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Netflix’s The Midnight Club is a cornucopia of all things Mike Flanagan specializes in: grief, horror, and eerie Easter eggs. While The Haunting of Hill House had us searching for all the ghosts hiding in plain sight, The Midnight Club will have you scouring the internet for old copies of Christopher Pike books. Because much like its story-obsessed heroes, almost everything about this show is a tribute to Pike’s bibliography.
Set in 1994 at the Brightcliffe Hospice, The Midnight Club follows a group of eight teenagers diagnosed with different terminal illnesses who find comfort in telling each other horror stories late at night. With tea cups in hand and stories on the tips of their tongues, they gather each midnight at the hospice’s library for spooks and scares. Here, they find a unique camaraderie in a shared love for storytelling that guides much of the show’s thematic overtones.
While their stories act as vessels for their personal fears or anxieties, they’re also all inspired by Pike’s many stories; Flanagan and co-creator Leah Fong aren’t exactly hiding this, as most episode titles are also the name of whichever Pike book the narrator is referencing.
With each Midnight Club club member being assigned at least one great story throughout the show, here’s a breakdown of the Christopher Pike books behind each — and how they all tie in together.
Daily News | Online News Kevin’s story: The Wicked Heart (1993)
Credit: Netflix
“Dusty was perfect. Perfectly, fucking crazy.” — “The Midnight Club,” episode 3
Spanning across several episodes, Kevin (Igby Rigney) reels the other club members into the world of Dusty, a teenage serial killer who can’t stop himself from murdering people because of a demonic entity that keeps him going. Sheila, Dusty’s classmate, soon becomes an object of his affection and affliction, with Dusty trying to put an end to the entity that controls him so he may save the girl he loves — from himself.
In The Midnight Club, Kevin’s story speaks to the pressures he’s feeling from his own mother and is more or less an emotional navigation of his drained sense of self. However, his tale is entirely inspired by Christopher Pike’s novel of the same name, which explores the roots of Dusty Shame’s oh-so-wicked heart and the resilient Sheila Hardolt who tries to stop him.
Daily News | Online News Sandra’s story: Gimme a Kiss (1988)
Credit: Screenshot Netflix
“It begins on a stormy night. Saturday, April the 11th.” — “The Midnight Club,” episode 4
A fan of Old Hollywood, Sandra (Annarah Cymone) takes us through the world of her film noir starring Alice, a young teen at the heart of a cluster of deaths and disappearances. There’s Sharon, her dangerously curious childhood best friend; Jake, her other best friend with a big secret; and Kirk, her ex-boyfriend and Jake’s secret lover. When Jake’s diary makes its way around the school, revealing his relationship with Kirk, scandal turns into mystery and gossip into murder, with a knife-wielding, vengeful Alice behind it all.
Sandra’s dip into a ’50s detective drama is largely inspired by another one of Pike’s books, Gimme a Kiss, though with a twist. In Pike’s story, our protagonist is Jane, a girl who spirals into a murderous rampage for revenge after her diary gets leaked. Both versions center vengeful teens with mishandled diaries and big, big secrets. Sandra’s story strays away from Pike’s a bit in order to serve another plot point in that episode — her fight with Spencer — but both versions still follow the same series of events, from boats to cabins and all the murder in between.
Daily News | Online News Amesh’s story: See You Later (1990)
Credit: Netflix
“Luke loves video games. Quite a programmer too. Already designing strategy games from his basement. But lately, the only thing on his mind is the girl at the counter.” — “The Midnight Club,” episode 5
After what would have been his death day, Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota) entertains the group with a sci-fi tale expanding across the space-time continuum. There’s traveling through time to stop the imminent end of the world, video games brimming with secret codes, and two time-trotting lovers linking it all together.
Pike’s novel of the same name is evidently the inspiration behind Amesh’s story, but its original premise is ridiculously more convoluted. Apart from time traveling and the looming threat of World War III, there are also aliens, a military gone rogue, and a whole circus of sci-fi cliches. Amesh’s version is a simple confession of what he wants most from his life: saving the day and getting the girl. Which happen to be two things he achieves in his own way by the show’s end.
Daily News | Online News Ilonka’s story: Witch (1990)
Credit: Screenshot Netflix
“Imani was a witch. Well, all the women in her family were. Far back as anyone could remember.” — “The Midnight Club,” episode 6
Imani, like Ilonka (Iman Benson), is obsessed with healing. The biggest difference between them, however, is that Imani is a witch who is gifted with a healing touch, as well as the ability to see the future using a divination technique called scrying. However, one night she goes against her mother’s strict rules and uses moonlight upon water to scry instead of sunshine, and is given a terrible vision of a future she can’t avoid or heal.
Inspired by the supernaturally inclined protagonist Julia in Pike’s novel Witch, Ilonka’s story takes the blueprint of the novel and uses it as a way to make sense of her terminal diagnosis. While she can’t navigate all her feelings around it yet, translating them through Imani’s story is an alternative. And Pike’s illustrious imagination of a curious witch who made a terrible mistake becomes a mirror of our very own Ilonka and what she’s going through.
Daily News | Online News Natsuki’s story: Road to Nowhere (1993)
Credit: Screenshot Netflix
“I call this story ‘Road to Nowhere.’ It’s about a girl named Teresa. She’s tough, she’s complicated, and she’s not easy to know. And when we meet her it’s on a night where Teresa just had to get away.” — “The Midnight Club,” episode 8
Whereas Pike’s book takes you on a much longer, more convoluted road trip, Natsuki (Aya Furukawa) uses the idea of a road trip and a creepy plot twist to describe her feelings towards life, death, and what it really means to live a day longer.
Both revolve around a steadfast girl named Teresa who’s running away from a life she no longer wants; along the way, she picks up two hitchhikers with the curious names of Freedom Jack and Poppy Corn. But while Pike’s story meanders down a long and winding road filled with dark secrets, shared stories, and visiting Freedom Jack’s fortune-telling mom, Natsuki is more concerned with the fact that Teresa is actually dying, and her road trip is one long deep dive into whether or not she wants to continue to live.
While the book and the show take completely different routes on their respective road trips, they highlight the same themes and ideas along the way.
Daily News | Online News Spencer’s story: The Eternal Enemy (1993)
Credit: Screenshot Netflix
“This is a story about time and fear.” —”The Midnight Club,” episode 9
Cyborgs stand in the way of humanity in this episode (William Chris Sumpter), whose Midnight Club tale is about Rel and his boyfriend Christopher finding a VCR that records the future. At first the boys think they’ve made a fortunate discovery, but like all Pike plots, the VCR is not what it seems, and a sinister truth is brimming underneath its surface.
In Pike’s novel, things are significantly less queer; Rel is Rela, a young girl who has no idea that she’s actually a cyborg from a cataclysmic future that’s basically The Terminator gone feral. While Rel and Rela both try to interfere with destiny, their stakes are completely different. Rel is trying to keep Christopher alive after seeing his death on the tape whereas Rela is trying to keep herself alive after watching her own death. Both stories tackle similar ideas about fate, but Spencer’s version is about him overcoming his fear and desire to become more of an activist in his life. It’s a role that he perfectly nestles into by the show’s end.
Eagle-eyed Pike fans will also notice that The Midnight Club drops Easter eggs for the very novel from which it was adapted. Remember that creepy montage in the show’s first episode where a cloaked figure sits around a table with all of the kids dead? Yup, that’s The Midnight Club’s book cover. Well, on the cover they’re pictured alive. But it wouldn’t be a Flanagan show if the dramatics weren’t amped up.
Credit: Screenshot Netflix
Despite The Midnight Club’s take on Pike’s stories slightly straying away from the source material, the same cast of characters, stakes, and plot twists make up the kids’ stories and are even elevated to reflect what they’re going through. None of Pike’s included stories feel out of place, and they bring out the club’s characters in such intimate ways that you’ll find yourself resonating with all their otherworldly plots.
The tribute to Pike’s collection of novels is one giant love letter to storytelling and all the worlds it allows us to escape to — which is the very reason the kids began the Midnight Club in the first place. Flanagan’s latest Netflix series is a true feat of storytelling in every possible way.
The Midnight Club is now streaming on Netflix.(opens in a new tab)
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