Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Warrior Nun season 1.
Warrior Nun introduces a world of angels and demons using Earth as a battleground, but could these strange creatures actually be aliens from another dimension? The Netflix show is based on a series of comic books where Heaven and Hell really do exist, but the adaptation has already taken many liberties with the source material. Moreover, Warrior Nun season 1 lays a lot of groundwork to suggest that angels and demons aren't what they seem.
The idea of gods and angels actually being creatures from outer space or another dimension isn't new. It's the premise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Thor, in which the Asgardians were actually alien beings who visited Earth and were mythologized as the Norse gods. The crossover genre of science-fantasy has played around a lot with the idea that things thought of as magical are actually just highly advanced technology.
Thanks to the presence of genius scientist Jillian Salvius, Warrior Nun season 1 literally puts the divine under a microscope in an effort to understand the science behind it. And with the finale already bringing with it a big twist that upends the Order's mythology, Warrior Nun season 2 could take things a step further by revealing that the angels and demons aren't holy and unholy beings, but something else entirely.
Warrior Nun Is More Science-Fiction Than Fantasy
Though Warrior Nun features Bible references in its episode titles and is based around a holy order of nuns who work within the structure of the Catholic Church, there isn't actually much concrete evidence of the divine in the show. In fact, Shotgun Mary goes so far as to admit that saying prayers while exorcising demons is more for the benefit of onlookers than for any actual effect, "but it can't hurt." People possessed by "demons" are never shown to be bothered by things like holy water or the sign of the cross, and in fact a priest was one of the former victims of possession.
Thanks to Jillian Salvius, Warrior Nun shows that the supposedly holy substance of Divinium is actually just another element - and one with important scientific applications. In addition to preserving the life of Jillian's son, the Divinium is also used to build a quantum portal to another dimension. The Church believes that this portal will lead to Hell, while Jillian believes that it will lead to another plain of existence, where her son won't have to fear death or disease.
Much About The Order Is Revealed As A Lie
By the end of Warrior Nun season 1, it's clear that the Order of the Cruciform Sword's origin story has a few important details left out. According to the original story, Warrior Nun Areala's life was saved by an angel wearing Divinium armor, who gave her his halo in order to stop her wounds from killing her. When Ava experiences a flashback to those events, however, it's revealed that neither the halo nor the Divinium were originally Adriel's. The halo was a stolen artifact that he forcibly shoved into Ava, demanding the protection of the Templar Knights in exchange. Meanwhile the Divinium actually came from the skeleton of a Terask killed by Adriel, which he then melted down to create his "holy" armor.
Ava comes to the conclusion that Adriel is actually a devil, which could mean that the Terasks chasing him are angels. Adriel would certainly have been in a good position to fill Christian doctrine with lies, making the false claim that Terasks were demons from Hell and disseminating their image among religious texts so that people would come to associate horns and cloven feet with evil. Meanwhile, when Adriel first appears to Ava in his tomb, he is wearing Jesus-like robes that are revealed to be nothing more than a front designed to manipulate her. If so much of what the Order believed about Adriel, the Terasks and the wraith demons is a lie, perhaps they're nothing to do with Heaven or Hell at all.
Adriel Hints That The Divine Is Not What It Seems
When Adriel tells Areala that he is an angel and that she is "expected to believe that this is a devil" (referring to the Terask), she calls it a "lie" and says that he is "no angel." The simple interpretation of this is that Adriel is actually a demon, but the lie could run deeper than that. When Ava confronts Adriel about the lies he's been telling, he responds:
"You expect everything to be straightforward. Right and wrong, good and evil. You expect this because this is what you've always been taught to believe: that divinity is infallible. It's not. It's messy, it's complex."
This suggests, at the very least, that the plain Adriel comes from is not neatly divided into a Heaven and a Hell as described in religious doctrine, and that what Ava has "been taught to believe" is not necessarily true. And while Ava and the other nuns ultimately recognize Adriel as a "devil," Warrior Nun stops short of identifying him as a traditional demon or even revealing his "true" name. This leaves the door wide open for another explanation to reveal itself in season 2.
Theory: Angels And Demons Are Really Aliens
Rather than being angels and demons from Heaven and Hell, the Terasks, the wraith demons and Adriel could simply be members of an alien race. The halo itself could actually be a piece of highly advanced technology; after all, there's something distinctly limiting about the idea that its energy can be drained after a certain amount of phasing through walls, whereas angelic power should in theory be infinite. Divinium, meanwhile, can be studied under a microscope and used to build machines like Jillian Salvius' quantum portal. When Adriel used his connection to the Divinium in Michael to send over the plans for the portal, what he may have actually been sending was blueprints for alien technology.
If this is the case, then there may be no Heaven or Hell on the other side of the portal, but instead simply an alien dimension. This is supported by the fact that the teleportation effects that are seen when Terasks, Adriel and Lilith travel all have the same appearance, and it looks more sci-fi than spiritual. If the aliens have been periodically visiting Earth throughout the history of human civilization, they could have established religion as a meas of controlling humanity, or humanity might simply have developed their own ideas after witnessing visitations from these "angels" and "demons." If Warrior Nun season 2 has a big twist to match season 1's, this could well be it.