Netflix canceled Warrior Nun in December 2022, five weeks after its second season premiered. That fact hangs over any honest look at the series now. What Simon Barry built over 18 episodes is a show with a genuinely strange premise and a center that never quite holds. It scores 6.2/10.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Quadriplegic Orphan Wakes in a Morgue
The premise is the best thing Warrior Nun has going. Ava Silva, played by Portuguese actress Alba Baptista, is a 19-year-old quadriplegic orphan who wakes up in a morgue with a divine artifact embedded in her back. The artifact makes her the Halo-Bearer, and it forces her into the ancient Order of the Cruciform Sword, a secret sect of demon-hunting nuns.
That is a real hook. It is also Baptista’s English-language debut, and the show leans on her hard. She narrates, she leads, and the series rises or falls on whether you want to spend 18 episodes inside her head.
Alba Baptista Carries the Order of the Cruciform Sword
The cast around her is deep. Thekla Reuten plays Jillian Salvius. Lorena Andrea is Sister Lilith, Kristina Tonteri-Young is Sister Beatrice, Sylvia De Fanti is Mother Superion, Tristán Ulloa is Father Vincent, and William Miller is Adriel. Toya Turner and Emilio Sakraya also star.
The Order of the Cruciform Sword is the show’s best invention. A sect of nuns who fight demons on Earth is a premise that could have gone broad and silly. Instead, the series plays it straight, and the headquarters in Andalusia, Spain, gives the order a physical weight the scripts do not always match.
After waking up in a morgue, an orphaned teen discovers she now possesses superpowers as the chosen Halo-Bearer for a secret sect of demon-hunting nuns.
Two Seasons, 18 Episodes, and a Cancellation
The schedule tells its own story. Here is how Warrior Nun ran:
| Season | Episodes | Premiere | Finale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 10 | July 2, 2020 | July 2, 2020 |
| Season 2 | 8 | November 11, 2022 | November 10, 2022 |
The gap between seasons is the problem. Season 1 arrived in July 2020 to generally positive reviews. Season 2 did not land until November 2022, more than two years later. Netflix canceled the series the following month.
That is not a creative failure. It is a scheduling one, and it is worth saying plainly.
Heaven and Hell Both Want the Halo
The show’s mythology is where it gets interesting and where it gets muddled. Powerful forces representing both heaven and hell want to find and control Ava. That is a clean setup for a season, but the series keeps widening the board instead of deepening it.
Barry, who created the show, adapted it from the comic book character Warrior Nun Areala by Ben Dunn. The project started as a feature film adaptation before Netflix re-imagined it as a television series and gave it a first-season order. You can feel that origin in the pacing. Some episodes read like a movie that got stretched.
A Feature Trilogy That Never Arrived
The afterlife of Warrior Nun is its own story. On August 15, 2023, a revival trilogy of feature films was announced to be in development. Fans had spent months campaigning for the show’s return, and the announcement looked like a win.
It did not hold. In April 2025, Barry shared an update stating that he does not know the current status of the movie trilogy. That is the last word on the project.
A revival that nobody can confirm is not a revival. It is a holding pattern, and it has now lasted longer than the show itself.
The Cast Deserved a Longer Run
Here is what actually matters about Warrior Nun. The show found something real in Ava’s body as a site of both damage and power. A quadriplegic protagonist who gets a new lease on life and a divine artifact in her back is not a premise you see on television often, and Baptista plays it without sentiment.
Tonteri-Young’s Sister Beatrice and Andrea’s Sister Lilith are the supporting turns that stick. De Fanti’s Mother Superion gives the order its spine. These are performances that would have grown if the show had been given a third season.
The 6.2/10 reflects a series that was better than its reception and worse than its premise. It is worth watching. It is also, at 18 episodes, exactly what it is: a good show that got cut off before it could become a great one.
The part worth watching is not the demon fights. It is the quiet scenes inside the order, where a group of nuns decide what they owe a girl who never asked for any of this.
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