Yahoo Movies Mike Flanagan answers The Midnight Club season 2 burning questions after show cancellation
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Midnight Club.
Netflix may have officially closed the book on The Midnight Club, but series creator Mike Flanagan is answering viewers' burning questions about how season 2 would have played out after season 1 ended on a cliffhanger.
"I'm very disappointed that Netflix has decided not to pursue a second season of THE MIDNIGHT CLUB," Flanagan wrote in a blog post published to Tumblr. "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, so you can know what might have been, learn the fates of your favorite characters, and know the answers to those dangling story threads from the first season."
Based on the various works of author Christopher Pike, The Midnight Club starred Iman Benson as Ilonka, a college hopeful who is diagnosed with cancer. She goes to live at Brightcliffe Hospice, which markets itself as a home for terminally ill kids who want to transition on their own terms. Ilonka soon joins the Midnight Club, a gathering of the teens at Brightcliffe who share ghost stories — each one an adaptation of a different Pike horror novel — and look for signs of life beyond death.
Eike Schroter/Netflix The cast of Netflix's 'The Midnight Club'
Word came Thursday that Netflix had canceled The Midnight Club after a single season. The news coincided with a separate announcement that Flanagan and producing partner Trevor Macy had signed a multiyear deal to make projects for Amazon Studios, which likely had something to do with the fate of the show. The Fall of the House of Usher will now be the last Flanagan series to come out of his initial deal with Netflix.
Among the major revelations Flanagan let loose about the now-scrapped Midnight Club season 2 is that Pike's Remember Me would have been an integral part.
Ilonka was to begin a serialized story based on this tale about a girl who's pushed from a balcony and seeks to solve her own murder as a ghost. Taking place over five episodes, the story was meant to help Ilonka's love interest Kevin (Igby Rigney) stay alive longer as his condition worsened, but it would really be a vehicle for Ilonka to accept the fact that she's going to die.
"But this is the coolest part… the lead character of Ilonka's story wouldn't be played by Ilonka. She'd be played by… Anya," Flanagan wrote, referring to Ruth Codd's character.
The vignettes of the show that dramatize the kids' horror stories commonly star the actor who's playing the character telling the story. But Flanagan said it was important for Codd to play the lead of Ilonka's story "because this is how we live on, isn't it? In the minds of those we leave behind. And Ilonka would use REMEMBER ME as a way to imagine her dear friend Anya, waking up as a ghost, navigating the afterlife."
He continued, "And this sets up one of the best mechanisms of the show - even if a character dies, as long as they're remembered by members of the club, they live on in their stories."
Flanagan tied up many of the story threads dangling from season 1, including the reveal that the janitor, played by Robert Longstreet, is really the spirit of Death and Heather Langenkamp's Dr. Stanton is really the daughter of the original Paragon cult leader who also wrote the cult journal Ilonka found in season 1.
Eike Schroter/Netflix Chris Sumpter on 'The Midnight Club'
Flanagan also provided answers for the Living Shadow, the Mirror Man, and the Cataract Woman that would have tied into the ending of season 2.
The Shadow is the "unknown," Flanagan wrote. "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."
Season 2 would have ended with Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota), Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), Kevin, and Ilonka all dying from their illnesses. When the Shadow comes for Ilonka, she's given clarity: she and Kevin are the reincarnations of Stanley Oscar Freelan and his wife, a.k.a. the Mirror Man and the Cataract Woman, who continue to find each other and fall in love in every life they lead.
Season 2 would end with Cheri (Adia) telling a story to a Midnight Club full of kids at Briarcliffe. "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," Flanagan explained. "A story called 'The Midnight Club.'"
Read more of Flanagan's plans for season 2 on his Tumblr page.
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