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Recap / Are You Afraid Of The Dark Season 6 The Tale Of The Secret Admirer

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"It's payback time, superstar!"
In a game of "Secret Confessions," Megan reads aloud several typed messages. Anonymous notes can be supportive - but what if they warned of something evil? Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls this story "The Tale of the secret Admirer."

In her bag, Meggie Evans finds a crumpled envelope. Inside, a hand-printed note invites her to the wood shop. At a row of lockers outside the wood shop, she approaches Nick, whose friends Bucky and Moose then arrive. One of them snatches Meggie’s note. Nick hands it back to Meggie, and gently disclaims authorship.

At home, a dejected Meggie softly declines an offer of a trip to the Scoop for ice cream. As night falls, Meggie hears a clatter. The lights fail. At the front door sound two urgent knocks. Outside, no one is there - but on the doorstep is another envelope. Inside is another note, with the same message. She locks the door.

The bathroom door swings open. In the moonlight, she finds the bathroom empty. Its door swings closed behind her. The cabinet mirror is defaced with dark red stains, which, beneath a huge heart-shape, form a repeat of the message. In fear, Meggie looks away - and, behind the shower curtain, sees a tall silhouette. She screams, and flees downstairs.

She unlocks the front door, and wrenches it open. Someone is on the doorstep. Meggie yelps in fright - but it's only Nick, here to apologise for his friends' behaviour. He hurries upstairs, closely followed by Meggie. As they reach the landing, the lights return. Nick wrenches back the shower curtain - to find a hanging pair of Mr Evans's long johns. The bathroom mirror is now clean. With a merry farewell, Nick leaves.

At the bathroom sink, Meggie wets her face, and dabs it with a towel. In the mirror, someone is standing behind her. The bathroom light fully illuminates a young man in a leather jacket. The right side of his head, bereft of hair and features, is a tortured mess of charred black flesh. Meggie screams. Her returned parents hurry upstairs. The apparition has gone.

Next day, at school, in Nick's locker, a note threatens to hurt him if he doesn't stay away from Meggie. Nick finds Meggie; urges her not to fear this cowardly antic, and emphatically resolves not to stay away. Emboldened, she leans forward and kisses his cheek. Just then, Bucky and Moose arrive, and laughingly claim to have bet money on Nick’s ability to win a kiss. Shocked, Nick rebukes the two. Humiliated, Meggie runs off.

That afternoon, Nick returns to Meggie’s door, and denies any part of the spiteful bet. Another note summons her to the wood shop tonight. Nick goes off to meet the note-sender. In the kitchen, Mr Evans sees Meggie’s bag. He notes it to have once belonged to Meggie’s mother - whom he now addresses as Meggie; her school nickname. Young Meggie shows them the note. Mrs Evans peers at it. Disturbed, she bustles out. Meggie presses her dad for explanation. He reluctantly explains. When they were at school, delinquent Teddy Mars sent her mother notes. In the wood shop, Meggie's father found Teddy with a lacquered wooden heart. He started shoving the young Mr Evans, who was eventually forced to shove back. Teddy hit his head on the drying lamp, which broke, and ignited the lacquer. The explosion threw Mr Evans out of the room, and killed Teddy.

Nick reaches the double doors of the wood shop. Inside, behind him, the open door slams shut. All around the room, equipment rattles furiously. Nick runs into the finishing room. Atop a workbench, are mounted two pink-painted wooden hearts. In the shadows beyond is a tall, shaded figure. By itself, the handle of a nearby gas pipe swivels. Gas pours into the room. In the shadows, the apparition laughs. Nick falls to the floor. Above him, the bulbs of the drying lamp ignite. The disfigured apparition steps into the drying lamp's pink glow. Outside the wood shop, Meggie desperately shoves at the double doors. From by the wall, she lifts a fire bucket, and smashes it into the window, which shatters…

The ghost of Teddy advances, crowbar in hand. As Teddy prepares to swing the crowbar, he sees the door rattle. Coughing, Meggie stumbles into the room, and helps up Nick. Teddy desperately asks Meggie if she returns his love. Meggie calmly replies in the negative. With a howl of raging despair, Teddy swings the crowbar at a bulb. In that instant, Meggie and Nick sprint for the door. They leap out, just in time to evade an explosion which roars across the finishing room.

On closure of her tale, Megan reads a note addressed to Quinn - which jokingly calls him a dork. With chuckles all round, Megan gives him a consolatory pat on the shoulder.

This episode provides examples of:

  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Averted with Meggie, as well as her mother Maggie. Meggie is creeped out that this burnt-face ghost wants to go out with her, whilst Maggie was never comfortable with Teddy's advances to begin with.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: The flesh of Teddy's face is graphically burnt.
  • Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A gender inversion; sorrowful, frightened Meggie is soothed by jolly, caring Nick.
  • Brutal Honesty: This is how Meggie is able to get Teddy's ghost to leave her alone once and for all: by telling him the cold hard truth that she doesn't feel the same way he does for her.
  • Generation Xerox: Meggie is said to closely resemble her mother at that age.
  • Haunted Technology: By spectral means, the notes, unseen by their recipients, arrive instantaneously. When manifest, Teddy, by force of will, controls the wood shop's electronic devices.
  • History Repeats: In life, Teddy tried to woo an unwilling girl, only to confront her "Super Star" crush in the woodshop. A generation later, his ghost tries to woo the girl's unwilling daughter, and confronts her Lovable Jock crush in the woodshop. And in both instances, what cuts him off from the mortal plane is when he gets caught in a small gas explosion.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Downplayed. On learning Meggie not to reciprocate his feelings, Teddy withdraws from the material world - but with a gesture of helpless rage, which causes a small gas explosion.
  • Jerk Jock: Nick averts this, have genuine respect and even affection for Megan. His "friends" Moose and Bucky fit the bill, however.
  • Jump Scare: In the bathroom, Meggie, euphoric from her encounter with Nick, looks up, and sees, in the mirror, the reflection of a disfigured ghost.
  • My Greatest Failure: A self-defensive shove triggered an explosion fed by lacquer, killing Teddy and leaving Mr Evans traumatised.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: In the dark, empty house, Meggie hears ominous knocking.
  • Not So Similar: When Megan's mom tries to comfort that she went through the same thing she did, Megan tearfully points out that she has no idea what her experiences are like. True enough, no two high school experiences are exactly the same.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Nick, having seen the top shelf of his locker mere seconds ago, looks again to find another phantom note.
  • Shout-Out: Haunting of a school by the spirit of a young tearaway who died in a fire somewhat recalls Hello Mary-Lou: Prom Night II - whose writer, Ron Oliver, directed much of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and wrote two episodes.

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