By Dee Holloway 
This serial column revisits The Exorcist television series. Conceived by Jeremy Slater for FOX and starring Ben Daniels, Alfonso Herrera, Geena Davis, Alan Ruck, and John Cho, the show ran 2016-17 and was generally well-received by critics and audiences. DIS/MEMBER returns to the show in the context of new Exorcist franchise films, seeking insight on what made the show work and why it’s lesser-known than its film counterparts. All screencaps sourced from Kiss Them Goodbye.
“One for sorrow, two for joy,” begins a common rhyme about magpies, or occasionally crows–not just a children’s nursery rhyme but a form of casual ornithomancy, or fortune-telling using the movement and appearance of birds. By episode four, The Exorcist season two’s major theme (children and childhood) has emerged, while a bird motif has risen to explicate it. Childhood rituals, childish ways of relating to the world and each other, and children’s superstitions are at the heart of this season.
“One for Sorrow” starts with Sister Dolores (Karin Konoval), the possessed nun of episode three’s reveal, listening to a recording of the Christian children’s hymn “Jesus Loves Me.” As their new foster-sister Harper arrives, the kids at Andy’s house undergo a slight shuffling of allegiances and concerns. A classic girlish tea party takes place; a gift of a night-light is offered to the new resident; Harper also adds a handprint to the wall alongside other children’s hands, her palm coated in bright red. All these instances of youthful fancies, intra-family jockeying, and identity-building balance on a knife’s edge: pure and charming on one hand, and chilling within their greater context, over which assorted demons loom.
One of those demons is climate change, according to local Fish and Wildlife official Peter (Christopher Cousins). He gives Shelby and Andy a casual answer to episode three’s bird-avalanche omen, but Shelby remains unconvinced. Intriguingly, Peter’s more open later in the episode… with Marcus. Despite their conversation revolving around assorted instances of deformed and diseased animals Peter has collected from the island, their conversation is downright flirtatious.
“One for Sorrow” gives Marcus great range to loosen up, from flirting with a silver-fox ranger to connecting with Harper over their shared experiences of childhood trauma. His relationship with Father Tomas is also evolving; they’ve moved from the disapproval Marcus displayed over Tomas’s new techniques earlier in the season to an open admission of trust. “You believe in God–I believe in you,” he tells Tomas over beers. He might even fear that God sent Tomas not as a partner to Marcus, but as a replacement for him. It’s a re-configuring of the priestly dynamic that bucks against Sister Dolores’ assessment an ocean away. The gray lion and the cub. The tension between youth and experience is the fulcrum of season two, and another demon rearing its head.
It’s an old saw at this point: US society prizes rosy notions of childhood, but doesn’t care for actual children. Childhood is a time of innocence, but the adults likeliest to harm children are those kids are related to. The kids at Andy’s house have been abused, neglected, or abandoned, yet now they’re surrounded by adults they want to trust–adults who seem to trust them. The farmer next door and Ranger Pete know Shelby and treat him respectfully. In Harper’s eyes (although not Verity’s), Tomas and especially Marcus might as well be God. And little Grace, played by Amelie Eve? Grace loves Andy; Grace wants to be Andy’s favorite.
It’s a normal display of feeling for a young kid in a house of older not-quite-siblings… but the powers beyond anyone’s control seem to settle on Grace in episode four. We’ve seen her in her pillowcase mask so often it’s become normal, such that seeing her without it hints at a jump-scare. When maskless, she’s often seen first from behind, prompting viewers familiar with the tell-tale sign of demons–pupils gone wrong–to tense, waiting for a reveal.
No such reveal occurs. Season two of The Exorcist is in some ways subtler than season one, content to play what are beginning to feel like two long games. Episode four is a busy one, the priests’ storyline colliding with Andy’s while Father Bennett’s is about to open up. His new compatriot Mouse reveals that season one antagonist Maria Walters (Kirsten Fitzgerald) is still looking for Bennett, confirming the truly global nature of this demonic crusade. Bennett’s conversation with Sister Dolores is an interesting one: she groups him squarely with the exorcists, while his prior relationship to Marcus had been complicated at best. “The time of the exorcist is over,” her demon spits, the time of a demon-possessed Catholic hierarchy begun, exorcists being targeted for possession or destruction.
For Bennett, there’s no longer any choice in his options for friends, colleagues, or comrades. There are demons, and those able to fight them. Worse yet, season two has intimated from the start that there are demonic forces at work which Marcus and Tomas have never encountered before. The presence Shelby claims to sense in the wood near Andy’s house doesn’t act like the demon who came for the Rances in season one. In “One for Sorrow,” it’s possible we glimpse this presence onscreen, as Rose experiences a night terror of truly frightening proportions (and gross, wet sounds). Earthier, less embodied, perhaps far older: Rose’s vision and Shelby’s fears echo the swerves in Bennett’s story, as Earth’s demonic presence expands.
Or perhaps that presence is merely re-asserting itself. Sister Dolores speaks to Bennett of the demonic loathing for God’s younger children. That youth-experience tension isn’t just about seasoned professionals bickering with greenhorns, or big siblings managing little ones. It encompasses all the millennia of Earth’s existence. It situates humans in a war against demons only a few of us know we’re fighting.
Just as Rose’s phone flashlight vanquishes the strange figure crawling over her bed, Harper wakes screaming from a nightmare. By the end of episode three, Harper’s addition to Andy’s family might have given viewers pause. Surely the cast was big enough, the plots complex enough, without another body in the mix? Yet there are signs that Harper’s presence might further complicate the fine art of demon-detecting, and may even be the linchpin of the season’s themes.
Currently, the priests and Rose know that Harper’s mother was making her daughter ill–which means there was no demonic culprit. But Tomas, haunted throughout “One for Sorrow” by flashbacks and premonitions alike, begins to sense that something isn’t right at Andy’s… and Harper is still the likeliest source. In some ways, she emerges as a foil for Verity. The two girls are closer in age than Verity and Grace, and Andy observes that Verity “really stepped up” to make Harper welcome. They share a room, and Verity paints Harper’s nails, something she’s never experienced before. The small gift of selecting a nail polish works both in the moment, as Harper reveals her mother didn’t let her use polish or makeup, and also reminds the audience of what’s at stake across both seasons of The Exorcist. Harper and Verity are on the cusp of adulthood, the other side of the mirror from Casey and Kat Rance’s young adulthood. Everything we know about girlhood both compliant and turbulent casts the girls as ripe demon pickings.
And it’s possible that, as always, the demonic call might be coming from inside the house. Two sets of bonding scenes–Harper and Verity, Andy and Grace–dovetail in a collision so gradual its dread is only comprehensible in immediate hindsight. Throughout season two so far, Grace’s development has remained apart from the other foster kids, which seems reasonable given all the kids’ experiences of trauma. But two instances in “One for Sorrow,” both angled from Verity’s point of view, cause viewers to think back frantically over Grace’s screen appearances.
First, a wholesome scene of Grace and Andy playing outside cuts to Verity watching through a window, appearing confused. Then, the episode’s ultimate scene, and a real humdinger: a door we recognize as Grace’s, but not covered with her room sign and childish art, opened by Verity onto a landscape of decay. Strange, violent paintings, well-used art supplies, and maggot-crawling sandwiches litter the space. No cute bed linens, no sleeping girl. This shot, far more than previous ones featuring standard possession clues like mystery winds and shaking picture frames, establishes that something is very wrong in Andy’s house.
It’s possible neither Grace’s human face nor her “brave face” are her real face. It’s possible the demonic reveal happened the first time she appeared onscreen.
