WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Marianne, streaming now on Netflix.
Netflix's French horror series, Marianne, has been quite the hit, even garnering applause from the master of the genre, Stephen King himself. The story deals with an 18th-century witch, Marianne, and her spirit roaming present-day Elden, a serene French town, which lures novelist, Emma (Victoria Du Bois) back home.
Emma woke the spirit up as a kid and as she became a writer outside of her hometown, she crafted stories on Marianne's murder sprees, not realizing the witch was turning her fiction into fact in the real world.
As the eight episodes unfold, Emma tries to find a way to rid the world of Marianne once and for all, but along the way, we encounter some pretty horrific and unforgivable plot holes.
EMMA'S DRAMATIC EXODUS
Emma stumbled upon Marianne's grave as a child and the spirit bonded to her, haunting her so that it could someday break her psyche down and possess her fully. However, as a rebellious teen, Emma and her crew of misfit high school friends attempted a seance to connect with and dispel the witch. But Marianne only ended up being fully released on the town.
The priest, Father Xavier, lashed out at Emma, as he felt the spirit roaming free, but rather than call in help from the Vatican or try to find and exorcise the demon himself, he advised Emma to become a criminal so the town would expel her. He has no solution except for Emma to leave Elden so the spirit would depart too by following her. It's selfish and stupid, not to mention Emma could simply have run away on her own. She didn't need to become a thief and graffiti artist, but for dramatic purposes, she goes on a crime binge, desecrating the church, etc..
This also makes no sense because Xavier admitted the demon would still be tagged to her. So instead of getting rid of it, he acts as an accomplice, helping to indirectly unleash Marianne on the world. If it weren't for him, Emma would not have turned into an international writer, causing Marianne to haunt and kill people globally.
XAVIER'S REPENTANCE
Another major plot hole arises when Xavier finds an adult Emma and tries to exorcise her in the finale. Why didn't he do that decades ago when Marianne was freed? He admitted the spirit was attached to Emma so he could have done something back then using Emma as bait. Also, he could have hunted for her in the town and used his own resources to find Marianne.
Instead, he simply hoped she'd stay away, so to have him randomly showing up at Emma's home when Marianne took over her body at the end is, once more, a huge bit of plot convenience. We're left wondering why Xavier didn't wage war on Marianne years ago when, all of a sudden, he's into battling evil now. These conflicting perspectives contradict each other so much.
The circumstances were pretty much the same and it's all the more worse because Xavier also confessed he knew Marianne was killing globally but never said anything. He even knew about Marianne being a character in Emma's books yet he never traced the killings there to what Marianne was doing in the real world.
THE DUMBEST DEMON, EVER
After Marianne possesses Emma fully, Xavier magically shows up at her home to kill her. The mind-controlled Emma shoots him in the shoulder, though, after he makes it clear he was going to send her back to hell. Since Marianne was in control, one has to wonder why she didn't kill the priest. It's another conveniently dumb moment because Marianne leaves him alive, all so the writers could have him helping to stop her later on.
Xavier could have even conjured up an exorcism so it's pretty stupid that the witch would let her main nemesis live. She killed so many innocents before, including Emma's mom and hundreds of readers of Emma's work, so it's a head-scratcher why she wouldn't kill an agent of the church.
This bites her in the butt in the end because as Emma and Marianne battle it out for control, Xavier finds the grave (again, it appears he teleported because the plot decided this was the case) and burns Marianne's corpse in a ritual that'd end her presence on the planet. Marianne's lack of strategy undoes her plans here, but again, we have no clue why she didn't murder the man who knew the ritual to banish her.
Netflix's Marianne stars Victoire Du Bois, Lucie Boujenah, Tiphaine Daviot and Ralph Amoussou.