'Midnight Mass' Season 2: Could It Happen?

Spoilers ahead for Midnight Mass season one. Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass packed a lot into just seven episodes. The Netflix horror series/religious allegory/vampire drama ended with Crockett Island alight; most of the cast dead and the remaining characters feasting on their blood; and the injured angel/demon who caused this whole mess fleeing the scene. The show wrapped up neatly, if bloodily—like I said, most of the characters died and most of the island burned—but it's always possible that a show like Midnight Mass could get a season two, especially since it's spent more than a week close to the top of Netflix's coveted top 10.

It's possible—but it's unlikely. For a start, Midnight Mass is billed as a limited series, meaning that it was developed as a standalone season. Yes, there have been other limited-edition shows that ultimately decided to return for a second season, like Big Little Lies, but, well, not everybody died at the end of Big Little Lies. The only survivors of the vampire invasion (or whatever we're calling it) on Crockett Island are two relatively minor characters, teenagers Leeza and Warren, who leave on a small boat and watch their home burn from the ocean. And the angel/demon technically survives, too, fleeing the island with burned wings, so a second season could follow its journey to the mainland—but the show would lose something essential if it was set anywhere but an economically depressed island filled with religious zealots like Crockett.

What would happen in a second season of Midnight Mass?

We know from earlier episodes that the island has been decimated before. In 1984, the whole island "burned to nothing," leaving nothing standing but the church. The island made a recovery—sort of—and hypothetically it could rise from the ashes (quite literally) and start afresh, perhaps even with Leeza and Warren and potentially the angel/demon present.

EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIXNetflix

But, again, it's unlikely. For a start, Flanagan specializes in limited series, and even though he often brings back actors and themes—think The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, from which you'll recognize many of the main characters in Midnight Mass—Flanagan has not yet done a second season of the same show. Instead, he prefers to utilize versatile actors as different characters in different settings.

Which brings me to this: Next up, Flanagan is working on The Midnight Club, which stars three prominent actors from Midnight Mass: Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, and Samantha Sloyan. So in the same way Hill House was a sequel to Bly Manor, in that it shared similar name, themes, and actors, but had a completely different story, we can see The Midnight Club as a sequel to Midnight Mass.