Heard the joke about the young woman who wakes up in a morgue with inexplicable powers and gets caught up in a battle between good and evil?
You haven’t! Then read on…
On Netflix’s occult drama Warrior Nun, newcomer Alba Baptista plays an abused young teen offered a new start at life when she’s anointed with the divine powers of an ancient relic in order to help defeat evil itself.
Loosely based on Ben Dunn’s early 90s manga-style comic book series Warrior Nun Areala, which depicts a fictional military order of sexy ninja-like nuns, the series trades the comic’s dedicated heroine, Shannon Masters, for a waif who has no interest in serving the Catholic Church after a degraded childhood in holy care.
Baptista’s Ava grew up in a Catholic orphanage in Andalusia, Spain, ever since a car accident claimed her single mother and left her entire body paralyzed. At the age of 19, as she lays dead in a church morgue — her death a mystery — sinister church elders chatter around her. Suddenly, a team of chainmail-clad female fighters bursts into the cathedral, barely evading blasts through stone. They’re under attack and their leader is dying. Without much time to consider the alternatives, they perform a mystical emergency surgery to remove a sacred metal ring from the back of fading Shannon, and stick it into the dead girl, instead, for safe keeping. But none of them expected the dead girl to wake up again… or have newfound superpowers.
As the role of Halo Bearer is traditionally bestowed on the most deserving of the Order, Ava finds herself caught between two factions: those who see Ava’s surprising selection as divine providence, and those who consider it a mistake – and therefore want to rip out the Halo and give it to a more accomplished Sister.
In the first camp is Giles-esque Father Vincent (Tristan Ulloa) and Sister Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young), while scheming Cardinal Duretti (Joaquim de Almeida) and Sister Lilith (Lorena Andrea) head up the second group.
In-fighting isn’t the only thing Ava has to contend with. Apart from demons drawn to the Halo, there’s medical pioneer Jillian Salvius (Thekla Reuten), who believes the Halo, and closely-related metal Divinium, can be harnessed to open a portal to another dimension.
In fairness, the pace does slacken a little from the non-stop assault of the first episode. Ava spends most of her time in the season’s first half bumming around with a bunch of attractive-yet-dull mansion-squatters while delivering needless exposition in a mooning voiceover, but Warrior Nun gets away with it thanks to the charisma of its cast
Once the Order catches up with Ava, they train her in martial arts and weaponry, helping her learn to control her superhuman abilities. But she’s understandably reluctant to join a sisterhood in service of the institution that terrorized her, let alone operate as God’s champion.
Ava is played by the Portuguese actress Alba Baptista. It is her first English-language role, but she manages to locate just the right balance of vigour and hesitation required of an undead demon-killer.Â
But the standout is Toya Turner as Mary, who runs away with the season. A badass, a brilliant strategist, a smart tracker, a brilliant investigator, and the one who gets most of the best lines, Mary is also in seventeen kinds of pain from what she’s been through, both before and after she joined the OCS.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
It is Buffy, basically, mixed with elements of Sense8, Orphan Black. The whole thing is a loopy thrill-ride. If you can skip the needless mid half of the season, the show picks up a full head of steam, as it does in the final couple of episodes during a mission to the Vatican, you can easily see Warrior Nun will return for a second season.
3.5/5 STARS