Midnight Mass is a slow-burning mystery with an explosive ending.

After The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor, horror auteur Mike Flanagan is back with another meticulously layered horror series to savor. All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are streaming now on Netflix. If you're reading this post, you probably know the show has a high chance of being the best horror series of the year.

Midnight Mass sees Riley Flynn, a man haunted by a drunk driving accident, return to his hometown on Crockett Island, where he struggles to find a purpose in life. Enter the mysterious Father Paul. What are Father Paul's intentions? Why did he have red eyes in the series trailer? Is he the... devil?

Let's dive into all the answers below, in full-on spoiler territory.

Father Paul -- is he good or bad?

Any Easter eggs?

A ton. Flanagan fans know that a prop novel titled Midnight Mass has been peppered throughout the director's other works, from 2016's Hush to 2017's Gerald's Game.

Midnight Mass was referenced in 2016's Hush

Kate Siegel, who plays Erin Greene, starred in the 2016 horror Hush as an author who writes a book titled Midnight Mass.

"Because [Hush] was a low-budget movie, we needed a story that Maddie, the main character could write -- she's an author in the story. We needed a book that wouldn't cost us any money," Siegel told Pop Culturalist. "Mike was like, 'Oh, I have this now-defunct idea for a novel called Midnight Mass. I have three chapters written. We can use that so we can use those pages and we can use that story."

She continued, "If you look, there's a screengrab in Hush where you're looking at Maddie's computer screen and it says, 'The red and blue lights of the cop car twinkle off the Jesus fish.' That's the first shot of Midnight Mass."

Flanagan and Carla Gugino cameos

Another Easter egg: Flanagan himself appears in a cameo in episode 3. A member of the tour group on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, his character helps to direct the elderly, dementia-suffering Monsignor Pruitt. Oh -- and Carla Gugino, who starred in Hill House and Bly Manor, has a brief voice cameo as the judge in the first episode.

The antique mirror from Oculus appears in the recreation center

For anyone who's seen Oculus -- Flanagan revealed he embedded a huge nod to the 2013 horror starring Karen Gillan into scenes set in the recreation center. The movie's titular possessed, antique mirror can be seen in the background, sitting on the stage during Riley's AA meetings.

"It's behind them in the profile [shots] on stage," Flanagan told Entertainment Weekly. "It's all becoming incredibly convoluted, really connected. That's our goal. I want all of [these projects] to just be a big ball of rubber bands by the time we're done, just impossible to extricate from each other."

What's next for Mike Flanagan?

If you were hoping for more of The Haunting, sadly, the wait continues. While Flanagan has said he's open to another chapter of the anthology, he has to find the perfect piece of literature to reimagine first, just as he did with the previous two ghost stories.

The Midnight Club

He's also extremely busy busting out more content for Netflix. Filming has reportedly wrapped up on The Midnight Club -- a limited horror mystery thriller series unrelated to Midnight Mass. An adaptation of Christopher Pike's 1994 young adult novel, it follows a group of terminally ill young patients who gather together at midnight to tell scary stories.

The series will incorporate several other of Pike's novels and feature Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan and Matt Biedel, who played Riley Flynn, Bev Keane and Sturge respectively in Midnight Mass, along with several more of Flanagan's growing acting troupe. Unlike with Midnight Mass, Flanagan will direct only a couple of episodes (it's not yet been announced how many there'll be).

The Fall of the House of Usher

Then came the big news that Flanagan would be adapting Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix. Also incorporating other works from Poe, 실시간바카라 the standalone limited series will run for eight episodes, four of which will be directed by Flanagan. Flanagan recently explained why Usher isn't part of The Haunting anthology -- simply, it has no ghosts. Still waiting for a premiere date announcement.

Is Midnight Mass based on a true story?

Yes and no.

Midnight Mass comes from a very real place for creator Mike Flanagan and has been cooking for a while. Flanagan was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy at his parishes on Governors Island in New York and in Bowie, Maryland. In this small-town setting, "midnight mass, that was a pretty big deal," Flanagan said in the Making of Midnight Mass Netflix featurette.