Midnight Mass Rewatch: Chapter 1

An overview, a new arrival, and a reluctant return.

“Ask Him why He always takes the kids, and the drunk fucks always walk away with scratches.”

At the beginning of December, it will be 25 years since I attempted suicide. At the end of December, it will be three years since I nearly died of kidney failure. In the first situation, I could have died, while in the second I definitely did almost die, as in if I had waited a day or two longer to go to the emergency room, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this.

When you survive something that should have killed you¹, you experience a strange mix of gratitude and confusion. Okay, thanks, but what now? It’s a romantic notion that surviving death means you must acknowledge that life is both precious and brief, and that you should live yours the way you want to, but in truth most of us just have to go back to work as soon as we’re able to. I keep waiting for some sign that I’m meant for other things, and it hasn’t come yet. The only thing that’s really changed is that I’ve become keenly aware of how much of my time, both before and after it happened, has been wasted on pointless things, and that which I can’t control. The vast majority of our lives are devoted to tasks and people who enrich our world in no meaningful way, and if you think about it too long you’ll throw your phone away and move into a cave.

There’s also the survivor’s guilt, compounded by the fact that I nearly died in the middle of the pandemic. My surviving sometimes feels like a cosmic accounting error. I don’t consider myself a bad person, exactly, but certainly an inconsequential one, and it simply makes no sense to see people who had far more to offer the world go before I do. It feels like a joke without a punchline.

To some people’s estimation, Riley Flynn is a “bad” person. He’s certainly a weak person, a flawed person, who made a terrible mistake when he got into his car and drove it while drunk. When Midnight Mass opens, Riley (Zach Gilford) is sitting on a curb, stunned, bleary-eyed, but praying, both for himself and the young girl lying on the street across from him, half her face obliterated. She’s obviously beyond saving, but Riley asks a cop if she’s going to be okay. The cop, who’s overheard Riley praying, sarcastically remarks “Ask Him why He always takes the kids, and the drunk fucks always walk away with scratches.”

“This isn’t a community anymore. It’s a ghost.”

After four years in prison, Riley is haunted by both that remark, and Tara-Beth, the girl he accidentally killed, who stands in silent judgment of him before he sleeps each night². With no prospects upon his release, he returns to Crockett Island, the tiny village where he grew up. A true Stephen King “dying on the vine” town, the sun never seems to shine on Crockett Island, and the houses there are all in danger of imminent collapse. Despite the chirpily cheerful demeanor of Riley’s mother Annie (Kristin Lehman), who greets him at the ferry dock, even she admits “This isn’t a community anymore. It’s a ghost.”

Annie, and we soon learn, his childhood friend Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), are the only ones in town who are happy to see Riley return. Though the accident happened in Chicago, bad news travels fast, and everyone treats him accordingly, with barely hidden distaste and open pity for Annie, who holds her head up and acts like she doesn’t see it. Also unable to hide his distaste for Riley is his father, Ed (Henry Thomas³), who demands that he continue attending church, even after Riley admits he’s no longer a believer. The best he can offer is an awkward shoulder pat later, and a reminder to Riley that while he should attend church, he shouldn’t take communion, because it would look bad. For Riley, church isn’t a place of comfort or salvation, just another form of punishment, a “condition of your parole.”

Though Erin, who’s returned to Crockett Island under her own embarrassing circumstances (pregnant with the father out of the picture) offers him some pragmatic “one day at a time” reassurance, Riley finds himself even more adrift without the structure of prison life. Even in his childhood home, in the bedroom that’s remained unchanged since he was a teenager, there’s no peace. The last thing he sees before he falls asleep is still Tara-Beth, the ghost who followed him to this ghost town, still dreadful in her silence, the symbol of a question Riley can’t answer.

“Turns out I'm not much use to people who are in a state of grace. Jesus, he didn't have that much interest for those kind of people either. No, he seemed to go straight for those folks who weren't in a state of grace. They were his favorite people, turns out.”

There’s a third arrival to Crockett Island as well: Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater), who announces at Sunday services that he’s temporarily replacing the beloved but long past retirement age Monsignor Pruitt, after he fell ill while on a trip to the Holy Land. Though the parishioners greet this news with wariness, there’s also some excitement too: a new (if only temporary) priest might be the most exciting thing that’s happened to the town in years. Crockett Island isn’t a place you come to, it’s a place you leave, particularly after the oft-mentioned oil spill that all but destroyed the local fishing businesses a few years earlier. If anything, the church best illustrates this: barely half the pews are filled, and communion only takes a few minutes.

As instructed, Riley refrains from taking communion, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Father Paul. But he’s kind about it, gentle, seeming to know a lot about what’s going on with him without having to ask, just by Riley’s reluctance to look him in the eye. When Riley tells him that he’s “not in a state of grace,” Father Paul responds with acceptance and understanding, not judgment. "Turns out I'm not much use to people who are in a state of grace,” he says. “Jesus, he didn't have that much interest for those kind of people either. No, he seemed to go straight for those folks who weren't in a state of grace. They were his favorite people, turns out.”

Riley is unmoved at first. As he explains to Erin, he spent four straight years in jail reading all the religious texts he could find, and none of them answered his question, the question many of us ask: where is the grace in suffering? Why do innocents like Tara-Beth, who have their whole lives ahead of them, have to die, while selfish fuck-ups like Riley keep on trucking? The world is an evermore unjust and terrifying place, and so it’s hard to take comfort in knowing that Jesus wants us this way, confused and scared and unsure of anything.

As if the good folks of Crockett Island haven’t taken enough of a beating recently, a violent storm tears into it. Riley is taken aback by a strange sight: the ancient Monsignor Pruitt, despite supposedly recovering from an unexplained illness overseas, staggering across the beach in the stormy night. It’s one of a number of puzzling things that have happened upon both Riley and Father Paul’s arrival: strange noises, unseen animals scratching in the dark. Town drunk Joe Collie (Robert Longstreet) babbles a wild tale about a huge bird flying overhead. It’s probably nothing, though. It’s nature reclaiming the town. It’s the town folding in on itself.

But the dead cats, strewn up and down the beach like hellish party confetti? That’s a little harder to explain. Even if it’s just an unfortunate coincidence, it seems to mark the beginning of Crockett Island’s very long night.

1. In my case with the help of modern medicine, although part of me likes to think that sheer stubbornness helped.

2. Given the themes of Doctor Sleep, his take on The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan is clearly fascinated (if not haunted) by the concept of a person tormented by guilt in a corporeal form.

3. When I first watched Midnight Mass (this is now my third viewing), I was a bit baffled by the fact that Thomas and Lehman are both wearing obvious “old” makeup, and assumed there’d be a flashback involving their characters. There was, turns out, but not quite in the way I expected.