The Chosen: Last Supper - Part 1 [s5e01] (2025)

Image Credit: 5&2 Studios. See all my The Chosen posts here.

The arrival of The Chosen: Last Supper in cinemas will mean different things to different people. On the one hand there are the fans of the show, who have followed Jesus, his followers, and indeed his enemies, through four seasons and a couple of Christmas specials. Many have watched those episodes multiple times and the chance to see their favourite show on the big screen is something for which they’ve been waiting for quite some time. It’s almost a celebration of what the show has achieved. Or validation, having started all those years ago as a relatively unknown, crowd-funded venture now pulling up a chair to the table in the high temple of entertainment.

Yet its arrival in cinemas also puts it into a different bracket. To others, it’s just a film. Among its audience of enthusiastic Christians, there will be those who have no idea about The Chosen. They might be there as invited friends. Or as those who’ve heard the hype and are interested to see what is drawing in 250 million viewers. Or they might be fans of historical cinema, curious atheists, or simply people who are bored with nothing better to do. What might The Chosen mean to them?

I’m fascinated by this juxtaposition, because attracting that latter group seems to be, at least in part, the aim of the show's creators. Yes, given the show was being filmed anyway, it will also raise some money; money which Dallas Jenkins – The Chosen’s showrunner – has always been clear, will be ploughed back into making the remaining two seasons (and perhaps, beyond it, other entries in The Chosen universe). But Jenkins has always been equally clear about his evangelical beliefs and his desire to spread the message of Jesus. As I’ve heard him say more than once “I believe that if you can see Jesus through the eyes of those that actually met him you can be changed and impacted in the same way they were”.¹

So I want to look at the film from two angles, how does this cinematic presentation work as part of the show, and how does it work as a stand alone experience for people who are unfamiliar with the show and might only have a passing familiarity with the Gospels? I’m conscious of potential spoilers, but given the source material is nearly 2000 years old I’ll happily discuss things in the New Testament, as well as obvious things from the publicity, but I’ll exclude things from the world of the show that might spoil the experience for fans – particularly in the UK we still have another two weeks to go before it arrives in cinemas.

In this article I’ll start with the question of how The Chosen: Last Supper works as part of the show.I’ll return to that second question in a later post.

At the end of season 4 Jesus and his followers have just arrived outside Jerusalem with the scene set for Palm Sunday, but that’s not quite where the series starts. If you’ve been curious, like I was, as to how “The Last Supper” made sense as a title when the Last Supper was scheduled to be the last event covered by the series then the answer is 'flashforwards'. 

Both episodes that make up “part 1” (effectively s5e01 and s5e02) start at the Last Supper. Jesus and his disciples sit in the upper room. He quotes at some length from the account in John’s Gospel and its lengthy speech by Jesus. The layout of the table at the Last Supper in Jesus movies is much discussed, from those seeking to echo Leonardo’s favourite painting, to those seeking to subvert it, such as Nicholas Ray’s Y-shaped table in King of Kings (1961).

Jenkins himself got the ball rolling on this one, way back in July, proudly posting the show’s composition in the midst of the furore around the Olympics Opening Ceremony. It’s been reignited by the show’s arrival in cinemas, people liking it /disliking it for its similarity / dissimilarity from (and let's remind ourselves) an old painting based, at best, on earlier carvings of this scene. Anyway, I’m keener on this composition than I was at first. It both nods to the tradition / iconographic but also works on a practical level (for a large group eating together, but still wanting to chat) and also a cinematic one allowing Jesus to be the centre and unencumbered by people in the way. Also the lighting here is beautiful and getting lighting this low to work is a significant challenge from a technical point of view. 

The use of the flashes forwards at the start of both episodes (and possibly each episode in the series) is a brilliant way to solve a number of issues the series might have had. The most obvious of which is that Jesus’ speech in John is very long, in places quite dense and obscure, and frankly a bit boring. Presented in linear fashion, it doesn’t make for good cinema, as anyone who has sat through it in 2003’s The Gospel of John can testify. By breaking it up and using each segment as a way into the episode it not only makes the speech digestible, but makes it more relevant. There are probably those who will hate it for precisely those reasons, but there we go.

When this particular flash-forward comes to an end we are back outside the walls of Jerusalem again with Jesus sat astride a donkey heading towards Jerusalem. But before they get too close they are stopped by three Pharisees, one of whom is Yussif still sitting on the fence and nervous about publicly supporting Jesus.² They warn Jesus about entering into Jerusalem in that way and about their concerns about how the Romans will respond to it.

This again ties in with the much underappreciated verse Luke 13:32 where the Pharisees warn Jesus his life is in danger. I do think this is a critical scene, because, aside from Yussif there are now reasonable portrayals of Pharisees who are not frothing at the mouth because of his blasphemy. They disagree with him perhaps, but reasonably, and they certainly don’t want Rome to harm him. I was interested to come across a recent quote from Jenkins that says “Jesus was actually probably a Pharisee”.³ While that’s certainly contestable it’s increasingly one of the frames I approach the gospel stories through. What if this was all inter-family debate? I do wonder if Jenkins has shifted to this position as the series has progressed.

Jesus and the disciples carry on, unperturbed. The triumphal entry is also quite interesting, because the crowds welcoming Jesus are big, but not that big. “Over a million people are here” someone says later on. Josephus, somewhat prone to exaggeration, recalls there being 3 million in Jerusalem for the Passover in 66 AD (Wars, book II, 14:3) so that’s not unreasonable. There’s nothing like that many here, more like the 5000 we saw in series 3. Later someone comments that this is “double the number of pilgrims” there were last year, with the implication being that this increase is due to the news about Jesus.

The scene also seems to tip its hat to Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). It’s one of the few moments I recall the show using distorted electric guitars on the soundtrack, and here they have that relatively early distortion effect that was popular in the early 1970s. Moreover, part way through this moment, we also see Jesus’ mood change suddenly from relaxed and smiley to a bit more serious and perhaps concerned, something that also happens during this moment in Superstar.

Once inside, with the sounds of the crowd shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David” ringing in their ears, Jesus and his disciples eventually make their way in front of the clouds and we get one moment (that I shan’t spoil) that I can only really recall happening in one other Jesus film before, and even then it might have been narrated rather than shown more literally and discussed as happens here. The sets inside Jerusalem, particularly the huge one for the outer courts of the temple are really impressive. I can’t attest to their accuracy, but regardless it's an impressive feat.

As ever with The Chosen what is happening with Jesus and his disciples is only part of the story and here we’re treated to a meeting between Pontius Pilate and Joseph ben Caiaphas. There’s a deal of pageantry and ceremony to their meeting. Caiaphas is there to collect his ceremonial robes which he is only allowed access to on special occasions, and Pilate loves to taunt him, but he also knows the rules that the high priest lives by. Whether this school-bully type relationship is a fair equivalent of the power dynamics we can’t really be sure. Certainly Pilate had the power and what influence Caiaphas had (“... to the extent I have any control” he says at one point) derived to a significant extent from the position he had been given by Pilate’s predecessor. 

The other significant event to happen in the first section/episode here is that Jesus heads out during the evening undercover to sample the mood of the crowds. It’s nice to see a mix of ethnicities among the extras here, Acts of the Apostles after all lists a whole range of nationalities who were present in Jerusalem for Pentecost. 

Jesus is enjoying the festival atmosphere, he even gets dragged into dancing at one point. There’s something that rings true in Jesus getting distracted and caught up in someone else’s happiness for a moment and his joyful soul bubbling up. But then his shawl falls off his head and suddenly everyone recognises him and the moment is gone. 

Personally, I find Jesus’ response then a little weird. Returning to their accommodation for the week he asks Zebedee to take his mother back to Lazarus’ house. He doesn’t want her around for the next few days while he goes through what he needs to. But then he takes out the bridle that Joseph gave him in s3e03 – an heirloom that had been passed down since the exodus – and starts to fashion bits of it and fix them onto a whip he seems to have specifically brought with him.

Frankly, I was already finding the publicity’s fascination with this whip a little odd. It’s something only mentioned in John’s account of Jesus turning over tables in the temple, not in the synoptics. Yet it seemed to be one of the most prominent elements in the build up to the show with some seemingly getting quite excited at the prospect.⁴ The screen time devoted to this scene and its prominence (immediately before closing credits at the end of episode 1) just seem a little over-emphasised, as if they relish the idea of Jesus’ violence a little too much.

The turning of the tables scene itself occurs at the end of the second ‘episode’ and, again, it seems over-focused on the whip (not to mention Jesus’ exemplary whipping skills). Aside from his opening speech at the start of the 'episode', Jesus barely appears in this episode. That’s not something uncommon for the show, but again it raises a few questions. What was Jesus up to? Has he been pondering this action all day? Why wasn’t he making the most of his last day with the disciples? And in a clever way, it draws attention to the fact that there is so much the Gospels that we just don’t know, even in the most important week of Jesus’ life there are significant gaps. I’m reminded of that C.S.Lewis quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe “He’s not a tame lion you know”.

However, Jesus’ motives for his attack are made a little clearer by what some of his followers encounter during the day. Some of Jesus’ gentile followers who we have got know over the series now want to make sacrifices and so they try to exchange money and buy animals for a sacrifice. The disciples make it clear there is an extensive markup and that proves to be the case. That said, Tamar meets a fellow African store-holder who lets her have the animals she needs for free.

There are other potential triggers for Jesus’ actions. Zebedee and John try to bring their oil to the inner parts of the temple and in doing so they meet Malchus. Those who know the Gospels will recognise his name as the servant of the high priest who gets his ear cut-off in the Garden of Gethsemane. Again, he’s one of the characters who rarely gets a back story, and again The Chosen does a great job of crafting him as a three-dimensional person. John can’t accompany his father into the inner section of the temple buildings, due to him not being sufficiently pure (the implication being he’s had a nocturnal emission) and neither can Malchus, so the two men bond while they wait. From this, his sense of humour and the way he’s dressed more similarly to the disciples (and us) than the Pharisees and priests it does seem like he will eventually become a believer. The fact that he’s named in the Gospels perhaps also suggests that, but I wish the costuming didn’t suggest good Jews and bad Jews in this fashion. There are exceptions in The Chosen, Yussif wears a Pharisees headgear, but even then it’s only some of the time and he has the least imposing head gear of any person in religious dress in the show. 

Still, the question for me remains as to why Jesus acts in quite such an extreme way. For me the reasons the show presents us with, particularly these episodes don’t quite add up. The overcharging is bad, but is it that bad that it brings about such a violent swing in personality? Is Jesus even that concerned with the temple system? And are those who are invested in it doing that much more than following what has always been their people’s custom relating back to what’s revealed in the Hebrew Bible?

I’m aware of the theological answers that are often given to those questions, and that many historians consider this was the action of Jesus that got him killed. My question, though, is whether the show does enough to really explain its protagonist's drastic change of mood? The kind, loving patient, gentle (if also determined, focused and steely) persona developed in the previous four seasons is turned over so suddenly. And the whip, passed on from father to son going all the way back to the time of Moses, as if destined to be used for this? Yes, John's text has Jesus say “zeal for your house consumes me” but the show doesn’t really give enough motive, other than, I guess its own supersessionism. Perhaps the producers' also see something of themselves here, a desire to pop up in Hollywood's temple and tip over a few tables themselves.

There are a few other problems with these two episode, many of which are traits of The Chosen as a whole: the occasional burst of expository-laden dialogue; the idea that people really far away can still hear what you’re saying; the disciples having a hugely impressive ability to interpret any minor inflection of something Jesus does that relates to previously obscure bits of the Hebrew Bible, but miss the most obvious elements of what Jesus says.⁵ But it feels like the way show has built up this moment of confrontation, but not really explained it through character and drama is a significant flaw. Perhaps parts two and three may backfill some of these spaces.

For fans of the show, though, even if this bothers them, few will be put off. The show has been consistent enough to merit giving it the benefit of the doubt.⁶ And there is plenty to appreciate in this part of the saga, including the opportunity to see those sets, those crowds on the big screen and consistently good performances. In terms of the series as a whole, things are left at an interesting juncture. There’s quite a lot of Jesus’ words still to get through, including the Olivet discourse; the odd fig-tree to curse; the people’s reaction to Jesus’ actions in the temple; and of course Judas’ betrayal. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season balances these various elements from here.

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1 - “Why THE CHOSEN was Created and How God Made It Possible” Praise on TBN -Matt Crouch YouTube Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecaT5_As1Gs

2 - This seems to be Joseph of Arimathea, which may have been confirmed in season 4, but I’ve not yet seen it.

3 -  Rich Tenorio, “Just in time for Passover, Jesus biopic ‘The Chosen’ premieres Season 5 in US cinemas” Times of Israel 28/03/2025 - https://www.timesofisrael.com/just-in-time-for-passover-jesus-biopic-the-chosen-premieres-season-5-in-us-cinemas/#:~:text=“Jesus was actually probably a Pharisee

4 - See for example this post and the responses to it - https://www.facebook.com/InsideTheChosen/photos/its-a-bit-more-like-chopped-or-hells-kitchen-than-chefs-kiss-but-yes-jesus-is-fe/1199537415072006/ 

5 - To be clear, the latter is a key element of Mark and to a slightly lesser extent the other synoptics, and to a certain extent John too, but it’s the way someone always catches the subtle things that Jesus does, even when they don’t really fit the specifics of the context when you look at them carefully that has eventually become a little jarring.

6 - As mentioned above I’ll cover how those less familiar with The Chosen might react in a separate post.