The following will dive into plot details for Midnight Mass, so stop reading now if you haven’t yet started to watch Mike Flanagan’s show, and still plan to.
When you consider that Mike Flanagan is a horror writer and director, it becomes easier to connect with the characters. Addiction is a thread that runs through Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, his adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, and his latest series for Netflix, Midnight Mass. It goes without saying that Flanagan is/was a deeply religious person, which colors in a lot of the conversations he’s trying to launch with the series. But while guesting on CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast, Flanagan also made it clear that the character of Riley, played by Zach Gilford, was “an avatar” for the director, who had faced down some of the same struggles.