Netflix’s latest fantasy adventure drama series The Chosen One aims to hit the right spot between being a coming-of-age story and a grand supernatural adventure, ultimately failing hard to do so. Based in Mexico’s Baja California Sur, the series follows twelve-year-old Jodie, who discovers that he has supernatural powers resembling those of Jesus Christ. Shocked and astonished at this revelation, Jodie tries to use these powers for the benefit of the people around him while also desperately trying to understand who he actually is. Despite the interesting premise, The Chosen One, which is based on the comic book series American Jesus, ends up ruining the watching experience with major revelations stuffed away for the last few minutes and leaving far too much for the potential next season.
Plot Summary: What is the Series About?
At the beginning of The Chosen One, we are introduced to a young boy named Jodie, who lives with his single mother, Sarah, in a small town in Mexico’s Baja California Sur. Despite being just twelve, Jodie seems to struggle to keep control over his mind, as the boy has to regularly take pills to prevent seizures. He also seems to regularly have a particular dream in which a mermaid-like creature in the sea calls out to Jodie and asks him to go meet her. Jodie really enjoys life with his four friends from school, though, as he is part of an ever-together group along with Hipolito, Wagner, Tuka, and Magda. The boy is also very smitten with and interested in Magda, who is his neighbor as well, but he has yet to express these feelings.
One evening, during a festivity in the town, Tuka informs his friends that his uncle has not returned home yet, which is highly irregular for the fisherman. Very soon, the man does turn up at the town square in a heavily injured state and with a wild story to tell. The uncle reports that he had seen a woman lying in the water and had rushed to help her. However, this woman turned out to be an other-worldly beast known as a “Chupa,” or siren, which attacked him and left him gravely injured. A day or two later, the five friends decide to make the long journey to the beach where this attack had happened in order to find the siren and become famous.
Losing their way in the desert, Jodie bravely sacrifices a locket that he wears around his neck, which is one of the very few possessions that he has had in his life forever. A statement made earlier by a woman named Elena that the desert always gives back in return for a sacrifice does come true now as a seagull leads the way for Jodie and his friends. They eventually reach the sea and find the uncle’s boat too, but there is no sign of the other-worldly creature. But disaster strikes when the five children are on their way back to the town, as a low-flying vulture distracts a truck driver, leading to the heavy truck falling off the road. As it happens, the vehicle lands exactly on young Jodie, with an impact that is sure to kill him. But instead, Jodie survives the crash with no scratches at all, and this gives birth to a rumor in town that he must be a miracle child.
How do Jodie’s powers affect the townsfolk?
The best parts of The Chosen One undoubtedly play out in the first few episodes, when Jodie’s true powers are still not revealed to his friends. The bond that these five kids have between them shines at these moments as they search for ways to capitalize on the town’s belief in Jodie’s supernatural powers. They eventually came up with the idea of presenting Jodie as the second coming of Jesus Christ and planned tricks to gather crowds. It begins with Jodie telling his exaggerated story about surviving the truck accident and then faking the miraculous healing of a friend who has very weak eyesight. The friends then also use magic tricks to turn bottles of water red, making it seem like red wine, and sell it off as another of Jodie’s Jesus-like powers. Earning petty money in exchange for people coming to see such miracles, the five friends are rather happy about their situation. Jodie personally is also quite pleased, as his apparent powers also get him closer to Magda. However, after some time, Jodie starts to realize that he does indeed have some unexplainable powers.
The bottles of water that he had touched indeed turn into wine, and the friend with weak eyesight is also mysteriously cured of his problem after Jodie touches him. When enraged and seemingly out of control of his own emotions, Jodie’s anger sends very physical waves of power all around him, toppling and pushing every object in the way. This realization also gets him agitated since his friends or the rest of the townsfolk do not really believe in them; and his mother does not share any details either. Jodie had always wondered who his father was, and now he also contemplates who he actually is. Gradually, though, with time, the boy starts to fit into the belief that he is indeed the second coming of Jesus Christ and that he must, therefore, use his powers to help those around him.
The Chosen One also has in its plotline a bully from Jodie’s school, Angelo, who remains an integral part of the story since his introduction. Angelo always held animosity against Jodie because of the fact that Jodie was fair-skinned and was actually American, and he would often attack the boy and his friends. Then it turns out that the man driving the truck that fell over Jodie was Angelo’s father, Carlos, and this accident leaves the man in a coma for weeks. Since Angelo’s mother had left the family and the country, he was now left alone with his young sister, desperately wishing for his father’s recovery. Once Jodie starts to heal people in the town with his touch and word gets out of this miracle, Angelo forcefully brings the boy to the hospital to get Carlos recovered, and this does seem to work. Despite Carlos now being alive, but a silent shell of his earlier self, the whole town celebrates this as proof of Jodie actually being a Godly figure. The town is also divided into two different sects of followers, with Father O’Higgins being the priest of the original church and an evangelist pastor setting up a new church in town. While O’Higgins is wary of Jodie’s situation, the pastor starts to worship the boy and gathers most of the town’s followers to see Jodie as Jesus after Carlos returns from the coma.
However, this situation worsens when Carlos commits suicide one day, building on the anger of his already disturbed son, Angelo. The way his father was after his return already upset Angelo, and he now decides to expose Jodie and take his revenge on the boy. While this is about to happen, Angelo misfires his gun and instead kills Jodie’s friend Tuka. This leads the evangelist believers, headed by their pastor, to call for Angelo to be punished by God instead of any law, and they attempt to publicly thrash Angelo for his sins. As the mob grows angrier, there are calls for Angelo to be hanged as well, while on the other side of the town, Tuka’s funeral ceremony is held. It is then Jodie, in his ultimate divine form, who comes and intervenes in both events in a remarkably supernatural occurrence, for the boy exists at multiple locations at the same time.
Jodie visits each of his friends separately at the same time and bids them goodbye. Magda’s family had always been disturbed by the disappearance of their young son, and Jodie now informs her that although the brother is no longer alive, he has been resting in peace. Hipolito always feared that he would have to follow in his father’s footsteps by working at the salt pits, but Jodie now assures him that his life would be better. Another friend of the kids, an adult transwoman named Elvis, is also seemingly helped by Jodie, as she had been disowned by her brother, the evangelist pastor, who now realizes his mistakes. Lastly, and most importantly, Jodie makes the biggest sacrifice for Tuka, as he uses his powers to bring the dead boy back to life. In the end, Tuka comes back to life and rejoices with his friends and family, as well as the rest of the townsfolk, while Jodie goes away after his ultimate miracle.
What is Jodie’s real identity?
From the very beginning of The Chosen One, it has been clear that Jodie has been a miracle child from his very early days. Even as a baby, he was powerful enough to bring about storms with his anger, change people’s minds with simple looks, and control just about everything to make them into whatever he wanted. Jodie’s mother, Sarah, knew about this as well, and she knew that her son’s real powers would come out whenever he was unable to control his emotions and feelings. It was for this that she had taught Jodie to take pills whenever he felt uneasy, as the pills were actually to calm him down. There is much mystery about Jodie’s birth as well, for Sarah had signed some documents before his birth, seemingly for a program in which she was only supposed to give birth and never actually raise the baby. Even more strangely, Jodie was not born in a natural biological way either, since Sarah did not conceive the baby after any sexual encounter. Instead, she had baby Jodie miraculously, making it seem very close to the story of Mother Mary giving birth to baby Jesus.
However, at the very end of The Chosen One, it is revealed that Jodie was not the second coming of Jesus but was actually the son of Lucifer. It seems like Sarah had possibly signed up for some program with devil worshippers who wanted a successor to Lucifer who would wage war against their enemies. But after giving birth, Sarah had fallen in love with Jodie, and she did not want to give him up at any cost. It was because of this that she fled from the USA to Mexico with her baby and always tried to hide her son’s real identity. Jodie always had immense power inside him, and he was destined to have control over the world someday, but during his initial days of realization, the boy actually thought himself to be good, and so he helped everyone around him. In all honesty, this twist, in the end, does come off as extremely gimmicky and as a rushed measure to keep the plot open for a second season.
Another man named Lemuel is also introduced in the story, as he initially seems to be part of an evil organization that wants to track down all miracle children in the world. He learns of Jodie from a newspaper article about the truck accident and then travels to Mexico to find the boy. Ultimately, though, it is revealed that Lemuel was on the side of the gods or some religious institution that worked on stopping Lucifer’s son from assuming full power. But Lemuel’s plan fails in the end since he does not inform his team about Jodie and instead wants to stop the boy by himself.
‘The Chosen One’ Ending Explained: What Ultimately Happens To Jodie?
After the miraculous return of Tuka from death, Jodie visits the nearby church, where he is met by Sarah while the rest of the town is busy celebrating the miracle. Sarah now realizes that despite her best efforts, her son has grown into his most powerful self, which means that she can no longer hide him from the organization that works for Lucifer. She hands Jodie over to the organization, which sends a fancy car to welcome their savior. A woman meets Jodie inside this car, and she was earlier seen as the one who had explained to Sarah what her role in giving birth to Jodie would be. She then also goes on to take different forms, including that of Elena, one of the teachers at Jodie’s school, and even the siren that used to call out to Jodie in his dreams. She then goes on to take Jodie over to the United States of America from Mexico.
The Chosen One‘s ending takes place sometime in the future, where we see Jodie all grown up into a young man, and the entire story has been seemingly told in a sort of flashback as he remembered his early life. Jodie has now become the President of the USA, and he is about to launch an attack on what is referred to as the “Holy Land.” This is probably the birthplace of Jesus Christ, as Jodie is now completely working for his father, Lucifer’s, plan of starting a war against Christianity. What ultimately happens after this will probably come in a possible second season, as The Chosen One ends with Jodie’s plane flying away toward his target.
