And there it is: the first major character loss on The Midnight Club. It fits that “Anya” is also the first episode to feature no midnight storytelling; this is, first and foremost, a celebration of the titular character, easily the series’ strongest achievement in both acting and characterization.
Of course, you could call the first half of “Anya” a narrative. It’s the story that plays out in Anya’s brain in her final alive-but-unconscious hours, one that also honors all the other stories throughout the season. The episode begins in 1997, with Anya living a boring but physically healthy existence bagging groceries and watching TV on her nights off. It seems, at first, like Anya made a full recovery, got a prosthetic leg, and started a new life.
But even if this scenario were real, Anya’s life is far from a fantasy. She’s wracked with survivor’s guilt and scared to throw herself back into a previous passion like ballet. Her old friend Rhett won’t accept her apologies or be there for her when she needs him. More than anything, she misses her friends. One day at support group, she talks about the experience of spontaneous regression: suddenly improving from a serious disease. Anya knows that unexpected recoveries typically come down to a boosted immune system, not magic; the infection itself is what enables your body to fight it. If magic really worked, her seven friends would be there today.
As Anya learns, though, her friends are there, even if they aren’t there. This flash-forward reveals itself to be what you probably expected: a delusion, a coma dream playing out what her life might’ve looked like after a miraculous recovery. That reality breaks down the longer the dream goes on; eventually Anya begins seeing the characters from all her friends’ previous Midnight Club tales filtering in to remind her the truth. She sees the screaming girl from Natsuki’s jump-scare-heavy intro, Luke (Amesh) and Becky (Natsuki) working together at the video game store, the detective (Dr. Stanton) from Kevin’s story, the unreliable narrator of Sandra’s, Ben (Kevin) bleeding out on the ground, Dusty (Kevin again) hitting Sheila (Ilonka) with a hammer, Jake (Spence) emerging from a bathtub with a shotgun, Dana (Anya herself) cutting her wrists at the Devil’s instruction — they’re all there.
None of these characters recognize Anya as their friend because they’re not her friends; they’re fictions that originated with her friends. The “realest” image in Anya’s dream is the final one: a shadow reaching out for her from a black pool in the ceiling, coming to claim her. But before she has to go, she gets one final comfort. The real Anya is lying in the recovery room, and she can hear her friends speaking to her through the intercom in the hallway. Dream Anya hears it from her bedroom radio, crying as Natsuki shares her comforting fantasy of all eight of them recovering and spending the rest of their lives as friends. Ilonka is the last to say good-bye, telling Anya she’s sorry she failed.
After Anya is gone, the rest of the episode is aftermath. Ilonka hears some wisdom from the same orderly who comforted Natsuki after Tristan’s death, this time quoting Nietzsche and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The idea that depth of life matters more than length is empowering, and everyone can agree Anya lived deeply.
Dr. Stanton informs Ilonka that Anya left her everything, including money, but she’s seriously considering throwing Ilonka out of Brightcliffe — though Ilonka is far too wrapped up in grief and guilt to tolerate Stanton shaming her. Shasta, as usual, becomes Stanton’s indirect foil, offering Ilonka the opposite advice and encouraging her down this path. The way she explains it, the Paragon may have “gotten lost along the way,” but there was something to their embrace of the hourglass symbol — of the idea that time can always be flipped, and life can, despite everything, prevail.
At the Midnight Club, Ilonka reads out Anya’s final letter, which promises to leave a big sign if there’s an afterlife. But Stanton interrupts the meeting, revealing she’s known about and overlooked the Midnight Club all along; in fact, there was some comfort in falling asleep knowing the club was in session, with their always-changing little family eager to share as much of themselves as they can. “The sounds of stories are the sounds of life,” Stanton says, one of many wise Stanton-isms this episode. She reminds them how hard she works to grant them independence and agency. She’d hate to have to take that away.
Of course, Ilonka immediately flouts the rules by suggesting they have the funeral Anya deserves. They dump her ashes in the water, all singing “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” together. Am I missing something, or is this one of the most glaring musical anachronisms in recent TV memory? Did the ghost Anya of 1997, the year that “Good Riddance” was actually released, travel back in time two years and haunt her friends via Green Day? Is that the unambiguous sign she promised?
Luckily, that cheesy scene isn’t the end of the episode. Afterward, Ilonka and Kevin’s tension finally boils over and she starts to kiss him, but he pulls away. What he says next, though, makes for one of the most interesting Kevin moments of the show. He essentially points out that in a way, Anya’s death isn’t a particularly big deal, because they’ll all be there soon. He’s not wrong, but brushing off the impact of Anya’s death is just as much a defense mechanism as Ilonka pretending she ever could’ve prevented it. As Kevin says “fuck” and walks away, you get the sense that even he is disturbed by his words.
In the final scene of the episode, Ilonka overhears Stanton crying about Anya and opening up to someone on the phone. She also hears that while the ritual may have failed one patient, another patient might be going home! It’s a huge moment, but Ilonka doesn’t even have time to process it, because she runs into the same old lady and old man who’ve been haunting her in visions. Then, like clockwork, she passes out.
I’m curious to see where this development goes. Will the series actually confirm that the ritual works, and if so, will anyone else be able to avert their fate? Most of both “Witch” and “Anya” paint Ilonka as someone unable to accept the reality of her situation, putting her friends in danger in the process. Will this latest news teach her all the wrong lessons?
Scary Stories
• Anya imagines herself watching Order & Reprimand, an obvious parody of Law & Order, with one-liners that include, “Maybe these kids didn’t drink, but they sure got hammered.”
• Nice reappearance of Tim, but it feels so brief. Might’ve been nice to spend a couple scenes with him and Ilonka.
• We get a confirmation that Stanton does smoke weed. She also throws the Paragon diary in the fire, which surprised me a bit.
