Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass Is Getting an Ideal Follow-Up in Seven Weeks

Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass remains one of the strongest horror series from his Netflix years, and five years after its release, a new miniseries looks poised to revisit one of its most effective ideas. Netflix’s Below, arriving in October 2026, places an isolated coastal community at the center of a supernatural threat, creating an obvious connection to Flanagan’s acclaimed 2021 series.

Flanagan’s run with Netflix produced some of the most celebrated horror television of the late 2010s and early 2020s. His future projects could continue that creative streak, including his planned remake of Stephen King’s The Mist, a miniseries adaptation of Carrie, and The Dark Tower saga for Prime Video.

Still, his five Netflix series from 2018 to 2023 remain an especially impressive body of work.

Below Has the Right Ingredients to Follow Midnight Mass

Flanagan began his Netflix run with 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House, a loose adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel. In 2020, he followed it with The Haunting of Bly Manor, an equally ambitious reimagining of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

The following year brought Midnight Mass, his first completely original Netflix series. Unlike Hill House and Bly Manor, which substantially reworked their literary source material, Midnight Mass was built from an original story and became a major critical success.

The series takes place on the isolated Crockett Island, where the arrival of a mysterious priest, Hamish Linklater’s Father Hill, coincides with disturbing changes throughout the community. At the same time, disgraced stockbroker Riley Flynn returns home after serving a prison sentence for drunk driving.

The result is an ensemble horror story about a close-knit island community facing an increasingly inexplicable supernatural threat.

Below appears to occupy remarkably similar territory. The Josh Hartnett-led series is set in a remote town in Newfoundland, where residents are threatened by a mysterious creature emerging from the sea.

Among those caught in the crisis are Hartnett’s fisherman Calvin Penney, his son Wade, and Mackenzie Davis’ visiting researcher Fonda. Together, they must confront whatever is hunting the townspeople while trying to protect the community that has formed around their small fishing village.

The parallels with Midnight Mass are difficult to miss. Both stories center on isolated fishing communities whose residents share close personal ties, only for their way of life to be disrupted by an unexplained paranormal threat.

That makes Below particularly well suited to follow Midnight Mass, especially because Flanagan’s series ultimately turned out to be something quite different from the island-set creature feature its early episodes might have suggested.

Below Could Deliver the Monster Flanagan’s Netflix Shows Avoided

Spoilers ahead for Midnight Mass.

It takes time for Midnight Mass to reveal what kind of horror story it actually is. Eventually, however, the series exposes its central supernatural mystery as an unconventional vampire story.

Riley discovers that Father Hill has reversed decades of aging by bringing back a monstrous vampire. The creature restores his youth, but in return, it feeds on the people of Crockett Island.

The revelation allowed Flanagan to explore vampires, a classic horror subject he had not previously tackled in his Netflix work. It also transformed the series from the small-town monster story it initially appeared to be into something far more unusual.

The first two episodes could almost have belonged to the same general tradition as Stranger Things or Super 8: character-driven stories about small communities with an ominous creature waiting just beyond the edges of the narrative.

Instead, the vampires of Midnight Mass were intelligent, calculating and capable of thought and emotion. The series eventually combined the bleak horror of 30 Days of Night with elements reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s Silence, using its supernatural story to explore faith, religion, belief, death, free will and determinism.

That approach made Midnight Mass distinctive.

Below could provide something Flanagan’s Netflix shows largely lacked: a traditional monster.

Its marketing has not yet revealed exactly what the creature in Below looks like. Nevertheless, the premise suggests a return to the kind of creature-focused horror that Flanagan consistently avoided during his five Netflix series.

The Midnight Club, for example, featured stories involving hitchhiking ghosts, murderous doubles and futuristic time travel. Future The Shards star Igbo Rigney played a teenage serial killer in his contribution to the anthology.

Even The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan’s loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s work from 2023, continued his preference for supernatural horror that avoided straightforward, traditional screen monsters.

That makes the possibility of Below introducing a Cthulhu-inspired creature particularly intriguing.

There is, however, one major obstacle: Below will arrive in a horror landscape where another recent series has already explored remarkably similar territory.

Below Faces Major Competition From Widow’s Bay

Comparisons between Below and Midnight Mass are inevitable. Both are self-contained ensemble horror stories centered on isolated seaside communities, with tightly connected residents facing an unexplained supernatural threat.

But Below will also have to contend with Widow’s Bay, the highly acclaimed 2026 series that has already made a similar premise its own.

Essentially Midnight Mass crossed with the workplace comedy Parks and Recreation, Widow’s Bay follows the struggling mayor of the titular island community as he tries to attract publicity for the tourist destination while dealing with accusations that the town is cursed.

The situation becomes considerably more complicated because the island really is haunted. The mayor’s attempts to conceal the truth only make the crisis worse.

Widow’s Bay succeeded as both a loving parody of shows such as Midnight Mass and Salem’s Lot and a strong small-town horror story in its own right. The series even included a cameo from Hamish Linklater.

That gives Below a particularly high standard to meet when it arrives in October 2026.

With its isolated Newfoundland setting, threatened fishing community and mysterious creature, the series has all the ingredients to become a natural companion to Midnight Mass. Whether it can distinguish itself from both Flanagan’s vampire masterpiece and the recent success of Widow’s Bay will become clear when Below arrives in a few weeks.

Below

Below arrives on Netflix in October 2026.