Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Warrior Nun’ Season 2 on Netflix, Where Alba Baptista Returns To Fight Angels, Demons, And Whatever Else Threatens Her Fellow Fighting Sisters

Warrior Nun, the fantasy action drama based on comics by Ben Dunn and created for the small screen by Simon Berry (Van Helsing), debuted in 2020 to strong fan response but little else, perhaps consumed by the content funnel cloud generated by the global pandemic. But now it’s back, and with a renewed lease on life not unlike sacred halo possessor Ava, its raised-from-the-dead main character played by the terrific Alba Baptista, who in real life may or may not be dating People’s newly-crowned Sexiest Man Alive Chris Evans.

WARRIOR NUN SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: So what led us here? Well, Ava Silva (Alba Baptista) will tell you all about it. “First, I was dead. Swear to God. Then, I got tricked. And then, the devil kicked my ass.” It’s been a few months since the events of Warrior Nun Season 1, and Ava is floating peacefully in a pool. She learned to swim, just like JC (Emilio Sakraya) encouraged her to. But all is not well in the Order of the Cruciform Sword, or for that matter in the world at large.

The Gist: As Season 2 of Warrior Nun opens, there’s a lot of lasting trauma from what went down in the first season finale. When Ava and her fellow fighting OCS nuns, a group including Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young), “Shotgun” Mary (Toya Turner), and Camila (Olivia Delcan), confronted the angel and/or demon Adriel (William Miller) during a battle at the Vatican, the violence revealed Father Vincent (Tristan Ullloa) as an agent of the baddie, the new Holy Father Francisco Duretti (Joaquim de Almeida) as having his own agenda, the portal built by Jillian Salvius (Thekla Reuten) as being a continuing mystery, and Sister Lilith (Lorena Andrea) as possessing dimensionally shifting abilities. Ava and Beatrice are laying low, working at a little bar in Switzerland. But zealotry for Adriel is spreading, and they are holding out hope that Mary wasn’t lost to their enemy’s minions.

At a convent in Spain, Camila gives a TikTok tutorial to a gaggle of nuns set to “The Magic Bomb” by Hoang Read before consulting with the OCS’s Mother Superion (Sylvia De Fanti), who is in contact with Ava and Beatrice as well as Duretti. In Portugal, Vincent is stumbling around drunk when Lilith appears out of thin air, ready to kill him, but he stays her death blow by blubbering that Mary is alive. And Jillian sits with the portal, which activates every few hours but won’t fully open, preventing her from passing through and trying to locate her son Michael (Lope Haydn Evans). Is the halo embedded in Ava’s back the key to fully powering the portal and revealing a mult-dimensional universe?

Maybe, but Ava has water-walking training and pulse bursts to practice. She blames herself for Adriel’s growing powers, for what she believes is Mary’s demise. And she wants to go on the offensive, but Beatrice preaches caution. There are still larger forces at work, forces that reach all the way into the Holy See, are able to attack the Superion’s convent in Spain, and send goons after Ava, Beatrice, and their new allies in Switzerland. The Order of the Cruciform Sword is spread thin. But there’s a reckoning coming.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ava’s chosen one status that stretches across the centuries will forever connect her character with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And there are thematic and visual nods to the Marvel Cinematic Universe here, with Adriel’s public emergence feeling like the aftermath of “The Blip” and onscreen titles that ape the look of the MCU. But in its hearty small screen world building, Warrior Nun’s most contemporary fellow traveler is probably Wynonna Earp, which remains in limbo after four well-received seasons at Syfy.

Our Take: The scope of Warrior Nun is ambitious, and bewildering. In its first episode alone, the series leaps from the mountains of Switzerland to an ancient convent in Spain, across the Iberian Peninsula to Italy and the seat of Catholic power at The Vatican, and over to Portugal, where henchmen apparently under the control of an otherworldly being attack a nun whose own powers are informed by the volatility of an unseen dimension. This is the kind of globetrotting and world building that’s common to big budget superhero movies, but that’s not to suggest those productions always get it right. Warrior Nun not only presents all of this with a breathless kind of excitement. It feels primed to immediately dig deep into the action that helped define its first season.

It helps immensely that Alba Baptista has only gotten more confident in the role of Ava, the former quadriplegic granted ancient supernatural powers via the sacred, occasionally-glowing halo embedded in her back. She is engaged from scene one, delivering her lines in at least three languages and shuttling easily between breezy and occasionally swear-y Gen Z banter and the weightier implications of what her and her fellow trained-up nuns are up against. Indeed, Ava and Beatrice’s attempts at discretion last less than a half-hour before they’re locked in a street fight down a Swiss alleyway as their compatriots are slaughtered a few hundred miles away. Warrior Nun feels like it’s chomping at the bit to put Ava back into a hot war with Adriel, and that’s bound to keep pushing the show’s pulse even as it winds up side stories about the Pope’s plans for the OCS and maybe a romance for its main character. There’s a lot to keep track of in Warrior Nun. But it’s more than worth the effort.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, anyway. There’s a strong sense that Ava is flirting with Miguel (Jack Mullarkey), one of her bargoers who presents himself as a bulwark against Adriel’s “crypto-fascist religious formation.”

Parting Shot: Sister Lilith is in a tight spot. Deceived by Vincent and beset by goons, she goes into kill mode, deploying her claws of flame and dimensional shifting abilities to absolutely destroy seven or eight assailants. Did those rubes really think pistols and mean looks were enough to stop this lady?

Sleeper Star: Joaquim de Almeida is 65 this year, but he somehow looks near exactly like the suave and unscrupulous villains he made a name for himself playing in 1990s films like Clear and Present Danger and Desperado. And in Warrior Nun, as Cardinal-turned-Pope Francisco Duretti, de Almeida gets to eat a ton of scenery and deliver fun lines like “Should he advance to physical attacks, I will unleash the full power of the OCS.”

Most Pilot-y Line: “All of this is my fault,” Ava laments to Beatrice in a quiet moment. “Adriel freed. The Firstborn Children gaining ground.” (The FBC are what Adriel’s followers call themselves.) “Mary lost,” Ava continues. “Vincent used me. He manipulated me because I was naive, because I was stupid. I need to make this right.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Warrior Nun feels revived and reenergized as it begins the second season nobody was originally sure it would receive. There’s a lot to sort out, like Adriel’s true lineage and who will survive the continued bloodshed. But as Ava, Alba Baptista is ready to lead the charge.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges