evil he has committed asks ukr and finally there's riley a man so wrought up in the guilt of killing an innocent girl he can't forgive himself nor ask for forgiveness from the girl he killed since she's dead that is until his final moment as riley dies we see him on the boat with tara beth and she extends her hand to him in a moment i interpret as forgiveness the two hold hands and it's hauntingly beautiful the only remaining survivors of crockett island that we know of are lisa and warren who have made it off the island there's also the angel that haphazardly attempts to make it to the mainland with its clipped wings which is ironic since aaron the girl who cut his wings tells a story about how her mother made her hold pigeons as a child while she cut their wings mainland is 30 miles from the island and it is assumed that the angel would not have been able to make it before the sun rises however we never actually see it die the final line does offer some clues lisa who was infused with angel blood giving her the ability to walk again tells warren i can't feel my legs this could mean that the angel blood in her body has simply dissipated or because it coincides exactly with the sunrise that the angel has died causing all the quote-unquote miracles to reverse either way midnight mass ends in tragedy almost everyone has died but i can't help but see a glimmer of hope here a lot of the characters saw the error of their ways the angel and vampires were stopped and it gave me hope that there will always be people who will stand up against religious zealotry but what did you think of midnight mass i literally finished the entire season in one day and have had no one to talk to about it so i want to hear your thoughts in the comments below thanks for watching everyone be sure to like and subscribe and for more bad takes you can always follow me on twitter and instagram at thingstoryt until next time remember daddy loves you very much

Channel: Think Story

Views: 403,411

Keywords: midnight mass, midnight mass ending explained, midnight mass ending, midnight mass explained, midnight mass trailer, mike flanagan, midnight mass angel, midnight mass review, midnight mass netflix, midnight mass vampires, midnight mass episode 7, midnight mass breakdown, kate siegel, zach gilfrod, hamish linklater, netflix original, midnight mass 2021, riley scene, what happened

Id: XRhZLPvdCZA

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021