What the 23 seconds contain
The sequence is a montage, and it is short enough to walk through. Feet in boots cross dark ground. A figure in a hooded cloak runs past a stone arch. An archer with long dark hair and a feathered hood draws a bow from a tree. Another figure holds a staff beside a trunk. A third stands on a rise with a sword out. Roumie appears in profile, and the wide shot places him between a small group in ordinary robes and the soldiers with the torches. The last image before the title is the archer again, the bow aimed straight at the camera. Then the gold type: “The Chosen,” and “New season November 15.”
The soldiers and the robes fit the arrest the show has been previewing since last fall. The feathers, the staff, and the layered armor are the new part. The grade is so cold that the archer’s face reads pale and blue against the torchlight. That look is what the replies started arguing about: whether the production had painted the figures, whether the blue is only the grade, and what either answer would mean in a series that has spent five seasons in linen and dust.
The line Jenkins already called unique
In an Easter interview on the followHIM podcast, for the week of March 30, Jenkins talked about the scene in Gethsemane where Jesus tells the disciples he could stop what is coming. “He outright said to the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, don’t you know at any moment I could just call on legions of angels,” Jenkins said, paraphrasing Matthew 26:53. “Portraying that is unique. It’s like, okay, what might that look like and how do we really communicate some of the supernatural elements of this, which are always tricky when you’re doing a TV show that’s grounded in reality.”
He called that spiritual reality hard to picture, because “you don’t know exactly what it looks like,” and said the show was putting “our toe into those waters.” In the same answer he described the moment in John 18 when Jesus says “I am he” and the arresting party is knocked to the ground, then the disciples’ confusion when he holds his hands out anyway. “It’s risky,” he said, “because again, you don’t know what it would have looked like and you’re always like, man, I hope this isn’t cheesy or weird.”
The Sunday clip does not show anyone falling, and it does not show Jesus calling for help. It shows armed figures the series has not used before, in the same night as the arrest. That is the overlap with what he described in the spring. He has not said these are the angels in the Gethsemane line. He was already talking, months ago, about a portrayal he knew could look wrong. The account posted the pictures and left the label off.
Come and see, and a thinking-face emoji
The replies split along the line he had already drawn. @frmdadust wrote, “wtf are those, man got some assassin creed gameplay.” The account answered that the explanation is on YouTube on November 14, the date of a global livestream it had posted about in a separate note the same hour. @ServusDeiVivi asked if the figures were supposed to be angels. The account replied with a thinking-face emoji. @JordanMatthew55 guessed “Demons and Angels maybe?” and got “Come and see to know for sure.” Asked “who are those,” the account’s whole answer was “Come and see.”
@DimeApologist put the objection in the terms the show’s own fans use for it: “The draw of The Chosen was the simple reality in its portrayal. A supernatural bent is going to be out of character.” The account told that user to watch and then say whether the feeling held. @Murrmensk called the footage a fumble into “marvel slop tactics.” @spik3fr33man wrote, “This is super disappointing to me.” The account’s reply was to check back after seeing the season. A smaller set of replies treated the archer’s look as a racial joke. One asked whether “the crouching tiger blue skinned native” was really in a show about Jesus. Another wrote, “Gotta hit that diversity quota.”
The other side of the thread is shorter and just as plain. @JimBurns9o0f said the same footage “floored me at Chosen Con” and was “truly different and brilliant the way it was presented in the show.” The account did not confirm a convention screening. It said it could not wait for people to see more. @Health2BWealthy wrote that it “definitely looks different” and that a binge was coming before the 15th.
People also used the thread to ask where the season would play. The account said episodes 1 through 6 are skipping the theatrical run Season 5 had: episodes 1 through 3 on Prime on November 15, then one a week, with the conclusion in theaters on March 12. Asked how to watch without paying Amazon, it said DVDs are on preorder and begin shipping in December, and that the season will eventually be free on The Chosen app.
What is still unnamed
Jenkins has already said he wants Season 6 to picture a spiritual reality the grounded seasons mostly left off the screen, and he has already said he hopes that picture is not cheesy. The account has now shown 23 seconds of armed figures in clothing the October trailer never used, in a scene that otherwise looks like the arrest, and it has kept to itself whether those figures are the angels in the Gethsemane line, something opposing them, or a device that will make sense only inside the episode. The place it named for the explanation is a YouTube livestream on November 14. The season those seconds are selling starts the next day.
