The Chosen (2022) s3e01

The Chosen's season two finale ended just as Jesus is about to begin the Sermon on the Mount

At the end of the last episode we see Jesus preparing to walk out and give the sermon, and this episode then starts with Jesus in the middle of the sermon and gives some of the highlights of his main thing, the highlights of the Sermon on the Mount. It's a little bit like Nicholas Ray's King of Kings. You can see in the half‑started post on that some points are put on that. And then it gets to the end of the sermon eventually, after lots of ponderous looking, and we get a couple of moments after the sermon. There's a couple of the people that have attended who start talking a little bit too loudly about sedition in front of a Roman, and there's one other conversation at that stage.

But then the whole thing breaks, and it's a weird break really because the series then goes back to what feels a bit more like typical start‑of‑a‑new‑series stuff. So you have all the disciples going back to Capernaum to re‑gather, to visit their families and so on, before they decide to set off again. So that feels a little bit unusual really. It makes the Sermon on the Mount feel even more tagged on, and it was just split across the divide as a device. It feels like the momentum is then a bit lost, although the point, would it be in climaxes? Anyway.

The other conversation at the end of that is a woman who comes up and quickly identifies herself as Joanna, presumably Joanna the wife of the chooser, because she says her husband works in Herod's court. She is both fascinated by Jesus and also has been to John the Baptist, and this enables Andrew to go and speak to John himself.

Joanna is one of a number of new characters that have come in around here. Just at the end of the last series we get a first look at Judas, and here he has a welcoming interview with Jesus. We get to know him a little bit and a bit about his backstory. There are all kinds of hints there as to what's going to happen and how it might go down, but it's difficult to really know at this stage how that might actually go down. There's nothing definite. It will be interesting to look back on that when we've seen how the betrayal is handled.

Andrew is also on a journey. He eventually finds his way to John the Baptist, who is very happy to hear what Jesus is up to, and I wonder if this fulfils the thing of John's followers coming to Jesus and reporting back to John about what's going on. Can't remember the verse for that, but we get it in Pasolini's film. John makes him realise that what's really been standing out to Andrew from the sermon is the bit about not being anxious, and Andrew goes back a little bit more charged by that.

There's a funny scene, or funny‑ish scene, with Simon Peter who has gone back to his wife, and it's implied they're about to have sex when other disciples start turning up and ruining the moment. So it feels slightly out of place maybe. Anyway.

Then we get two last little scenes, both of which start to move me to tears. Firstly, Andrew's apology to Mary for the way that he treated her previously. I remember saying at the end of, I think it was episode 6, about how he is a bit out of line with her, and he fully apologises to her for that.

And then lastly we get Matthew returning back to Capernaum, which used to be his home. He had bought himself a home with his own money and given it to his parents, and his parents had then disowned him. We get a real killer line. It's Matthew who doesn't think his father recognises him because of what his father said. But he decides to summon up the courage to knock on the door anyway, and his father Alphaeus opens the door and simply says the word “son.”

Ray's King of Kings

The episode (and indeed the whole season) ends, then, just as Jesus parts the curtain and walks out "on-stage". Perhaps unexpectedly this whole sequence really recalls Nicholas Ray's handling of the Sermon in King of Kings (1961). Jesus waits out of view while the crowd gathers, preparing himself before his disciples summon him and push for the big entrance. Also the crowd (and the way it is framed) also recalls Ray's epic.

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