Pendleton Ward brings you another imaginative experience more cerebral and more mature than her last big success, Adventure Time. Somewhere outside the confines of time and space, a caravan-dwelling observer with a nomadic hillbilly attitude hosts a podcast. This podcast, The Midnight Gospel, involves him travelling across different strands of realities and alternate universes, though not in exactly the same way Rick and Morty does. Despite our protagonist witnessing grand events like a zombie apocalypse or a magical underwater venture, he is unbothered by his surroundings. Instead, choosing to focus on the questions of existence. 

The Midnight Gospel provides a profound, yet calming lesson that is less narrative-driven and more about a sense of being

Although the animated subtext is inventive and fun, The Midnight Gospel captures an emotional journey simply through the calm, cool and collected conversation with our podcaster. A plethora of topics are discussed from enlightenment to death, but what pervades all of it is an overwhelming beauty in being still and being in the moment. The Midnight Gospel portrays this impressively without romanticising it. With characters conversing like Linklater’s Slackers, the animated subtext of Rick and Morty and the vision of Pendleton Ward The Midnight Gospel provides a profound, yet calming lesson that is less narrative-driven and more about a sense of being, how we experience time and what consciousness means. In the midst of a quarantine when everybody is losing their sense of time and some treating it like it is a bad thing, I would heavily recommend The Midnight Gospel. This show is especially for the arts and literature students appreciative of the postmodern, avant-garde, abstract etc.

The imagination of Pendleton Ward shines in The Midnight Gospel but in a more controlled fashion in comparison to the humongous spilling lore of Adventure Time. Within the space of eight episodes, The Midnight Gospel takes a journey that feels like a lifetime, both in the emotional and temporal sense. Every episode is unique yet similar, exploring different ideas of consciousness while culminating in an out of body experience overtime. 

Pendleton’s dialogue is elegant and reminiscent of Pratchett’s writing

This experience is conjured by Pendleton’s display of a profound and delightful calmness to everyday conversation. Pendleton’s dialogue is elegant and reminiscent of Pratchett’s writing; like peculiar, illogical poetry that somehow through intuition makes the most sense. Along with this, the characters are voice acted with the casualness of Richard Linklater’s Slackers and again Terry Pratchett’s Death. Pendleton’s characters throw out universal truths with nonchalance and yet they also forget the basic, little things. All of this helps to construct The Midnight Gospel’s distinctly unique vibe. Later on, in the season Pendleton carries on the writer’s tradition of personifying Death, which is a tired, old trope but she finds a way around that by making her Death more of a historian. On the other hand, her Death still sounds too familiar to Pratchett’s Death. It is not a deal-breaker, in fact, this particular characterisation of Death aligns heavily well to her fictional multiverse and her vision.

As our protagonist observes the fractals of the universe, he lives like he is in a surreal, enchanting dream filled with psychedelic zombies, vortex dogs, marine astronauts and so forth. The Midnight Gospel accomplishes this by meditative discussions and a fantastic manipulation of time, like the fourth episode of The Witcher when the timeline is cleared up but taken to the next level. Set in the distant future our protagonist lives in an idyllic countryside setting still haunted by his own past and discovering the histories of alternate universes to seek truths and secrets that may help him live in the present. It is fragmented and structured, confusing and beautiful, weird and paradoxical. 

It is fragmented and structured, confusing and beautiful, weird and paradoxical

Among the plethora of concepts, our podcaster discusses including admitting pain, sin being labelled sin, mind and consciousness, death, identity, what stood out to me was the difference in Eastern and Western understandings of enlightenment. As The Midnight Gospel suggests, the Western idea of fitting enlightenment into one lifetime is quite the hassle, whereas in other cultures where finding inner peace is fitted across multiple lifetimes seems to be more fitting. Every episode has something to offer which makes you re-evaluate concepts and, in a way, that other stories do not do.

Pendleton creates a realistic, likeable and at times deplorable flaneur brilliantly in the figure of Clancy

A favourite archetype of filmmakers and animations is the flaneur. The flaneur, although, a broad, diverse archetype of a character is someone who, in an oversimplified sense, lives in the moment. They may typically be revolutionaries or some type of artist. They observe their surroundings finding calming magic to existence instead of the conventions of society. Take, for example, the happy-go-easy attitude of Todd from BoJack Horseman. Instead of finding fulfilment in fame or wealth like the other characters do Todd goes on wacky hijinks everyday living life to the fullest. At times, it is up to him to balance the scales of the show by bringing the joy and the levity otherwise it would just be downright sorrowful. In a more philosophical example, Jason from The Good Place, a DJ from Florida, lives with an unrestricted childish playfulness. Jason has already found those non-existent answers. In a last feminist example, Beth from Little Women ignores traditional gender norms to find happiness in her family and her piano playing while her siblings squabble among themselves regarding those gender norms. For The Midnight Gospel, Pendleton creates a realistic, likeable and at times deplorable flaneur brilliantly in the figure of Clancy Gilroy (Duncan Trussell). At first, the flaneur is this enlightened spirit emancipated from what seems to appear to be everything. As we progress, we witness cracks in this persona and instead witness a normal person burdened by the same existential weight as everyone and trying to find peace in a realistic, interesting manner. With some bumps and surprises to what this pitiable every-man kind of character offers the journey shared is still authentically profound and can be intensely emotional.

The Midnight Gospel is a mind-bending animation for the arts and literature students obsessed with the avant-garde, the postmodern, the abstract and so on. It makes me sad that something like The Midnight Gospel probably will not be embraced by the mainstream public, but it is definitely worth a try. Pendleton has proven herself again a talented individual. Although Adventure Time gathered a humongous following with its ten seasons and it will be a while until Pendleton is appreciated for her proceeding works, I am very happy to have seen her next project. 

With a non-linear narrative and spectacle reduced to the background, Pendleton takes you on a heartfelt and mind-bending conversation that seems to continue after watching the show. The Midnight Gospel is less about learning a specific semantic lesson and more about living time the right way, or at least not the wrong way. If you want something different that will give you an actual feeling of change after you watch it, go ahead, be in the moment and listen to the beauty of every utterance in this new animation.

Rating = 5/5

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