Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Midnight Club’ is set in a hospice where eight terminally ill teenagers form the eponymous club, assembling each night to tell horror stories to each other. The stories are an escape for them, a way to talk about their fears, insecurities, and mortality, things they don’t feel comfortable talking about otherwise. With every episode, a new story is concocted by them, but slowly, they discover that the hospice has a few tales of its own to tell. By the time the season wraps up, some characters meet their end, a fortunate one gets a happy ending, and a very dangerous person is set loose on the world. And yet, a lot of things go unexplained. Here we break down the ending of the show to find out what it means for the characters. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Midnight Club Synopsis
Ilonka was on her way to graduate school and attend Harvard when she discovers that she is terminally ill. Nine months later, when her treatment stops working, the doctors declare that she doesn’t have a lot of time left. Desperate to find a cure for herself, Ilonka stumbles upon a hospice called Brightcliffe. She is intrigued by the story of a girl named Julia Jayne, who’d walked into Brighcliffe with a terminal illness and walked out of it cured after her mysterious one-week disappearance. Ilonka decides to stay at Brightcliffe too, in the hopes of finding out what it was that cured Julia.
At the hospice, she discovers that the other patients have formed the Midnight Club. They cook up scary stories and share them every midnight. There is also the talk of a thing called the Shadow, something that a couple of former patients had seen before they died. Ilonka’s roommate, Anya, is also terrorized by the Shadow, though she keeps it a secret from others. Meanwhile, Ilonka is plagued by the visions of a group of hooded people and the ghost of an old man and a woman. As she dives deeper into the mystery of Julia Jayne, some disturbing secrets about Brightcliffe come to light.
The Midnight Club Ending: How is Ballerina’s Leg Fixed? Is It a Sign From Anya?
While the Midnight Club met every night to tell stories, this isn’t what it was all about. The members of the club had promised each other that whoever died first would send a sign from the other side. Shortly after Ilonka arrives, a girl named Tristan passes away. The rest of the members wait for her to send a sign, but nothing happens. When Ilonka tells them about the old man and the woman she’s been seeing ever since her arrival in Brightcliffe, backed by Kevin, who’d seen the man, the group considers it their shared delusion and dismisses it.
After Sandra’s cancer regresses, Ilonka becomes more desperate to save herself. However, she soon discovers that Shasta is not the do-gooder she’d thought her to be. She is not only disappointed at not being able to find what she was looking for, but she also feels bad for putting other people at Brightcliffe in danger because of her actions. She decides that it would be best for her to leave the place and go back home. On Family Day, she waits for her father to arrive so that she can leave with him. But before that, she meets Rhett.
Rhett was Anya’s best friend, the one person that she wanted to mend her relationship with before dying. After her death, Ilonka had tried to reach out to him, but he had changed his number. It was only after reading Anya’s obituary that Rhett found out about Brightcliffe. Ilonka is glad to see him and gives him Anya’s things, one of which is the ballerina figure that he’d gifted her. The ballerina had a broken leg, and Anya had always fixated on how it was the same leg that she had lost. When Rhett sees it, he notices that the leg has been fixed. It’s as if it was never broken at all. How did that happen?
Considering that the ballerina was one of Anya’s most prized possessions, it would make sense that she tried to send a sign through it. She’d said that if she sent a sign, it wouldn’t be something vague like a whisper that could be dismissed by other explanations. It would be loud and clear so that everyone knew that it was she who sent it. Nothing gets clearer than fixing the ballerina’s leg. But does it really mean that Anya sent it?
Previously, when Spencer had heard a whisper which he thought might be Tristan’s, it turned out that Sandra was behind it. She thought that by sending a made-up sign, she could give him some hope. After the ritual they did for Anya, Sandra is cured, which she knows has disappointed Ilonka, who was hoping that it would work for her. As she leaves, she encourages her not to give up hope. Maybe, Sandra thought that Ilonka needed a sign, so she replaced the broken ballerina with a brand-new one. She knew that this would definitely catch everyone’s attention, and a sign from their beloved Anya would surely boost all of their morale, especially Ilonka’s.
While it is easier to believe that it was Sandra, it would be rather cruel of her to do such a thing again. She knew how unacceptable it was to send a fake sign to Spencer. She’d learned her lesson and would probably refrain from doing such a thing again. This means that there is a possibility that it is Anya’s sign from the other side.
Is Georgina Stanton a Member of the Paragon?
While Brightcliffe is known to the world as a place where terminally ill kids are cared for, the building has a fascinating history, one that leaves its residents wondering about a lot of things. The place initially belonged to a couple and then fell into the hands of a cult called the Paragon. It was years after their departure that Stanton bought it and turned it into a hospice. Ilonka read up on the entire history of the place before she arrived there, but there was still so much that she didn’t know, especially about the Paragon. She discovers that the cult used a half-filled hourglass as their symbol. Ilonka finds it in different places— inside the elevator, on the trees in the nearby forest, and on Shasta’s hand. In the final scene, we find the same symbol on Georgina Stanton’s neck. Does this mean that she is a member of the Paragon?
The Paragon was formed by a woman who called herself Aceso, after one of the five Greek goddesses related to health and healing. Her young daughter was also part of the group, and she was given the title of Athena. While Aceso was completely taken over by the idea that Brightcliffe held mystical energy and could actually be used to heal people, her daughter saw how her mother was simply losing her mind. When she realizes that Aceso’s blood sacrifice is going to stretch to human sacrifice, she decides to put a stop to it. She calls the cops on her mother, which leads to the disbanding of the cult.
Years later, Julia Jayne finds Aceso, but there is no sign of Athena. No one knows what happened to her. It is in the final scene that her fate is revealed. The mark on Stanton’s neck confirms that she is, in fact, Athena. Considering that she was still a teenager when she stopped her mother, and the events in the series take place roughly forty years after that, Stanton fits the age bracket that Athena would be in. Throughout the series, we also notice that Stanton knows more about the Paragon than she reveals. She is also alarmed when Ilonka finds Athena’s journal and is very angry with her when she lets Shasta inside Brightcliffe.
While her mother was more into blood sacrifice and whatnot, Athena actually hoped to help people. Years after she left the Paragon, and especially after the death of her son, Athena was moved to do something for young people with terminal illnesses. While she didn’t approve of the sacrifice, it could be that she believed that Brightcliffe had some magical powers. It was also her home for a while, and it would make sense that she came back to the place when she thought about helping and healing people. Her mother had tainted the reputation of the place, and Athena hoped that by turning it into a place to help people, she could wash off that stain not only from Brightcliffe but also from herself. So, as Georgina Staton, a name that she probably took after her escape from the Paragon, she set about doing something good for the children and herself.
What Happened to Shasta?
When we first meet Shasta, she appears to be a warm and welcoming person who is only interested in embracing nature and its gifts and helping others. Ilonka immediately takes to her, and because of her own reservations about Stanton, she doesn’t tell her about Shasta. If she had, then Stanton would have immediately warned her to stay away from the seemingly friendly woman.
It takes some time, but Ilonka eventually figures out that Shasta is Julia Jayne. It is exciting and hopeful for her because Shasta assures her that the ritual really works. Desperate to be cured of her illness, Ilonka agrees to take part in a sacred ritual. It isn’t until Stanton interferes that she discovers that Shasta’s ritual was the same blood sacrifice that Aceso had performed, and it wasn’t to cure Ilonka. Turns out that whatever Julia did to cure herself in ’68 is not effective anymore. Stanton explains that she, much like Sandra, was simply lucky but refused to believe it. Now that her cancer was back, she was holding on to the same beliefs that had driven her to seek out Aceso. She is ready to do whatever it takes and isn’t beyond killing a teenager who is already dying.
Before Shasta can complete the ritual and kill Ilonka and the other four women she brought with her, Stanton intervenes. Ilonka doesn’t drink the poison, but the other women do. Now that she is caught and her ritual is disrupted, Shasta makes a run for it. Instead of running after her, Stanton stays behind to help the women and saves their lives. We don’t see Shasta after that, but it is unlikely that she has strayed too far from Brightcliffe. She really believes that the place holds the magic to heal her, and according to Stanton, had already tried breaking into the hospice multiple times. Of course, Shasta doesn’t tell this to Ilonka in all the time they have a chat about Brightcliffe, but her resentment towards Stanton and how she is keeping the secrets and the magic of the place all to herself says a lot about her situation. Considering that the story of ‘The Midnight Club’ isn’t over yet, it is fair to say that it isn’t the last we’ve seen of Shasta. She’ll be back until she gets what she wants or dies trying.
Read More: Who Are the Old Lady and the Old Man in The Midnight Club? [Spoiler]
