Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God
Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God is a 2023 HBO documentary series directed by Hannah Olson. It looks at the life and death of Amy Carlson, the leader of the Love Has Won group. The show premiered on November 13, 2023, on HBO and aired through November 27, 2023.
After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Olson became interested in how conspiracy thinking spreads. She was introduced to Carlson by a New Age scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and wondered how Carlson went from a McDonald’s manager to a cult leader. The series seeks to understand the social and personal reasons people join such groups by listening to followers and using thousands of hours of livestream footage. Olson chose not to rely heavily on outside experts and only briefly mentions some conspiratorial beliefs, letting members tell their story to draw viewers into the world of Love Has Won.
The series has three episodes, each about 53–58 minutes long. It was produced by HBO Documentary Films, Elara Pictures, and Open Secret. Executive producers include Hannah Olson, Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Dani Bernfeld, Ronald Bronstein, Lauren Cioffi, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Sara Rodriguez. Producers are Ana Veselic, Matthew Killip, and Mimi Dwyer; cinematography by Christopher Messina; editors Ana Veselic, Matthew Killip, and Christopher Passig.
Critical reception was very positive. Rotten Tomatoes shows all seven critics’ reviews as favorable, with an average rating of 7.0/10. Time’s Judy Berman praised the series for making the cult’s worldview legible by focusing on Carlson’s family and inner circle. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager called it an unvarnished peek inside an insular community and noted how people use odd ideas to cope with unhappiness and trauma.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:45 (CET).