There was a kind of dichotomy that was omnipresent throughout the narrative of “The Midnight Club.” Be it the existence of the two worlds, i.e., the mortal realm and the undead realm, be it the duality of the characters (an alter ego that was accentuated by the stories they narrated), or be it the contrasting lives of the patients, before and after they had been diagnosed with the terminal disease, the dichotomy was evident all the way through. These kids, who had just entered adulthood, probably had seen so much and experienced such bizarre truths that their core had completely changed. Among all of them, Anya was probably the most convoluted person. Her personality had been shaped by some rocky experiences, and the fact that she had still maintained her sanity was a miracle in itself. She was portrayed to be this mean, unempathetic, and extremely insolent person from the exterior, who didn’t give two hoots about what the other person thought of her. It felt like it was her mission in life to offend everyone that came her way. But on the inside, she was a scared little girl who just feared the inevitable. She had seen so many deaths since she had come to Brightcliffe Hospice that it had changed her outlook on life. One night at the Midnight Club, Anya decided to take the mantle and tell the group a horror story. The story, the characters, and the world they dwelled in were all personifications of her own life.
Anya’s Story: Explained
Sometimes the very people we envy for their success and talent feel so caged in their own lives that they would do anything to break the shackles. A lot of times, people who have had extremely strict parents or a restricted childhood nurture a desire to do everything that they have been once prohibited from doing. Dana (the protagonist in Anya’s story), was a representation of the desires, needs, experiences, and insecurities of the storyteller itself. Dana was going to be a sensation. She was an extremely talented ballet dancer. She got a scholarship to the American Ballet Academy. Everything seemed perfect, but something was brewing inside Dana’s core that wanted to disturb this state of perfection. She was in such a ruinous state of mind that she didn’t care about anything or anyone. Anya said that Dana wanted to be “normal” because, for her, leading such a disciplined life devoid of any indulgences was taking a toll on her. The duality of Dana (and indirectly Anya) was brought to light when we saw her praying to the good gods to deliver her from her desires, yet something inside her wanted those desires to be fulfilled. The devil answered their prayers. Anya probably always had a lot of resentment against the almighty. That is why we see that in her story, the devil says that God never answers. Dana signed a pact with the devil. Her clone was created by the devil, and there was something that bound both of them together. Whatever bodily experience one had, it was automatically transferred and felt by the other one too. So now Dana could party and be at her ballet practice at the same time. She could see everything that life had to offer without compromising on her disciplined life. But slowly, the clone started indulging in all kinds of substance abuse. It started to have an effect on Dana’s life, and eventually, she destroyed everything that she had created after so much hard work and dedication. Her alter ego had become such an intrinsic part of her reality that it was no longer possible to differentiate between the two. The two Danas came face-to-face, and one of them died that fateful night, but we don’t know which one survived. Dana ends up losing her leg, her dream of becoming a ballerina, and most of all, her family and her best friend, Bill, who probably knew her better than anyone else.
Anya had dramatized bits and pieces of the story and changed the names of the characters, but it was pretty much what had happened in her own life. Why did she ruin her own life? What had crept inside her that she wanted to destroy everything? Well, even Anya didn’t have those answers in the end. She felt bad for losing her leg due to bone marrow cancer, but she felt even worse for losing her parents and her best friend, Rhett. She shows Ilonka, a figurine of a ballet dancer that was gifted to her by Rhett. When Rhett had asked her to stop taking drugs, she had, in a fit of rage, told him that she wouldn’t do so. The leg of the figurine had broken, and sometime after that, Anya was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Anya had, of late, started seeing a dark shadow. She believed that it came for those whose time was up. Anya was scared of dying. She feared the inevitable. She was scared of what lay in the other realm. She feared how much she would have to pay for her sins. The tough Anya, whom we knew and who was always so pragmatic in her approach, broke down in front of Ilonka. The tough exterior gave way to an insecure and scared interior that just wanted to be happy and gather the scattered bits of her past together and lead an uncomplicated life.
What Was The Meaning Of Anya’s Last Dream?
It is said that a person who is a few moments away from death experiences hallucinations and sometimes sees things that do not exist in reality. Sometimes a person who is on their deathbed feels like they have been transported to another realm, a parallel reality. Something of this sort happened with Anya too. The Paragon Cult ritual that Ilonka was trying to perform to save her friend’s life didn’t work. Anya was on her deathbed. In the 7th episode of “The Midnight Club,” we see her stuck in a dream, not able to decipher what is real and what is not. In her dream, Anya saw herself working at a retail store as a checkout attendant. Her boss advised her that in order to survive the mundanity of the job, she needed to find some goal, some activity that she was interested in. Anya felt terribly alone in her dream. She didn’t have anybody to talk to. She attended her rehab meetings, but there too, only she spoke. Anya saw that she had tried contacting her best friend, Rhett. She just wanted to hear from him that things were going to be fine. But it seemed like Rhett was still upset by whatever had transpired. He was not in the mood for reconciliation. He had moved on, and he didn’t feel any sort of attachment to her. Anya confesses that whatever she did in the past couldn’t be undone. Rhett was the only family that Anya had, and he had abandoned her. The call seemed like a cry for help. Anya always hoped that one day Rhett would come and find her, but nothing of that sort happened. After that call, Anya started feeling even more disoriented. Anya started to lose her mind. She started seeing characters from the stories of the other patients. She couldn’t decipher what was happening to her, and it all seemed chaotic. But then she heard some familiar voices. It was her friends from the Brightcliffe Hospice. The world seemed to have abandoned her, but her fellow residents at the hospice didn’t leave her side. They were still there to make sure that she was fine. They were still there even when Anya lay on her bed in a comatose state, not even knowing if their voices had reached her subconscious state of mind. They hoped that she would wake up and mock them in her patented manner. They hoped that she would live long enough to fulfill each and every desire that she had. Though Anya met her fateful end, she knew that there were a bunch of people whom she could call her family. Yes, she did have regrets, but she knew that with Ilonka, Kevin, and others by her side, she would be able to cope with it.
How Did The Statue Of The Ballerina Get Fixed?
In the 10th episode of “The Midnight Club,” we see that Rhett comes to visit Ilonka. She gave him Anya’s possessions that she had left for him. Rhett noticed that the statue of the ballerina had been fixed. The ballerina didn’t have a broken leg. Ilonka didn’t understand what had happened. She knew that till the time Anya was alive, she hadn’t fixed the leg. Anya had always said that if she could reach out from the other realm, she would do so with all her might. She said that she would let the others know what it was like. Maybe Brightcliffe hospice was the palace where the two realms intersected each other. Maybe Anya herself reached out from the other realm and fixed her stature so that the others would know that she was still there. Maybe she wanted to tell the others that she had not actually departed and was stuck somewhere in the transition. Maybe in the upcoming seasons of “The Midnight Club,” Ilonka would find a way to establish contact with Anya and all those who wanted to reach out from the parallel world.
Why Did Anya Constantly Have Visions Of The Shadow?
Before her death, Anya constantly had visions of a shadow looming inside her room. The shadow threatened Anya like a Grim Reaper waiting for her to die. However, Dr. Stanton called it a mere hallucination due to an overdose, but Anya knew what she had seen. She was not hallucinating. She had realized that her time in this realm was up, and maybe the shadow was coming to take her soul. The shadow was a personification of death. However, it could also have been possible that the shadow was of an evil spirit who wanted to “eat the years” out of people’s remaining life as told by Natsuki in her story, “Toshi no Taberu Hito.” It could have been possible that, through a ritual of the Paragon cult, a doorway to the other realm would have been opened, and somebody was feeding the patients to the evil spirits. Whatever it was, Anya knew one thing for sure: her end was near. She didn’t fear death as much as she feared what lay on the other side.
Is The Shadow Going To Kill Amesh As Well?
Probably after Anya’s death, the shadow had targeted Amesh, which was the reason why his health started to deteriorate at an increasing rate. He told Natsuki that his motor skills were declining because of which he was finding it hard to pick up and drop things and had also lost vision in one of his eyes. Amesh, in a state of horror, also revealed that he was constantly having visions of a shadow, something similar to what Tristan and Anya used to see before their deaths. He further added that the shadow sometimes resembled a person, but sometimes it was just a shape. If this shadow is the same thing that Anya used to experience, then we can speculate that it is going to take Amesh’s life in the upcoming seasons of “The Midnight Club.”
