The Storyline We Should Have Gotten In Warrior Nun Season 3 Before Its Unjust Cancelation – Looper

Meena Rayann’s Yasmine Amunet — whose Egyptian mother-goddess last name means “the hidden one” — is likely the mole who betrayed the OCS to Adriel (she sure seems to get in their way a lot, through an endearing but potentially feigned ineptitude). Nonetheless, it’s clear she cares about her newfound family, and like so many of the show’s more mysterious characters, we can assume her motivations are complex and potentially justified. At the very least, it’s unlikely they’re intentionally nefarious. 

Then, of course, there’s our very first warrior nun, Areala of Cordoba (Guiomar Alonso), and her continually evolving, unreliable flashbacks. Despite their unreliability and continued manipulation, there’s a lot we can deduce from this figure and her “history.” A major theme in “Warrior Nun” is its frequent questioning of the line between the reality of what happened, and the politically-driven revision thereof. Areala’s story rests at the intersection of these dueling narratives, and points to some major Season 3 reveals. 

Let’s begin at the beginning. Given the tone and subtext of “Warrior Nun” as a whole, the handful of Areala flashbacks can’t possible be the last we’ll hear of the crusades, and the semantics at play in Ava’s reading of Areala’s history echo this: she “fought in his name,” the history reads (and Ava stresses the “his”), but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we know who “he” is, or what Areala fought for. Considering how reality contrasts with the toxic mythology of the crusades (recently reignited, per Time), it’s hard to believe that the show’s ancestral hero figure would buy Pope Urban II’s hateful propaganda, or endorse such transparently political bloodshed.

“You lie like a man,” she tells Adriel — a line that says much about who she’d be willing to take orders from.