YMMV / The Midnight Club (2022)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Shasta once she's revealed as Julia, and actually just out to use Ilonka for a ritual to heal herself, is dealt with pretty easily; Stanton just interrupts the ritual, gets medical assistance for the other sacrifice victims and lets Julia get away with a hand wave that she's tried to do this multiple times and there's no point setting the police on her.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Shasta being Julia Jayne is easy to figure out from the very first second you see the character.
  • Similarly, Dr. Stanton actually being Athena is also very easy to figure out, both due to her hatred of everything related to the Paragon cult and the fact that by the end of the story there aren't a lot of other people who could fill that role.
• Epileptic Trees: The biggest fan theory surrounding the series is that Shasta isn't actually Julia but Aceso in her body. Many hints towards it include - Shasta talks about her love of plants and Aceso killed people with plants around the property, in the finale's flashback Aceso talks quite similar to how Shasta does, Shasta always calls Stanton by her full name the way a mother would, and how Aceso calls Julia a "bright girl" the way Shasta does to Ilonka.
• Evil Is Cool: The devil in "The Two Danas", as played by Heather Langenkamp, covered in tattoos of the souls she's collected and with a very stylish wardrobe. She also doesn't need to trick people - she gives them exactly what they ask for, warning them the whole time, and still winning in the end.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Dana Two in "The Two Danas" is the Evil Twin, with a typical 'bad girl' look not unlike a Biker Babe. While her very existence makes Dana One's life miserable, there's no denying that Ruth Codd looks great as a bad girl.
• Jerkass Woobie: Many of them, but several stand out.
  • Anya is rude, obnoxious and sometimes outright cruel to Ilonka but once her backstory is revealed - she destroyed a promising dance career through simple teenage rebellion, lost both her parents in a car accident and drove her best friend away when he tried to help her - it's impossible to not feel sorry for her.
  • Sandra is a borderline fundamentalist, and seems determined to force her religion on everyone, but it soon becomes clear that she's that way because religion is all that she has to hang onto. And when she offends Spence, she is initially blaming everyone else, but realises her mistake and seems genuinely sorry for what he's had to go through.
  • Spence himself is rough and acerbic to everyone but, given that he's a gay teenager with AIDS in the mid-90s, you can easily understand that attitude. Especially when it's shown that his mother won't even visit him on Family Day.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The prospect of the ritual working and Anya surviving isn't immediately a red flag, though the circumstances of the episode in which it happens are a little suspect. When Anya tells her support group that the other teens died soon after it becomes immediately obvious something else is going on, as it's unlikely that the entire cast would be killed offscreen.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Per Word of God, the series is basically Are You Afraid of the Dark? for adults, with the titular Midnight Club being inspired by the latter's Midnight Society.
• Tear Dryer: In the final episode, when telling the end of the "Witch" story, Ilonka can't continue past the part where Imani sacrifices herself to save Scottie, as the reality that she won't be cured hits her. Cherie continues the story for her, declaring that Imani's friends built a memorial for her and Ben. Amesh chimes in and clarifies that Imani and Ben were indeed truly in love, despite their brief time together, and the memorial is shown to be on the side of the lake that Imani had walked by with her mother. Natsuki adds in that Scottie laid Imani's ashes in the lake, and the friends all briefly see a vision of her in the afterlife. So moved, Ilonka finishes the story; clarifying that Imani, her mother and Ben are Together in Death and walk among the fireflies together, finishing with a beautiful line.
  "And there were many faces Imani didn't know, but somehow her heart knew them all. And so the path continued, and Imani continued. Because that's what people do - they go on. Her friends would never know if what they saw was just their imagination, but if it was a dream, it was one they all shared. And nothing is more real than that."

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