‘The Midnight Club’: The Full Ending Explained and Your Questions Answered

The newest chapter of Mike Flanagan’s horror sequence on Netflix sadly will not be going past its first season. Netflix canceled The Midnight Club (co-created with Leah Fong) after season 1, in order that tantalizing cliffhanger regarding a sure physician will not be resolved — properly, you might need thought so, however fortunately Flanagan has fulfilled his promise to followers by detailing in a weblog publish precisely what would have occurred in season 2.

Let’s dive into what would have come and every little thing else to know concerning the present within the spoiler-packed part beneath.

Warning: Spoilers forward.

What would have occurred in season 2?

Sadly, Netflix will not be renewing the younger grownup horror sequence for a second season, regardless of fairly favorable critiques (together with CNET’s personal). The Midnight Club managed solely a three-week run in Netflix’s high 10 considered exhibits chart, by no means claiming the No. 1 spot. What additionally appears more likely to have factored into the choice is co-creator Mike Flanagan’s manufacturing firm Intrepid Pictures selecting to go along with Amazon Studios as their subsequent TV residence, signing a multiyear take care of Prime Video, with their contract with Netflix coming to an in depth.

Fortunately, Flanagan stated at a Netflix press occasion (through Elite Daily) that he was ready for cancellation and would drop solutions to any lingering questions on Twitter. “We didn’t answer some of the bigger questions of the season — those answers exist, but were meant to be for the next season,” Flanagan stated. If there isn’t any second season, he’ll “put [the answers] up on Twitter.”

With so many story threads to tie up, Flanagan as a substitute took to Tumblr to publish an in depth rundown of what would have occurred to the members of The Midnight Club in season 2. “My biggest disappointment is that we left so many story threads open, holding them back for the hypothetical second season, which is always a gamble. So I’m writing this blog as our official second season,” Flanagan wrote.

Let’s run by means of the important thing plot factors that may have been fleshed out in season 2:

• Amesh — dies in early within the season from his glioblastoma.
• The Janitor — is confirmed to be Death. Only the sufferers ever noticed him as he provides them sort phrases earlier than they die.
• Ilonka — will get a brand new roommate, who takes Anya’s previous mattress.
• Christopher Pike novels — tales that may have been instructed at The Midnight Club embrace Remember Me and presumably Monster.
• Natsuki — could be the subsequent to die.
• Spence — his prognosis would now not be terminal due to developments in HIV remedy within the late ’90s. He would go residence to reside his life, identical to Sandra did on the finish of season 1.
• Who is Dr. Stanton actually? Dr. Stanton is de facto Athena, the daughter of the unique Paragon cult chief, Aceso. She’s carrying a wig as a result of she has most cancers, and he or she has a tattoo as a result of she was a part of the cult when she was younger. Ilonka discovered her initials Georgina Ballard (her maiden title) carved right into a tree. She created Brightcliffe to have fun life and undo the atrocities of her mom.
• Kevin — would have died on the finish of the season.
• Ilonka — would have died shortly after Kevin.
• The Living Shadow — is revealed to be the unknown. “As it engulfs someone, in the last moment of their life, it takes them through a place of understanding and catharsis, preparing them for the next step,” Flanagan wrote.
• The Mirror Man and the Cataract Woman — not solely are they revealed to be Stanley Oscar Freelan and his spouse, the couple who constructed Brightcliffe, however they’re the previous selves of Ilonka and Kevin. They’re true soulmates who at all times discover one another and fall in love.
• The ending — Ilonka and Kevin would die with out concern, realizing they’d discover one another once more. “The series would end with Cheri telling this story to a whole new table of patients, including our new series leads. Most of our original cast now would exist as stories, a story told to the next ‘class’ of storytellers at the table, all of whom we will have met by the end of the season. A story called ‘The Midnight Club.'”

There you’ve gotten it. At least there’s one ultimate Flanagan challenge on the way in which to Netflix, after the stellar The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass. The Fall of the House of Usher, based mostly on works by Edgar Allen Poe, will doubtless hit Netflix in 2023, with a lot of Flanagan’s favourite appearing troupe set to look, together with Carla Gugino, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas and extra.

What are the origins of the Paragon cult?

The origins of the Paragon cult are all recorded in a diary that was saved by the cult chief’s disillusioned 16-year-old daughter,  Athena. Athena wrote that the commune was began in 1931 by her mom, Regina Ballard. After Ballard’s husband died of pneumonia and her son of polio, she started a brand new age well being philosophy — “a naturopathic alternative to the medical establishment.” But this philosophy modified for the more serious due to Ballard’s obsession with 5 Greek goddess sisters all linked to therapeutic. She created the Paragon cult, their hourglass emblem drawn from Ancient Greece’s symbols for Earth and air.

Eventually, Ballard and the cult delved into historic rituals involving blood sacrifices. But, in 1940, one among these rituals went badly fallacious. All the opposite grownup members died from poisoning. Ballard was the one survivor, claiming she collected the fallacious elements for his or her tea. When the police found her, she now not had hair. A tattoo of the hourglass image was seen on the again of her neck.

After the Paragon tragedy, Ballard was despatched to a psychological establishment. Her home remained empty till it was bought by Dr. Georgina Stanton in 1966. While we see present cult chief Julia Jayne go to Ballard within the ’60s, it is not clear whether or not Ballard continues to be alive throughout the ’90s.

What precisely occurred to Julia Jayne?

It ought to have come as no shock that Shasta (sanskrit for “teacher”) — the all-too pleasant founding father of Good Humor Wellness, a naturopathic firm sourcing elements round Brightcliffe — is de facto ex-Brightcliffe affected person Julia Jayne.

Like Ilonka, Julia was additionally identified with thyroid most cancers within the throat as a teen. She based The Midnight Club in 1969, then later found Athena’s journal within the Brightcliffe library. She tracked down ex-Paragon cult chief Ballard by impersonating a hospice care nurse, visiting Ballard’s forwarding addresses from the psychological establishment till she discovered her.

Ballard, seeing Julia’s ardour, agreed to let Julia keep together with her for per week, throughout which she taught Julia the methods of the Paragon. She known as Julia her “bright girl” — the identical title Julia/Shasta offers Ilonka. Ballard and Julia spun a narrative round what actually occurred. In the police reviews Ilonka reads, Julia disappeared from Brightcliffe for per week. She returned in full remission and stated, “It was because of this place, that she found something here and it cured her.”

In Julia’s artwork remedy — saved in her Brightcliffe file — she wrote down the Dewey Decimal System numbers of the place she hid Athena’s Paragon diary within the library, passing on the knowledge as Ballard did for her. According to Stanton, Julia’s preliminary restoration comes right down to easy, unlikely luck — not the secrets and techniques Ballard gave her. Julia returns to Brightcliffe as an grownup to undergo with the Paragon blood sacrifice ritual as a result of she’s sick once more.

Season 2 theories (earlier than we knew the solutions)

What’s Dr. Stanton’s true id?

Just when there is a sense of acceptance and calm inside Brightcliffe Hospice, Dr. Stanton reveals within the ultimate cliffhanger scene that she — like lots of the different most cancers sufferers — is bald and wears a wig. Except, when she takes her wig off for the night time, a tattoo of an hourglass could be seen on the again of her neck, identical to Regina Ballard.

Is Dr. Stanton a part of the Paragon cult?

Just like the various tales instructed in The Midnight Club, you’ll be able to interpret the which means behind Dr. Stanton’s look in a number of methods.

It’s fairly doubtless Stanton was as soon as a believer within the Paragon’s strategies, even when she would not presently follow them. She was undoubtedly conscious of the Paragon, having acquired their books and teachings after buying the home. Maybe Stanton tried to make use of the Paragon ritual on her sick son, Julian.

But Julian is outwardly now not alive, so the strategy did not work. In a dialog with Ilonka after Julia breaks in, Stanton labels the Paragon’s methods as “sick.” No longer a believer within the Paragon technique, she hid her connections to the cult. Maybe she’s nonetheless bald as a result of she too was identified with an sickness and has accepted that the one cause she’s nonetheless alive is due to luck. “The thing about Julia and other people I’ve met over the years is … they can’t accept that they were just lucky,” she tells Ilonka.

Maybe, after her son died, Stanton fostered real good intentions behind beginning the hospice, offering a spot the place the terminally ailing can “focus on living” whereas giving herself function within the course of.

Is Dr. Stanton good or unhealthy?

There’s one other means to take a look at Stanton’s intentions.

Despite every little thing Stanton has stated about caring for her sufferers as a health care provider, she would possibly nonetheless be utilizing the Paragon’s strategies. Why else has she saved the basement in the identical state because it was throughout the time of the commune? Maybe Julian continues to be alive in some kind. To maintain him alive, Stanton has been utilizing the home and its particular properties — that is why she goes to nice lengths to maintain Julia and the brand new Paragon cult out of the image.

In this studying, Stanton’s cause for founding Brightcliffe Hospice might need one thing to do with utilizing the sufferers as sacrifices to the gods — or the ghosts.

Who are the previous ghosts?

In the ultimate cliffhanger scene, the digital camera pans throughout a framed newspaper clipping from 1898 within the Washington Journal. It features a image of industrialist Stanley Oscar Freelan and his spouse, Vera Freelan, the unique homeowners of the home. They look fairly darn much like the 2 ghosts who hang-out Ilonka and Kevin, named within the credit as The Mirror Man and Cataract Woman.

In this scene, Stanton listens to the identical previous music that performs each time Ilonka travels again in time. The music — Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming — consists by Stephen Foster and was printed in 1855. The previous newspaper clipping says that the New Freelan Estate was completed in mid-1898 and that it is “truly a marvel of architecture.” (This contradicts Ilonka’s analysis — she says the home was inbuilt 1901.) Maybe this musical connection is meant to counsel that Stanton is much older than she seems and that her longevity has one thing to do with this “marvel” of a home.

Is Stanton feeding the Brightcliffe children to the ghosts?

Another concept is Stanton might need some form of take care of the resident ghosts. On the seaside in episode 5, whereas celebrating Amesh outliving the day he was speculated to die, Natsuki speculates that Stanton began Brightcliffe to siphon off the sufferers’ life drive into different vessels. Spence additionally factors out that they do not know the place the our bodies of ex-Brightcliffe children go.

In episode 9, Ilonka says that the ghostly previous girl with the cataracts “keeps talking about how she’s hungry, she’s starving.” Natsuki then shares that her mom instructed her a narrative a few “thing,” an “eater of years” or “the years eater” which appeared like an previous girl. It was present in locations the place individuals had been going to die and it could eat the years they’d have had. “This place would be a feast,” Natsuki says of Brightcliffe.

Maybe Natsuki’s proper. Maybe Stanton actually is feeding the Brightcliffe children to the ghosts in alternate for some form of profit or life drive for Julian.

Is ‘The Living Shadow’ Death?

Or may it’s Julian?

Maybe Stanton managed to maintain Julian alive due to the Paragon’s strategies, however it got here at a worth: Julian now exists as a form of in-between being. Both Anya and her ex-roommate Rachel talked about seeing The Living Shadow shortly earlier than their deaths. The delusion of The Living Shadow has been handed down by means of generations of The Midnight Club, its presence felt so long as there are sufferers round to doubtlessly maintain it and the opposite ghosts properly fed.

Or perhaps, ultimately, the shadow actually is the manifestation of the youngsters’ premature ends.

Why does Ilonka have visions?

Is it as a result of her medication is making her “see stuff” as Kevin says in episode 3? Or is it as a result of the home and its ghostly residents are calling to her? “I hear things. I see things. Those whispering voices … [are] practically screaming at me,” Ilonka tells Kevin. She initially thinks the voices are her personal instinct spurring her to analyze Julia Jayne’s previous, however perhaps it is actually the ghosts reaching out to a brand new sufferer to feed on.

Any Easter eggs?

You guess! Flanagan likes to pepper in satisfying Easter eggs all through his exhibits and The Midnight Club — co-created with The Haunting of Bly Manor producer and author Leah Fong — isn’t any exception.

• The cool slanting graphic design of The Midnight Club’s title card appears to be like to be impressed by Christopher Pike’s novel, aka the supply materials. One of the editions makes use of the same font for the title on the entrance cowl.
• The Lasser Glass, a possessed vintage mirror that featured in Flanagan’s 2014 horror Oculus, could be seen within the basement room in episode 4 a bit over a minute in, partially hidden below a material cowl. This Easter egg additionally seems in Flanagan’s 2021 horror sequence Midnight Mass.
• This is not actually an Easter egg, however a enjoyable truth: Episode 1 of The Midnight Club broke the Guinness World Record for “most scripted jump scares in a single television episode” with 21 situations of the basic horror trope.

Is The Midnight Club based mostly on a real story?

Yes! The story of The Midnight Club relies on Christopher Pike’s younger grownup novel of the identical title. The tales the members of The Midnight Club inform one another are drawn from Pike’s different novels, together with The Wicked Heart, Gimme a Kiss, See You Later, Witch, Road to Nowhere and The Eternal Enemy.

Pike drew inspiration for The Midnight Club from a real story. In 1993, a younger most cancers affected person requested him to jot down a narrative about her and the youngsters in her ward, who had began a “Midnight Club.” “They would meet at midnight and discuss my books,” Pike stated in a Netflix press launch. Pike gave Ilonka Pawluk a Polish title in honor of the younger affected person, who additionally had a Polish title. Unfortunately, regardless of his greatest efforts, Pike was unable to complete the e book earlier than she died.

Is Brightcliffe Hospice an actual place?

The Brightcliffe home itself would not really exist. While a portion of the home’s facade was arrange on the filming web site in Pitt Meadows, Vancouver, nearly all of the outside was created by means of VFX magic. According to a Netflix press launch, the Zoic Studios results crew scanned a home in Maine because the VFX foundation for Brightcliffe’s gothic exterior.