Midnight Mass Premiere Recap: "Book I"

The first episode of Mike Flanagan’s newest Netflix series opens with a bang – or rather, the immediate aftermath of one. Riley Flynn (Friday Night Lights’ Zach Gilford) is the first person we see, and he’s sitting on the side of a road late at night, surrounded by flashing lights and policemen. His car sits to the side; and while it’s mostly unbeaten, the car it seems to have collided with is completely trashed. He watches paramedics try to resuscitate the young woman he hit, and when he realizes their attempts are fruitless and the girl is dead, he starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer under his breath, his words slurring. “While you’re at it,” an EMT tells him as he treats Riley’s minor head wound, “ask Him why He always takes the kids, while the drunks walk away with scratches.”

Riley spends the next four years in prison, where he suffers from nightmares and visions of the girl’s dead body, police lights reflecting from the pieces of glass embedded in her face. When he’s released, he returns to his childhood home on Crockett Island, a small, isolated community. His mother Annie (Kristin Lehman) and younger brother Warren (Igby Rigney) welcome him back, but his father Ed (Henry Thomas) has reservations about his oldest son’s return, to say the least.

Warren and two of his friends canoe to the abandoned northern part of the island, where his friends drink and smoke weed, though Warren abstains. He hears a noise nearby and, thinking it’s coming from the cats that wander this side of the island, shines his flashlight on the area. Instead of cats, however, he sees what appears to be a dark shadow – it almost looks like a man with glowing eyes crouching in the bushes. He panics and stumbles backwards, and when he looks again, the shadow is gone.

At around the time of Riley’s return, a man arrives on the island as well, and he enters one of the houses dragging a large, apparently heavy trunk behind him. He kneels down beside the box and knocks twice on the lid; whatever is inside knocks back.

We go on to meet the other inhabitants of the island, including: Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan), a self-righteous woman who essentially runs St. Patrick’s, the local catholic church; Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), a young woman who’s pregnant and alone (and who apparently dated Riley while the two were in high school); Mayor Wade (Michael Trucco), his wife Dolly (Crystal Balint), and daughter Leeza (Annarah Cymone), the latter of whom is bound to a wheelchair; Sherriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli) and teen son Ali (Rahul Abburi); town doctor Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish) and her invalid mother Mildred; and town drunk Joe Collie (Robert Longstreet).

We learn that Crockett Island was the victim of a nearby oil spill several years ago, hitting the fishing industry hard, and that many families have left since then – hence the ghost-town feel of the island. We also hear that Monsignor Pruitt, the elderly priest of St. Patrick’s, is due to return from a trip to Israel; but when Bev Keane goes to pick him up from the dock, he isn’t there. Instead, a young priest shows up for Mass. He’s a stranger to the congregation, but we’ve seen him before: he’s the man who was knocking on the trunk near the start of the episode. He introduces himself as Father Paul and explains that Monsignor Pruitt fell ill and is being kept at a hospital on the mainland, and has instructed Father Paul to fill in for him until he returns. After introducing himself to the Flynn’s, he comments on how Riley sat back for Communion – something Ed had instructed Riley to do after the two got into a bit of a spat the night before. Riley explains to Father Paul that he’s not in much of a “state of grace” at the moment. That’s fine, according to the priest, because he says he’s not of much use to people who do consider themselves to be in a state of grace. “Jesus didn’t really have that much interest for those kinds of people, either,” he goes on to say. “He seemed to go straight for those folks who weren’t in a state of grace. They were His favorite people, it turns out. They were the ones He called friends.”

Though they’re still mildly confused, the island’s inhabitants welcome Father Paul with open arms, expressing how nice it is to see a new face around. Riley goes on to rekindle his connection with Erin, and the two start spending an increasing amount of time together. A storm is brewing on Crockett Island, and the community holes up inside their houses to wait it out. We see Father Paul on his couch, reading a book, and the trunk he knocked on earlier is now opened. The power goes out, and while Riley is watching the storm through the windows in the Flynn home, he sees a figure on the beach that he recognizes as Monsignor Pruitt – complete with the distinctive coat and hat the elderly priest used to wear. He runs out into the storm to get a better look, but the figure runs away.

The next morning, as the residents look over the damage done by the storm, they stumble upon a nightmarish scene: a multitude of dead cats have washed up on the shore of the beach, too many to count. If it wasn’t before, it’s now abundantly clear something strange is happening on Crockett Island.