Hulu’s Helstrom Ending Explained- Who Are Kathara And Father?

Whether you call her Kathara, Cathara, Kthara, or Mother, one thing is clear; the Helstrom matriarch is no one’s mommy. She doesn’t do hugs.

Hulu’s first and unfortunately, probably last dabbling in the horror Marvel Universe, is much better than anyone expected. Like the demons, the Helstrom siblings hunt, deliciously serpentine, and hideously adorned with no shortage of nasty teeth. Based on the Hellstrom(note the two T’s) siblings in the Son Of Satan graphic novels, this ideation is a touch more grounded in reality. Gone are the ridiculous costumes and more fantastical set pieces, replaced instead with to die for subdued fashion, gritty mental hospital halls, and endless eviscerating wit. Through all the twists and turns, including the incredible last three episodes, Daimon and Ava attempt to decipher their parents’ lies. When your Mom and Dad are demon-possessed monsters, there’s not going to be a dull moment. Here’s everything you need to know about the deception of Kthara, Father, and that devastating ending.

We are first introduced to Mother/Victoria, played wonderfully by Elizabeth Marvel, who Manifest fans will recognize as The Major locked up and foaming at the mouth. Daimon and Ava’s biological mother has a demon inside her that insists on calling herself, Mother. It’s just one of many hideous cruelties the Helstrom siblings had to endure in their younger years. Their father is a nasty piece of work with demonic powers of his own, a serial killer who used his daughter to lure in victims. It’s pretty much a miracle the two kids didn’t turn into psycho killers themselves. Luckily their surrogate parents, The Caretaker, a calmly resolved Robert Wisdom(The Alienist) and Dr. Hastings, played by a convincingly idealistic June Carryl(Mindhunter), stepped in and raised the kids when Mother was institutionalized, and Father went missing.

At the midway point of the series, Mother begins to call herself Kathara. She plays on Victoria’s sympathies and does a fair job convincing everyone that even though she’s a demon, she is one of the misunderstood angsty types. More bad by circumstance than by nature, Kthara is just another parent desperate to get to her kids. She claims she has two children she needs to be reunited with. They were hunted and killed by humans for being powerful and different. She tells a story to Victoria about an innocent child and a pitchfork-wielding gang of townsfolk hellbent on killing. As we later find out, she really wants to reunite with Father, and the kids are just as big a dick as she is. Knowing what we know after the final episode, those two children are likely Cain and Abel.

Who Is The Demon Kthara?

She claims to be the Mother of demons and appears in the several Marvel stories, including the obvious Son Of Satan novels Helstrom is based on and The Fantastic Four. She is a self-proclaimed high-ranking member of Satan’s Council and, by all accounts, a lying bitch. There is no actual demon known as Kthara, but there is one called Lilith, and she is the HBIC of the underworld.

By the end of the Helstrom, Mother’s deception is revealed. She never wanted to run from Father. Quite the contrary, she and Father fully intended to find their way back to each other in new bodies. Initially, Victoria housed the deceptive demon, but after Gabriella(Ariana Guerra) was briefly possessed by Mother, and Daimon possessed by Father, they gave birth one day later to Mother in the flesh. One final twist occurs when Chris, a criminally underused Alain Uy(The Passage, The Morning Show), seemingly kidnaps the baby to protect it from Mother and Father. He became a Keeper after a bout with a cyclops demon skull. Just one month later, she is now roughly seven years old. The X Files Agent Skinner(Mitch Pileggi) shows up and takes the child after think-killing a group of people waiting at the dock. Here are the essential takeaways from that conversation.

Father asks Kathara her name, and she initially calls herself by the only name we know. He presses her, though, and tells her she has an older name. After thinking for a minute, she responds with Lilly. What a pretty name that hides an ugly secret. She is Lilith, the Mother of Monsters. First appearing in Jewish religious texts as Adam’s first wife in the Garden of Eden. She was born not from his rib but the same soil as he was.

Often depicted as a half-human, half serpent female wrapped around the Tree of Knowledge, she is extremely powerful and duplicitous. Associated with the owl, Lilith is associated with nocturnal predatory behaviors and night terrors. That is interesting knowing Mother’s propensity for causing nightmares in most of the characters in Helstrom. She is a Babylonian demon which has existed for 4,000 years preying on pregnant women and children. She is a succubus who sleeps with men in the sleep and steals babies.

If she is Lilith, who is Papa or the Father?

In the graphic novels, Father refers to himself as Satan. In the Lilith stories, Adam is traditionally depicted as the Father of ghosts and demons. Having been born simultaneously from the same material as Adam, Lilith believed she was equal and refused to bend to Adam’s will. She either left Eden willingly to escape his rule or was banished to the desert for her insubordination. In the Zohar, the Jewish Kabbalah’s chief text, Lilith is partnered with the male personification of evil. He is named Samael or Asmodeus, and is together they created innumerable demon children.

Chris Yen is marked with XX, the universal sign for those with two X chromosomes. As The Keeper, he is marked by Father’s bloodline and the one-eyed demon he serves. It offers him protection from Father, but not those around him. When Father begins killing everyone waiting for the ferry, Chris turns the child over to him. She calls him Papa, but this might be one of those Vice President Mike Pence situations where husbands and wives refer to each other as Mother and Father. It’s creepy, but she should be of legal age with her rapid growth in another month.

Whether he is Satan, Samael, or Adam, he is bad news, and these two together are a nightmare. Hopefully, the powers that be at Hulu understand there is a market for this type of horror/superhero entertainment. Greenlight Helstrom season two ASAP.