The celebrity worship of “Love Has Won”: Why Robin Williams may have resonated with a cult

There is little about Amy Carlson’s cult that diverges from other groups profiled in docuseries like “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God.” To fans of such docuseries, it may feel like an expansive palette sparkling with conspirituality themes. Self-identified light workers bandy about the concept of twin flames and profess that cumulus cloud tufts disguise space ships.

Each of Carlson’s followers describes some version of being adrift in life before meeting her, whether due to addiction, trauma, serious illness or existential malaise. They credit her for guiding them out of the 3D illusion that is mundane reality into their five-dimensional ascended state. At this “frequency” it is understood, for instance, that Hitler was a lightworker. They proclaim the miraculous health benefits of ingesting colloidial silver.

And Carlson, whose followers call her Mother God or simply Mom, comes from basic beginnings. The supposed messiah was born in Kansas and found success as a McDonald’s district manager in Texas before suddenly abandoning her family in 2007, reappearing online shortly after that claiming to be a divine healer who practices spiritual surgeries.  Among her many wild claims was that she lived more than 500 lives over 19 billion years and was once known as Joan of Arc, Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra. She also purported to be the reborn “Madam Blavtski,” likely referring to Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophy occultist movement.

When Carlson died in 2021 at the age of 45 as the result of what a coroner’s report deemed to be “alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion,” her followers refused to let Mom go. They drove her body from California to a Colorado house belonging to one of her most trusted acolytes, wrapped it in a blanket and blinking Christmas lights, and awaited her return. By the time the police raided the home, Carlson’s corpse was blue and mummified.

If you’ve seen “Wild Wild Country,” any of the Twin Flames or NXIVM examinations and “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult of Sarah Lawrence,” to name a few, you have seen some version of this. But “Love Has Won” has one dazzling and bizarre differentiator from those: its followers’ universal connection through the spirit of Robin Williams.

The Love Has Won cultists are on a first-name basis with the legendary performer’s ghost, viewing him as  one of “Mom’s main ambassadors” and the primary “Galactic” in her “etheric team.” “She signed over, like, the divine plan for him to make change,” explains one of Carlson’s main “Oracles,” Archeia Hope, whose real name is Ashley Peluso. “Like, he’s a very, very big part of this. And humanity is going to see that.”

Hope explains the Love Has Won belief system by holding up a mixed-media collage of smiling celebrities, most of them dead, that Hope describes as “the Galactic A-Team.” It includes but is not limited to Steve Irwin, Carrie Fisher, David Bowie, Rodney Dangerfield, Gene Wilder, Chris Farley, Tupac Shakur, Whitney Houston, Prince and Michael Jackson. John Lennon, who in life was such a terrible driver that he hired chauffeurs for the safety of those around him, is in command of the main spaceship. The cult calls him Ashtar.

Donald Trump is among them, of course, one of the living (aka “in the physical”) members of the cult’s team. The still very much alive Carol Burnett is also in the picture, although Hope probably has no clue of who she or most of the others are. “Elvis is actually Mom’s son,” she says, pointing to Patrick Swayze’s mug.

Carlson’s grinning visage is the largest and tops this mountain. Slightly smaller, but larger than the rest of the stars, is the face of the metaphysical figure Saint Germain. To her left is a picture of the same size which, Hope says, is “obviously Robin Williams.”

All messages about what she or they should be doing come from what Carlson or one of her top followers claim to be Robin Williams. That could be as simple as Bring Mother God some onion dip and shrimp cocktail. 

“I have seen Robin Williams come through Mother God because she’s on alcohol,” says still-loyal follower El Moyra, aka Ryan Kramer, “and I feel that she utilized it as a tool to let certain things through, because we needed to hear it.” Such as the fact that he took Mother God’s joy away “by making her the world’s worst quesadilla.”

“No Surprises Here Robin Is an Expert” one of her journal scrawls declares.

It is hard to say what Williams would have made of “Love Has Won” or the cult itself; several videos show Carlson ripping massive bong hits in her pursuit of a “higher vibration.” Williams once mused, “Do you think God gets stoned? I think so. Look at the platypus.” (He was also famously inclusive, placing that reputation at odds with the cult’s views that homosexuality is wrong and, um, that whole Hitler excuse.)

Carlson isn’t around to explain why Williams, who died in 2014, holds such a vaunted status in her beliefs. That means we may never know why she proclaimed him to be Heaven’s herald as opposed to, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman or Casey Kasem, who “ascended” that same year.

Decoding a fractured psyche is a fool’s errand, we know. But there is some logic thread to tug at here, in that Williams built his comedy persona around being an outsider observing his fellow humans with affection, sensitivity and understanding.

November coincides with the 30th anniversary of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which is neither here nor there when it comes to mulling over his supposed divinity. One could make a more compelling argument in surmising that “What Dreams May Come,” which was made 25 years ago this year, might have had a more lasting impact on a person who tumbled down the Internet spirituality rabbit hole.

Carlson and her Oracles aren’t “channeling” that essence. In the main Williams’ kindly impression perseveres among Millennials and Gen Xers who came to accept Williams as a regular presence during the holidays thanks to movies like “Good Will Hunting,” “Jumanji” and “Night at the Museum.”

“Love Has Won” director Hannah Olson noticeably doesn’t solicit expert insights in her documentary series. However, the theory she presents in a recent LA Times interview makes sense. “I think for latchkey kids of the ‘80s and ‘90s, celebrities filled in for the family members we wish we had,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want an uncle or a father like Robin Williams?”

That intimation may transcend cultures, suggested in Williams’ recent surprise cameo in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” of all places. In the course of Norman Reedus’ wandering hunter escorting a supposed Messiah and a pair of nuns through zombie-infested France, they come to be hosted by a community of children in “Alouette.”

Clémence Poésy as Isabelle, Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” (Stéphanie Branchu/AMC)To entertain their honored guest, they activate a bicycle-powered generator that fires up their TV to show an old episode of “Mork & Mindy.” Daryl’s uncharacteristically open joy is one of the limited series’ highlights; his memory of watching the show with his brother Merle is a happier one in an abusive home that wasn’t so happy.

Choosing “Mork & Mindy,” a show most people under 35 probably never heard of has metaphorical significance, as the episode’s director Daniel Percival told The Wrap when it aired in September. Percival wanted to imply a connection between Daryl’s story as “a fish out of water and an alien in a strange land” to that of Williams’ ambassador from Ork. When the children’s beloved caretaker dies, they send her off with a chorus of “Nanu, nanu.”

That leaves a very different impression from the following spirit world proclamation, relayed by one of Mother God’s followers in “Love Has Won.” “Another message for you disgusting b***hes and a**holes from Robin Williams. We’ve been instructed to take your heaters. Robin Williams is disgusted. You don’t get s**t.”

Many conspiracy-driven groups ground a portion of their whackadoodle belief system in a celebrity’s legacy. The most prominent example is QAnon, whose followers are certain that John F. Kennedy Jr. is alive and working with Trump – which, predictably, Love Has Won embraces. Rogue theories swearing that, say, Elvis, Tupac and Biggie Smalls are upright and possibly living together in a hidden bunker, have been flying around for decades.

Carlson’s obsession with Williams, however, illustrates the conspiritualist tendency to conflate celebrity and authority and how that amplifies a message’s potency. (Hence the continued viability of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign, along with Trump’s.) Love Has Won was born on the Internet; its earliest members chose its name because it was more searchable. Celebrity fame also lives and dies online and is frequently co-opted for dubious purposes.

Between selling “wellness” products making pseudoscientific claims of effectiveness and their massive output of livestreams and YouTube content, Carlson and her close-knit community rode a wave swelled by disillusionment, a sense of powerlessness and doubt like the one that made Gwyneth Paltrow an alternative wellness guru.

Like Goop, Love Has Won benefitted from our broken safety net. Some who appear in the documentary attest to having struggled with mental health issues; one former member was drawn to the spiritual respite Mother God offered because she was being crushed by medical debt. Surrendering to love has a concentrated appeal to the psychologically embattled.

But the average extremely online person wouldn’t know what to do with some random saint’s orders from beyond, even one best known for toplining a liqueur.

Williams, on the other hand, played the genie in “Aladdin,” along with a career’s worth of roles positioning him as everybody’s good guy, assuming most cultists missed his work as a soulless psychopath in “Insomnia.”

In a culture that deifies celebrities, Williams remains one whose memory is often invoked with affectionate nostalgia, accompanied by some of his better movie quotes, or from one of his stand-up sets.

“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs,” he once said. We may never know if that punchline launched a religion. The universe has pulled stranger jokes on humankind.

“Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God” is streaming on Max.