Warrior Nun: Dodging the Puppykicker

How Warrior Nun made me care about the "bad guys"

[Warning: The following post will contain spoilers for Warrior Nun Season 1.]

Warrior Nun is the most fun I've had watching a Netflix series in a long, long time.

Despite enjoying the darker, drearier stories found in other shows on the service like Ozark or Mindhunter, sometimes it's nice to just kick back, relax, and watch something that's clearly a passion project for everyone involved. Now, I must be frank here: Warrior Nun is not a perfect show. Some of the side characters like JC and Camilla lack a certain level of depth that other characters get throughout the series. A few of the twists and turns were presented in a very nonchalant manner, as if expecting the audience to already know what's going on. And despite how great of a story twist it is for Adriel to be a surprise final villain, third act bad guys often rub me the wrong way, especially when their appearance results in an oddly-placed cliffhanger as his did.

However!

None of that matters. Because beyond those three specific criticisms, I have nothing negative to say about Warrior Nun Season 1. Because everything else about the show tells me every single person making this series had fun doing it. There is love poured into every single scene. Every camera angle, every action sequence, every monologue, every dream. All of it comes together to tell a compelling story about Ava, a girl imbued with more power than she can handle, and a destiny she doesn't want. 

There's a selfishness to her at first, but the origins of that selfishness grow understandable with every new episode. Ava is a girl who lost the ability to walk in a car accident at such a young age, she's spent practically her entire young life bedridden. Her anger at her situation comes out in the form of humor, a humor she maintains after the halo embedded in her corpse's back by a panicked nun gifts her the ability to walk again. Others call her selfish for not wanting to take up the mantle of the Warrior Nun. And she is. But that selfishness is justified. The audience understands where she's coming from because a full picture of her has been painted for them to see.

But it's not just Ava that Warrior Nun does this with. It also does this with major figures in the story introduced as antagonists who want Ava's power for themselves.

Let's think about villains for a second. I like villains. Villains are great. Because, unlike the hero, who is almost always portrayed as a harbinger of justice or being right or at least trying to do what they think is right, villains don't have to fall into that category. Villains can be cruel, cowardly, awful people. They often do bad things for specific reasons, but most of the time it's something audiences understand is bad for the world at large. Villains are "against the good guy," but they come in a variety of interesting, dynamic forms. Sometimes it's someone with a specific goal in mind that will benefit them and them alone. Sometimes it's a person who is seeking revenge in ways that, to them, are justified despite the torment they leave in their wake. And sometimes, a good villain is just a Goddamn puppykicker. Some asshole so who just likes to beat the metaphorical puppy because he can.

But none of that would have worked for Warrior Nun. There's a complexity to the world right out of the gate. Ava was taken care of by nuns, yet she doesn't align herself with the church or religious idolatry at all. Meanwhile, Lilith, a nun in the Order of the Cruciform Sword and the rightful halo-bearer, becomes increasingly agitated at the fact that someone outside the OCS now has her birthright. Lilith is against Ava, which would make her an antagonist by traditional terms. The show easily could have made her power-hungry, or plotting to take over the Church, or just be a puppykicker because it's easy to root against an antagonist when they're a puppykicker.

But that's not what Warrior Nun did. In developing every primary antagonist in the show, Warrior Nun made sure none of them were puppykickers.

Every single major antagonist in Season 1 is doing something that, to the audience, can be justified. Some viewers might even grow to agree with what certain characters are doing despite them going against Ava and the more heroic characters in the show. There are, of course, outliers. Season 1 doesn't show us much of Adriel, or Father Vincent's reasons for being on Adriel's side. Frances and her putting down sick children in the orphanage is disagreeable wholesale. Then again, Frances wouldn't be classified as a "puppykicker," instead acting as a villain with misguided beliefs. But aside from Frances, Adriel, and Father Vincent at the end, every other party in Warrior Nun that could be construed as a villain always has an understandable, reasonable rationale behind what they do.

Appropriately, let's start off with Lilith. With a name as on-the-nose as that, you'd expect her to be an evil character right off the bat. But, instead, the show spends three episodes justifying where her frustrations with Ava having the halo are coming from. Not only was the halo her birthright, but an outsider having such tremendous power could threaten the OCS and the church. An order that has been maintained for hundreds of years could all be toppled if Ava doesn't comply with her newfound destiny. Lilith wants the halo and says she would be willing to kill Ava to get it, but it's not without reason. The series justifies her point of view for 4 episodes, rationalizing why she's willing to agree to kill Ava after then-Cardinal Duretti advises her to. What is the life of a single person compared to the OCS, which has saved thousands--if not millions--from the demons lurking on Earth?

Lilith shows her true colors in Episode 5. While Mary tries to keep Lilith from killing Ava per Father Vincent's orders, Lilith refuses to give up. Every time the duo spar throughout the episode, Lilith keeps trying to get Mary to see her perspective on why cutting the halo out of Ava and being done with it is the best scenario for the OCS. But Mary--who understands what it's like to be an outsider like Ava--refuses to give in. Here we see that, despite the duo fighting against one another, they're also fighting for the same reason. Lilith and Mary duel across Episode 5 because they believe what they want from Ava is what's best for the OCS and, by extension, the world. It's easy to root against Lilith because she doesn't have Ava's best interests (staying alive) at heart. But she sees her duty as protecting the OCS first and foremost, something that requires sacrifice.

But it ends up being Lilith who has to make said sacrifice. At the end of Episode 5, a tarask attacks Ava and the rest of the group, drawn by the power of the halo. Seeing the beast raise its arm up high, Lilith dives in to block the attack, which would have split Ava in two. But she times the angle wrong, being impaled in the process. Despite wanting to kill Ava, believing that doing so would better protect the world, Lilith is a protector first and a killer second. It makes complete sense for her to protect Ava and sacrifice herself because, despite acting as an antagonist since Episode 4, that's who Lilith is. Every episode up until this point made it clear that, despite doing what she deemed necessary by hunting down Ava, she was doing so because she thought it would save the OCS. Seeing Ava in trouble and jumping in, seemingly dying in the process, is exactly the kind of person Lilith is based on everything already established. Would Lilith really have killed Ava, despite that being her end goal? With a sacrifice so noble and selfless, it's hard to say. But my money's on no. No, I don't think she would have. And that too makes her character all the more dynamic.

Lilith continues to maintain that characterization upon her return later in the season, after the tarask drags her to Hell and she mysteriously reappears at the OCS' church. Despite coming back with some kind of Hell powers and ever-whitening hair (which I'm sure Season 2 will elaborate on), Lilith maintains concern for her actions prior to being pulled into Hell by the tarask. Her and Ava have a heartfelt conversation outside of ArqTech where the pair make amends, although the alliance appears uneasy. That is until Episode 9, when Lilith teleports her way into Adriel's underground tomb, warning Ava that it's not safe for her to go inside. While Mary is able to calm Lilith down and keep her from attacking Ava and Beatrice, her worries soon prove to be correct, as Adriel is still alive inside his tomb, waiting for Ava so he can retake his halo. Lilith's concerns were not unfounded, even if she was planning to do harm to her friends in order to stop them from unleashing a new evil upon the world.

Lilith is a dynamic antagonist because she isn't evil. She's against Ava, which makes her an antagonist by default, but her nature is clearly that of someone who wants to protect the people she cares about, even at the cost of her life. Sacrificing herself for Ava proved that she didn't want the halo getting into Hell's grasp, nor did she want to see an innocent involved in the underworld of the OCS get hurt. Her warning to Ava and Beatrice proves that she just doesn't want to see anyone harmed. While she often puts up a cold exterior, that fades over the course of the first season, her walls breaking down to reveal a young girl who wants to make the world a better place, no matter what she has to do to attain that bettering.

Similarly, Cardinal (and later Pope) Duretti was a curveball character I did not see coming out of Warrior Nun. Introduced in Episode 2, Duretti was displayed as the cold, harsh overseer of Father Vincent, contemplating the many ways in which the halo could be removed from Ava's back. His scheming is what leads to not only Lilith's near-death experience, but also Beatrice's subtly lacking faith in the church and the OCS. He doesn't care if Ava lives or dies and, to top it all off, he and Mother Superion begin to conflict with one another after the Pope's death. As it's revealed that Cardinal Duretti has made as many political moves as he can muster in the background to take control of the church and become Pope. He wants the power in his hands, and only God knows what he's going to do with it.

Duretti is painted as this scheming, conniving villain, until we learn why Duretti truly wanted absolute power in the church during the season finale. Confronted by Mother Superion, she begins to accuse him of killing Sister Shannon, knowing about Adriel's "bones" under the Vatican, and plotting to use his power as Pope to do something nefarious. But Duretti is taken aback. "What bones?' he asks. Superion has clearly known Duretti for a long time, as she looks just as shocked by his question. Duretti then reveals the truth: He really was trying to gain more power in the church in order to better watch over and protect the OCS. Everything he did throughout Season 1--from tasking Lilith with hunting down Ava to trying to sway Beatrice to his side--was done in service of the church and for the protection of the world.

Duretti and Lilith are villains that exemplify something I think Warrior Nun does really well with its story. I call it the "not twist." See, in a typical story, the presentation of, for example, Duretti scheming with Lilith to take back the halo by killing Ava, would be seen as a guise. A guise for Duretti to gain more power by having Lilith, the rightful halo-bearer, under his thumb, while Lilith herself vies for more power in the OCS using the halo. That's the way that particular scene is presented. But it's underscored by the idea that, yes, what Duretti and Lilith are doing is justified if their intentions are pure, even if they're a threat to Ava in that moment. By the end of the season, that twist one would expect of Duretti or Lilith wanting absolute power for malicious reasons doesn't come. Instead, both of them have proven that they are, in fact, good people who were simply doing what they believed was right, even if it painted them as antagonists in the eyes of the more obviously heroic characters in the story.

While Duretti and Lilith's similarities invoke this idea of a "not twist" through negative motives that never come, ArqTech is...slightly different. Acting more as an "other" force in Warrior Nun, ArqTech is spearheaded by Dr. Jillian Salvius, who has been utilizing ancient, holy artifacts in order to do science stuff with the quantum realm. Yes, another unique and interesting aspect of Warrior Nun is that some holy Christian artifacts contain a material called "divinium" that can be utilized in quantum experiments. Because divinium is connected to realms beyond humanity--with a heavy implication that it may originate from Hell itself--it's up to the OCS and the church to make sure artifacts containing divinium don't fall into the wrong hands. Something made all the more difficult in the modern age, when ArqTech wants to utilize the powers found in divinium-laced artifacts to experiment with dimensional travel and quantum physics. Also it all comes from Adriel's armor, which is typically how artifacts imbued with divinium got...well, divinium.

When we first meet Salvius at ArqTech in Episode 2, she gives a demonstration of how divinium can be used to open a small gateway to another, unknown dimension for a brief period of time. Personally, my gamer senses were going off here, and I started to wonder if ArqTech was supposed to sound like Argent, the Hell energy being harvested by the UAC in Doom 2016. But I digress. Over the course of the next two episodes, it's revealed that Salvius has a much larger quantum portal in her lab, one which she wants to use to open a gateway that a full person could step through. In order to power it, however, she realizes that she needs either more divinium to incorporate into the machine, or Ava, whose powers through the halo can magnify the existing divinium and its quantum properties.

Despite having all the hallmarks of an evil, tech-centered organization going against the mighty and true religious-oriented protagonists, ArqTech--well, specifically Salvius--never felt antagonistic to me. In her initial scenes in Episodes 2 and 3, Salvius doesn't sound like she wants to utilize divinium for any ill-begot reasons. Instead, she seems more ignorant to the power it holds and what kind of negative forces she could be messing with without realizing it. Salvius didn't understand the possible risk of opening a gateway to another dimension, and it was clear right from the start that she didn't hold any malice toward the church. She simply wanted to learn more about divinium and what it could be used for by employing the scientific methods her worldview is built upon.

But then things started to get more complicated. As it turns out, Salvius has a son, Michael, a sickly young boy who is only alive because of divinium flowing through his system. Salvius' larger portal--which she reveals is called the Ark--was built in order to transport her and Michael to a world where pain doesn't not exist. In essence, Salvius is revealed to understand the religious implications behind her scientific research, but remains hopeful that she's crafted a portal to Heaven, despite the church's warnings. Not only does this reveal highlight her own ignorance, an irony given her scientific background, but also why that ignorance is there. It's not simply that she doesn't understand divinium and its ties to very real religious-based entities. Salvius doesn't care, because to acknowledge anything demonic in the work she's doing to save her son would make everything she's done at ArqTech all for nothing.

When Michael goes through the Ark without Salvius in the season finale, it's genuinely heartbreaking. Salvius didn't just want Michael to be saved by traversing dimensions, she wanted to go with him. She's his mother, after all, so it makes sense as to why she wanted to leave Earth alongside him. She's lost her son--the only thing she was fighting for--because of a strange connection between the Ark, the halo, and Adriel. And she doesn't even understand the full context for it. Who was the angel that was sending Michael drawings of the Ark opening? I still don't know. A cliffhanger for Season 2. But one that resonates so well with Salvius' grief. She doesn't have all the answers in the end, despite doing everything she could to find them. Salvius is a tragic character that truly just wanted to save her son by any means necessary.

The complexity of characters that seem like villains in Warrior Nun Season 1 truly astounded me. Lilith, Duretti, and Salvius easily could have been introduced as characters who have disagreeable motivations, or are power-hungry, or are just Goddamn puppykickers. Instead, Warrior Nun made them into complex characters who, while introduced as antagonists, slowly morph into recurring characters with motivations just as strong as Ava and the OCS girls. Simon Barry and the rest of the incredible writers and directors involved in crafting Warrior Nun's story understood the world they were building was complex enough that a puppykicker villain just wasn't going to work. So, they didn't make any. They created characters whose motivations were understandable and whose stories all tied together with how they had behaved all along.

I think what really gets me is the way it was done. So many scenes were shown and hints laid out that misled the audience. Lilith wants the halo for herself because she's jealous of Ava or wants more power than everyone else in the OCS! Duretti wants to become the Pope because he's power-hungry and wants to make sure he has an iron-fisted rule over the church! Salvius has a random child kidnapped in ArqTech and has been experimenting on him for nefarious purposes! All of these clues leading to assumptions that, for one moment, made each of these characters seem like antagonists that deserve to be hated by the audience. But by the end of Season 1, all of those "clues" are recontextualized, making viewers realize that Lilith, Duretti, and Salvius were never acting antagonistic out of malice. They were all driven by the belief that what they were doing was the right thing to do.

Their presentations throughout Warrior Nun Season 1 is what also has me interested in Adriel and Father Vincent going into Season 2. I think Warrior Nun could get away with making Adriel a puppykicker. He is some kind of demonic entity, after all, who so far seems to want his halo back for no other reason than to gain even more power on Earth. His motivations are bound to be clarified in Season 2, but Warrior Nun could still get away with making him a bad guy motivated by grandeur and a lust for power because of his otherworldly origin. At the same time, however, Season 1 laid the groundwork for some level of understanding on Adriel's part. Season 1 doesn't show viewers the whole story as to how he was entombed beneath the Vatican, meaning it's possible that his motivations for getting the halo back will grow to become more understandable in Season 2. I'm looking forward to learning more.

Father Vincent is a much more complex case. His background involving the cartels wasn't explored too much outside some exposition with Mary in the middle of Season 1, something that may have skewed his worldview in a way that justifies his allegiance to Adriel. At the same time, however, Vincent crossed a line: He killed. Duretti and Salvius have no blood on their hands, but Vincent orchestrated the murder of Sister Shannon. However, Lilith also killed Sister Crimson, who, despite her aloof demeanor and constant sneering, did remain loyal to Duretti until her death. Does that make Lilith any less understandable when it comes to her motivations? I don't think so. But Crimson was also displayed as a more straightforward antagonist, albeit one with very little development. As for Shannon, she was very much a heroic figure, making her death at Vincent's scheming less forgivable. It will be interesting to see how the complexities of character motivations and moralities spin Vincent's story going into Season 2.

Warrior Nun surprised me beyond belief with the way it handled its antagonistic characters. Not a single puppykicker in sight, even for characters who, while holding misguided beliefs or loyalties, were more one-note villains within the larger story. I think the creators behind the show did a fantastic job at making me care about characters that a lesser series would have painted as "the bad guys" and been done with. I am incredibly grateful for Warrior Nun's portrayal of its antagonists, who, by the end of Season 1, turn out to be just people in the story trying to do what they think is right.

I cannot wait to start Season 2.

***

If you like the blog and want to support me, consider buying one of my books here.

For more information about The Root, subscribe to The Crown Informer!

For more Frayed Branches, you can subscribe to get new essays every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 PM EST below:

Thank you for your support!