‘The Midnight Club’ Episode 7 Explained: A Deep Dive Into Anya’s Story
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Midnight Club, Season 1, Episode 7, “Anya.”]
Netflix‘s The Midnight Club is filled with stories told around the group’s routine meet-up spot, but they’re coming to life for cynical cancer patient Anya (Ruth Codd) in the aptly titled seventh installment, “Anya.”
In a move that has become a signature for co-creator and executive producer Mike Flanagan, the episode delivers quite the twist. And while it may come as a surprise to some viewers, Anya’s story hints at her fate throughout the installment.
As viewers saw in Episode 6, “Witch,” Ilonka (Iman Benson) led her fellow Midnight Club members in a ritual in a last-ditch effort to create a miracle for Anya. But as the ceremony proceeded, Anya looked up in terror as shadowy hands reached for her. Did that mean the ritual worked? Did a miracle occur? When Episode 7 picks up, Anya’s undoubtedly healthier and works at a local supermarket where she’s a little distracted.
(Credit: Netflix)
It’s unclear at first if this is taking place after the miracle or is a flashback until certain signs start popping up, including the ballet studio next door, which reminds the young woman about her love for the art form but also mirrors Anya’s story told during the Midnight Club meetings, “The Two Danas.” As she tries to mimic the performers inside while looking in from the sidewalk, Anya loses her balance with her prosthetic leg.
At home, she heats up a frozen meal, watches a crime procedural, and tucks in for the night but doesn’t get much sleep when her alarm goes off at midnight. The radio clock plays a recording of a Midnight Club meeting as Kevin (Igby Rigney) says, “to those before, to those after, to us now.” She punches the button, turning the sound off before starting a new day.
As she attends a support group meeting, Anya finally reveals that this is set post-Brightcliffe after she experienced a miracle and found herself healthy once more. The only problem? She doesn’t feel whole and is just existing in the aftermath of her experience. She talks about how spontaneous regression has left her feeling chewed up and spit out.
(Credit: Netflix)
That attitude continues at her job and as she exits the market, passing a man resembling Dusty the serial killer and wielding a hammer. While this may appear to be just a coincidental happenstance, there’s more to these signs than Anya initially understands. At home, she tries calling her former best friend Rhett (Daniel Diemer), informing him about her improved health and asking for him to tell her “everything’s going to be okay.”
She doesn’t get the reassurances she’s looking for though, and she admits she’s upset that he never came to find her. After hanging up, Anya carries on with her evening but finds it difficult to sleep as a baby cries from the apartment upstairs. At her next support group meeting, the leader asks what Anya meant by saying her “friends at the time.” Anya then goes off on a tangent, saying she thought there were signs from beyond, but if magic existed, her friends would have survived.
Anya implies that the ritual worked for her, but not for any of her other friends, leaving her alone without them. But not everything is as it seems when Anya returns to work and finds a bloodied hammer among a customer’s items. When she looks up, it’s Dusty’s mother (Veronika Hadrava) with an evil look in her eye, and it’s the first real blending of Anya’s reality with the stories the Midnight Club have told each other.
(Credit: Netflix)
When she exits the market, Anya walks by a video game store and sees Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) working behind the counter. She’s relieved to see her friend, but he quickly informs her that his name is Luke, pointing to his name tag and calling Beck — Natsuki’s (Aya Furukawa) story counterpart — over. They ask Anya if she’s okay and goes to call for help, receiving assistance from the detective (played by Heather Langenkamp) who appeared in the “Gimme a Kiss” story.
But Anya bolts as more characters come to life around her, including Sandra’s (Annarah Cymone) “Gimme a Kiss” counterpart, as well as Dusty the serial killer, his girlfriend Sheila, and the witch Imani among others. When Anya walks by the ballet studio, which may or may not be coincidentally named Ms. Jane’s (perhaps after Samantha Sloyan‘s Julia Jayne?), she finds the other version of herself standing beside Langenkamp’s devil character from “The Two Danas.”
Running scared, she enters her apartment to find Spence’s (Chris Sumpter) “Gimme a Kiss” counterpart hiding in the bathtub of her burning bathroom. When Sandra’s character shoots her, Anya lands back in bed, adding to the surreal nature of this reality she’s found herself in. As she looks up at the ceiling, Anya is haunted by a dark entity that leans toward her. Rolling over, she tries to sleep off the fear, but is awoken again by the radio at midnight.
(Credit: Eike Schroter/Netflix)
This time, Anya doesn’t turn it off, and it helps viewers understand what’s actually happened because Anya’s been in a coma. The world she’s been inhabiting would seem to be her own consciousness, and the voices over the radio are the rest of the Midnight Club sharing stories with her over the intercom to the private room she’s now occupying at the Brightcliffe hospice.
On this particular evening, Natsuki leads the storytelling session, spinning an idealistic future which involves all of them becoming healthy and moving into the same apartment building. She goes on to say that Anya will get a new prosthetic leg, enroll in college, and get back into dancing. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Rhett, they end up married, living in the same home for years, having a dog, three kids, and a pink jeep with a black skull on the hood.
The future they paint for Anya includes her growing old with Rhett and having weekly potlucks with the rest of them. It’s a bright idea to be sure, but not the reality that Anya or her friends will ever truly see. When listening to the voices, Ilonka takes over noting, “It’s just you and me now.”
Speaking directly to Anya, she says, “It’s just so f**king unfair… what’s happening to you, what’s happening to us. So I hope you hear me when I say, we’re all with you in there and we always will be.” After apologizing for the fact that the ritual didn’t work the miracle they hoped for, Ilonka tells Anya that “everything’s gonna be okay.”
The assurance is all Anya needed to hear as she finally lets go and seemingly passes onto the other side, whatever that may be. The episode raises some definite questions while answering others. It offers clarity on Anya’s fate, but it also makes one wonder, what is the shadowy entity haunting her? Could it be the fear of death manifested or is it the embodiment of demons from her past threatening to pull her away?
While questions like that remain to be answered, there is a sense of peace that is reached upon Anya’s departure. Leaving her ashes and belongings to Ilonka, the club ends up sending her off by spreading her remains in the lake and singing Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” The tune which celebrates living life while you can is a perfect accompaniment and send-off for Anya, a member of the Midnight Club that continues to impact her friends throughout the season.
Let us know what you think of the twisty episode and Anya’s fate in the comments section, and check the other episodes to see what unfolds.
The Midnight Club, Season 1, Streaming now, Netflix
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