See You Later
Episode 5 of The Midnight Club begins with Ilonka giving Anya CPR. Thankfully, she regains consciousness, throwing up on the floor. However, she’s still seeing the shadow up on the wall. All of this seems to be as a result of her overdosing on her meds. ..
We know from across the season that Anya has been popping more pills and smuggling them out. As for Ilonka, she’s in the treatment room and shrugs off my questions about what she saw, claiming it’s nothing.
According to the Paragon Diary, Athena was a very brave girl who fought against the cult and helped free other girls from it. She also had a lot of wisdom and knowledge, which is why she’s considered a great leader. Her kids died in the process, but she still continues to lead this group today in order to help others.
Aceso, a cult that practiced blood rituals in the name of Greek Gods Athena, had children who were taken by Julia Jayne when the cult was raided. It is unknown what happened to them after this. Jayne has been connected to Aceso through her involvement with the cult and her connection to the children. ..
Ilonka believes Julia found the book of rituals and managed to walk out healed, seemingly enacting the same rituals that Aceo did all those years ago. ..
Cheri gets Ilonka a gift – a wig. Given she’s been reminiscing sadly about wanting long hair while getting Kevin ready for prom, it’s a nice gesture.
The group of friends celebrate Amesh’s death day by eating hash brownies and playing PlayStation.
Natsuki makes an appearance and admits that she has clinical depression. Her mother always wrote this off as her being hysterical but of course what happened to Anya and Tris have triggered her again in the worst way.
Ilonka follows the old woman into a dark hallway, where she suddenly turns and starts to run. Ilonka tries to pursue her, but the woman is too fast for her. She falls to the ground, and before Ilonka can do anything, she’s killed.
She heads through the rooms and ends up finding herself in the Midnight Club. The footage disappears, and we return to the group. This time though, Spence and Ilonka both talk about their spooky experiences.
Today, Amesh tells us about his love for writing. He admits that he has some things within this that he loves, and that is why he enjoys writing. ..
Luke is our protagonist, and he asks out a girl called Becky at the counter. When she rejects him, Billy Butcher happens to approach him, asking about his experience with gaming. It’s not really Butcher from The Boys, it’s basically a budget version of him, called Vincent.
Vincent is a V-Com employee who has been working on a near-future strategy game called Decision. It’s too real, and every decision seems to end in disaster. However, if Luke could somehow crack the formula and beat the game, Vincent promises to split the money he’ll make off it with him.
In the end of the game, Luke is revealed to be the protagonist, and he has survived on board the ISS for some time. He tells a strange story of a white light that ended the game. It is unknown what caused this flash of light, but it seems to have been some sort of event that saved Luke’s life.
Apparently, the white light are aliens who whisk the surviving humans back in time to try and change something that went wrong in the past. Luke has been constructing an ending for the ISS where it crashes into Earth, which is what he did to get here. ..
It turns out that Kara is actually Becky from the future while Vincent is Luke from the future! Instead of actually trying to change things, the timeline is rewritten when Becky dies after being hit by a car. That, in turn, eliminates Kara from the future. As a result, the timeline is changed and Luke decides not to write the code for the game either.
Ilonka is up in her room, trying to get the sheets off of Anya. She’s wet, and it seems to be as a result of the trauma she’s been experiencing.
Anya, a high school student, tells her story of how she killed her parents in a car accident. She started using heroin after the accident and then her best friend Rhett left her. A few months later she was diagnosed with an addiction to heroin and was given a statue of a ballerina as an intervention gift. ..
Anya is worried about the future. She doesn’t want to die, but she doesn’t know how to save herself.
The Episode Review
Although there is no horror in this episode, that is not to say there is not things to like. Namely, the story Amesh concocts up is quite good, with a nice little twist and a Back to the Future vibe to it too. However, Vincent is very much a carbon copy of Billy Butcher from The Boys, which I wrote earlier in the recap, and that is pretty distracting. ..
Anya is still the standout character of the bunch, but it’s a little frustrating that we haven’t explored the backstories of the other kids as much as hers. ..
We’ve seen a little bit for Kevin and Ilonka, but beyond that, most of these episodes are slotting into a rather formulaic feel. I hope the second half of this series actually allows us to see more of the backstory for characters like Cheri, Natsuki and Spence, because if it doesn’t, it’ll feel like a real missed opportunity.
