[EXOSPECTIVE] THE EXORCIST SEASON ONE: "THIS IS A VICTORY LAP" • DIS/MEMBER

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This serial column revisits The Exorcist television series. Conceived by Jeremy Slater for FOX and starring Ben Daniels, Alfonso Herrera, Geena Davis, and Alan Ruck, the show ran 2016-17 and was generally well-received by critics and audiences. DIS/MEMBER returns to the show in the context of a new Exorcist franchise film, 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.

Episode nine of The Exorcist returns to a topic near and dear to my heart since my earliest fandom days (those of Animorphs): if you were under mind control, would anyone notice? If you went to Hell and came back wrong, would your loved ones realize? If a demon possessed you, would your family care… especially if it made you a “better” mother, sister, wife?

Throughout “162,” Angela’s behavior appears to course-correct from the understandable stress of parenting a demonic teen–at least, that’s how it looks from the outside. Speaking with police, family, and clergy alike, she’s composed, even chipper; she makes overtures toward going back to work; she gets smoochy with Henry. Certainly, once tragedy’s burden has been lifted, light might re-enter one’s life. The Rances might feel that Chris’s funeral could be the final nail in their coffin of grief and chaos. Angela’s good humor might appear natural.

Almost.

But of course, seeded through every conversation is a demonic kernel, a cruel humor when referencing the Rances’ past misfortunes (such as Henry’s accident), an impatience with old rituals (like saying grace before dinner). Gone is her staid, motherly wardrobe and weary demeanor, replaced by sleek black clothing, skyscraper heels, and a sly smile. If the OG Exorcist‘s power hinged on desecrating one of American culture’s sacred cows–little girlhood–its distant offspring swims in similar waters. White motherhood is yet another inroad for transgressive visuals and commentary.

When Angela swans into the papal committee’s inner sanctum, there’s no denying her power, or that of Geena Davis. Once named by Brother Simon, her demon’s power shows itself as awesome indeed: Pazuzu drops everyone around Angela, until Simon kisses her black velvet heel and only Maria Walters is upright. Yet even this seeming mercy is a tool for humiliation. Do you want to know why you’ve never been chosen, is a question for the ages, one any human with a scrap of ambition has asked themselves and the universe. Contrary to what Captain Howdy told Angela in the previous episode, he is choosy indeed.

When Angela returns home and finds Casey in the room where she’d been chained during her own possession, that particularity comes to the fore. What transpires is one of the most troubling scenes of the show so far, in which the viewer can never ascertain between truth and falsehood. There’s a sense that even if Pazuzu is speaking truth through Angela, it’s not truths he’s bothered by, ones he feels Casey shouldn’t know. Nothing about me was mine anymore, Angela tells her daughter, beneath which words lies a glimmer of the demon’s glee. Perhaps most troubling of all is the betrayal the conversation embodies, the very human betrayal of a trusted person doing a heel turn in real-time, right to your face.

At a certain point, you asked for it.

One of this first season’s through-lines is betrayal: reality betrays Casey when it turns out demons are real. Angela betrays her family and herself by inviting the demon back in. Kat smells betrayal and keeps the Rance family conversations centered on Chris’s untimely death. The Church betrays Marcus–again and again, using him and casting him out. Tomas betrays his faith, yet ultimately, that faith is one of the strongest in the series. Even a robust and wealthy new parish, a gift-wrapped promotion, tastes of falsehood when it comes at the cost of St. Anthony’s.

In theory, clergy like Father Tomas are the backs on which any religion is built; the only problem is that his superiors see the superficiality of their need, his handsome face and disarming style. The audience sees a man we could ostensibly trust with our souls, a sinner alongside us, trying to approach the divine. His future is balanced on a knife’s edge, as Maria Walters tries to draw him further into the spider’s web. At this point, we can see a few possibilities for Tomas. He could be primed for possession, another body sacrificed to the evil plan developing in Chicago, or a career as a well-paid dupe, in debt forever to this iteration of the Church and smart enough to shut up about it. Watching him hobnob with Maria and the papal entourage is a chilling scene, this man armed only with faith surrounded by demons in shepherds’ clothing. Yet when Maria welcomes His Holiness with a speech, proclaiming “He is the Church,” we must again compare Tomas, the Pope, and what we know of demonic possession.

What does it mean for the church to reside in the body of a man?

Other bodies are at work across Chicago. Marcus is on the hunt, conferring with the Moveable Feast only to return later and find them murdered. One of their surveillance photos caught a body doing something it shouldn’t: the third demon’s pupil in Brother Simon’s eye. Angela has visited Mother Bernadette’s enclave and killed every nun inside with an eye-blink. Next she seduces Henry, asking him if he can remember the last time he touched her.

Despite the show’s over-arching world-domination plot, The Exorcist is at its height when it traffics in human intimacy gone awry. Is what Pazuzu is doing assault? That fine line is complicated further, naturally, when Angela begins to choke Henry. Later she steals into Kat’s room and watches her sleep, the affectionate caress of a mother turning nauseating when Angela’s hand reaches Kat’s abdomen. Casey spies this out and protects Kat with her own body, going to sleep in Kat’s bed. The violence enacted by Pazuzu against Angela’s body and Kat’s is echoed in a lavish hotel room, where Brother Simon is indulging in many unpriestly pleasures of the flesh. His rude awakening arrives in the form of Marcus, who–in a splendid display of Catholic magic–blesses a bathtub of water and holds Simon’s head under the surface until he burns.

Betrayal lands hardest when it’s off-set by trust. Marcus trusts that Tomas hasn’t turned to the dark side. Tomas trusts his own instincts where his affairs, romantic and clerical, are concerned. Henry and Kat trust Casey, despite having every reason not to. And Pazuzu asks the Rances to trust him, his claim that Angela’s soul is integrated with his, that there can be no separation without death. When Casey was possessed, the family’s choice was between a slow death by internal demon or a swift one by poison.

But Pazuzu within Angela is too powerful; he binds the Rances in place and torments each of them in turn without breaking a sweat. It seems impossible for them to escape. And it presents an interesting comparison, Angela’s body while possessed (physically normal) to Casey’s (demon-wracked, degraded almost immediately). Is this what true demonic integration looks like? Was Casey’s resistance actually more powerful, and thus more destructive to the demon? Does Angela’s prior, deep familiarity with Pazuzu put her at greater risk of losing herself?

With Pazuzu poised to destroy everything Angela loves, the ramifications of her choice to save Casey and her internal struggle are accented by a twist. Brother Simon, having gained the upper hand on Marcus, is ready for a nuclear strike: the vocare pulvare. Thus far, we’ve seen the ritual of ash only as something willing participants are eager to accept. There’s no way of knowing what might happen if it’s applied forcefully… or whom Simon is trying to invite inside Marcus’s soul.