Netflix's Best 2-Part Fantasy Epic Is the Binge You've Been Sleeping On

3 days ago 9

Published Apr 11, 2026, 2:38 PM EDT

Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter.

Did you know Netflix has a fantasy series about a group of ass-kicking, demon-hunting nuns with a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes that basically nobody has seen? Yeah, we thought so. It’s called Warrior Nun, and if it isn’t in your queue by the end of this article, well, then we just haven’t done our jobs. Based on a comic book story and created by Simon Barry, the show follows a teenage girl named Ava (Alba Baptista) who wakes up in a morgue to discover a glowing holy relic has been fused to her spine. She trades in a pretty grim existence in an orphanage for a secret Catholic order of divinely-ordained brawlers, women who have trained and fought for centuries in the shadows to keep the modern world safe. When Warrior Nun first dropped on Netflix in 2020, critics called it one of the most brutal, genuinely moving genre shows on the platform (basically Buffy but with sharper takes on faith, queerness, and what it means to own your own existence).

And sure, Netflix cancelled it after two seasons. Honestly, that still stings, but that doesn’t mean, years later, it’s not worth your weekend. The good news here is that, while there's definitely more story to tell at the end of the show’s second season, fans get some satisfying conclusions in that surprise series finale too. And the ride is great from start to finish, filled with likable characters, deeply disturbing villains, bizarre creatures, and a ridiculous amount of medieval weaponry. Like, really, what was the armory budget on this show? If you're the kind of person who has ever wished a show would just commit to its weird, ambitious premise instead of playing it safe, Warrior Nun is going to feel like it was made specifically for you.

'Warrior Nun' Is Not the Show You Think It Is

Look, "demon-hunting nuns" is not a premise that inspires immediate confidence, but every instinct you have about what a show called Warrior Nun is going to be is probably wrong. No, it’s definitely going to be wrong. But that's exactly what the show is counting on. Ava Silva is not a hero who rises to the occasion... at least not at first. She's a young woman who spent her short life being told she was a burden, who died before she got to actually live, and who wakes up with a second chance and absolutely zero interest in spending it fighting demons in the name of an institution that never did anything for her. That tension, between the life that was taken from her and the one being demanded of her now, is what drives the whole first season and makes it so much more interesting than the tagline suggests.

The Order of the Cruciform Sword — the secret sect of nuns she's been drafted into — is its own compelling world. These are not the submissive, soft-spoken women of faith you’ve seen. They are trained fighters operating in the shadows of the Catholic Church, armed with holy relics and a mandate to keep demonic forces from breaking through into the human world. The sisters around Ava are each carrying their own complicated relationships with faith, the institution, and each other, and the show takes its time letting those dynamics breathe. Sister Beatrice, played by Kristina Tonteri-Young, is the standout, a quietly fierce and devout follower wrestling with a faith that the Church has used against her in ways the show handles with real delicacy.

Season 1 takes a little while to find its footing, but stick with it, because by the back half, the show has fully clicked into gear, and the season finale, which recontextualizes everything you thought you knew about the order, the halo, and the angel who supposedly created it, more than earns the whiplash it delivers. Season 2 is where Warrior Nun becomes truly great. Picking up in the aftermath of the first season's cliffhanger, Ava and the sisters are now up against Adriel (William Miller), a fallen angel who has taken control of a powerful tech corporation and is using it to manufacture plagues, build a cult following, and position himself as the dominant religious force on the planet. It sounds maximalist, and it is, but the show grounds it in character work that makes every WTF twist feel plausible.

And it does all of this while also delivering some of the best action sequences you'll find on a streaming budget. The fight choreography is inventive and vicious in a way that feels purposeful rather than gratuitous — and the show clearly understood what it had in Tonteri-Young, because Beatrice's set pieces in season 2 are the kind you rewind…multiple times.

Netflix Killed 'Warrior Nun,' But You Should Watch It Anyway

This is the part that's hard to explain without getting a little annoyed on the show's behalf. Season 2 became the third most-watched series on Netflix in its first week despite having essentially no marketing budget behind it. The audience that found it loved it. The critical reception was great. And Netflix cancelled it anyway. Still, there’s a complete enough story in the two seasons we did get that you won't feel robbed if the long-rumored revival never materializes. Warrior Nun is the rare binge-watch that gets better as it goes and that ends on exactly the kind of note that makes you grateful you showed up for it. It's funny and bloody and moving and always better than you think. You won’t regret watching it.