Warrior Nun creator on show's legacy: "We really connected to a big group of fans"

Billboards bearing the hashtag #SaveWarriorNun soon appeared outside Netflix’s offices in cities including London, Los Angeles and Milan, while fans also hosted meets-ups across the globe, shared selfies with #SaveWarriorNun signs while paragliding and scuba diving, and launched a petition calling for the show to get a third season, which currently has more than 120,000 signatures.

It’s this “really strong and vocal and engaged fan base” that creator Simon Barry is most proud of when looking back at the show, which was based on a 1990s comic book by Ben Dunn and saw 19-year-old Ava (Alba Baptista) resurrected in a morgue only to discover she’s been imbued with superpowers and become the chosen halo-bearer for the Order of the Cruciform Sword (OCS), a religious sect of demon-hunting nuns and priests (yes, really).

Warrior Nun not only pushed the boundaries of the fantasy genre itself by blending science fiction, action, fantasy, period and young adult fiction but, led by an almost entirely female cast of warriors who hold the fate of the world in their hands, also offered refreshing female and LGBTQ+ representation rarely seen in fantasy shows.

“We really connected to a big group of fans who felt that their show was telling a story that they had not been told, and that they were seeing themselves represented in a way that was really not just entertaining for them but also empowering and joyful and sort of, I guess, satisfying,” Barry tells RadioTimes.com.

“I’m proud that there’s a really good community that we helped build of people that connected with each other as a result of the show and now have formed a strong community that is self-sustaining and built on friendship and shared interests.”

Barry was first introduced to Dunn’s comic book by friend and film producer Dean English, who had the rights to the material and approached him in 2015 to rewrite the script for a feature version he was developing.

Barry was busy working on another show at the time, but was immediately attracted to “some of the ideas in the comic book and movie as they related to just playing with religion as a mythology: good and evil, heaven and hell, demons and angels".

“And also because of power dynamics in the church and the way religion wields influence and power. It just felt like it had a lot of social and political levels to it that push against the idea of what normal fantasy does," adds Barry.

But the story and its huge mythology wasn’t really suitable for a movie, he realised: it was “definitely too big” and “needed a much bigger canvas”. And so Barry suggested making a TV series instead.

“But at the end of the day you have to figure out what the TV show is before you can sell it, and I hadn’t really had time to develop it as a show,” Barry recalls. That is, until, around 12 months later when he was approached by a Netflix executive who was looking for shows to buy and jumped at the concept of Warrior Nun.

It was at that point that Barry realised he better figure it out. “I went back to Dean and said, ‘I think I’ve got a way to pitch this as a show, so can I get the rights from you?’ And so he agreed to give me the rights to pitch it to Netflix properly and then I developed essentially what was the show that you’ve seen.”

The story in the original comic book is centred on Sister Shannon Masters, an older and wiser Joan of Arc-like heroine of the OCS. But with a tonne of complex mythology to unpack, Barry realised he needed a protagonist who would be on the same page as the viewer – and so he invented Warrior Nun’s Ava.

“Ava was basically an opportunity for the audience to participate in a journey and an experience along with the central character that would then allow us to unpack and peel back the layers of the OCS and the mythology of Warrior Nun instead of asking people to absorb a huge amount of information quickly,” says Barry.

“Anyway Netflix was very happy with the pitch that I presented to them in terms of the concept of the TV show and the characters, and they immediately ordered it to series.’’ Production kicked off in March 2019, shooting on location on the streets and cathedrals of Spain.

Of course, introducing the concept of the Warrior Nuns and the OCS through Ava’s eyes made the task of casting the character all the more important.

The casting sweep – which was a search for people who were new to television for the most part – did take a long time, Barry recalls, with the quest for some parts running “very closely to the beginning of production”. But it was clear immediately that Alba Baptista had the right qualities to portray Ava.

“She had a balance of being able to show what she’s thinking and how she’s feeling without having to say words,” Barry says of Baptista. “For me that was a very important layer of an actor’s talent to be able to bring into the equation” and meant he could “start cutting lines, which is always good”.

Though she had previously starred in Portuguese series such as A Criação and the telenovelas A Impostora and Jogo Duplo, Warrior Nun marked Baptista’s first English-language role. “We didn’t know this when we cast her but just the fact that she had the professionalism and experience and ability to handle every situation that was thrown at her. All of those elements made it ideal.”

While Warrior Nun has been lauded for its LGBTQ+ representation through Ava and Sister Beatrice’s (Kristina Tonteri-Young) relationship, which really blossomed in season 2 and culminated in a kiss, LGBTQ+ fans weren’t always on board. The first season of the show was met with backlash from some fans for flirting with gay subtext without openly acknowledging a romantic relationship between the pair.

But Ava and Beatrice’s romantic arc was mapped out from the very beginning, Barry insists. “Obviously we didn’t want it to be overt at the beginning because we wanted to give it time to develop and so that was always part of the scripting strategy, which was, how can we let this evolve in a natural, organic way?”

Of course, the kiss between Ava and Beatrice in season 2, which unfolded just before the mortally wounded Ava was vanished to Adriel’s realm, was a bittersweet moment for fans. And while Warrior Nun’s second season wrapped up its main storyline – with the show's antagonist Adriel (William Miller) finally meeting defeat – it also set up what would have been an epic third season, with Ava and Beatrice’s fates still up in the air, not to mention a Holy War on the horizon.

"People in the business side of Warrior Nun are definitely working on [keeping Warrior Nun going]," reveals Barry. But despite the show's followers calling for rival streamers like STARZ, Apple TV+, Max, and Paramount+ to pick up the series as part of their ongoing campaign (which Barry terms an “amazing gesture” and “a complete and pleasant surprise”), Barry thinks it’s unlikely that another platform would pick up the series.

It’s “not entirely impossible,” says Barry. “But it feels like the way that Netflix has built their business is in terms of the shows that they originate. It’s very rare that they allow a show to be taken over by another streamer unless it’s a show that was owned outside the Netflix ecosystem.

“So, for example if it was a show that was made by a studio like Sony and it was on Netflix and Netflix cancelled then, yeah, the owner studio could negotiate that. But because Netflix was the studio on a Netflix show, it’s less likely that they will let it go.”

More likely, says Barry, is a continuation in another medium, such as feature films, podcasts, and novel or graphic novel form.

Would a potential Warrior Nun movie pick up where season 2 left off? “I don’t know where the feature story will or won’t connect to the TV show just based on the decision of the people who are making that. They may see advantages in that version; they may see advantages coming at the story from a different point of view.

“They may also want to make the universe much bigger,” adds Barry.

Well, Warrior Nun fans would surely jump at that.

Warrior Nun seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, or visit our TV Guide or Streaming Guide.

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