Midnight Mass Recap: "Book II"

After the slow-moving but decidedly intriguing premiere, episode two of Midnight Mass seeks to raise more questions than answers – both in the mystery and in the story’s deeply-ingrained philosophy. This episode opens where the last one left off, and Sherriff Hassan is investigating the cat-ridden beach debacle. This isn’t the first strange thing that’s happened on Crockett Island, but it certainly seems to be the grossest. As they prepare to burn the carcasses in case they’re infested with disease, Mayor Wade suggests Hassan join in on Sunday Mass; Hassan, a devout Muslim, completely ignores him.

After Mass one day, Father Paul walks alongside Leeza Scarborough’s wheelchair on her way home. She asks him where he was before he came to Crockett Island, to which he gives a wishy-washy response that in no way answers her question. “That’s the thing about where we’ve been,” he tells her. “It’s important, sure, but it’s not as important as where we’re going. And every place I was before where I am now, they were just leading me here.” Their conversation is interrupted by Joe Collie, who’s walking outside with his dog Pike. Though he doesn’t say anything to them, he and Leeza hold eye contact for a long while, and there’s some clear tension between the two.

Father Paul stops by the house of town physician Sarah Gunning, explaining that Monsignor Pruitt told him that Sarah’s mother, Mildred, was a devout churchgoer before she became too sick to leave the house. Since she can no longer come to Mass, he wants to bring Mass to her, and prepares to set the table for Communion. Mildred seems to mistake him for Monsignor Pruitt, calling him “John,” and Sarah explains that her mother gets easily confused.

At a town potluck, Father Paul and Riley discuss the AA meetings Riley is forced to attend on the mainland. The priest suggests the two of them meet instead, to save Riley a trip to the mainland and to hopefully draw other residents of the island to get help themselves. Riley takes this opportunity to ask him how Monsignor Pruitt is doing, and tells him about the figure he saw on the beach. It couldn’t possibly be Monsignor Pruitt, because according to Father Paul, he spoke with Pruitt on the phone the night before the storm, and the elderly priest was still bedridden. “Between you and I, Riley,” he sadly says, “that man isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

We also find out from this conversation that Joe Collie was responsible for the hunting accident that paralyzed Leeza, a result of his drinking. And speaking of Joe, his dog Pike is poisoned at the potluck, the community looking on in horror as the dog vomits up the contents of his stomach and promptly dies. Joe is devastated, and suspicion quickly falls on Bev Keane, who seemed to have it out for Pike and has admitted to sprinkling rat poison around her property after the dead cat fiasco. Hassan informally questions her about it, but gets nothing in return except a less-than-genuine speech about how devastated she’d be if she had accidentally killed the dog.

Riley and Father Paul have their first one-on-one AA meeting, which mostly consists of Riley voicing his issues with the Catholic church. He explains how the rec center, the site of their current meeting, came to be: apparently, after the oil spill several years back, Bev encouraged the residents of the island to take the settlements from the oil companies, then pushed them to give some of the money to the church. “Which,” he explains, “with Pruitt being sick as he was, means they were really giving it to her.” He and Father Paul get into a theological discussion about the nature of suffering, which in Riley’s case was caused by his alcoholism. Father Paul assures him that God can take our suffering and turn it into something good, something meaningful, but Riley isn’t buying it.

Erin pays an after-hours visit to Sarah Gunning when she notices blood in her underwear, but the doctor assures her that it’s just spotting and the baby is fine. After Erin leaves, Sarah hears her mother screaming from her bedroom, and runs upstairs to see what’s the matter. “I thought I saw your father,” Mildred says, pointing out the window. “But it was something else. It came right up to the window. Oh, that face,” she repeats. “That face. That face.”

Meanwhile, the town drug dealer, who made his first brief appearance earlier in the episode, is attacked and seemingly killed by a dark figure with glowing eyes. The next day at Mass, as Father Paul prepares to offer Leeza Communion, he suddenly insists that she stand from her wheelchair and come receive the elements herself. The congregation begins to collectively turn on him, apparently thinking he’s taunting her – that is, until Leeza does, indeed, rise from her chair and walk.

As I said at the start, this episode ends with even more questions than the first. Was the figure that attacked the drug dealer the same thing Riley’s brother Warren saw in the Uppards? Who (or what) did Sarah’s mother see in the window? Did these two occurrences have anything to do with Father Paul’s arrival? And maybe most importantly: is this miracle really what it appears to be, or something much more sinister?