The Midnight Club is the latest spooky Netflix series from Mike Flanagan, with horror fans tuning in and bracing themselves for more scares and eerie moments as we follow a group of teens living together in a hospice.
Things at Brightcliffe Hospice start out normal enough, with the group gathering to tell each other stories and support each other through their respective diagnoses, but things soon take a dark turn and Mike Flanagan seeks to terrify audiences once again.
Brightcliffe's newest patient Ilonka is led down a dangerous path in search of a cure, leading her to uncover some dark secrets involving cults, poisonings, and ghosts, taking us on a wild ride as we uncover the truth about what's really going on here.
There are plenty of unexpected twists throughout the Netflix series, and lots of questions to be answered such as hospice owner Dr. Georgina Stanton and the secrets she keeps.
So read on to find out what happened at the end of The Midnight Club but be warned as there are spoilers and some dark themes ahead.
The Midnight Club ending explained: Who is The Paragon?
As mentioned above, cults come into play in The Midnight Club where we learn about The Paragon, a cult that had a reputation for sacrificing some of its members in order to draw on the power of ancient Greek goddesses for healing, and are closely linked to Brightcliffe Hospice.
Throughout the course of the series, Ilonka is determined to find a cure and become healthy enough to pursue her dreams of attending Stanford University. Upon being admitted to Brightcliffe, Ilonka has a lead that she thinks can help her.
She was trying to track down Julia Jayne, a former patient who miraculously recovered from cancer during her stay there back in 1968. This is where the Paragon come into play, as Julia Jayne had borrowed from their teachings and they used to reside at Brightcliffe, where they used controversial methods in order to cure others.
Julia Jayne also founded the original Midnight Club, which this new group of patients has mirrored, so she's very influential, especially to Ilonka who wants to learn more about her to find out how she was healed.
Ilonka is successful in her search, as it is revealed that Julia Jayne has been here this whole time, assuming the name of Shasta and living in a commune close to Brightcliffe.
Now Julia Jayne's real identity has been exposed, she promises Ilonka that she can heal her and her friends. Desperate to be cured, Ilonka accepts Julia's offer and sneaks her and three other women into Brightcliffe after the Midnight Club party has gone to bed.
Julia claims that Brightcliffe's location was spiritually imperative to healing and that five sisters were needed to complete the ritual, mirroring that of the ancient Greek goddesses.
It is later revealed that Julia has been manipulating Ilonka the entire time, using her vulnerability to sneak back into Brightcliffe so that she could perform the ritual again and heal herself because whatever she did back when she was first diagnosed didn't have long-term effects and her cancer is back.
Julia Jayne has certainly exposed herself as a ruthless individual, who is happy to sacrifice a dying teenager if it means getting her health back, to the point where she even attempts to poison Ilonka. She passes round tea as part of the ritual, but Dr. Stanton steps in and warns Ilonka not to touch it.
Ilonka manages to avoid deadly poisoning, Dr. Stanton lets Julia escape and it's not known where she's gone after she fled the scene so her fate has been left on a cliffhanger for now.
Who is Dr. Georgina Stanton?
Julia Jayne isn't the only mysterious woman involved in The Midnight Club, as the finale definitely exposed some dark truths about Brightcliffe's founder, Georgina Stanton.
At face value, Dr. Stanton is a caring person who wants to treat young people, following the death of her son to cancer. But we soon learn that there's more to her than meets the eye, and she knows more than she initially lets on.
Ilonka asked Dr. Stanton about The Paragon, and she denied knowing anything about them, but it is later revealed that she has been fending off Julia Jayne and is well aware of the cult and its teachings.
In fact, she could be closely linked to The Paragon as a cliffhanger reveal showed that she has the hourglass marking of the cult tattooed under her wig, which she keeps hidden from public view.
Though The Midnight Club has not confirmed Georgina's affiliations with the cult, it is likely she could be related to the defunct Paragon leader Regina Ballard, who went by the name Aceso.
We know that Aceso had a daughter named Athena, who rescued the children from The Paragon, where she took them to safety and alerted the authorities to her mother's practices, to put an end to her killing spree.
So Athena rejected her mother's cult, and with Georgina stepping in to help Ilkona, does this mean she's actually Aceso's daughter? Right now, it's all speculation so we can't say for sure...
What happened to the Brightcliffe residents?
Of course, The Midnight Club centers around the teenagers living there, so it's only right we recap what happened to them at the end of the series.
One of the biggest tragedies in the series is the death of Anya, which is sudden and shocks everyone at Brightcliffe. She had been living at the hospice the longest, losing her leg to cancer, and eventually succumbs to her illness much to the devastation of those around her.
The group made a pact that the first one to go should send a sign from the beyond, and it's implied they got what they wanted after Ilonka finds a miraculously repaired ballerina figurine that belonged to Anya.
The figurine was a gift from Anya's best friend Rhett and had been broken during an argument, so there's no logical explanation for why it's now suddenly intact... unless Anya's spirit had something to do with it?
The rest of the residents survived the entirety of The Midnight Club, and we should expect to see them again if the Netflix series is renewed for a second season.
Anya and fellow patient Sandra took part in a ritual, and it's suggested that the latter may have recovered from her illness, with Dr. Stanton passing on the news to Sandra who we saw leaving Brightcliffe at the end of the season.
Sandra's cancer was claimed to be a "misdiagnosis" as the lab result and tests confirm that she was sick but not terminal came before the ritual, but we're not entirely sure what's going on and if there are more surprises in store.
The first season of The Midnight Club has left us with a lot of questions, but with no word on whether season 2 is on the cards, we'll have to wait patiently to find out more.
