Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass Is Getting an Ideal Follow-Up in Seven Weeks
Five years after Midnight Mass premiered, Netflix is preparing to return to one of the horror series’ most effective settings: an isolated coastal community confronted by something it cannot explain.
That idea is at the heart of Below, a new miniseries arriving in October 2026. Led by Josh Hartnett, the series follows a remote Newfoundland town whose residents find themselves threatened by a mysterious creature rising from the sea. The setup immediately brings Midnight Mass to mind, even though Mike Flanagan is not involved with the project.
Flanagan’s Netflix era produced five horror series between 2018 and 2023, establishing one of the strongest bodies of work in modern television horror. His next projects include a planned remake of Stephen King’s The Mist, a miniseries adaptation of Carrie, and The Dark Tower saga for Prime Video.
Even with those projects ahead, his five Netflix productions remain a particularly notable chapter of his career. Among them, Midnight Mass stands out for the way it turned an isolated island and its deeply connected community into the foundation for a much larger story about faith, mortality and supernatural horror.
Below could make for an especially fitting companion piece.
Below Has Many of the Same Ingredients as Midnight Mass
Flanagan launched his Netflix run in 2018 with The Haunting of Hill House, a loose adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel. Two years later came The Haunting of Bly Manor, another ambitious reimagining, this time based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.
Then came Midnight Mass in 2021, marking Flanagan’s first completely original Netflix series.
Unlike Hill House and Bly Manor, Midnight Mass did not substantially rebuild an existing literary story. Instead, Flanagan created an original tale centered on Crockett Island, a remote community whose fragile routine begins to collapse after the arrival of a mysterious priest.
Hamish Linklater plays Father Hill, whose appearance on the island coincides with a series of increasingly disturbing events. At the same time, disgraced stockbroker Riley Flynn returns to Crockett Island after serving a prison sentence for drunk driving.
What follows is an ensemble horror story built around a community where everyone knows everyone else, making the supernatural threat increasingly difficult to separate from the lives, beliefs and relationships of the island’s residents.
Below enters similar territory.
The series takes place in a remote Newfoundland town populated largely by fishermen. Josh Hartnett stars as Calvin Penney, a fisherman whose son Wade is among those caught up in the crisis. Mackenzie Davis plays Fonda, a visiting researcher who becomes involved as the community faces a mysterious creature emerging from the sea.
Together, they must figure out what is hunting the townspeople while protecting the small fishing community that has become their home.
The similarities to Midnight Mass are striking. Both stories place an isolated seaside community at the center of the action. Both rely on close relationships between residents to establish a strong sense of community before an unexplained supernatural force threatens everything they have built.
There is another reason the comparison is particularly interesting. Midnight Mass initially appeared to be heading toward one kind of monster story before ultimately becoming something much more unexpected.
Below Could Bring a Traditional Monster to the Table
Spoilers ahead for Midnight Mass.
One of the strengths of Midnight Mass was the amount of time it spent allowing its central mystery to unfold.
Eventually, the series revealed that the supernatural horror at the heart of Crockett Island was an unusual take on the vampire story. Riley discovers that Father Hill has been rejuvenated after encountering a monstrous vampire. The creature feeds on the island’s residents while restoring the priest’s youth.
That revelation gave Flanagan an opportunity to explore one of horror’s most recognizable creatures, something his Netflix work had largely avoided up to that point.
The early episodes could have suggested a more conventional creature-feature approach. With its isolated island, troubled young protagonist and ominous supernatural presence, Midnight Mass initially shared some of the atmosphere associated with stories such as Stranger Things and Super 8.
But Flanagan took the story somewhere considerably more complicated.
The vampires in Midnight Mass are intelligent and calculating rather than mindless predators. They can think and feel, and the supernatural elements ultimately serve a much broader exploration of faith, religion, belief, death, free will and determinism.
The series combined elements of vampire horror with ideas reminiscent of 30 Days of Night and Martin Scorsese’s Silence, resulting in a story that was difficult to reduce to a conventional monster narrative.
Below could take a different approach by putting a more traditional creature at the center of its story.
The series’ marketing has not yet revealed exactly what its mysterious creature looks like. Its premise nevertheless suggests that audiences could finally see the kind of creature-focused horror that Flanagan largely avoided throughout his five Netflix series.
Even The Midnight Club moved well beyond conventional monster horror, incorporating stories about hitchhiking ghosts, murderous doubles and futuristic time travel. Future The Shards star Igbo Rigney also appeared as a teenage serial killer in his contribution to the anthology.
The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan’s 2023 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, followed a similar pattern. Although supernatural horror was central to the series, it continued Flanagan’s preference for unusual and psychologically driven approaches rather than straightforward screen monsters.
For that reason, the possibility of Below featuring a Cthulhu-inspired creature is especially interesting.
There is one significant complication, though. Below is arriving at a time when another 2026 horror series has already explored a remarkably similar premise.
Below Has Another Seaside Horror Series to Beat
The comparisons to Midnight Mass are unavoidable. Both are self-contained ensemble horror stories built around isolated seaside communities, with tightly connected residents confronting an unexplained supernatural threat.
But Below will also have to distinguish itself from Widow’s Bay, the highly acclaimed 2026 series that has already put its own spin on this kind of story.
Widow’s Bay can essentially be described as Midnight Mass crossed with Parks and Recreation. The series follows the struggling mayor of the titular island community as he attempts to generate publicity for the struggling tourist destination while dealing with accusations that the town is cursed.
The problem is that the accusations are true.
The island really is haunted, and the mayor’s efforts to hide that fact only make the situation more difficult.
Widow’s Bay works both as a loving parody of shows such as Midnight Mass and Salem’s Lot and as a small-town horror story in its own right. The series also featured a cameo from Hamish Linklater, adding another connection to Midnight Mass.
That leaves Below with a high standard to meet when it reaches Netflix in October 2026.
Its ingredients are promising. A remote Newfoundland setting, a tightly connected fishing community and a mysterious creature emerging from the sea give the series plenty of natural overlap with Midnight Mass while leaving room for a very different kind of horror story.
The bigger question is whether Below can establish its own identity after Midnight Mass explored the isolated-community formula so effectively and Widow’s Bay recently put another memorable spin on it.
Audiences will find out soon enough.
Below
Below arrives on Netflix in October 2026.