midnight mass angel vampire reddit theory

This Reddit Theory About The “Angel” In ‘Midnight Mass’ Is Straight-Up Freaky

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Between the spooky memes the show inspired, the low-key hot priest, and the disturbing ending, Netflix’s Midnight Mass is… a lot!

The seven-episode series is set within an isolated town called Crockett Island, as a community welcomes a mysterious young priest into their close-knit fold — but all is not what it seems.

Spoilers ahead, so now is the time to exit this window if you don’t want to know the big twist in Midnight Mass.

The youthful priest who joins the Crockett Island church is actually the same priest who has preached there for decades — Monsignor John Pruitt — only he has aged backwards after encountering an “angel” during a visit to Israel. This apparent angel, however, looks terrifying.

Far removed from the angels we’ve seen before in both mythology and pop culture, this angel looked like a monster. It had a hideous face, it was huge in scale, and had massive scaly, skeletal wings. It looked more like the cursed offspring of a demon and a bat.

Monsignor Pruitt reclaimed his youth by drinking the demon’s angel’s blood, before he eventually died himself by getting poisoned and returned as a fully-fledged blood-sucker. The priest eventually would tempt the entire town into dying, only to be resurrected with an insatiable urge to drink blood and well… brutally kill each other.

Without saying the actual word in the series, most viewers have gathered from the whole blood-drinking thing and resurrections that the apparent “angel” was actually a vampire.

So was the Midnight Mass angel actually a vampire?

Due to the identity and origin of the angel being left so ambiguous, viewers are posing their own theories about what the hell that creature was. On Reddit’s r/MidnightMass page, a convincing argument was made about whether the entity could be both an angel and a vampire at the same time.

“The big bit of irony in the show is that Pruitt identifies what is very obviously a vampire as an angel of God,” the theory begins.

“But a couple of things tell us that there’s more to this misunderstanding. First off, the angel decides to turn the Monsignor when he hears him praying; whether due to the familiarity or recognising he can manipulate him, it’s clear he knows religion. Then, we see that this angel is very capable of carrying itself as a man, and understands the rites behind religion, so he must have been a man himself at some point. Then, last but not least, this fucker shows up in a chasuble and strolls through a building packed with vampire lunchables to deliver the midnight Mass.”

This scene was at odds with what is known of vampire behaviour: the angel wore a robe and walked through the church, not attacking any of the crowd. Would a vampire be keen to chuck on a religious outfit emblazoned with crosses? Seems suss.

They continued, “So I’m thinking Pruitt, in a second layer of irony, was likely not entirely off the mark. There’s no way the angel wasn’t some religious leader in his past life.” They then went on to suggest that the angel was actually Jesus or Judas, who had been transformed into a vampire. “First, a lot of the miracles in the show mirror those of Christ in the Bible. Healings, resurrections, making the old young,” they wrote.

They went on to point to the resurrection part of the bible, making a connection that Jesus came back as a vampire. “The greatest mystery of Christianity is the resurrection. The many accounts of this all share that his resurrection itself was never witnessed, just discovered,” they said.

The theory receives support on Reddit, with others adding their own additions to the argument that the angel was a biblical figure. “One of the especially interesting qualities of the ‘angel’ in this series, to me, was that it was entirely unaffected by crosses and faith,” one added.

“Vampires throughout most stories and lore are repulsed by the cross and/or demonstrations of powerful faith. For this creature to not only ignore the crosses around it, but in fact seemingly revel in its role as a religious figurehead, is extremely odd if it’s just some classic vampire.”

A fellow Redditor also agreed. “Another interesting point to consider,” they wrote. “From what I remember, having just finished the show, I don’t remember the word ‘vampire’ ever being used. If that does check out, I would have to think that it was done on purpose.”

However, others disagreed with parts of the theory. One posted that “Neither Jesus or Judas would recognise the rites of the Catholic Church. My theory is that it’s just an anonymous priest that became a vampire a long time ago and that the way it looks, its wings, etc, might just be a natural part of the vampirification process.”

Then there was this mind-bending theory that is also worth considering. “What if there are no such things as ‘angels’ and the mythology of them grew from very real vampires?” a Redditor posed. “I mean this in a storytelling, mythological sense. Some people believe that the idea of angels came from aliens who once visited earth. In this show’s universe, what if they grew from vampires?”

Makes you think, huh.

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Stream Midnight Mass on Netflix.