We Finally Know When 'Warrior Nun' Is Returning This Year

Netflix has a habit—pun very much intended—of taking seemingly ludicrous conceits (hello, Too Hot to Handle) and spinning them into surprise hits. Take Warrior Nun, for instance—which, yes, is a real show that hit the top 10 most-watched series list on Netflix when it dropped in 2020. The story follows an young orphan named Ava (Alba Baptista), who wakes up in a morgue and soon discovers she’s been imbued with ancient abilities via an artifact embedded in her back. As such, she’s earned a free ticket to join the Order of the Cruciform Sword, a group of—you catching on now?—warrior nuns. Said warrior nuns have sworn to protect the world from demonic forces, though Ava’s not so sure she buys into the hype.

What follows is a lot of Supernatural-esque baddie-fighting, spiffy superpowers, and flashy outfits, but the delightful cast rescues this otherwise irreverent show from alienating its audience. As one of Netflix’s numerous comic book adaptations, Warrior Nun quickly accumulated a fan base hungry for season 2. After all, we must learn what happens after the finale’s massive cliffhanger. Will we witness the epic battle between good and evil? Or will Ava hang up her halo for a life in the hills, à la Maria in The Sound of Music?

After a two-year hiatus largely onset by the pandemic, season 2 is finally on its way. Here’s what we know so far.

When is season 2 of Warrior Nun coming out?

During its June 2022 Geeked Week event, Netflix finally announced a release timeline for season 2: winter 2022. In an accompanying teaser trailer, we see Ava reckon with season 1’s cliffhanger ending—and get a taste of the battle to come. (Also, she runs on water.)

“No one in history has ever defeated Adriel and lived,” a voice warns.

“Well then,” Ava says. “Looks like we’re gonna have to make history.”

Watch the full teaser below.

Why did season 2 take so long to get here?

Way back in August 2020, Netflix posted an official announcement that Warrior Nun had earned the green light for another season. During an adorable virtual reunion that the streaming service posted to Twitter, the cast burst into cheers when showrunner Simon Barry dropped the news that they’d be reuniting soon.

But due to pandemic restrictions, production wasn’t able to launch in earnest until nearly a year later, in summer 2021.

In November 2021, Barry posted on Twitter that the main unit production had wrapped filming, which gave fans a hint that season 2 would likely drop sometime in mid-2022. Barry confirmed their suspicions in December 2021, when he posted a behind-the-scenes photo from set captioned, “Happy New Year from #WarriorNun - we can’t wait to share Season 2 with you in 2022!”

The next update didn’t come until a few months later, when Barry revealed in February 2022 that season 2 was “in several thousand small digital parts in a massive @netflix server, being reassembled by brilliantly talented artists who need to shape it just right so that it melts your brain in the desired fashion we imagined.” Finally, in June 2022, a season 2 teaser and release timeline dropped during Netflix’s Geeked Week.

What can we expect from season 2?

In a July 2020 interview with Refinery 29, star Alba Baptista discussed what boundaries the series might push in its exploration of Adriel, a character with a fascinating backstory. “The writers have it all thought out for an eventual season 2,” she revealed. “…I love Adriel’s character. I think he’s so dense and he has a lot of layers to his story, which we will discover further on.”

She later added that the second season might be even more wild than the first. “[There’s] going to be a big, big reveal for an eventual season 2,” she said. “It was well thought-out. It wasn’t just an accident. It’s another plot twist for the spectators to guess on for another year. They’ll have to wait for another season.”

The season 2 trailer confirms Adriel will make a momentous return as the Big Bad, but in what capacity we can’t yet be sure.

How many total seasons will Warrior Nun run?

We’ve got our second, but if Barry had his choice, he’d get a third, fourth and fifth as well. “Anything between five and seven seasons would be lovely," he told Inverse.

He also told CBR.com, “We had ideas out of the first season writing room that we thought would be interesting for a second season if we were lucky enough to get one. So yeah, we definitely encourage Netflix to pursue that.”

And he revealed to Looper that "we were holding back so many secrets in a way in season one. The fact that we now have the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, in terms of the mythology of the show. I think it'll be really exciting to take that journey and unpack what we've revealed."

You Might Also Like

• 10 Pairs of White Sneakers That Go With Everything

• 50 Surprising Things You Never Knew About 'Sex and the City'

• 20 Serums to Solve All Your Skincare Problems