A once a in a thousand years sandstorm washes across Syria and lasts for an entire month. It’s a natural disaster of Biblical proportions. But it also wipes out reconstituted ISIS forces that were on the verge of conquering Damascus. When a young man claiming to be the son of God takes credit for the sandstorm and leads thousands into the desert, folks around the world start to stand up and take notice. This is the basic opening premise for the new Netflix mystery drama The Messiah. Released at the start of the new decade (January 1), and starring Michelle Monaghan as a skeptical CIA analyst and Mehdi Dehbi as Al-Masih (the Messiah!), this 10 episode first season follows the premise of what happens when a young man claiming to be the second coming performs purported miracles around the world, and how the rest of us react.
It’s an interesting concept. It follows a popular trend over the last decade of shows that heavily feature religious themes, such as HBO’s The Leftovers. Over the course of the next ten episodes, I’ll share a brief synopsis of the episode along with some of my thoughts on what’s going on and whether I like it or not. A couple of disclaimers before we start this wild ride. 1. My recaps are going to be a little stream of consciousness, as I’m writing while I watch. Sometimes I might posit a theory that’s confirmed or disproven a few sentences later. Sometimes I’m guessing at what’s going on. 2. I’m taking a “you’re sitting next to me on my couch while I watch” approach. That means you also get all my snarky comments as I watch. It’s part and parcel of watching TV with me. So, without further ado but with plenty of spoilers, I present to you Episode 1: “He That Hath an Ear.”
The episode opens with a young man, Jibril, whose parents are both killed, years apart, in the violence that has plagued Syria for years. When his father dies at a young age, he asks his mother why this happened, and she tells him nothing happens without God’s okay, so it must be part of the plan. Not sure if that makes Jibril feel better, but it definitely foreshadows the fact that he’s been trained from a young age to look for signs from God. I appreciate this little note, because those who aren’t super religious watching this show might wonder what makes a person follow a rando out into the desert because she claims to be a Messiah.
Jibril sort of becomes the voice of the common man in Al-Masih’s growing crowd of adherents. With the sandstorm having blown through and pushing ISIS out, Al-Masih takes his flock out to the desert, tells a bunch of wise old misogynists that women are equal to men, and makes everyone bury their guns. Oh wow, look how radical he is. He leads them right to the Israeli border, where lo and behold, he picks the one spot of the fence that’s broken, so he can walk right in. Keen eyed viewers will note that the spot was marked with a flag. Did God put the flag there? Did someone else? Or was it a local insurgent thing he just happened upon? It’s a mystery!
He’s captured and taken to what I assume is a Mossad interrogation room where he’s questioned by Aviram Dahan (Tomer Sisley). Dahan is kind of a jerk, a not so great father, and estranged husband who likes to pop into his separated wife’s apartment and gross up the place because he “pays for it.” Real classy. He gets called into work to interrogate Al-Masih, just another day at the office. But Al-Masih has some tricks up his sleeves. He knows Dahan’s name. He knows seemingly everything about him, even his darkest secret only one other soul alive knows, about something that happened to a boy long ago. Presumably this PTSD-laden horror is a big part of why Dahan lost his faith and perhaps his humanity.
Dahan has a sort of long night of the soul (and a long night of drinking) and when he returns to the prison the next day, Al-Masih is gone! Vanished into thin air! The video tapes glitch and he’s gone. The mystery deepens!
On the other side of the ocean, CIA analyst Eva Geller catches wind of what’s happening with Al-Masih while texting a mysterious individual known only as Q. Is it Q from the James Bond movies? Is it deep state activists from Q Anon? Is it Queen Latifah?! Who knows?! Between mysterious doctor visits for unnamed treatments and injections that cause her hair to fall out (Cancer? Fertility treatments? Peanut allergies?) and avoiding talking to her father who we also learn was in the CIA, we learn that Geller is a somewhat emotionless drone who sees the world in black and white. Good or bad. This or that. No grey. No hidden truths or Kenobi-esque “certain point of view.” Geller asks her boss to put surveillance on the guy because of the most non-sensical five second analysis I’ve ever seen. She thinks he sounds Persian (despite him telling Aviram Hebrew was his native tongue), so he must be Shiite, but he’s leading a bunch of Sunnis. What does it all mean?! Probably terrorism. I mean, it must be terrorism, right? But it’s weird terrorism, and that bugs them. So they decide to bug Al-Masih. That’s pretty much it from their side, and frankly, if this is the best our intelligence agencies can do, I think we’re all in a lot of trouble.
So just based on what I’ve seen so far, here are my possible theories on what’s going on:
- He really is the Messiah, the second coming, and God has a message that he’s not pleased, and folks have been misinterpreting his vision for mankind for a couple thousand years, so he sent this dude to correct the record.
What do I think of this theory? It’s the most interesting, maybe. At this point I expect shows like this to make you think it’s real only to pull a switch, and then do a quick cut scene where they reveal all the little clues you should have spotted that tell you it was a conspiracy from the start. Having it actually be supernatural, and having him actually be the Messiah and what that would mean for modern mankind would be different, and far more interesting.
- He’s a delusional cult leader.
What do I think of this theory? At the moment, it’s the theory the people within the show seem to be rolling with, but obviously we know a little more than they do. The interesting thing about this theory is that it seems to exist just to show how dumb it is. The fact that this is what the CIA analyst and her boss first assume it is, with their lame, superficial 15 second analysis before labeling it a threat and throwing drones at it, really just emphasizes the lazy thinking we seem to be trapped in. It also shows that these agencies can’t really break out of a paradigm that sees The Messiah as anything other than a radical threat.
- It’s a government conspiracy.
What do I think of this theory? There’s evidence. The knowledge he has of his interrogator could have been fed to him, an inside man could have gotten him out of prison, the spot where he opened the fence to get into Israel was marked, and what he seems to actually be setting out to accomplish, uniting the Abrahamic religions, preaching gender equality, peace, non-violence, etc, would certainly make life for a lot of governments a whole lot easier, and would make the world a much safer place. Anyway, I find this a little more interesting than your typical government plot. Of all the shows that have dealt with the threat of conspiracies and terrorism, this has to be the most unconventional approach I’ve seen someone take to try to change religious tension in the world. And I’d be really curious to see what happens when they lift the curtain and we see how the folks in charge are doing it.
I’m interested to see what happens next! But, as with most high concept mystery dramas, I’m waiting for it to disappoint me.
Episode Grade: B+ (Interesting premise so far, and some good acting, but the CIA characters are pretty wooden)
