Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God

There were several times I had to ask, is this a spoof series? Like 'This is Spinal Tap' for cults. It's sad that these are real people living life so poorly.

But, somehow, it's compelling to watch. How? How do people get this lost? I hope the rest of the series takes a dive into these lives (rather than the crazy clips) and how they became so broken. Trauma, obviously, but it's got to be more than just that.

As a parent it's a nightmare to think your kids might end up so astray in their lives. We'd like to think we'll be there for them and have given them enough tools. Sometimes it's still not enough. It's easy to call these people absolute morons. Outliers. Anomalies. Freaks. Is that in any way helpful, or preventative? I hope the rest of the series veers a little more in that direction.

Sporadically interesting but it didn't really make any effort to tell me why I should care or why this is even interesting. Its almost completely devoid of insights. The cult was only around a dozen people at most, so its hard to argue it had any wider impact. 'Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults' made a pretty good effort to delve into the psychology of cult members and why people join cults. There's nothing of that here. Much of it was just watching a sad collective of drug and alcohol addicts getting intoxicated and talking gibberish, with a leader who's clearly suffering from a mental illness. Am I supposed to be entertained by this? Clearly the idea is that crazy automatically means interesting. But without analysis the spectacle verges on voyeurism. There definitely should have been more non-LHW voices to give a more grounded and critical perspective.

As Episode 1 of "Love Has Won" (2023 release; 3 episodes ranging from 54 to 58 min. Each) opens, it is "Creston, CO, April 29, 2021" and the cops are descending on the home of a small cult group, where they find the mummified body of Amy Carlson, a/k/a Mother God. We then go back in time as we learn of Amy's upbringing, a young mom with 2 kids and managing a McDonald's in Dallas. How did that turn into becoming a cult leader? At this point we are 10 minutes into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from director Hannah Olson ("Baby God", "The Last Cruise"). Here she reassesses the life and times of a woman who at age 30 decides to leave her existence as she knew it then, and ends up proclaiming herself Mother God: "God is on the planet and she is a woman!", as the group called Love Has Won proclaims. Of course Love Has Won is awash in multiple conspiracy theories. And then just when you think that things can't get any weirder, they do. Olson mostly lets the members of Love Has Won tell the story. No need for Olson to correct anyone, I mean you can't make this stuff up! Bottom line: this is fascinating viewing, and these 3 episodes just flew by. Over the end titles of the last episode, we hear "Love Is Strange", the original 1957 version by Lonnie Donegan, which I had not heard before (I am familiar with the 1972 version by Paul McCartney & Wings). Great tune. Last but not least: the correct title of this mini-series is "Love Has Won", period. No sign anywhere in the series of "The Cult of Mother God" that many sources have added to the original title for no apparent reason.

"Love Has Won" recently premiered on HBO and is now also streaming on Max, where I caught it. I watched all 3 episodes in a single setting. If you have any interest in how a seemingly very ordinary woman changes her life from being a manager at McDonald's to becoming the leader of a small cult, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion,

This was definitely a strange documentary, but it was interesting, often funny (unintentionally), and even sad at times. But when a wasted Mother God asked for Chicken Parmesan and was given meatballs, one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a documentary happened. I can't really repeat it because of all the cussing, but her delivery of "Chicken Paremsan! I love meatballs.... but that's not what I wanted! CHICKEN PARMESAN!.... and then something along the lines of "I get dumber every moment I'm around you stupid people" with much more cussing and swearing.... I mean, seriously? If this was real, who would actually think this was a God-like figure who just drank all day long and swore all the time??? If you like bizarre, this one is for you.

Just watched this documentary. I don't think I've ever seen a more gullible, imbecilic group of people in my life. To blindly follow a childish, narcissistic, alcoholic, believing all the time that she is the embodiment of God on earth. Well, what can I say there's a sucker born every moment. Compassion is one thing. I have that for all of them. They have obviously had very messed up lives, but the levels of ignorance and sheer naïveté are just astonishing here. No one featured on this documentary should ever ever ever reproduce and yet several of them did, and, of course Abandoned their children.