The Midnight Club: Summary and Ending Explanation Of The Netflix Series
The ten episodes of the new horror series directed by Mike Flanagan are recently available on Netflix: unlike the previous shows – Hill House, Bly Manor and Midnight Mass, also distributed by the streaming giant – The Midnight Club, which is based on a novel by the writer for children Christopher Pike, is aimed at a different target, teenagers and young adults. As we explained in our Midnight Club review, in addition to a considerable dose of chills, the series touches on important themes, such as grief and depression, the acceptance of death, and the importance of family and friendship ties.
The series, which as we will see ends with an unexpected twist, is set at the Brightcliffe Hospice, a facility that welcomes terminally ill young people. Brightcliffe’s guests find in the building a safe place to spend their last months of life in peace, welcomed by the competent care of Dr. Stanton. The past of the big house, however, hides many secrets, from a pagan sect trying to cure the most serious ailments – the cult of Paragon – to one of its patients who – in the 1960s – seems to have miraculously recovered from a terminal illness. In addition, between the corridors of the old mansion, two spirits, elderly and terrifying, wander around, specifically targeting two of the young protagonists.
Every night at midnight, the eight Brightcliffe guests, who are part of the so-called The Midnight Club, meet in the library to tell each other scary stories, stories that help us get to know them better because they tell us about them, their fears and the traumas they are looking for. to face and overcome. In this article, focusing on what happens in the last episode of The Midnight Club, we will try to shed light on the true meaning of the series and clarify what happens in its last minutes, in the surprising ending that has overturned the cards in the table (and left us with the desire for the story to continue in a second season!).
The Midnight Club Ending Explained: What Happens In The Last Episode?
The last episode opens with Ilonka (Iman Benson) forced to face the consequences of what happened with Shasta (Samantha Sloyan). The girl – who has discovered the true identity of the mysterious neighbor, actually Brightcliffe’s former patient Julia Jayne – tries unsuccessfully to rescue Anya with a Paragon sect ritual (learned in a diary left by the priestess’s daughter). While unable to help her friend, Ilonka does not give up and is still convinced that the beliefs of the sect can heal her and her friends. For this reason, she is persuaded by Shasta to let her into Brightcliffe, where she along with some other women tries to carry out another ritual. This ritual, however, proves to be much more deadly and dangerous: the women that Shasta brought with him collapse poisoned, but since Ilonka refuses to drink the concoction, she is offered, the ceremony is not completed. Meanwhile, they are discovered by Stanton, who arrived in the basement by some hidden stairs.
The tenth episode of Midnight Club revolves around the need for Ilonka, but also for her friends, to come to terms with the fact that they cannot recover from their illnesses, and that it will soon be time for them to leave this world too. Ilonka, who from the beginning was the one with the strongest and most unshakable hope of being able to get back healthy and being able to move on with her life, is forced to face the harsh reality: there are no miraculous cures, and the importance it is also enjoying the little time we have left.
For this reason, at the very end of the episode, she decides to give in to the attraction she feels for Kevin (Igby Rigney) and declare her feelings to him. Both she and the boy realize that, even if briefly, the important thing for them is, to be honest about what they feel and enjoy the presence of the other in their own lives. This very sweet moment shared by the two underlines the true meaning of the series: to live our life to the fullest we have to accept that sooner or later we will die, so why waste time trying to achieve the impossible when by doing so we could miss the good things in life?
The Message From The Afterlife?
The Midnight Club was born with different objectives: to tell stories with which to pass the time, chase away the loneliness to which the disease can oblige, keep alive the memory of one’s missing friends, and make a very important promise. When the time comes for someone, this person will have to, once passed over, do everything to communicate with their companions, thus revealing to them that the afterlife exists and that, even for them, everything will be fine.
In the last episode, one of their missing friends, Anya, finds a way to connect with them. As Ilonka is giving Rhett, Anya’s childhood friend, her friend’s last things, she discovers that her ceramic dancer’s leg is no longer broken. That dancer represented the essence of Anya, who had deeply loved dance, and in a fit of anger after losing her leg (which we also see in the girl’s story, The Two Danas, in the second episode) she had broken it. When Ilonka finds the dancer as new, and intact, she realizes that it is a message from Anya from the afterlife, who is trying to tell her and the others that she is fine, that she no longer suffers, and that she is back to being “whole”, like the statuette.
The Midnight Club: The Final Scene
The story ends in a bittersweet way, leaving the protagonists with a new awareness and ready to accept their destiny. Many of the mysteries opened during the series, however, seem to be left unsolved: in this explanation of the Midnight Club ending we can only dwell on the closing of the last episode. Stanton is in her room, and we listen to the same music in the background that Ilonka heard during her visions of the past of the house. The song is Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming, composed in 1855 by Stephen Foster.
As the woman walks, we also see an old newspaper clipping, where we read that the new Freelan Estate is completed in 1898 (which would contradict Ilonka’s research, the girl had claimed that the house was built in 1901) and we see a couple standing (industrialist Stanley Oscar Freelan and his wife) and an old photo of Brightcliffe. Shortly after Stanton takes off the wig he was wearing and shows his bald skull: on his neck stands the hourglass tattoo, a symbol of the cult of Paragon. Who is Dr. Stanton really and who are the two ghosts that populate the house?
Who Are The Ghosts Of The House?
Let’s start with them, the two ghosts who, as we discover in the credits, are called the man in the mirror (in fact he always appears to Ilonka through a mirror) and the woman with cataracts (the old lady who has white eyes and looks almost completely blind). The two, as the newspaper clipping implies, could be the first owners of the house, Stanley Oscar Freelan and his wife. One of the most likely hypotheses as to why the two are still in the big house – as well as haunt it of course – is that they feed on the energies of its tenants, especially the young patients. In episode 5, See you later, as the boys celebrate the fact that Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) survived the day he was supposed to die, Natsuki (Aya Furukawa) wonders if Stanton founded Bright Cliffe to steal their last from sick boys.
Vital energies, transferring them into dolls. And what if the “recipients” of these energies were the two ghosts, who feed on the vital force of Brightcliffe’s patients? Spence points out that no one knows where the boys’ bodies end up and, above all, Ilonka explains how, every time she saw the old lady’s ghost, she told her she was hungry and wanted to feed. Soon after, Natsuki tells an old legend, which her mother told her about, in which a creature that “feeds on years”, looking just like an old lady, is seen in places where people go to die, feeding on years that remain. Brightcliffe, as Natsuki herself notes, is just one of those places. Could it be that Stanton feeds the Brightcliffe boys to the ghosts of the house? What could he get in return?
The Midnight Club: Who is Dr. Stanton?
What are Dr. Stanton’s true intentions? The hypotheses are manifold. The final scene reveals that, at least at one stage in her life, the woman was a member of the Paragon cult. She could even be Athena, the daughter of Aceso, whom we are told to have betrayed her mother and abandoned the sect. One possibility, in our opinion among the most probable, is that the woman tried, after returning to Brightcliffe, to perform the ritual of the sect to save her sick son, Julian. Consequently, since we know that Julian is no longer alive, after the failure of the ritual she may have lost faith in the beliefs of the cult, deciding to dedicate her life to the care of the less fortunate children.
On the contrary, however, it could be that Stanton is still part of the cult, and somehow exploits the lives of Brightcliffe’s guests to his benefit: the fact that we see her bald, could indicate that she is sick and that in some way lengthens his own life thanks to those of his young patients. What if – obviously this is an extreme hypothesis, as we like to play fantasy – Julian was still alive, hidden somewhere, and Stanton kept him alive by harnessing the vital energy of his young patients? It could even be that the shadow that all the boys see when the time of their death approaches is precisely Julian, who has transformed over the years into a monstrous creature that feeds on the lives of others.
The Midnight Club: Will There Be A Second Season?
We can only conclude by asking ourselves if, given the decidedly open ending, Midnight Club could have a second season. For now, nothing has been confirmed but – as stated by Variety – the team behind the creation of the series (which includes Mike Flanagan is the same as Bly Manor) has let slip that the sources for the show would not be limited to just the novel. Midnight Club by Christopher Pike.
For this reason, since this season covers the entire novel, it is possible that if others were made, other works from the author’s extensive bibliography could be adapted. It, therefore, remains to ask whether the characters will remain the same, and therefore the events of the protagonists of the first season will continue, or if they will completely change characters and plot, as was done for Hill House and Bly Manor.
