The Midnight Club episode 1 recap/review: Who is Julia Jayne?

The Midnight Club, a hauntingly arresting and quite absorbing new horror-thriller series, made its debut on Friday, October 7, 2022, exclusively on Netflix.

The series is adapted from writer Christopher Pike's book of the same name. Leah Fong and Mike Flanagan are the creators of The Midnight Club. They have also acted as the executive producers of the suspenseful horror series, along with Julia Bicknell, Trevor Macy and Pike.

The cast list for The Midnight Club includes Iman Benson, Ruth Codd, Adia, Igby Rigney, Aya Furukawa, William Chris Sumpter, Annarah Cymone, Sauriyan Sapkota, Zach Gilford, and Heather Langenkamp, among others.

The official synopsis for the series reads:

"At a hospice for terminally ill young adults, eight patients come together every night at midnight to tell each other stories – and make a pact that the next of them to die will give the group a sign from the beyond."

Since its arrival, The Midnight Club has already received a lot of positive responses from viewers all around the world. Without further delay, let's dive in to find out how the first episode of the horror series has turned out.

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A recap/review of The Midnight Club episode 1: The Final Chapter

What happened to llonka?

The first episode of The Midnight Club begins with a young girl with a bright future named llonka, who finds out that she has Thyroid cancer. From that very moment, all her plans turn upside down. However, it is quite evident that the young girl is a fighter and determined to beat her illness.

Even when her cancer becomes terminal, she does not give up. While researching the cure for her disease, she finds a hospice named Brightcliffe. She gets to know the story of a 17-year-old girl named Julia Jayne, whose cancer was miraculously cured after she attended Brightcliffe.

This news intrigues her to take part in Brightcliffe's special program for terminally ill young adults and she ends up there.

At Brightcliffe, llonka finds eight other young patients who are also terminally ill. She immediately gets along with a patient named Kevin. However, finds it difficult to get along with her roommate Anya.

At night, she sees Anya sneaking outside the room, although it is prohibited to roam around the house at night. She follows Anya and ends up in the Brightcliffe library. To her surprise, she finds all the other patients there as well, sitting around a long wooden table. llonka stays hidden but listens to what they're saying.

Soon she realizes that they have some kind of a pact and meet there every night to tell ghost stories. At one point, while listening to one of the patients telling a story, llonka accidentally drops something and is forced to come out in front of others. Anya asks her to drink wine and tell a story.

As llonka begins to tell the story of Julia Jayne, the audience is bound to get goose-bumps. She ends the story on quite an absorbing note, with Julia getting cured and knowing when others in the hospice will die.

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How did Kevin know that Julia Jayne is not an entirely fictional character?

Later that night, Kevin confronts llonka about her story. He is sure that the main character of her story, Julia Jayne, was not completely made up. He knows it because he has seen her picture on a wall in Brightcliffe along with other former patients' pictures. He has also seen her name written above her picture.

llonka goes on to admit that the main reason for her going to Brightcliffe is Julia Jayne's story. She truly believes that she can also find a cure for her illness there.

As both Kevin and llonka leave the corridor for their rooms, a shadowy spirit is seen in the corridor of the hospice.

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Don't forget to watch The Midnight Club episode 1, which is currently streaming on Netflix.