Julia Garner Is Why You Should Binge ‘Waco’

There are a lot of reasons why Waco is worth your time. The limited series serves as a pretty nuanced look into why the authorities brought in the military to deal with a cult. Plus at only six episodes, Waco makes for a pretty easy weekend watch. But there’s only one reason why Waco deserves to be binge-watched, and her name is Julia Garner. Once again Garner proves whatever role she’s tackling she’s an unstoppable force of acting greatness.

Released by Paramount Network in 2018, Waco is just one of Garner’s many incredible performances. She was already cursing up a storm and taking names as Ozark‘s Ruth Langmore in 2017, a full year before Waco‘s premiere. The same year Waco was first released she made headlines again as the spoiled valley girl Terra Newell in Bravo’s Dirty John. But for fans of the actor who may be new this limited series, Garner shows a completely different side of herself.

In Ozark, Garner perfectly channels Ruth’s sharp callousness. She’s completely believable as a low-level criminal who would just as quickly cut you as she would drink a beer with you. Yet even at her most hostile Ruth is always acutely aware of where she stands in this world and exactly what her weaknesses lie. Alternatively, her role in Dirty John is practically defined by oblivious helplessness. Because of Terra’s life of luxury, she believes she’s almost entitled to a life free of drama. When her mother’s abusive boyfriend swoops in to uproot everything and prove that money hasn’t made her untouchable, that devastates her to her core.

Underneath both of these vastly different women there’s a degree of softness. For Ruth, it only appears sporadically as she cares for her cousin Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) or has a sympathetic moment to spare for Marty (Jason Bateman). For Terra those breaks in her privilege are magnified the longer her mother Debra (Connie Britton) is used by the titular John. She’s a stuck up rich girl, sure, but she’s also a young woman terrified for her mother’s well being. By contrast, Garner’s take on Michelle Jones is a concentrated force in these fleeting moments of softness.

Michelle isn’t hardened or self-absorbed. She’s a young woman who deeply cares about her friends and family, even the members who have been forced into her life through the cult she’s been in since childhood. She’s recently realized that not everyone around her is as fiercely loving as she is. You can see that the moment Michelle confronts her sister Rachel (Melissa Benoist), asking her why she agreed with David Koresh’s (Taylor Kitsch) prophecy that he was destined to “marry” Michelle at the age of twelve. Michelle is someone on the brink of truly living, a young woman who has just started to understand the exact ways her sister sold her innocence as well as the life she should, and could have had.

Rory Culkin’s David Thibodeau may be the audience’s eyes into this sickening cult, but Garner’s Michelle is its heart. She’s the one whose future is being swept away before her eyes before it’s even started. And yet in the midst of so many betrayals, she still manages to maintain her optimism and loving attitude. In this way, Michelle comes to represent many of the Branch Davidians who were lost in the siege on Waco: dedicated, hopeful, loving people who died fighting for a misguided cause.

It would be easy for Michelle’s constant goodness in the face of so much adversity to drift into being cloying. But under Garner’s artful hand that never happens. Even at her worst, Michelle still represents the best that people have to offer. It’s that complexity that Garner continues to nail time and time again.

Where to stream Waco