“The Chosen” opens with a demon. Not a metaphor, not a mood — a woman named Mary Magdalene, played by Elizabeth Tabish, who is possessed, broke and out of options in first-century Galilee. Before the show gets anywhere near Jesus, it makes you sit with her.
That is the whole idea behind “The Chosen,” and it is why the series works. Created by Dallas Jenkins, it is the first multi-season television show about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It is set in Judaea and Galilee in the first century. It premiered in 2019, and it does not tell the story from the top down. It tells it from the side, through the people who ran into him.
Trailer, via The Chosen.
A demoniac named Mary Magdalene
The show’s best decision is its narrow view. Jesus is the subject, but he is rarely the camera. The series follows the apostles and disciples, Jewish religious leaders, Roman government and military officials, and ordinary people who cross his path. The synopsis is blunt about the method: the life of Christ through the eyes of those who encountered him.
That choice gives “The Chosen” a shape most Bible films never find. Instead of a greatest-hits reel of miracles, season one is a recruiting story. Jesus builds a group. He calls the former demoniac Mary Magdalene, the stonemason Thaddeus, the choir member Little James, the fishermen Simon, Andrew, Big James and John, the caterer Thomas, the vintner Ramah, and the tax collector Matthew.
Look at that list. A tax collector. A vintner. A caterer. These are jobs, not titles. The show keeps insisting that the first followers were people with trades and debts and grudges.
Jonathan Roumie empties himself out
Jonathan Roumie plays Jesus, and he is the reason the show holds. His approach is not a performance of divinity. It is an emptying.
Roumie said he always aims to “empty out as much of himself as possible” to allow the Holy Spirit to work in him through both the script and his performance onscreen. On preparation, he said he does “a good bit of reading and rereading the source material,” but that most of it is “in the spiritual department.”
That is a strange thing to read in a press cycle, and it explains the show’s register. Roumie is not playing a superhero. He is playing someone with a job to do, and the show trusts him to be quiet when quiet is right.
The casting around him matters just as much. Roumie stars alongside Shahar Isaac, Elizabeth Tabish, Paras Patel, Noah James and George H. Xanthis, among a large cast. Jenkins avoided “big stars” and “white people,” trying instead to rebuild a picture of first-century Capernaum. Capernaum sat on a trade route. A trade route means a mix of ethnicities and backgrounds, and the show casts accordingly. Many actors in the series are people of color, which is not often the case in Bible films and television.
A crowd-funded season and a free show
The business side of “The Chosen” is not a footnote. It is part of the story.
Season one was financed through crowdfunding, and it became the most successful crowd-funded TV series in history. It launched in 2019 on the VidAngel platform with a subscription required. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and millions of people stayed home. The producers temporarily made the season free to watch. Revenue went up.
That result pushed the show toward its current model: free to watch, with exclusivity windows. Seasons three and four premiered in movie theaters before moving to various streaming platforms. The show’s networks include Prime Video, VidAngel, Angel and TheChosen.tv. Five seasons have been released. The sixth is filmed and pending release in November 2026. The seventh and final season is in filming in summer 2026.
A crowd-funded show that gives itself away and still survives is not a normal television story. It is closer to a congregation than a network.
Samaria, Bethesda and the Sermon on the Mount
The seasons build in a clear line. Season one ends with the group traveling through Samaria, where Jesus reveals himself to Photina, a Samaritan woman, and launches his public ministry.
Season two moves from Samaria into Syria and Judea. Jesus heals the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda. He calls Philip, the disciple of John the Baptizer; Nathanael, an architect; and Simon Z., a Zealot. The season ends on the preparations for the Sermon on the Mount, with help from Judas Iscariot, a business apprentice.
Season three returns to Capernaum, where Jesus’s popularity starts to trouble the Romans and the Pharisees. After the Sermon on the Mount, he sends the twelve apostles out two by two to preach and perform miracles without him. It is their biggest challenge yet. He then goes back to Nazareth, his hometown, and the ministry shifts into the year of his greatest popularity.
Here is the part that separates “The Chosen” from a Sunday school pageant. The show treats the Sermon on the Mount as a logistics problem. It treats the sending of the twelve as a staffing decision. It treats Judas as a guy with a head for business. Faith in this show is not a feeling. It is a set of choices made by people who are not sure they are right.
The cast who found a dream role
Several cast members have described a deep connection to the show, the story and their character. Tabish, who plays Mary Magdalene, was considering leaving acting when the role arrived. She called it a “dream role.”
That detail lands harder once you have watched her in season one. Mary Magdalene is the show’s proof of concept. If the audience does not believe her, the whole method collapses. Tabish makes you believe her, and the show earns the right to keep widening its circle.
The result is a series with a clear idea and the patience to follow it. It is not reverent in the way that word usually means. It is reverent in the way that a good documentary is reverent: it takes the people seriously, including the ones who get it wrong.
What actually matters here
Ranking the seasons is a fool’s errand this far in, but the order of what the show gets right is not close.
- The point of view. Telling the story through the disciples and the officials and the ordinary people is the single decision that makes “The Chosen” work.
- The casting. Jenkins built a first-century Capernaum instead of a Hollywood one, and the show is better for it.
- The distribution. Free to watch, crowdfunded, theaters for seasons three and four — the model is as unusual as the show.
- The pacing. The series runs 6 seasons and 47 episodes, and the show uses that room unevenly.
The pacing is the real cost. A multi-season series about Jesus has to fill time, and “The Chosen” sometimes fills it with the machinery of its own plot. The political pressure from Rome and the Pharisees is necessary, but it can slow a show whose best scenes are two people talking in a room.
What matters more is what the show refuses to do. It does not make Jesus a special effect. It does not make the disciples geniuses. It does not pretend the first century looked like a Renaissance painting. The camera stays low, at eye level, on people who have no idea what they have walked into.
That is a real achievement. “The Chosen” is not a perfect series. It is a series with a clear idea and the patience to follow it. The sixth season is filmed and pending release in November 2026, and the seventh and final season is in filming in summer 2026. The show has already proved its case.
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