Warrior Nun season 1 included an early twist about Ava’s death, but some viewers might’ve been able to figure out the truth thanks to some foreshadowing. The new Netflix original series is loosely based on the Warrior Nun Areala comic created in 1994, with one of the most significant changes coming through the lead character. Warrior Nun follows Ava Silva, a paraplegic young woman who suddenly comes back to life with a fully healed body after having a Halo planted in her back.
While Warrior Nun follows Ava’s journey of coming back to life with new abilities and learning about the secret world she’s suddenly become a part of, the Netflix show starts in a surprising way. The opening scene of Warrior Nun shows Sister Frances in a church recording a death of someone from her orphanage, and it is revealed that Ava is the one who died. Sister Frances refuses to tell the priest the cause of death, but it is later revealed that she overdosed on drugs. But, this isn’t completely true, as Sister Frances is the one who administered the overdose.
The twist that Sister Frances is responsible for Ava’s overdose comes near the end of Warrior Nun‘s fourth episode, so a good portion of the ten-episode season has already gone by. But, viewers who paid extra close attention to the show might have already picked up on this revelation. Sister Frances’ refusal to list the cause of death on Ava’s death certificate was an early red flag, but the show also included flashbacks to Ava’s life before she died. These scenes frequently showed Sister Frances hovering over Ava and make it clear that she is in control of anything that happens inside the orphanage, including Ava’s death.
While Ava doesn’t understand her resurrection or know what caused her death at first, she is confident that she didn’t commit suicide. Her file indicated that she killed herself because she was about to age out of the orphanage, but Ava insists that the last thing she remembered before being revived was just going to sleep. Ava doesn’t know why drugs were found in her system, but she knows she didn’t take any the night she died. This is because Sister Frances injected her with drugs while she was asleep to kill Ava.
The mystery surrounding Ava’s death is wrapped up by the end of episode 4, as Ava kills Sister Frances after she tries to kill her again. Sister Frances revealed that Ava was not the first child that she killed before they could age out of her orphanage, with the number of murders so high she lost count. This causes Ava to try and stop her so that Diego, the child she roomed with at the orphanage, would not also be killed by Sister Frances. It’s a defining moment for Ava that catapults her through the rest of Warrior Nun‘s story.
