'Kickass girls killing monsters': is Warrior Nun the next Stranger Things?

Warrior Nun might be the most perfectly titled piece of television in the entire history of the world. Not because it is particularly accurate – its lead character is neither a warrior nor a nun – but because it is grabby enough to cut through the static of the Netflix menu screen. Warrior Nun. You’d watch that, right? Of course you would.

Or maybe you would only give it a few minutes, to see if the content miraculously lived up to the title. In which case you would witness an opening scene set in an Andalucían church, where a bunch of what appear to be interdimensional space knights battle to save a mortally injured colleague. Their assailants arrive and a gunfight ensues. In the meantime, a glowing halo is dug from the back of the dying knight. They hide it in the body of a recently deceased woman, who instantly comes back to life, screaming in confusion. A smoke demon appears through a wall and grabs hold of a man. The resurrected woman hits the demon on the head with a spanner and he explodes into burning ashes. Moments later, the woman vomits on a stranger, gets hit by a truck and smashes through the wall of a sportswear shop.

At that point, your mind is made up. You are either in, because Warrior Nun has all the shameless, breathless, genre-splashing and-thenning that you haven’t seen since the first season of Stranger Things. Or you are out, because your sense of fun curled up and died some years ago. There is no in between.

Warrior Nun, based on a 1990s comic book by Ben Dunn, tells the story of the woman brought back to life by the halo. Ava Silva, abused and tetraplegic, died in an orphanage but, thanks to the halo, is able to see the demons that float among us undetected. The knights from the opening scene want her to help them fight the demons, but she would rather dance and take drugs. It is Buffy, basically, mixed with elements of Sense8, Orphan Black and The OA. The whole thing is a loopy thrill-ride of absolute hokum, but you sense that Netflix’s commissioning algorithm might have had a full-blown orgasm when it was presented with the pilot script.

In fairness, the pace does slacken a little from the non-stop assault of the first episode. Ava spends most of her time in the season’s first half bumming around with a bunch of attractive-yet-dull mansion-squatters while delivering needless exposition in a mooning voiceover, but Warrior Nun gets away with it thanks to the charisma of its cast. Ava is played by the Portuguese actress Alba Baptista. It is her first English-language role, but she manages to locate just the right balance of vigour and hesitation required of an undead demon-killer. Thekla Reuten is also brilliant as a possibly shady scientist, and William Miller’s turn (as a character whose name I will omit, for fear of spoilers) in the second half of the season seems designed to propel him into Internet’s Problematic Boyfriend status.

When it picks up a full head of steam, as it does in the final couple of episodes during a mission to the Vatican, you can easily see Warrior Nun running and running. It has mysteries to unpack, a manner of storytelling designed to get viewers starting various subreddits and episode titles that demand to be Googled. All that, plus it’s a show about a bunch of kickass girls killing monsters with swords in churches. Honestly, what isn’t there to love?

I can see Warrior Nun going one of two ways. In one scenario, it becomes a huge Stranger Things-style crossover hit and makes household names of its stars. In the other, Netflix does not realise what it has on its hands and cancels the show after a single season, at which point a small army of vocally hardcore devotees will go bananas and campaign for more episodes. Either way, those who are in will be in deep. I think I might be one of them.