Vigil (2026)

Vigil takes us back to what many have dubbed the ‘Bardoverse’, that being a kind of purgatorial netherworld inhabited by the dead that formed the primary focus of Lincoln in the Bardo. Here, though, the setting is the present day (or thereabouts) and instead of a graveyard we largely find ourselves at the bedside of a dying man, the powerful oil executive K. J. Boone. We are introduced to him through the eyes of Jill “Doll” Blaine, a young woman who died (in a rather unfortunate case of mistaken identity) in the 1970s, and has been sent to ‘comfort’ Boone through his dying moments. While she has been through this process more than 300 times in her afterlife, Boone represents an entirely new experience for her. He is an unrepentant architect of climate change, and even aside from that, a man with precious few redeeming qualities.