Warrior Nun: Behind the VFX Magic that Brought a Cult Classic to Life

You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. At the very end of last year, fans of the cult-hit Netflix TV fantasy drama Warrior Nun were handed the most unwelcome of Christmas presents: The show’s cancellation. 

That controversial decision precipitated an almighty backlash from Warrior Nun’s legions of fans, culminating in a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures and a strategically-placed billboard looming over Netflix’s HQ. To this day, the streaming giant’s call to wrap up Warrior Nun following season two’s cliffhanger ending remains one of the most talked-about decisions in TV.

With Warrior Nun’s future still up in the air, LBB is taking the opportunity to go behind the scenes of the show and, specifically, its stellar visual effects. 

The Embassy, a powerhouse visual effects studio based in Vancouver, was responsible for bringing the show’s uniquely fantastical world to life. To reflect on what made the show so special, we heard from the company’s EP and president Winston Helgason alongside creative director David Casey. 

“Warrior Nun was a really interesting brief from the start”, recalls Winston. “It was obviously a project which involved a lot of fantasy and magic - not something that The Embassy has always been known for. Traditionally, we are the go-to house for hardcore photo-real sci-fi. We took the fantasy brief as a challenge to expand our repertoire and broaden our services, whilst still delivering world class work”. 

And it didn’t take long for the studio to accomplish that mission. As David explains, the challenge of translating the world from the original comic books onto TV screens is one that the team relished. “The team is really engaged when they get to concept and design an effect from scratch”, he says. “In the case of Warrior Nun there was an overall vision of what the effect needs to accomplish from a storytelling point of view - but the details and mechanics of the effect had yet to be worked out. That gave the team a great opportunity to put their creative stamp on it”. 

For fans watching the show, there are no shortage of examples of that high-quality VFX coming to the fore. One of the most memorable comes at the end of episode one, as Lilith rips through a team of goons caught unaware by her supernatural powers. With the scene running over a minute long, it was one of the most effects-heavy shots in the entire series. 

“The effect involved meticulous rehearsal by the stunt team who developed a pre-viz to plot out all the fight action”, explains David. “To accomplish the phasing effects meant shooting the scene in multiple passes so that Lillith could teleport from one part of the shot to another. This required the use of a Bolt robotic motion-control rig”. 

Casting his mind back to the scene, Winston highlights an interesting source of inspiration for the team. “The production team explained the scene to us and said they wanted to film it using that Bolt camera so Lilith could teleport around the environment and kill people one by one like the nightcrawler in X-Men 2”, he says. “Funnily enough the EP on Warrior Nun, David Hayter, also wrote X-Men 2! We started out by attending stunt sessions at their warehouse, and we brought the Bolt camera there to start staging the sequence. In the end, that was the most complex piece of work we produced for season two”. 

More broadly, however, the team’s core challenge was to keep the visual effects of Warrior Nun feeling grounded in a world that felt real. When it comes to a show about fighting demons with supernatural powers, that’s no mean feat. 

“Many times, you can watch a multi-million dollar FX extravaganza and it comes across as cheesy or unimaginative”, notes Winston. “Our goal was to create magic, but to keep it visually grounded. Across the two seasons of the show, we’ve had all sorts of challenges - portals, teleportation, you name it. But as a house that was not known for this type of work, I’m proud of how the team excelled”. 

For The Embassy, Warrior Nun was something of a labour of love. But, as both Winston and David acknowledge, to see that passion spread across the show’s community of fans proved to be an immensely rewarding experience. When asked why they felt the show connected so strongly with its viewership, David’s answer is twofold. 

“First of all, it’s an incredibly unique show. Unique in scenario, story, performances, look, and locations. There just isn't anything on screen these days that looks and feels like Warrior Nun, so it really stands out. It's an irreverent show that has charted its own course”, he says. “And the second reason is the representation of women on screen. There are few, if any, genre shows that have a majority female cast. The exploration of female relationships against a backdrop of peril, again, is just such a unique scenario and if we are to go by the audience response has been clearly under-represented on screen up until this point”. 

Similarly, Winston cites the show’s themes and message as an explanation for its cultural impact. “There’s a strong LGBTQ message,and much more besides. There are religious implications, the fight between good and evil, beautiful locations and people, badass fight sequences, crazy creatures, and high stakes. What’s not to love?!”, he says. “It was a show that deserved to find a wider audience - although the people who did discover it invariably went on to love it. There are some rumblings that something may happen at some point, but we never know”. 

On which note, the visual effects experts are both open-minded about the prospect of a future return for the show. “For the artists and the people that run the company, it’s probably been the best project we’ve ever had. I am hoping that we get to bring life back to Warrior Nun someday in some other reincarnation”, says Winston. 

And, as David notes, bringing a show to life which connected in such an authentic way with its audience is its own reward. “Seeing your work resonate with people is the ultimate compliment - and it can be quite the motivator too”, he says. 

Whilst there’s still a lack of concrete news regarding the franchise’s future, it still feels premature to rule anything out. After all, this is showbusiness. It feels like, in one way or another, there’s still more to come from Warrior Nun. In this life, or the next.