overnights

The Midnight Club Recap: Liminal Space

The Midnight Club

Midnight
Season 1 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 2 stars

The Midnight Club

Midnight
Season 1 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 2 stars
Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

“Midnight” is The Midnight Club in a nutshell with all the strengths and weaknesses it ever had. My initial reaction was disappointment, to be honest. I couldn’t help but feel as though the season never lived up to its full potential, even if this finale had its affecting moments.

First, let’s take a final look at the basics of the mythology, which we mostly learn in the scenes that bookend the finale. In the opening, a flashback to 1968, we see where Julia Jayne went when she disappeared from Brightcliffe for a week: to the home of Regina Ballard, a.k.a. Aceso from the Paragon. Aceso, a pariah who no longer spoke to the daughter who sabotaged her demented human sacrifice, agreed to help Julia heal on the condition that she wouldn’t speak about Aceso when she returned to Brightcliffe.

Right after the flashback, we skip to the present-day struggle with Julia, which turns out to be the most intense this finale is going to get. Dr. Stanton and Ilonka let Julia go so they can resuscitate the three women she was willing to sacrifice, and the two have a longer conversation the following day. Stanton says that, after all this time, Julia can’t accept that she was just lucky. She’s made many attempts over the years to access Brightcliffe, and now she’s turning desperately to dangerous Paragon rituals — her illness must have come back.

What I’m less clear on is this: Are we supposed to take Stanton’s explanation at face value, or is the ending reveal of her apparent past involvement in the Paragon meant to indicate that there is something to the cult’s methods? Could Stanton be Aceso’s daughter, Athena, in which case the diary she threw in the fire would be her own? If Brightcliffe really is “special” in some supernatural way, it remains vague and undefined. If Aceso really did cure Julia, it’s unclear what made her methods more effective than the other failed rituals. And if it really was just a coincidence that Julia recovered right after her return to Brightcliffe, that’s a bit cheap.

It feels as though nobody really decided how “real” the magic and horror in The Midnight Club should be. Are Ilonka and Kevin’s hallucinations really only superficially similar, a case of folie à deux? Didn’t Ilonka have visions of the Mirror Man before she came to Brightcliffe, before she was even on meds? And didn’t she feel déjà vu upon arriving, when she saw a boy on a bench whom she somehow recognized?

This lack of clarity is frustrating, especially as it relates to the characters. I can easily accept Anya’s subtle sign from beyond: Her ballet-dancer statuette with the broken leg is mysteriously fixed. That bit of ambiguity is evocative without demanding further clarification (though part of me wishes more of the series was spent on the initial premise of Midnight Club members communicating from the afterlife). I’m pickier when it comes to the mythology we’ve been asked to obsess over alongside Ilonka during the whole season.

In any event, the rushed resolution of the mythology leaves most of the hour for sappily concluding each of the individual character arcs. As I said, some of this is quite moving; I love that Amesh will get to see his parents again and introduce them to Natsuki, even if his worsening motor skills and vision indicate he could be the next to go. Spence’s mom showing up and hugging him feels right if predictable. And Sandra’s good-bye, when she admits, “I don’t know how to do this,” really makes you feel just how strange and emotional it would be to go home after six months at this place.

I figured the finale would feature a final session of the Midnight Club, but I’m not sure I was expecting such a large portion of the time to be fictional stories. Many of the episodic “horror” tales in this season were fun, creative, and insightful, but they took up more time the longer the season went on instead of less. That can be frustrating, especially if it’s the last time we’ll see these characters; ultimately, we’re spending a whole lot of time on people who, no matter their resemblance to the main cast, are not “real” in the context of the series.

There are two final stories to mostly close out the episode. First up is the conclusion to Kevin’s story about Dusty the serial killer. We learn that his compulsion to kill has been passed down from generation to generation. He’s able to just barely resist the urge to kill Sheila, burying a hammer claw in his heart to protect her from himself. Sheila, being merciful like Ilonka, hits him softly enough to spare his life, and he’s found legally not responsible because of insanity.

This must be a cathartic ending for Kevin’s friends who’ve been waiting for it for a while. But to me, there’s little it accomplishes that isn’t later spelled out in the penultimate scene, when Kevin tells Ilonka he’s always afraid of hurting the people he cares about and she says that’s no reason to be alone. The kiss between the two was always going to happen, but it’s still a little forced.

The conclusion to Ilonka’s story from “Witch” is immediately much more powerful. Ben dies, as the universe always meant him to, and Imani is forced to accept what she can’t change, just like Ilonka. What she can change is Scottie’s fate. This is where the parallels to Ilonka’s friendship with Anya really come into play: Imani failed Scottie because of her need to fix everything even when it’s like fighting gravity. Ilonka similarly failed Anya. What Imani can do for Scottie now is make a genuine sacrifice and face her own death head on. And while Ilonka similarly accepting her own death can’t bring Anya back, it somehow feels as if it is. Eventually, she’s overcome with emotion, and Cheri, followed by everyone else, chimes in to finish the story.

My feelings about Ilonka have been complicated over the course of this season; with so much of her story line focused on survival and investigation, there was little room to watch her hang out and get to know everyone. But in retrospect, as a protagonist, she has a pretty complete, thematically satisfying arc. She’s a young adult who had her whole life ahead of her until she got cancer, and it’s not exactly unreasonable to want to reverse that at all costs. But Julia’s mask-off moment made her realize, finally, just how wrong her priorities have been. And her discovery of Anya’s repaired statuette is just enough confirmation of something beyond this mortal plane to remind her Brightcliffe is where she belongs. The Ilonka who brings up her preneed to her foster dad is a changed Ilonka, more at peace.

Enough is neatly tidied up here that it’s frustrating to notice the bits that aren’t, even allowing for the possibility of a second season that ties up the remaining loose ends. What happened to Julia, the closest human character this show has to a villain? Is she on the run from the law or just back at the collective? It’s even strange, for example, that the recounting of Ilonka’s traumatizing night to her friends takes place entirely off-screen a day later, the climax of the season treated as an irresponsible but inconsequential event. And yet I still feel a lot of affection for this ragtag group — especially Anya and Sandra (seen but unseen, here but not here). They’re present in spirit and in stories, if not in flesh. But, hey, when it comes down to how much you love someone, is there really a difference?

Scary Stories

• Cheri is endearing, but there’s just not much to her character, and the fact that the show is still mentioning her love of making shit up shows how little her character really deepened over time.

• Kudos to Kevin for being honest with Katherine, though he basically just stares at her until she understands they’re breaking up. I still feel some real empathy for her, and Emilija Baranac played that scene just right.

• Love ya, Mark.

• Thanks so much for reading along! Despite some of my frustrations with this show, I’ll certainly be checking out season two if there is one, especially if it means more Heather Langenkamp.

The Midnight Club Recap: Liminal Space