'Messiah' Season 1: User claims Netflix blocked them for tweeting out a nearly 2000-year-old spoiler
Last week, Netflix released the trailer for its upcoming original series, 'Messiah', with the show's official Twitter account writing, "Who do you think he is?" However, it may seem that the show may not be as suspenseful as Netflix and the creators of the show expected after Muslim and Arab followers immediately picked on the titular character.
The news for the show first dropped in 2017, claiming that it will have the audience asking big questions like, "What if someone showed up in 2018 amid strange occurrences and was thought to be the Messiah? What would society do? How would the media cover him? Would millions simply quit work? Could governments collapse?"
In 'Messiah', Al-Massih, played by Tunisian-origin Belgian actor Mehdi Dehbi, first appears in the Middle East, proclaiming to be the second coming of "Isa (Jesus) or Mahdi of the time". His sudden appearance and apparent miracles soon propel him to international fame and doubts arise as to who he really is, and eventually, the CIA gets involved. The trailer for the show asks whether Al Massih will convert you or con you, with shots of "False God" written on the wall.
Of course, for Muslim and Arab viewers of the trailer, the spoiler was immediately visible, after all, this has been part of a nearly 2000-year old folklore. In Islamic eschatology, Al-Masih ad-Dajjal is the "fake messiah" and the name of the character immediately clued them in on who Mehdi Dehbi's character really is.
This led to one user tweeting, "I'm getting Dajjal vibes". Later, the same user tweeted screenshots that reportedly showed that both Netflix's and the show's official Twitter accounts had blocked them, although Netflix has denied this.
Another user tweeted, "So basically Dajjal but both his eyes are working," with another replying, "Bet he’ll lose one in the movie."
Now that the spoiler is out and many users have uncovered it, it remains to be seen whether the Netflix show will involve a deeper dive into Islamic eschatology. One thing is for sure, 'Messiah' will need a miracle to keep users interested.