#no one was thinking of joe collie no one cares about midnight mass but!

[gaystropod]

Whenever a character puts themself on a path of redemention but dies before they can get there i die also.

[oskarwing]

I really wanna talk about the parent child relationships in Midnight Mass

I’m not sure if I’m good at writing this sorta Meta but here goes nothing. Very many spoilers follow.

Let’s start with the adults: 

First we have Erin who suffered so much at the hands of her mother and later because of her mother’s abuse. We don’t get much detailed info on Peggy Greene but from what we can gather she was a lot like Beverly Keane, who seemed to idolize her (though that probably got easier for her after Peggy was gone), in her self-righteous over-pious manner. She just happened to be Beverly with an alcohol problem and a daughter who she could take all her anger at life for not working out her way for God loving her just the same as everybody else out. The dove scene is really such a good scene. But Erin was stronger than her mother, stronger than the abuse that was about to repeat itself and when she found out that she would have a child of her own she left and tried her best to give her kid a better life than the one she had. And she found the strength I think with the help of the same God her mother most likely used as legitimation for her abuse (don’t get me wrong I believe it was Erin’s own strength but she also clearly found something in religion that helped her gather it) and it helped her to carve out a path for herself and her unborn child.  

Sarah’s relationship to her parents is such an interesting one because we get to see the end of it. The man who she believed to be her father has been dead for a long while and her mother is suffering through the late stages of dementia. And Sarah showed up for it. As a doctor she most likely knew what would be happening as soon as Mildred started to show the first symptombs but she wasn’t going to leave her mother. That kind of care for an elderly parent shows something that is proven in Mildred’s character time and time again: She is a very devoted parent and the love between mother and daughter flows both ways in every scene they are in together, after the birth of her daughter her world turned around Sarah and she loved her with all she had. There are a few scenes that show that Mildred’s understanding of the duty she felt towards her family came from the old values of her time. She wouldn’t have taken off with John and their child not for a lack of love but because in those times, in catholism still at least where I’m from, you can’t just marry a priest. You can’t just have a child with a priest eventhough you’re married and then fuck off with him. As a woman, as a wife and mother you have to stand with your husband, stand with your child and you have to stop running after fantasies I’m sure Mildred had. I’m saying this all from her perspective btw, I don’t necessarily think running away with John, in the way he wished to, would have been good for Sarah but honesty might have been and her old fashioned values were also what kept her from being truly honest with her daughter.  To John on the other hand Sarah is a fantasy, a dream he couldn’t reach. His daughter, his baby, so close and yet so far away getting to watch her grow into an adult but never being able to really be her father as in her Dad instead of her priest. And it’s painful to him, he clearly loved Mildred, loved Sarah but he was also kinda selfish in his love that in the end took Sarah away. At first he isolated his child by starring at her giving her the creeps and the feeling that she had done something wrong that he knew she was gay and dissaproved and then he took it upon himself to ‘cure’ Mildred in the same way he was. Sarah wanted to take care of her mother wanted to be there for her in those final months and John decided it was up to him to give Mildred a youth potion to make it so she’d never die. And with that he took away from Sarah what is without doubt a hard but for many people a very important last part of the relationship between child and parent. John was a complicated man and would maybe have been a great Dad he certainly showed a lot of fatherly love for his altar boys but he couldn’t have the family in the way he fantasized about and in the end it was that fantasy that made him act the way he did.   

Riley Flynn causes his parents a lot of pain. Him killing that girl in the beginning, his alcoholism, him simply not liking the place, the home they build for themselves through hard work causes the Annie and Ed so much pain and financial loss and you can see how tired they are, how much guilt they feel for failing their son. Ed calls out his own guilt and says that he doesn’t belive it could be Annie’s fault because ‘your mother’s a saint’ but what I truly love about Annie and Ed Flynn is that they both aren’t saints. As a mother Annie is very much overprotective and suffocating, wanting to keep her children on crocket island and hating the notion that they might leave her, even though she is kind and sweet and loving. And while Ed seems rather checked out as a father but he is the more honest parent, never talking down to Riley and telling him as it is, telling him about the pain he caused him while also admitting to the guilt he feels. The Flynns are flawed people even in their religious practice (I think the way Annie speaks about Ali showing up at church when Hassan seemed to be nothing but nice to her spoke very loudly to the fact that Annie is rather misguided sometimes) but they are good people at the core of it and their parenting might have been part of Riley’s way into alcoholism but it wasn’t only them. There were things they couldn’t change and things they had no influence over like his heart being broken by Erin running away, the sort of people he went out on parties with and so many other things...  Yes, they may have shaped their son in a way that made him vulnerable to addiction and the party scene of the stock and tech market and brought him to the point where he killed a child but it doesn’t happen through parenting alone and they also shaped him in the good ways. Him not losing himself when Pruitt changes him, him being brave enough to warn Erin, him standing up for what he believes in those things were also shaped by Ed and Annie. They are one of the best example of flawed but good hearted Christians I have seen in recent media and their portrayal was one of the most heartbreaking ones. 

Now the kids: 

Let’s start with Leeza. Little Leeza Scarborough who before it comes to her wonder gets treated with pity and overprotectiveness from her parents and the island community at large. Leeza was injured by Joe Collie transforming him into the island’s villain and her into the ever present victim.  What happened to her is without a doubt horrible and I understand why Wade and Dolly started to become these overprotective parents, why they were so easily sucked in to John’s and Bev’s scheme. Their little girl was almost taken from them eventhough Wade is the mayor, one of the most powerful people on the island he had no influence over what happened to Leeza even was the one who took her out that day and what followed the accident was as we can gather from their conversation with Sarah a lot of pain and financial burden though they say they would have done it all over for Leeza. In fact a lot of places in crockett island are wheelchair accesible and I am sure that Wade as mayor made it so (I can’t really imagine that a small place like the island was very inclusive though I may be wrong).  After Leeza is healed they don’t want to question in don’t want to think about what might have been the cause for it. In fact they stop questioning anything after that point, after Leeza walks again they are completely vulnerable to Bev’s manipulation and them letting that happen, them just going along with everything, Wade protecting John after he kills Joe long after Leeza forgave him and with her forgiveness send Joe on a better path is what in the end makes them lose her. Because Leeza isn’t that little victim who needs pity and help, she is a strong minded, strong willed young woman with a lot of wit who similar to Erin finds strength in her faith but in a way that isn’t devotion without question and when the Easter vigil is held she doesn’t follow her parents eventhough she loves them deeply. She forgives them I think, because that’s what Leeza’s character is about in it’s core but her parents were two of the instigators behind what happened on the island, without Wade’s protection John and Bev couldn’t have come as far as they did and they put their trust in them because they loved their daughter so much they didn’t stop to question if maybe what made Leeza walk again was also a bad thing. 

Ali and Hassan don’t have it easy and I as a white person really can’t speak much on the racism and religious discrimination they face.  I can say this I think: The first line spoken about Ali before we even really get to look at him is “You didn’t invite Aladin” and already sets us up for what both of them know: They are the outsiders. Not only because they just moved to the island but also because in their faith they are different from their peers and religion can often be a community building event for people before it is anything else. Ali starts balming his father a little for that, for not trying to fit in more with the community, for moving after his mother’s death and then not trying to be closer to the people around them and for the pain all the pain the two of them went through before Crockett island. It isn’t oly peer pressure though of course that brings Ali to St Patrick’s. Sure, Ali wanted to be part of the community but also desperately wanted to believe that there was a devine power who could if he just did it (it meaning faith) the right way he might find a way to avoid the pain of his parents. Hassan knew that and he warned him that that wasn’t how it worked. Hassan was a protective Dad and maybe he overdid it from time to time but his worries were never without reason, his need to keep his son safe from a world that hated him for a crime that happened when he wasn’t even born yet never unfounded and him wanting to make sure his kid kept the memory of his mother alive never anything but the wish of a griefing man and loving father. In the end when they pray together there is peace in them. They face their ends with the dignity Ali’s mother would have wished for and they face it as father and son. While Beverly the true religious terrorist of the story burns away without it. 

Warren is the youngest Flynn and it is never directly stated yet omnipresent that his coming of age happens in the shadow of his older brother’s mistake.  Annie warns him away from drinking when he goes out he in fact doesn’t drink. He never drinks because of what his brother did.  Warren would have been 12 when Riley killed that girl and so he would have seen and felt what his brother’s actions did to his parents fully without being yet old enough to maybe see the nuance.  Annie and Ed probably try to right the wrong they believe to have done in parenting Riley with Warren and that’s a lot for a kid. I do think it’s pretty usual that parents of multiple children especially when there’s a larger age gap try to do better with the younger children, but that isn’t fair is it?  Warren is his own person not a second chance to do it over.  And yet seemingly he does what is asked of him. He’s alter boy, he’s charming and helpful and sweet, he doesn’t drink (even when he does smoke pot) and he helps his father where he can with his work.  But in the end he feels guilty because he thinks he wasn’t enough and says at that last dinner he would have been different if he had known he wouldn’t see his family again. But Leeza is right they know and they love him and Warren deserved to not be perfect all the time. 

Littlefoot saved Erin and Erin payed her back with all the love she had. She was never born but she gave her mother the strength and willpower to leave.  In her speech to Joe Leeza said he reached through time and took things from her she didn’t even know she had yet.When Erin left her husband she reached through time and saved Littlefoot from a childhood like hers and when John gave Erin the angel’s vampire’s blood he reached through time and took away her child, a child who would have been loved and cared for. A child with an amazing mother and probably a great step-dad.  Littlefoot’s story is tragic because she never got one. 

[kaasknot]

i just hit up the midnight mass tag on ao3, and it's the place to be if you're a fan of tortured priests, but i was disappointed there wasn't any sheriff hassan/joe collie fic. i mean i see why, joe collie is old and fat, and fandom is a shallow creature (i do not exempt myself). which is a shame, because it's such a good dynamic.

joe collie, town drunk and outcast, with plenty to atone for and so much character development to play with. textually he's an outsider for shooting the mayor's daughter; his reasons for this are never explained, but he clearly regrets it immensely. i have a feeling that it was a terrifying moment for him, when he came face to face with the monster inside himself; and i think it drove him fully into alcoholism. as far as shipping is concerned, it wouldn't be hard at all to include "closeted gay" to his list of issues. maybe beverly keane saw him kissing a mainlander down by the marina when they were 17, and no one talks about it, but everyone knows. an insular, catholic town like that? there's no way joe escaped unscathed. maybe that's why sarah gunning is so cautious about her girlfriend: she saw what happened to joe collie.

and sheriff hassan el-shabbaz. he's an outsider, too, and just as intolerable to a conservative christian parish. he's mourning his wife; he's struggling to maintain dignity in a town whose leaders only accept him in letter, not in spirit. joe calls him 'sharif' and scoffs at his faith, and make no mistake: after a long day of the same crap from everyone else on crockett island, it's hard to bear. but joe's as likely to call bowl out for starting shit as he is to start shit on his own. he apologizes for being a bother, instead of pausing for hassan to apologize for islam. if hassan stops to think about it, it's depressing as hell that the closest thing he has to a friend is the town drunk. but it's also a relief to share a cup of coffee with someone who gets it when bev keane acts up.

there's such compassion in their interactions. well, from hassan to joe, anyway; hassan cares about joe. he's the only one to comfort him or try to help when pike dies; he's the only one who validates joe's anger toward bev. he's probably the closest thing joe has to a friend, too, after pike. joe's a little too much of a surly asshole to fully return the favor, too wrapped up in his own hurts to be compassionate in kind, but i think he would have, if he'd been given the chance. joe wanted to fix himself; he just needed the motivation (or the permission).

there's fodder for a very quiet, self-effacing love story here. hassan struggles with being a queer muslim and with fears that he's betraying his wife; joe struggles with remembering how to be a good person and with trusting that sometimes life brings good things. it's hard, of course, but it's also as simple as a cup of coffee.

[aion-rsa]

Midnight Mass Cast: Previous Credits From Hill House to Bly Manor, Legion & Sherlock

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If you find yourself thinking ‘where have I seen that guy before?’ while watching a Mike Flanagan show or film, the answer may well be ‘in another Mike Flanagan show or film’. The horror writer-director is known for his rep company of actors, many of whom appear in multiple roles across various projects. Below is a spoiler-free rundown of the main players in the Flanagan gang’s new Netflix horror series Midnight Mass, about the ripples caused by the arrival of a mysterious priest in a remote North American island community. There’s also info on who they played in past collaborations, and a few other places you may have encountered them on screen. A good handful will additionally be seen in Flanagan’s next series The Midnight Club, on which filming is already complete, and which will be coming to Netflix next year. But first though, welcome to Crockett Island. Be not afraid…

Hamish Linklater – Father Paul

A newcomer to the Mike Flanagan acting family, Hamish Linklater is now fully ensconced so expect to see much more of him in future and rejoice, because he’s the absolute stand-out in Midnight Mass. Commanding, charismatic, intense, and utterly committed, this is a big performance that’ll be hard to forget. Previous to Father Paul, Linklater played Division 3 Agent Clark Debussy in trippy comic book series Legion, and IRS agent Larue Dollard in Fargo season three, both for Noah Hawley. Prior to that were recurring roles in sitcoms The Crazy Ones and The New Adventures of Old Christine, with Robin Williams and Julia Louis Dreyfus respectively, plus recent Amazon crime thriller Tell Me Your Secrets, with his partner Lily Rabe. Honestly though, Father Paul is the only role anybody’s going to be talking about for a good while yet.

Samantha Sloyan as Bev Keane

The villainous Bev Keane is another stand-out performance in Midnight Mass thanks to Samantha Sloyan, whom you might remember as Leigh Crain, the wife of novelist Steven Crain in 2019’s The Haunting of Hill House. Prior to that, she played Maddie’s neighbour Sarah in Mike Flanagan’s Hush, as well as the recurring roles of Jeannine Locke in Scandal, Dr. Penelope Blake in Grey’s Anatomy, and several appearances as Victoria in SEAL Team. Look out for her among the cast of Flanagan’s next Netflix series, The Midnight Club, which is already in post-production.

Kate Siegel as Erin Greene

Where would a Mike Flanagan project be without regular collaborator (and wife) writer-actor Kate Siegel? We barely have to know because Siegel is a bedrock of the Flanagan collective. In addition to the role of schoolteacher and former runaway Erin Greene in Midnight Mass, she played glove-wearing empath Theodora Craine in The Haunting of Hill House, 17th century Viola (who became the Lady in the Lake) in The Haunting of Bly Manor, Sally in Gerald’s Game, Jenny in Ouija: Origin of Evil, Maddie in Hush (which Siegel co-wrote) and Marisol in Oculus. Siegel wasn’t in Doctor Sleep, possibly because she and Flanagan welcomed their daughter Theodora to the world almost exactly to the day filming wrapped on The Shining sequel.

Zach Gilford as Riley Flynn

In Midnight Mass, Zach Gilford plays Riley Flynn, whose return to his Crockett Island family home coincides with the arrival of the mysterious new priest Father Paul. Gilford’s known to many as sensitive young quarterback Matt Saracen in Friday Night Lights, but he’s appeared in plenty since, recently including Greg in NBC’s Good Girls, Ben in LA’s Finest, a central role in The Purge: Anarchy and recurring parts in ABC series The Family and Off the Map. He’s also going to be back for Mike Flanagan’s next Netflix project The Midnight Club.

Annabeth Gish as Dr Sarah Gunning

Sarah Gunning is Crockett Island’s resident doctor who’s caring for her dementia-suffering elderly mother. She’s played by Annabeth Gish, who you’ll have seen in… well, loads of stuff, including The Haunting of Hill House in which she played housekeeper Mrs Dudley. Gish also played Jed Bartlet’s eldest daughter in The West Wing, Lt. Jarry in Sons of Anarchy season seven, the therapist in Pretty Little Liars, venture capitalist Diane Gould in season three of Halt and Catch Fire, and FBI agent Reyes in The X-Files revived seasons.

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Rahul Kohli as Sheriff Hassan

British actor Rahul Kohli plays Crockett Island lawman Sheriff Hassan, following up his role as the internet’s boyfriend, chef Owen in The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020. Prior to that, Kohli was best known for playing Ravi Chakrabarti on iZombie, popping up in a couple of episodes of Supergirl and recently voicing The Scarecrow on animated series Harley Quinn. He’ll soon be heard as the voice of Egill in Zack Snyder’s Norse mythology-inspired anime Twilight of the Gods.

Kristin Lehman and Henry Thomas as Annie and Ed Flynn

Here’s a fun fact: Kristin Lehman and Henry Thomas, who play Riley Flynn’s parents in Midnight Mass, are only 10 years older than actor Zach Gilford in real life. Another fun, but extremely well-known fact is that Henry Thomas, who played Hugh Crain in The Haunting of Hill House and Henry Wingrave in The Haunting of Bly Manor, started out as young Elliott in E.T. Thomas is a regular Flanagan collaborator and has also popped up in Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game, Ouija: Origin of Evil to name but a few. He recently had recurring roles on Stargirl and Better Things. Canadian actor Lehman has a similarly full back catalogue, featuring a great many TV and film roles from The Outer Limits to Altered Carbon and The Killing, as well as several TV directing credits.

Robert Longstreet as Joe Collie

Crockett Island’s town drunk Joe Collie is played by Robert Longstreet, who appeared opposite Annabeth Gish (see above) as caretaker Mr Dudley in The Haunting of Hill House, and in the Mike Flanagan-directed Doctor Sleep. You can also see him in horror sequel Halloween Kills and as Professor James in Aquaman, and he’s part of the cast of Mike Flanagan’s forthcoming Netflix horror series The Midnight Club.

Michael Trucco & Annarah Cymone as Wade and Leeza

Michael Trucco and Crystal Balint (not pictured) play Wade and Dolly Scarborough, parents of Leeza (above), Crockett Island’s sole devout teenager played by Annarah Cymone. Trucco will still be best recognised around these parts as Samuel Anders in Battlestar Galactica, but he’s done plenty more, including recurring roles in One Tree Hill, How I Met Your Mother and Netflix stoner comedy Disjointed. Balint has a similarly full back catalogue, with roles in Prison Break, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco and recently Riverdale. She’ll be seen again in The Midnight Club too, along with Cymone, the actor who plays her daughter in Midnight Mass, whose TV debut this marks.

Louis Oliver, Igby Rigney and Rahul Abburi as Ooker, Warren and Ali

It’s unlikely you’ll recognise Louis Oliver, who plays teenage altar boy Ooker on Midnight Mass, from his first screen role as he’s grown up since then, but he was the young Sherlock Holmes in BBC episode ‘His Last Vow‘ (and also happens to be the son of Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat and producer Sue Vertue). Igby Rigney, who plays Riley’s younger brother Warren, played the young Jesse in the recent film F9: The Fast Saga and will also be appearing in The Midnight Club. Sheriff’s son Ali is Rahul Abburi’s second TV role after appearing on YouTube Red series Good Game.

Matt Biedel as Sturge

Crockett Island resident and Bev Keane’s right-hand man Sturge is played by Matt Biedel (a little unrecognisable under a full and healthy beard), who’ll also star in The Midnight Club next year. Biedel is probably best known for playing Daryl in Narcos: Mexico, Sgt. Dale Chedder in The Umbrella Academy and Dimi in Altered Carbon.

Alex Essoe

Another Mike Flanagan rep company member, popular horror movie regular Alex Essoe played Charlotte Wingrave, mother to Flora and Miles in The Haunting of Bly Manor, and the Flapper ghost in The Haunting of Hill House, as well as playing Wendy Torrance in Doctor Sleep, a role made famous by Shelley Duvall in The Shining.

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Midnight Mass comes to Netflix on Friday the 24th of September.

The post Midnight Mass Cast: Previous Credits From Hill House to Bly Manor, Legion & Sherlock appeared first on Den of Geek.

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