Top 5 things we wanted in The Exorcist season 3

Well, fans of The Exorcist, it seems our prayers have been in vain: Fox just gave our show its last rites. Bring on the lamentations.

Maybe we saw this coming — the show’s EP certainly did — but that doesn’t make the cancellation of The Exorcist any less tragic. As much as I want to put on a brave face and make a post about all the things the show has given us to love, right now I plan to wallow a bit.

So here it is: the top 5 things we wish we could have gotten in season 3.

Weep with me.

Marcus’s contacts in the religious underworld

Oh man, I was so excited just typing the words “religious underworld” just then — and so utterly cheated that we won’t get to see what that entails. One of my favorite parts of season 1 was the weird Murder Tour Bus guides with their finger to the pulse of demonic activity in Chicago. In an interview with TVLine, Jeremy Slater mentioned that season 3 would have introduced even more characters along those lines:

"I think it’d be fun to see Marcus having to go outside the bounds of the Church and talk to some of the people he would have met over his last 30 years of exorcising people. [Sources] who deal in conspiracy theories, religious reliquaries and things like that… Shamans and rabbis and people from different faiths who may be fighting the same evil using different terminology and different methodology."

Argh. If I had to name one thing from season 1 I felt was lacking in season 2, it would have to be the fascinating side-characters that Marcus has met over the course of his career. Having Marcus get in touch with his old contacts would be a great way to explore his personal history and introduce some cool new characters at the same time. Alas and alack, we will never get to see it.

Marcus and Tomas reunite

This is the big one I’m sure we’re all heartbroken over. At the end of season 2, Marcus hangs up his exorcist hat and sends Tomas off to continue the fight against demonkind with his ex-protégé Mouse — and then, six months later, receives a mysterious vision that ended with his desperately whispering Tomas’s name. How’s that for a cliffhanger?

It was never a question that Marcus and Tomas would eventually get back together. Marcus and Tomas’s relationship has been one of the best parts of the show — even when they’re practically at each other’s throats, it’s the deep mutual respect and concern for each other that brings the dynamic to life.

But now we’ll never get to know how that reunion would have played out. The closest we can get to seeing that scene comes from Jeremy Slater again, who says that Marcus would essentially “kicking the door down and saying, ‘Tomas, I miss you.’”

Well, that excellent mental image will have to sustain us now.

Bennett gets exorcised

Listen, I refuse to accept that Bennett is integrated. I know it’s a moot point now that the show is cancelled, but the thought that he and Marcus would never again get to snipe at each other about religious theory across dingy diner tables is too heartbreaking to contemplate.

Bennett serves as the perfect foil for Marcus in season 1. He’s in good with the church hierarchy while Marcus is excommunicated; he’s by-the-book while Marcus is busy defacing the pages. But at the end of the day, their faith and their belief in helping people make them a perfect team. And the hints at their personal history as partners are utterly tantalizing as well. I would have killed for flashbacks of them working together as exorcists, no doubt arguing the entire time.

Of course, no one knows Bennett is possessed (not integrated!), which means we could get some truly juicy scenes with Bennett meeting up with our exorcists and pretending to help them while secretly working against them. And then they successfully exorcise him, naturally. Because that would have happened by the end of the season, and no one can tell me otherwise.

More Mouse

I fell in love with Mouse from the instant she was introduced. A ruthless female exorcist whose first scene involves dusting pastries with crumbled up communion wafers and then setting a room full of demons on fire? I was instantly ready for a Mouse-centric spin-off.

She got some more great scenes in season 2, but I absolutely could not wait to see how she interacted with Tomas. Jeremy Slater had some cool ideas for how their dynamic might go:

"Marcus was very much constantly worried, almost to the point of obsession with protecting Tomas, Mouse doesn’t have those same nurturing instincts. In Mouse’s eyes, Tomas is a weapon to be used in this larger war. He’s an asset that she could potentially control."

I love this take so much, and would have loved even more to see it play out on the show. For most of season 2 Tomas pushes Marcus to be more reckless and active in the fight against demons. When thrown together with Mouse, who takes that philosophy to the extreme, would Tomas double-down or start longing for the days when he was the partner who didn’t play by the rules?

Personally I like to think he would return to Marcus’s lessons. Otherwise when Marcus rejoined him and Mouse Marcus would certainly have his hands full reigning the two of them in.

Representation

Though the plot and characters in The Exorcist were a huge part of what made the show great, its dedication to representation was what really elevated it. It explored the intersection of faith and the LGBTQ community — rare enough in any religious media, let alone an action-packed show about exorcising demons. It contained multiple LGBTQ characters in both seasons, from Kat to Verity to Peter to Marcus himself. Season 2 depicted an on-screen kiss between two older men and gave Verity multiple scenes to discuss her experiences being sent to a conversion camp.

The importance of that kind of content on a show that isn’t specifically about LGBTQ issues cannot be overstated. The Exorcist provided a cast of non-straight characters from teenagers to men in their 50s, and called out the existence of homophobia in the church without getting up on a soap box. Showing Marcus and Peter kiss on screen was kind of a big deal, in a media environment where representation for older LGBTQ people is even harder to find.

Of course, that kiss in particular made some people angry — but Jeremy Slater and Ben Daniels’ responses were nearly as popcorn-worthy as the show itself.

It meant so much to have a cast who actively if not vehemently defended the existence of their LGBTQ characters in the face of criticism. That, more than anything, is what I will miss the most about The Exorcist — the sense of a safe space which acknowledged the complicated relationship between religion and the LGBTQ community.

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So, in conclusion, there’s so much we all wish we could have had in season 3. But we still have two seasons of an awesome show, and nothing can take that away. So here’s to the Exorcist. The last rites may have been said, but our show will never be forgotten.