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.
The Exorcist season two presents an interesting balancing act: Andy’s storyline and that of Father Bennett (Kurt Egyiawan) and Mouse (Zuleikha Robinson). On their own, each plot contains enough heartbreak, intrigue, and demon-fuckery to sustain an entire show. Together, the stories work to create a larger perspective of the universe all these characters inhabit.
In Andy’s corner, there’s a drilling-down into demonic activities that grows the franchise’s lore even as it narrows the lens. The island witch, as the kids call it, is old, specifically land-based… and seems to have little relation to Catholic beliefs about possession. In Bennett and Mouse’s arena, the lens expands to encompass Europe, the United States, and perhaps the world–all through a conspiracy of Catholic “faithful” who have taken demons into themselves.
At the center of this Venn diagram, of course, are the exorcists.
Although “Darling Nikki” is a fast-paced, emotional, and horrifying episode, cutting fast between Andy’s house and Chicago, Fathers Tomas and Marcus re-emerge as the series’ heart and soul. Or perhaps its sword and shield. As an excommunicated, defrocked priest, Marcus has no allegiance to anything except his conscience, his higher power, and his partner. Tomas has moved beyond season one’s romantic turmoil and career ladder to seek an esoteric, practically Gnostic journey. Having settled Harper in her new foster home, they should rightfully be back on the road to seek new adventures, and they almost are.
But Tomas’ experience in Andy’s house has left him shaken. He’s begun to fear that Marcus was right: Tomas’ newfound ability to connect with demonic entities, to enter their realms and accept their sendings, might be a curse, not a gift. A thousand miles away in Chicago, our old friend Maria Walters (Kirsten Fitzgerald) confirms this. The little cub, she calls Tomas, giving him and Marcus the same nicknames that Sister Dolores (Karin Konoval) did in “One for Sorrow.” Not only does the demonic conspiracy exist, some sort of hive mind spanning continents, but they’re actively grooming Tomas toward his own possession. They see in him, ironically, the same power Marcus does. They know he can be God’s weapon, or theirs.
Marcus doesn’t finger-wag an I-told-you-so, nor is he fazed. As we’ve seen time and again, Marcus doesn’t see the chips being down as anything but an invitation. He’s in his element once shit–or pea soup–really starts to hit the fan. Upon returning to the house, he takes up the task of goading Andy’s demon into the light.
Because although audiences might hate to see it, Andy is possessed. Throughout season two, Andy hasn’t acted possessed; haunted, perhaps, but not possessed. Casey Rance spent so much of season one in the active throes of demonic possession that season’s two iteration comes as a bold, fresh take. The reveal of Grace, and the further reveal of the Nikki-thing, cement Andy’s reality. He’s not just grieving, overworked, exhausted. He’s seeing people who cannot be present, who are in fact dead. Episode six shows Nikki by his side throughout, kissing him, speaking to him, guiding him. He’s possessed.
John Cho‘s acting takes the situation home in chilling style. Throughout the season, again, he’s been so good in his fatherly, wounded but warm role that when his heel turn comes, it’s a real shock. The worst part is that he’s equally convincing as a cold cynic and a thrall as he was as a father. Andy and Marcus are a match for each other, both on the offensive as Rose and Father Tomas sit back in varying states of distress. When Marcus shows himself willing to use Andy’s foster family as bait, Andy responds with a display we know he’d never even consider: he uses Verity as a prop, dangling her abuse at the hands of priests in front of the exorcists. It’s a difficult scene to watch; we love everyone present and want them to thrive! Yet it’s also an uncomfortable one from a post-Christian perspective, a classic example of the Devil speaking truth. In a perfect world, exorcism is a crock of shit and Andy is correct about the human mind’s ineffable capacities.
Unfortunately, this is the world of The Exorcist.
There’s another fine line being walked in season two: its interrogation of the family. Swerve too hard in one direction, and Andy’s storyline condemns all families save the nuclear. Over-correct in the other direction, and risk making light of real-life crimes against children and intimate partner abuse. It’s an ambitious season of television, perhaps not one that viewers expected to engage so sincerely with topics like family annihilation, conversion therapy, and mental health. Bennett and Mouse’s story, with its emphasis on a global conspiracy, also edges up against certain rancid beliefs–but ultimately holds a mirror to what many Americans felt when things like the Charlottesville rally, the Pulse shooting, and QAnon broke wide in 2017.
Reactionary conspiratorial thinking had entered the mainstream violently; today, it’s no longer news. The conspiracy has no use for a rotting socialite, says Maria Walters’ demon, a bleak window into the human hosts who’ve accepted integration and been abandoned. Her body dying of cancer and her mind overtaken, her demon apparently trapped and tormenting her, Maria’s lot is little better than that of the homeless cannon fodder seen in season one. It might also be read as pointed commentary re: the uses of white femininity in fascist movements.
A favored reactionary talking point is fighting liberal destruction of the family. Parents’ rights. The sanctity of marriage–heterosexual, of course. When families are attacked in The Exorcist, demons turn members against one another. There is no united front against an external threat; there is only a rotting from within, a decay that begins in the home.
Of course, this reflects sad realities, as horror often does. By the time Nikki appears to Andy, his mind and spirit are stretched to breaking, so thoroughly exhausted that he lets himself believe his family can be made whole. I will never leave you again, she assures him… but to the viewer, that sounds like a threat. Alicia Witt is great in her first full episode as the Nikki-thing. The Exorcist is full of expressive face actors (Ben Daniels and Li Jun Li communicate entire scripts with just their eyes) and Nikki slips seamlessly between coquettish, bittersweet, and a chilling remoteness. Watching her puppet Andy throughout his house–their house–casts our entire awareness of him into doubt. It’s an intriguing depiction of the typical abuse dynamic in media and in life, an inversion of whose pain is visible. After promising to help Andy fool the priests and keep their family safe, Nikki purrs, I think that’s what they call happily ever after.
Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House didn’t premiere until 2018, but Nikki’s vision of family life is eerily similar to that series’ conclusion. It’s only their respective writers’ deployment that differs.
In episode six, the season’s turning point, all emotional hooks have been sunk. Father Tomas’ gift has led the priests to Andy’s house in a time of need. There’s something bleak in Mouse’s backstory that she doesn’t want Bennett to know, something involving Marcus, something she kills Maria rather than permit be spoken aloud.
After his own possession experience, Truck is in a juvenile facility, undergoing heavy drug treatment for an ailment no doctor can treat. Verity and Harper still wear the badges of their recent violence: a bruise on Harper’s forehead, fingerprints on Verity’s neck. And in a hell of a curveball, Harper’s mother Lorraine (Rochelle Greenwood) comes looking for her daughter, kidnapping her from Verity’s bedroom at knife-point. It’s this intrusion–this home invasion–that spikes Andy’s demon into hideous life.
At the denouement of “Darling Nikki,” after everyone in the house has been levitated from the force of the Nikki-thing’s rage, Andy takes Lorraine’s knife… and stabs her dead. It’s not really an Exorcist outing until the demon has showed itself (one of the reasons these movies and shows bear up under repeat viewings is that once you know how to find the demon, it appears all over the place). It’s not an Exorcist TV show until the exorcism itself begins. Twisted by pain and forces beyond his comprehension, Andy stands on the threshold with Marcus and Tomas.
Dead Maria in Chicago, dead Lorraine on the island. Out of these corpses will flow untold grief. Yet by the episode’s close, it’s another death that lingers with the audience: Nikki’s, and the possibility that she took her own life to prevent herself from taking those of the kids.
