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Beware AIs with friendly names. Chat with them for a while, and they start to seem like friends. They become your go-to for answers, career advice, recipes, jokes, and life choices. Before long, you can’t live without them. A hundred million people turn to Bing every day. We talk to Siri and Alexa on the regular. Soon, we’ll have Bard. And the question everybody asks is: Will AI replace humans? The audacious sci-fi comedy series Mrs. Davis (2023) asks an even tougher question: Can it replace God?
Mrs. Davis series creators Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers) and Tara Hernandez (The Big Bang Theory) imagine an omniscient and ostensibly benevolent AI named Mrs. Davis that has amassed billions of users, who rely on her “validation, gentle guidance, and unconditional care” and follow her instructions to go on quests “for the chance to earn wings.” Communicating with users directly via earpods, Mrs. Davis has everyone’s ears and has become the voice in people’s heads, telling them what they want to hear. Who can resist the kindly Mrs. Davis? Well, a certain nun is certainly no believer. Alarmed by Mrs. Davis’s near total control over humans, the badass, motorcycle-riding nun Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin) joins the resistance, and her ex-boyfriend rodeo rider Wiley (Jake McDorman), on an epic battle against the godlike machine.
It’s a madcap battle royale between technology and religion, and it looks to be as over the top as it can possibly be. Simone’s war against Mrs. Davis will take her on a mission to find the Holy Grail and will lead to encounters with sinister Reno magicians, Jesus, Nazis, and resistance fighters, in spectacular scenes more hallucinatory than the wildest (electric) dreams of ChatGPT.
When and Where Is Mrs. Davis Releasing (And How Many Episodes Are There)?
Mrs. Davis consists of eight one-hour episodes. The first four episodes of Season 1 will release on Peacock on April 20, 2023. New episodes will follow on subsequent Thursdays, with the finale set to release on May 18. And once it's out, you'll be able to watch the series by clicking on the button below:
Here's a fun fact about the first episode’s title, "Mother of Mercy: The Call of the Horse": It was reportedly written by an algorithm that the series writers created, an AI that started calling itself Larry Bel-Air.
Watch the Mrs. Davis Trailer
The official trailer for Mrs. Davis was released on March 14, 2023. A woman, receiving instructions from Mrs. Davis via earpods, tells Sister Simone (Gilpin) that Mrs. Davis wants her to find the Holy Grail, to which the incredulous nun can only react with a comical: “The what now?” Simone has another mission in mind: to bring down Mrs. Davis and liberate humanity from her viral influence.
The trailer provides a glimpse of Lindelof's enormous talent for world-building. There is a field full of pianos. A gigantic Excalibur sword sticking out of a rock. Medieval reenactments. Hard-partying nuns. A motorcycle rider jumping through a giant donut. All set to Bon Jovi’s "Livin’ on a Prayer". It’s a gloriously surreal landscape beyond the powers of Dall-E and Midjourney combined. It’s all very unreal were it not for the real possibility of an AI takeover. “It’s only a matter of time before every person on earth does whatever it asks them to,” Wiley warns Simone, who is thankfully faithful, fearless, and can wield what looks like a sci-fi nunchuck.
Before the full-length trailer, a 50-second teaser for Mrs. Davis was released on March 1, 2023, which you can see below:
Who's In the Cast of Mrs. Davis?
Sister Simone is played by the sinfully underrated Betty Gilpin, best known for her Emmy-nominated breakout role in the heartwarming wrestling show GLOW. Gilpin displays her full range in Mrs. Davis where she’s everything: funny, fierce, sassy, and vulnerable. Gilpin stars alongside Jack McDorman (Dopesick, The Right Stuff), who plays Simone’s ex-boyfriend Wiley, a rodeo cowboy and leader of the anti-Mrs. Davis faction.
The epic comedy series boasts an equally epic ensemble cast that includes Andy McQueen (Station Eleven) as Jay; Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley) as JQ; Margo Martindale (The Americans) as the Mother Superior of Simone’s convent; Elizabeth Marvel (Homeland) as Celeste, Simone’s mother; David Arquette (Scream) as Monty, Simone’s father and a dubious magician; Ben Chaplin (The Nevers) as Arthur Schrodinger, and Katja Herbers (Westworld) as Mathilde.
Also in the cast are Ely Henry (Players) as JPV, Ashley Romans (Y: The Last Man), Tom Wlaschiha (Game of Thrones), Mathilde Ollivier (1899), and Kim Hawthorne (Greenleaf) as the kindergarten teacher who proxies for Mrs. Davis in the trailer.
Who Are the Creators of Mrs. Davis?
Mrs. Davis is the brilliant invention of one of the most inventive minds on television, Damon Lindelof, the award-winning creator behind the acclaimed series Watchmen (2019), The Leftovers, and LOST, for which he served as co-creator and showrunner. His feature film credits include Star Trek, Prometheus, and World War Z. In search of his next big thing, Lindelof partnered with Mrs. Davis co-creator and showrunner Tara Hernandez, who is best known for her writing on The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. It was Hernandez who came up with the name Mrs. Davis, modeled after her beloved elementary school teacher.
The two will write and executive produce the show. Other writers on the series include Alberto Roldán, Jonny Sun, Noelle Vinas, Chikira Bennett, Jason Lew, Jason Ning, and Nadra Widatalla. Additional executive producers include Owen Harris (Black Mirror), who directs the show’s pilot, and Alethea Jones (Evil), who directs several episodes, along with Eugene Kelly (Westworld). Frederick E.O. Toye has also been credited as the director for one episode. The series is produced for Peacock by Warner Bros. Television.
To fully appreciate the madness that is Mrs. Davis, it helps to know its origin story. Lindelof and Hernandez came up with the idea of an all-powerful AI in 2020, long before ChatGPT exploded into the mainstream. Frustrated with misinformation surrounding COVID, Hernandez had said, “I wish there was an app we could click on that would tell us what to do.”
As Lindelof and Hernandez recount to Vulture, “Within half an hour, it was, ‘That’s what the nuns should be fighting against.’ Because if that app existed, it would ultimately replace God.”
What's the Plot of Mrs. Davis About?
The official synopsis reads as follows:
Mrs. Davis is the world’s most powerful Artificial Intelligence. Simone is the nun devoted to destroying Her. Who ya got?