The seventh and last episode of Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams follows Valdya, one of the best diamond appraisers in all of Jakarta, as she assesses a piece of diamond that has been flagged by the customs department. One day, while making her way out of the office, she comes across a mysterious woman who compliments Valdya’s eyes (and Asmara Abigail’s eyes are truly stunning) and tells her that she met someone who had eyes just like hers. When Valdya asks about that individual’s identity, the woman says nothing. But she does promise that they’re going to meet again. Later on, it’s revealed that Valdya’s sister, Dara, went missing a long time ago, and the guy who used to date her back in the day, Rendy, is now dating Valdya, and they are about to get married. And as their wedding date gets closer, Valdya starts getting skeptical about her union with Rendy and becomes more interested in finding Dara. When she discovers a pen drive attached to a picture of Dara and herself, she dives headfirst into the rabbit hole that took her sister away from her and finds something sinister festering in the underworld.
Spoiler Alert
Valdya Breaks Up With Rendy
In episode 7 of Nightmares and Daydreams, Valdya’s personal investigation into the disappearance of Dara starts with the files in her secret pendrive, where she finds a job application that’s addressed to P.O. Box 888. When she tries to get more details about the location from the internet (I don’t think Knoowble is an actual search engine), she hits a dead end. She finds some digital newspaper files, and that’s where she gets the exact location of the aforementioned P.O. Box. When she tries to get ownership of P.O. Box 888, she is told that it has already been taken by an anonymous individual. Apparently, this individual rented it almost 100 years ago and bought it off 40 years ago. So, it’s not a joke. The employee at the post office says that he can’t reveal the identity of the owner of 888, but since one other person has inquired about it, he is willing to give their contact details to Valdya. Since she is desperate for any kind of clue, she takes down those contact details and heads to their home. There she finds a woman called Ratna, and she lives with her son and her physically challenged husband, Adi.
Valdya is met with hostility, but when she says that she is looking for her sister, who went missing after applying for the job that’s linked to P.O. Box 888, Ratna eases up. She says that Adi used to work for the National Research Agency, but five years ago, he was found in a pool of his own blood with a hole in his head. The last thing that he said was that they needed to go on the run to avoid getting killed, and then he stopped talking. Hence, Ratna has been constantly on the move to avert this unknown threat. After recovering, Adi wrote down “P.O. Box 888” and screamed hysterically, thereby causing Ratna to believe that the threats Adi was hinting at were true. Ratna never complained to the police because she doesn’t want to kick the hornet’s nest. When Valdya shows Dara’s photo to Adi, he breaks down. Valdya takes their leave but comes back with the cops. When they enter the premises where Ratna used to live, they find nothing there. Instead of dropping the case, Valdya decides to double down on her investigation by going after the mysterious woman she met earlier, especially after she randomly showed up on the street and then disappeared. Rendy doesn’t want Valdya to lose herself in this quest. Since Rendy isn’t willing to believe in Valdya, she decides to call it quits with him.
Valdya and the rest of the applicants are gassed.
Valdya sees the mysterious woman in her nightmare. This somehow motivates her to simply fill out the job application that Dara had filled out and then follow the mail to its destination (yes, the job doesn’t take online applications) in the hopes that it’ll take her to Dara. Valdya gets a box in the post office where the 888 box exists. The employee at the office realizes that Valdya is up to something. He had given her a subliminal warning about meddling with stuff that isn’t “good,” and he warns Valdya again that if she doesn’t learn how to let go of the past, the consequences are going to be disastrous. Since Valdya desperately wants to find Dara (or at least learn what happened to her), she doesn’t heed this guy’s warnings, and she keeps stalking the 888 box because now she has an excuse to visit the post office. One fine day, two ominous-looking gentlemen show up and take the job applications out of the 888 box. Valdya finds those guys’ car and hides in its trunk.
When the car stops, Valdya finds herself in an underground parking space. She tries to open the door that leads to the building but fails since she doesn’t know the code. She thinks about notifying Rendy about her location but then chooses not to. When she emerges from her hiding spot, she notices a bunch of people waiting in the elevator. Upon entering the lift, she learns that all of them have applied for the job and have miraculously arrived there at the same time. While talking about the vagueness of the job and their personal attributes, one of the applicants figures out that they are there because each of them has a unique body part that they’ve optimized through rigorous training. The soccer player has a good heart and strong legs. The swimmer, too, has a healthy heart and powerful arms and legs. The chef has a sensitive tongue. The singer has amazing vocal cords and a diaphragm. The violinist has fantastic fingers. The researcher has a well-developed brain. Valdya has stunning eyes. And the adult film actor is well-endowed. As soon as they figure this out, the elevator comes to a stop, and all of them are knocked out with some kind of anesthetic gas.
Did Valdya find Dara?
When Valdya regains consciousness, she finds herself tied to a chair that is in a dungeon and is facing a massive dinner table. The violinist’s hands have been chopped off, and her fingers are being served to the guests. Amongst them is Adrian, from episode 3 of the show, which gives away the fact that these are the demons from Agartha, and they are using the joblessness in Indonesia to attract the best of the best to their lair and then eat them, literally. After they are done with the violinist’s fingers, the researcher’s head is brought in, and his brain is served to the guests (which is clearly a homage to the scene from the 2001 movie Hannibal). Then the porn star’s “Johnson” is served. This causes Valdya to lose consciousness once again. When the waiter proceeds to take her to the serving table, Valdya makes a valiant attempt to escape, but she fails. Before eating Valdya’s eyes, the monsters reveal that they’ve killed Dara and eaten her eyes. Valdya dreams about talking to Dara, who motivates her not to give up.
At the end of Nightmares and Daydreams episode 7, Wahyu (from episode 4), Dewi (from episode 5), Ali (from episode 6), Panji (from episode 1, Rania (from episode 3), and Laksmi (the mysterious woman who has been following Valdya) enter the dungeon and put up an amazing fight against the monsters. Wahyu reveals that they are a group called the Antibodies, and they are duty-bound to protect humanity from the monsters emerging from Agartha. Apparently, the monsters are as old as humans, but they were placed in the underworld, and that’s why they envy the surface dwellers. In every decade, they find new ways to entice humans and eradicate them, thereby paving the way to their ascension. Wahyu says that if they want to stop these monsters, they’ve to work together. Valdya, who is furious about losing her sister to these demons, vows to be a member of the Antibodies and eliminate anything that threatens humankind.
